Best Bacon Ranch Chicken

Our meal tonight is a variation of an old favorite. Mixing chicken with cream cheese and ranch dressing is a classic. Our usual LGBT hero will be replaced by an important legal topic that effects all LGBT's, “The Homosexual Panic”

Here chicken thighs are roasted with cream cheese and a ranch dressing with bacon. Throw in some fresh roasted broccoli and you have a wonderful meal that is an easy clean-up!

Ingredients

• 4 slices thick cut bacon

FOR THE CHICKEN

• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1 tablespoon butter
• 4 (2-pound, total) chicken thighs
• salt and fresh ground pepper, to taste
• ½ teaspoon garlic powder
• ½ teaspoon smoked or sweet paprika
• 1 head of fresh broccoli

FOR THE RANCH CREAM CHEESE

• 4- ounces cream cheese, softened
• 1 tbs Ranch dressing mix OR:
• ¼ teaspoon garlic powder
• ¼ teaspoon onion powder
• ¼ teaspoon dried dill weed
• ½ teaspoon dried chives

FOR GARNISH

• chopped fresh parsley
• sliced green scallions

Instructions

Preheat oven to 400F.

Lightly grease a 9x13 baking dish with cooking spray and set aside.

 Cut up the fresh broccoli into Florets set aside.

Set a large skillet over medium-high heat and add in bacon; cook until crispy.

Remove bacon from skillet and set aside. DON'T discard bacon fat.

Return skillet to heat and add vegetable oil to the remaining bacon fat.

Season chicken with salt, pepper, garlic powder, and paprika.

Add chicken to the hot oil - you may have to do this in batches if skillet isn't big enough - and cook chicken for 6 to 8 minutes, or until golden brown.

Flip over the chicken, add butter, and continue to cook for 6 more minutes.

Remove chicken from skillet and arrange in previously prepared baking dish. Set aside.

Put the broccoli into the skillet with the chicken grease and stir to coat. Spoon this around the pieces of chicken in the baking dish.

In a small bowl combine cream cheese and 1 Tbs of the ranch mix powder; mix until thoroughly combined. Taste for seasonings and adjust accordingly. *You can also just stir in 1 tablespoon of store-bought ranch seasoning.

Top each chicken piece with 2 tablespoons of the cream cheese mixture. Press the pieces of bacon into the cheese.

Bake, uncovered, for 25 minutes, or until chicken is cooked through and cheese is melted and lightly browned.

Remove from oven.

Garnish with fresh parsley and scallions.

Serve.

For our music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=El1kgCqD7Xk

So happy to be serving my Master Indy!

socialslave

To satisfy and restore.

To nourish, support and maintain.

To gratify, spoil, comfort and please,

to nurture, assist, and sustain

…..I cook!

Please buy slave's cookbook:

The Little Black Book of Indiscreet Recipes by Dan White http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00F315Y4I/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_vAT4sb0934RTMvia @amazon

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Homosexual Panic Defense

In legal practice there are, of course, the laws. These are the statutes and regulations set forth by government and signed into effect.

There is, however, much more. This is refereed to as the “Second Body of the Law”. It is made up of how the courts have interpreted those laws and set what is called “legal precedent”. It is within this area we find the subject of our article today.

Researching how the courts dealt with homosexuality is difficult. The words for the gay sex act were considered so vile, for centuries they were not allowed to be used in court! Sometimes phrases were used like: “The certain detestable sin of the Greeks”. Terms were kept so vague often the defendant never knew just what he was being charged with!

I shall try to describe the “Homosexual Panic Defense” in layman's terms. (since this is set up by lawyers – you can count on it being much more involved)

A homosexual is of course a vile and detestable creature so horrifying that when unexpectedly exposed to this, it can be expected to induce a temporary insanity, forcing the poor victim (the murderer) to commit an act that he normally would never even consider.

The loss of life may have been regrettable but not unexpected. The loathsome disgusting proximity would cause a reflex to rid society of this monster and make the bathrooms once again safe for our children.

The net result of this precedent lead to the reality that you could be beaten to death for looking the wrong way in the men's room. And the perpetrator would be hailed as a hero.

In 1952, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders listed "homosexual panic disorder."

Today there is an effort in the legal community to outlaw this defense

(including California in 2014, Illinois beginning last year, and Rhode Island in June.)

According to the LGBT Bar Association, it's usually invoked in three legal senses to mitigate murder charges: a defense of insanity, provocation, or self-defense.

Still, gay panic persists in the courts. A University of California–Los Angeles law review found that, since 1960, about half the states have issued court opinions dealing with the defense—and 16 of those were after 2000. Often, it doesn't work: Florida, Illinois, and Kansas courts have rejected the defense under state laws, and juries have rejected it across the country. But sometimes it does work, either by deadlocking juries or mitigating murder charges.

In September of 2015, 32-year-old Daniel Spencer was stabbed to death in his own home in Austin, Texas. His murderer, James Miller Jr., claimed he killed Spencer in self-defense after Spencer had come on to him. Miller and Spencer were drinking and playing music together shortly before the attack. Miller argued he reacted in self-defense but never claimed that Spencer intended to cause him bodily harm.

In April of last year, a Travis County jury found Miller guilty of a lesser charge, criminally negligent homicide. He received a sentence of 10 years' probation and six months in county jail.

“I have a huge hole in my heart. Something’s wrong in the world when you lose your child before you go,” the victim’s mother, Marsha Spencer, told the jury. “I’m tortured by the thought of how Daniel died and I’m tortured by the fact that he suffered and that he was alone when he died. It’s a loss that cuts deeply.”
The jury apparently didn’t care about the hole in her heart as much as they did the idea of a gay man supposedly making a pass at a straight man. To them, that’s deserving of death.

Trans panic is a similar defense applied in cases of assault, manslaughter, or murder of a transgender individual, with whom the assailant(s) engaged in sexual relations unaware that the victim is transgender until seeing them naked, or further into or post sexual activity.

In Australia, it is known as the homosexual advance defense

Today the gay panic defense is generally invoked in cases where the guilt of the defendant is unquestioned, but only to strengthen a more "traditional criminal law defense such as insanity, diminished capacity, provocation, or self-defense" and is not meant to provide justification of the crime on its own. While using the gay panic defense to explain insanity has typically not been successful in winning a complete acquittal, diminished capacity, provocation, and self-defense have all been used successfully to reduce charges and sentences. 
 
Often in US courts, judges and juries may have cited homosexual solicitation as a mitigating factor, resulting in reduced culpability and sentences.

Some legal remedies have been proposed: Potential "gay shield" laws would exclude evidence pertaining to the victim's history, identity, and behavior (the way rape evidentiary shield laws protect a victim from cross-examination of her sexual reputation and behavior) to avoid playing on the potential homophobic and transphobic biases of a jury.

For the foreseeable future we will still see cases were the victim will be called a monster and the murderer portrayed as the hero.

Palatinus Potatoes and Beans

Well after a brief stay in the hospital, your friendly neighborhood slave is back with more culinary delights for you to prepare. This hearty potato and green beans makes a wonderful one dish meal! It is named to honor a LGBT Hero John Palatinus. A brave photographer in the 50's that forged the way for a community to be started and selling “beefcake” photos.

Fresh green beans, red potatoes, and onions jazz up a great potato Au Gratin. Be sure to read the short story after the recipe.

Ingredients

• 2.5 lbs red potatoes
• 1 onion
• ¼ lbs loose sausage
• 3 tablespoons butter
• 3 tablespoons flour
• 1 teaspoon dry mustard
• 2 cups warmed milk
• ¼ cup gouda or gruyere cheese
• salt & pepper to taste

Instructions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Coat an 8-in. square baking dish with cooking spray.

Heat the milk.

Rinse green beans and snap the ends off.

Cook the ¼ lbs loose sausage in a medium skillet as you prepare the potatoes and onions.

Wash potatoes and slice into 1/8' thin slices. Slice onion as thin as possible.

Layer potatoes and onions in little stacks. Place stacks in the casserole dish. Cover with plastic wrap.

Microwave on full power for about 10 minutes (be careful, it will be hot when removing the plastic wrap).

Meanwhile sprinkle the four into the sausage in the skillet and melt butter Stir and cook 1 minute. Add seasonings and warmed milk. 

Stir over medium heat until thick and bubbly. About 3 minutes remove from heat.

This by the way is now an excellent sausage gravy if you ever need some!

Spread the stacks out in the dish and add the green beans. Stir until mixed. 

 

Spoon the sauce over potatoes. I sprinkled the Gouda cheese as a light thin topping.

Cover with foil (sprayed with cooking spray) and bake 45 minutes. Remove foil and check to see if the potatoes are cooked and done. Uncover and bake an additional 15 minutes or until lightly browned.

Important to let this “rest” for 10 minutes before serving. This allows the sauce to be pulled back into the potatoes.

NOTES:

• Yukon gold potatoes (or red potatoes) have tender skin and don’t require peeling (they hold their shape well).
• Use a mandolin to make these slices

Serve as a one dish meal with perhaps some crusty bread.

For our music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkunqvDT4kY&list=PLAIV0dLl8IN-gZzwSnKh4R9pNspXrQ1d8&index=70

So honored to serve this to my Master Indy

socialslave

To satisfy and restore.

To nourish, support and maintain.

To gratify, spoil, comfort and please,

to nurture, assist, and sustain

…..I cook!

Please buy slave's cookbook:

The Little Black Book of Indiscreet Recipes by Dan White 

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00F315Y4I/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_vAT4sb0934RTMvia @amazon

==============================================================

John Palatinus

John Palatinus was noted for his male physique photography which appeared in numerous magazines that catered to the interests of a growing gay male population in the 1950's.

It might be hard to remember how things were before the widespread internet.

The Forties and Fifties were especially guided by society's push to erase any depiction or even mention of homosexuality. Gay did not exist. Young gay men and women had no where to turn to find others in some instances to even know others existed. Teens hid underwear advertisements to fuel their growing sexuality.

In this environment, photographer John Palatinus in northern Indiana, dared to showcase the male physique as a form of beauty and desire. His images frequently depicted men posing in straps or nude. They were published in “Tomorrow’s Man” and other bodybuilding magazines popular among gay men. They sort of defined the physical archetype, which later became iconically gay.

Artist and author Tom Bianchi said, the images had an validating effect on these lives.

“For kids like myself, who were isolated the photos were the only window into the possibility that there might be a world where gay people could be.”

Born on July 6, 1929, Palatinus grew up in Indiana. It was after his military service in 1954 that he began photographing male bodybuilders, who were usually friends who wanted to document their bodybuilding progress. Early on, he said he realized the images had a “certain amount of art in there.”

John Palatinus was one of the few leaders in the fight for the freedom to disseminate gay photography and art during the 1950's and 60's. He was a legendary photographer from an era now called the Golden Age of Physique Photography. At that time in America, it was illegal to send even semi-nude photographs through the U.S. Mail.

Physique photography was about appreciation of the male form. Palatinus began by photographing one bodybuilder and quickly word spread.

“There was a whole group, a small community of dedicated people who wanted to show their progress.”

Initially only for the models, the pictures began to be published in physique magazines of the time like Tomorrow’s Man, published across The United States. In homophobic McCarthyist America, these magazines were to serve a second purpose- tacitly uniting many closeted homosexual men, who began collecting the images from photographers using the details printed with the pictures.

Later on in the nineties and beyond, Vintage Male Physique (VMP) photography was to become a collector’s business.

Palatinus was gay but most of his models were not.

“People always ask me: ‘How many of your models did you have sex with?’ and whenever they ask me that I say: ‘none of them’. I don’t think you should violate that covenant as a photographer. If you’re gonna make love to them, you do it through the lens.”

In 1954 Palatinus moved to New York, and set up in Greenwich Village, taking male physique photographs and distributing them to eager collectors. In 1958 he began to photograph nudes.

“Before then everything was covered or we would do poses so that the genitalia were not showing. It was a little bit soft core because you could see the outline of the genitalia, but nothing was exposed. It was always of one person, there was no sex involved so I didn’t think it was salacious or readily erotic. I decided: ‘Well I have these beautiful people why don’t I photograph them nude?’ Again I didn’t photograph with erections, there wasn’t any sort of sexual side to them.”

That was left to the roaring imaginations of the viewers.

However, Palatinus’ work was being intercepted by the US postal service, leading to his arrest in 1959. “The police came in to my studio and they took everything, they did a clean sweep, my camera, my lighting equipment, negatives, money, everything. The negatives ended up in the police department. I never saw them again. This was a very difficult time in America, it was the end of the McCarthy era and gay bars were being closed and they would say ‘these premises have been closed because they have been frequented by undesirable people or homosexuals.’

“They would close the bar and they would put the names of the people at the bar in the newspaper, ruining their lives forever. It was a very repressive time. It is representative of the puritanical America of that period and there are still vestiges of that today.” 

 

Using his own name and daring to photograph men for the appreciation of other men, Palatinus was taking a high risk. Alan Harmon, a VMP collector and curator, says it was rare for photographers to identify themselves so openly. 

“A lot of people didn’t use their real name when taking these photographs, Unless you got into their inner circle of buyers, you never knew who was taking these pictures. Then you got the rebels like John who used their full, real name. He was pretty fearless.”

Palatinus was one of many Male Physique photographers who was persecuted for his practice. Bob Mizer, another photographer, was imprisoned in 1959, the same year that Muscle Beach, a prominent setting for physique photography was closed down. “I did not expect it to come crashing down the way it did. It meant starting over at life again because at that point I didn’t have a day job anymore, because I was doing so well with the photographs. After that happened I really had to start my life over again and go back to doing something I did before.” 

 

He was arrested and put on trial in 1961. Palatinus was found guilty but allowed to go free because he had spent a night in jail at the time of his arrest.

He was so shaken by the experience that he turned away from physique photography as a career and focused on styling various commercial shoots for his peers and other creative outlets. But half a century later, renewed interest in his photographs fueled an unexpected career resurgence.

Palatinus began showing his work again in 2009. It was greeted with enthusiasm from galleries and festivals. His photographs were featured in exhibitions from Los Angeles and San Francisco to Paris, France, and Berlin, as well as in numerous magazines.

A 2011 show at Savage Gallery in Palm Springs drew a huge turnout, as Palatinus was honored that year with the Stonewall Lifetime Achievement Award lifetime achievement award. 

 

“When I was in court in 1959, the judge said: ‘by today’s standards it is considered pornography but who knows? In 50 years’ time it may be considered art’ and that really is true.”

 

In September 2014 after a brief illness, John Palatinus passed. He was precede by his life partner of 48 years, Jack Alexander.

Merle Miller Corn Chowder

Here is another hearty home made soup to honor LGBT Hero Merle Miller. Shortly after the Stonewall event, fifty years ago, this famed writer set down just what it meant to be a “homosexual”. It was and is a masterpiece of LGBT culture. Read about him in short article after the recipe.

This soup is made of things right out of your pantry. You should not have much to pick up at the store for this. A thick, rich homemade chowder can be the perfect meal for a lunch or game night while we still can not count on the weather holding. 

 

Ingredients:

3 cups	Chicken broth low salt
2 cans	Corn Kernels, drained
1	Yellow Onion, finely diced
2 cloves	Garlic, minced
1 can	Diced Potatoes
1lbs	Fully cooked pork sausages
½ cups	Half-and-half non fat
¼ cup	Fresh Parsley, chopped
½ tsp	Dried Thyme
2 Tbsp	Butter
1 Tbsp	Olive Oil
	Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
Do your cutting: Chop the onion and mince the garlic.


Warm the olive oil and butter in a dutch oven over medium heat. Toss in the onions, and cook for 5 minutes to start. 
 

Add the sausages, cook them until brown on both sides, another 5-6 minutes.
 
 

Remove the meat. (While the chowder is cooking cut the sausages into bite sized pieces.)

Pour in the chicken broth and scrape the bottom to release any browned bits. Add the drained can of potatoes and bring to a boil. Reduce to simmer for 30 minutes until the potatoes start to break down.
Then toss in the drained corn kernels for another 15 minutes. 
 

Carefully, using an immersion blender, smooth out the chowder. Season with salt and pepper, and add in the parsley. 

 

Once it is the consistency you want, add the cut up sausages and the can of creamed corn. 

 

Let simmer for 20 minutes to blend flavors.

If you like, serve with a spoonful of sour cream in each bowl.

For our music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZObv6QgRXc

What a wonderful meal to serve my Master Indy

socialslave

To satisfy and restore.

To nourish, support and maintain.

To gratify, spoil, comfort and please,

to nurture, assist, and sustain

…..I cook!

Please buy slave's cookbook:

The Little Black Book of Indiscreet Recipes by Dan White http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00F315Y4I/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_vAT4sb0934RTMvia @amazon

 

=========================

 

Merle Miller was born in Iowa at the end of World War I. Before World War II, he was a Washington correspondent for the late Philadelphia Record. During the war, Miller served both in the Pacific and in Europe as a war correspondent and editor for Yank, The Army Weekly.

During the course of a writing career that spanned several decades, Miller wrote numerous novels, including the best-selling classic post war novel, That Winter (1948). He also wrote several non-fiction books, many television plays, and was the author of the screenplays, "The Rains of Ranchiphur" (1955), and "Kings Go Forth", (1958). His postwar career as a television script writer and novelist was interrupted by the advent of Senator Joseph McCarthy and Miller's inclusion on the "Blacklist." He did not re-enter TV until the early 60s.

The trigger:

Joseph Epstein, in an essay in the September, 1970 issue of Harper’s, spouted the typical anti-homosexual drivel that was common at that time. He closed with: “If I had the power to do so,” he writes, “I would wish homosexuality off the face of the earth… nothing [my four sons] could ever do would make me sadder than if any of them were to become homosexual. For then I should know them condemned to a permanent niggerdom among men, their lives, whatever adjustment they might make to their condition, to be lived out as part of the pain of the earth.”

Merle Miller, who had been an editor at Harper’s, felt “outraged and saddened” to read Epstein’s language. He called Bob Kotlowitz, the magazine’s executive editor, to say as much. Kotlowitz, a friend of Miller’s, responded that he, like “a great many intelligent people … more or less” agreed with Epstein. 

 

A few days later, Miller had lunch with two editors at the New York Times Magazine, Gerry Walker and Victor Navasky, and Epstein came up again. Navasky, praised the unusual power of Epstein’s piece. Miller wouldn’t have it: “Epstein is saying genocide for queers!” In the essay, Epstein, had written that “Nobody says, or at least I have never heard anyone say, ‘Some of my best friends are homosexuals.’”

“Many of my best friends are Jewish fags, black fags…. Miller continued.In fact, most of my friends are gay! In fact, I’m gay! In fact, that’s the first time I’ve ever said that in public! And there are only three of us here.”

Navasky returned to his office and spoke with his superiors at the Times, They OK'ed and Miller was asked to express his reaction in a magazine piece. What Miller turned in, Navasky said, was “so beautiful, so spectacularly different, so compelling, that it had to run.”

“What It Means to Be a Homosexual”was published on January 17, 1971. It was extraordinary. Miller had not intended to write anything personal—“I have no taste for self-revelation,” he later wrote—but it seems to have spilled out from his pen, his typewriter, a reasoned and reasonably furious demand for respect.

“I am sick and tired,” he wrote, “of reading and hearing such goddamn demeaning, degrading bullshit about me and my friends.” It was a great deal more than that, but in a way, Miller’s anger was it: a simple, loyal appeal on behalf of himself and his bullied friends.

Miller couldn’t have known what would happen after the publication of his essay.

Miller’s essay got over two thousand letters—more than the paper had ever received for a single article. Later that year the piece was published as a book, with an afterword by Miller. Forty-one years later, Penguin Classics has re-released it as “On Being Different,” with a new foreword by Dan Savage and a new afterword by Charles Kaiser, the journalist and author of “The Gay Metropolis.”

Miller stated:

“I'll tell you this, though. It's not true, that saying about sticks and stones; it's words that break your bones.”

“I have never infected anybody, and it's too late for the head people to do anything about me now. Gay is good. Gay is proud. Well, yes, I suppose. If I had been given a choice (but who is?), I would prefer to have been straight. But then, would I rather not have been me? Oh, I think not, not this morning anyway.”

“A young homosexual friend recently said, "It's no secret that you, that one, has such-and-such color hair, is yea high, weighs thus and so, and so on, but when you keep one part of yourself secret, that becomes the most important part of you."
And that is true, I think; it may be the most important truth of all.”

Miller was fed up, and, in Dan Savage’s words, “captured the anger that has motivated L.G.B.T. activists from the Mattachine Society to the Stonewall riots to ACT UP to the It Gets Better Project. What are L.G.B.T.-rights activists but people who grew sick and tired of reading and hearing such goddamn demeaning, degrading bullshit about themselves and their friends and decided to speak up and fight back. ”

As Miller wrote in his May, 1971 afterword, doctors and therapists who came out would lose their patients; “lawyers wrote that they would lose their practices; writers would lose their readers; a producer would not be able to raise the money for his next musical.”

That afterword closed with a sigh of relief: “I realize how stifling the air has been all these years. I may not be freer, but I’m a lot more comfortable, a lot less cramped.” 

 

It was, of course, a landmark piece, and its author became an activist after it ran. Unfortunately, when Miller died in 1986, his New York Times obituary said that he had no survivors, although for years he had been with his partner, the writer David W. Elliott.