One of the special advantages a gay identity confers is kinship with other gay-identified persons all over the world. I consider ours a spiritual kinship because it transcends biological, national, ethnic, and socio-economic boundaries. As Homo sapiens we are all distantly related, of course, but we normally trace our biological kinship only as far back as familial memory or historical records permit. While some of us may lament the lack of biological offspring as a common consequence of choosing to honor our same-sex attractions, many more may celebrate our freedom from the financial and emotional costs of rearing children. Not only can we choose to remain free from the burdens of biological family, but we are also free to form our own intentional families, including sons or dads, if desired, by choosing relationships with individuals based on genuinely shared values, interests, and aspirations.

It was just shy of three months from when I finally admitted to myself that I was gay from when I moved to New York City.  So not only was I coming to the city to start my big time career ambitions, but also my big new gay life.  Knowing little about what to expect, I came to just accept that, based on the scene I fell into, I wouldn’t feel cute enough, wouldn’t have the right clothes, and could only hope that I would get an invite to visit a Fire Island Pines house as I surely couldn’t afford it.  (Which never happened.) But after unsuccessfully fitting in with mainstream gay culture, I met the love of my life and stopped caring what other boys thought of me.

About two years into our being together I suggested we go to Provincetown, Massachusetts for the weekend.  I had spent summers on the Cape during school but never stayed overnight in the “gay town” at the end of the earth.  We went, and by coincidence it turned out it was the end of something called “Bear Week”.  At the time, we thought a bear was simply an animal that well… shit in the woods.  Let’s just say that despite living in New York, I hadn’t yet realized that not everything from our culture had in fact ended up in an episode of Queer as Folk.  Bear culture… what’s that?

So in this weekend of firsts I met not just bears, but cubs, muscle bears, and daddy bears.  I found out that there was a bear flag, a bear themed magazine, and that you can sexualize chest hair.  (Woof!)  And on day two one particularly friendly “bear tracker” (a skinny hairless guy that none-the-less had a penchant for pelt) said to me quite seriously:

“You know what you are?”

“Ah… what’s that?” I replied warily.

“You’re an Otter.”

“I’m sorry?”

Edwin Cameron, openly gay and HIV positive, has been appointed as a judge to the Constitutional Court of South Africa, the highest court in that Nation.   Judge Cameron becomes the first openly gay man or woman ever appointed to any nation's highest court.  The appointment came from South African President Mothlanthe on Wednesday.

A former Rhodes Scholar and human rights lawyer, Judge Cameron is the co-author of several books, including Witness to AIDS, a memoir on his experiences as a person living with AIDS.

Last summer, Judge Cameron addressed the International AIDS Conference in Mexico, arguing that homosexual sexual conduct should be decriminalized throughout the world, as a necessary step in fighting AIDS.  He elaborated the argument in a scholarly paper co-authored withwith Scott Burris.

We're always thrilled here at DaddyHunt when another mature gay man opens a new door for the rest of us.  Let's hope we see more gay men and women leading our world courts (and legistures and countries) soon.

Here's something, ummmm, warm and inviting to think about on this cold, December Friday morn.  The hot daddy-ness of our celebrated Presidents is a very no-duh: Washington would be a stern papa, the military dad full of strength and honesty; Jefferson would be the smart dad, intellectual and passionate; Roosevelt (Teddy, of course) would be the (ahem) rough-riding dad, roaring with vigor; and Lincoln would be a strong but vulnerable father, determination mixed with kindness.

I'll take the second from the right, thank you very much

But leave it to a German gay travel site to take Mount Rushmore and make the Presidential Monument into a silly-something that would make even folks who don't see that daddy-ness of Washington, Jefferson, Roosevet, and Lincoln think of them in a new light ... and from a whole new perspective.  It's always been said that hindsight is in the eye of the beholder, no wait, that's not right...

Click here for a closer look.

You know what’s great about Sean Connery … aside from everything, I mean? He’s got that unbearably smooth cool thing, that burly roughness thing, and that seething ferocity thing going for him and they’re all good. Incredibly good, I grant you, but that's not what’s truly great about the Scottish actor who's been on stage and screen since the 50s.

What’s great about Connery, Sean Connery, is that no matter his age, he projects a wonderful daddy-thing.  Even when he was clumsy and gawky in (shudder) Darby O'Gill and the Little People, he had this smoky primal thing going on.  Yeah he looked like his voice might have just broken but even then you knew that he’d be the one slapping you on the back while you sipped a pint at the bar, or the one playfully wrestling you for the check when it was time to drunkenly stumble home.

Even during the years he was shaking-not-stirring his martinis, he had a dark edge, an almost brutal dynamism. You could still see that there was a playfulness there, though; a rough and tumble kind of fun streak. You could see him horsing around with the stunt guys, trading rude jokes with the extras, and leading the bit players in drinking games. 

Mr. Connery exudes class and a kind of burly elegance, but more than that there’s a realism he always brings to whatever he does.  It’s there in The Man Who Would Be King, there in Murder on The Orient Express, there in The Molly Maguires, and even in the surreal weirdness of Zardoz (where he spent most of the film in a very weird, and hot, outfit): a presence that’s fifty percent brilliant actor and fifty percent Sean Connery just being his usual down-to-earth, just-one-of-the-guys, self.

And he’s gotten better as he’s gotten older.  He still has that rough edge, that punch-you-in-the-shoulder manliness but he’s also developed an even more (if that’s possible) fatherly aspect.  Yeah, you could see the 60s and 70s Connery as the perfect daddy but also one that might be as much a competitor as a kind hand and a sweet touch. But the 80s, 90s and current Sean has become a real dad, a true father figure.

As if we needed more evidence of the power and wisdom that comes with age, 55-year-old gay poet Mark Doty has just won the 2008 National Book Award for Poetry for his collection, Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems.

The poems in the book represent more than 20 years worth of work but in an interview about his win, Doty said it was only at this stage in his life as a mature man that he could critically put this collection together. "When I started out I did what most young poets do -- take all the poems I'd written that I could stand and put them in my first book. But more and more it's a matter of building relationships between poems, and the way that new poems get made is out of the suggestions and possibilities of what I've already done."

Sounds like a a good daddy approach to life, and one that we appreciate here at Daddyhunt.

Check out Doty's website here to learn more about him and read some of his poetry.  Doty is the author of several collections of poetry and non-fiction books.  He lives in New York City and Houston, Tx.

Photo © Star Black