Boy George, "No Clause 28"

I'll save Earth Day for another day - Earth Day is every day, right? - so that I can continue on with EMP recaps.

One of the many conference speakers was Amanda Villepastour, an ethnomusicologist who spent several years as a touring musician with Boy George; she gave a talk on the bullshit he went through during and after his Culture Club years because of his sexuality and gender-tweaking self-presentation. She said she saw homophobia directed at him "almost on a daily basis" while working with him from 1988 through 1994. (As well as an attempt at entrapment via heroin, but that's a subject for another day.) He'd been prevented throughout the '80s from living life as his authentically outsize self for a number of reasons: he was in a clandestine relationship with his closeted bisexual drummer, Jon Moss, which he didn't wish to imperil by outing him; the press preferred to speculatively tut-tut than to deal with a sexual reality; the band's record label, not wanting to risk losing a cash cow, discouraged George from saying the words most who followed the band knew to be true.

In the late '80s, a Thatcherite law, Section 28, was implemented in the United Kingdom, stating (as Wikipedia summarizes) that any UK local government "shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality" or "promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship." (Ah, there's that word again, with regard to family and union: pretended. I've been railing for months here against the attempts by the right wing to inauthenticate same-sex relationships, to declare them inferior and invalid. Here was an instance of political forces doing so in a strikingly overt and brazen manner.) Section 28 had been "inspired" by both the AIDS crisis and the small number of books of the Heather Has Two Mommies ilk. The law went into effect in the spring of '88.

Boy George - who by this point had dissolved both Culture Club and his relationship with Moss, leaving him marginally more free to come out - responded swiftly with a propaganda dance record, "No Clause 28," that cast the argument in simple and human terms: "To tamper with our pride, they say to celebrate it is social suicide." On its sheer musical merits, "No Clause 28" isn't a great record - it's a synthpop period piece, with passable vocals and some sly lyrics (and one has to wonder if Flavor Flav appreciated the repurposing of his "Yeeeah, boyeeee" catchphrase) - but it was a display of courage from someone who still had a great deal commercially to lose by allying himself with the unpopular cause of gay rights.

George's career more or less died soon after, though he maintains a reputation in certain clubbing circles. But Clause 28 was ultimately repealed at the end of 2003. And so we gays lived happily ever after.

Er, except that we still don't have our fucking rights.

The Waterboys, "Fisherman's Blues"

Three years ago today, one of my very best friends enjoyed his last day on earth.

I'd known him since college; he struck me then as a wise man and old soul, and there seemed something almost fated about it when he persuaded me to move to San Francisco in the fall of 1996. We spent three years sharing the air in SF - sometimes out of touch over something stupid, but more often sharing the sights and smells and sounds of the city. A typical Sunday for us at our best might find us meeting in the Haight for brunch and then a walk through Golden Gate Park's flower gardens, followed by chess and conversation in a coffeehouse, then maybe dinner in Japantown or bickering over groceries and Blockbuster rentals before hanging out at his place.

We were never intimate, let me be clear about that; he was entirely het - but we had a deep connection nevertheless, both of us interested in creating positive change on grand levels yet devoted to each other's minor conversations as well. Indeed, the last time I saw him, he'd flown all the way to Seattle to watch me deliver a paper at a music conference. It's a rare person who'll do that for you. And Brandon was as rare as people get.

Kenneth Brandon Potter was only 35 when he passed away, for reasons still unsatisfactorily blurry to me ("heart failure" seems more a symptom than a cause), and I don't pretend I'm cool with his departure. It left a permanent hole in me.

But his life is something to be celebrated, not mourned, so I'll expunge my grief my own way as we enjoy a song Brandon and I both loved very much. In fact, when I reconnected with him in August 2000 after moving back to SF from a yearlong gig in SoCal, it was in a North Beach bar called Vesuvio with its own grand history, and the Waterboys' "Fisherman's Blues" just happened to be the song playing as Brandon wound up the stairs to greet me. As if the bar knew how to welcome back two devoted footsoldiers with tales to tell.

Brandon, I love ya, bud. Always will. But I'm still pissed that you never let me know where you were headed.