By Paul Varnell

Gays are winning, at least in the economic marketplace. After leaving a gay bar late one night I walked about a block to the nearest bus stop to wait for a bus. After a few minutes I heard a loud voice yell, “Hey.” I ignored it. Then I heard the voice more insistently yell, “Hey!” I looked around and spied a man standing in a second-floor window across the street. When he saw that I had spotted him, he yelled “You want a woman?” I shook my head no and the man disappeared. About a minute later, I heard the same voice yell, “Hey!” Again I looked up. “You want a boy?”

—Alcoholics Anonymous insists that people who used to drink but are trying to abstain continue to refer to themselves as alcoholics. By contrast “ex-gay” groups insist that people who used to engage in homosexuality but are trying to abstain not refer to themselves as homosexuals.

—At least one of the groups probably has the psychology wrong. Maybe both are wrong and it should be the other way around.

—It is interesting that, unlike “ex-gay” programs, Alcoholics Anonymous does not try to switch alcohol drinkers’ desires to something else, say milk, and then call themselves milk drinkers.

—One of the minor pleasures of learning about music, art, and literature is noticing connections among various works, the references one creative person will make to another. Swift borrowed from Polybius, H. G. Wells borrowed from Swift, Rand drew on Chernyshevsky, Magritte took ideas from De Chirico, Juan Gris drew from Picasso and Braque, Cadmus alluded to Rousseau, Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” reworks Bach’s Prelude in C, etc.

—Jazz, too. Miles Davis’s “Sketches of Spain,” arranged by Gil Evans, is avowedly derived from Joaquin Rodrigo’s “Concierto de Aranjuez.” But I noticed recently that Evans’ arrangement for Miles Davis of “Wait Till You See Her” had a brief quotation slyly slipped in from Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra. And arranger Torrie Zito slipped a bar of Stravinsky’s “Firebird” into a Morgana King song.

—Some presidential candidates say they are for full-benefit civil unions, but not marriage—yet cannot give a coherent reason why. The unstated reason: They fear if they endorse gay marriage, they cannot be nominated or elected. But they don’t want to say that. So we must keep the nation moving toward acceptance of gay marriage. Meanwhile, we can press them to support elimination of the Defense of Marriage Act barring equal federal benefits for same-sex partners. And we can vote in primaries for candidates who support gay marriage, even if they have no chance of winning, to demonstrate that there are votes for gay marriage supporters. Who will be for us if we are not for ourselves?

—Things that annoy me about gay men, No. 47: Fragrances. Sometimes when I go out to a bar I run into some man who has doused himself with so much cologne that I have to move away. People’s noses can get used to their own smell after a while, so they probably don’t realize how strong the odor seems to others. I once knew a man who used so much patchouli oil that we all figured he owned a patchouli oil well. He said it was his personal style. Some bars told him to take his personal style elsewhere. Good.

—A surprising number of conservative Christians seem to believe the Garden of Eden myth and some Christian dogmas depend on it. No Garden of Eden, no Adam and Eve. No Adam and Eve, no original sin because there were no original sinners.

—Nothing in the Bible suggests that God destroyed the garden, only that Adam and Eve were driven out. In fact, an angel with a fiery sword was placed to stand guard and prevent them or anyone else from ever entering it again, whch means it continued to exist.

—Although most parts of the world, including the Near East, have been thoroughly explored and satellite imaging provides clear pictures even of large buildings, no one has ever detected any Garden of Eden.

Some of Paul Varnell’s previous columns are posted at the Independent Gay Forum (www.indegayforum.org). His e-mail address is pvarnell@aol.com.