Written:  May 10, 2003  (4,541 words)

To Whom It May Concern:

Obviously, this is a message to a number of people, my friends, who know Larry Marshall and me, Larry Norton.  The dictionary defines FRIEND as a person attached to another by respect or affection, (or as an acquaintance).  Also, a friend is one who is not hostile. Am I hostile?  Please get better acquainted with me before judging my intent, as I promise to do the same with you.  I feel a sense of urgency in communicating with you. Thus this written message to share something about me.  Scheduling time to talk has been a problem far too long.

I know what some of my friends are thinking about me.  I do appreciate the concern for my well-being.   But as I try to be a man of my word, being honest, I see how hostility is a matter of being in the eye of the beholder.  Even if my intent is not hostility, it is perceived and felt as hostile sometimes.  Especially, recent spoken words to the effect, that I view all humans as being enemies of each other.   The dictionary defines this word, enemy, as one that attacks or tries to harm another, as a foe.   I can see where sometimes people feel attacked when with me, but I am not trying to harm, as if you were a foe.  I want to awaken the juices in your brain, to stimulate the thinking process, to boot out fear (emotion) and promote your intelligence factor.  We all go through (T.A.), TRANSACTIONAL ANALYSIS, of our environment, which includes the exchange of words, to determine in each of our transactions, what is safe to trust or what is doing us harm.  Did you realize this?  But today, my reality in this place and time, the WORLD, not just a single town, city, county or district, state, or country or continent, but the entire WORLD is advancing, consciously or unconsciously, in a seemingly sudden inhumane race  to total annihilation. It may be final after you, my friends, and I are dead, but nonetheless, it is a march toward extinction that we all must endure, as we are ALL in this boat called Earth, together.   It seems to me, we should be uniting together, not separating apart, not outright killing each other, physically or with words.  It seems wise then to always try to have our brains directing us toward pro-life, not pro-death.  If the human race is to survive, it seems to me, we all must be making more decisions toward peace, not war, whether personal decisions or societal decisions.  I believe we should work smarter, not harder.  But, friends…..

 Who am I?  This is Larry Norton, a person of self-worth who values highly your worth, communicating with WORDS, those unique features of the human species.

Being a person of faith, not a perfect know-it-all, I even believe words are sacred.  I believe words have meaning as they are symbols of energy.  Energy is one of the basic elements in our known universe, along with the element of Time.

As we thrive on energy, we thrive on words.  So why do we in today’s culture pervert the meaning of words?  Why do we allow our energy to be inefficient?  Is not our universe of energy very efficient when not perverted?

What am I?  I am a member of the human species, trying to be a friend.  I am a gift to the world from the Omnipotent One, like everyone else,  by way of a male and a female of the species.

Where am I? At this moment I am on planet Earth which is in a single solar system within the infinite universe.  I am sitting in a chair at my home computer keyboard typing in Fresno, California, in a country called United States of America (which is a misnomer, as they are NOT united).

I just experienced a power outage before saving this writing.  Out of ignorance, I FEARED I would loose these words.  I thought, Holy Shit.  But then, seemingly miraculously, the man-made computer having been pre-programmed, restored the text completely.  Praise Jesus. What friend said, I need to lighten up?

When am I?  I am at a point in time.  Time is that human named element of the universe which measures (or accounts) for a finite unit within infinity.  I am at a point in time when my human conscience is undergoing the most severe crisis thus far in my existence.  As a human at this point in time, I am faced with making a decision between right and wrong, between good and bad.  This is always my human choice whether in a crisis or not, every moment that I still have the breath of life.  I suggest this is true for all of the human species in its physical energy expenditure for survival.  At our best, we with a brain in balance with our emotions, choose to defend our life or when clouded by out of balance emotions, we choose the wrong, the bad, the evil, taking away of life (choosing death), or at the very least an act of dehumanization.

Why am I?  I am because for every effect, there is a cause.   The cause of my being, the infinite (no beginning, no end), the Omnipotent One (there can only be one ALL powerful, MOST powerful one), is not completely known to any of the human species with absolute certainty. How could a finite being ever have complete knowledge of the absolute, ALL-POWERFUL?   Being human in this condition requires a leap of faith or belief, a reasoning capability and responsibility.  I suggest it is obvious, it is not a single belief, but a system of beliefs to see with finite vision how to relate to the unknown cause of human existence.  As all humans are and were (and always will be?) created the same, it appears rational to interact with each other with mutual respect.  How else do or can we honor the Omnipotent in the universe?   We are all finite creatures living in ignorance.   Appearances however, are a natural part of a process of perception.  It is all a relative matter (NOT ABSOLUTE) in the eye of the beholder.  It seems what is true in my reasoning is true for all of humanity: that our actions (the effects in life) are born out of an interaction between the brain (the center of perception) and its encasement, the body (physical reality).  We have a mental, physical drive (experience) and an instinctual force (or spirit) or Will-Power to survive.  I am here to give the best that I can muster for the promotion of a harmonious life.   (My next sermon is  Where There Is A Will, There Is A Way).

How am I?  I am different.  We are all unique.

First, I am bogged down emotionally and seemingly at my wit’s end, intellectually.

My belief system on which I operate is and has been under attack ever since I first started “seeing” it (recognizing it, focusing on it, internalizing it) at the age of 9. (1957).  My beliefs are simple minded because they were recognized and started to be understood at an early age and were nurtured by imperfect simple minded poor-in-money parents and other human authorities.  It is NOT insignificant that 1957 was the very first year I can remember a conscious physical knowledge about sexual orgasms.  How’s that for a “food for thought” gift?

Secondly, I am now older and I think wiser.  So I feel more confident in preaching my convictions.

I learned in my age of innocence about the idea of questioning authority, whether it be parental, or social (peer pressure), religious (Southern Baptist anti-intellectual, ignorant, phony and hypocritical “believers”), or institutional (public – government supported education system).  I struggled and dealt with issues of what it means both to FEAR GOD and FEAR NOT.  I came to terms with that emotion, FEAR, which has everything to do with self-esteem, self-worth.  But being human, the struggle did not end; the terms had to be that I would do my best to stay balanced and keep a control over my emotions to prevent them from overtaking my being rational, and logical.   We all have a hard time with that one, I think.

I have tried to share what I know, but have become well aware now, that sharing with someone must be when they are ready to receive, for it to be accepted.  It seems that passive Larry Norton is being perceived as hatefully aggressive.

What stuns me day in and day out, is how others who judge or attack me based on THEIR belief system(s), before even knowing with any semblance of certainty about mine.  I believe that honesty is the best policy.  Others don’t.  I believe in doing to others what I want them to do to me.  Others don’t or don’t act like it.  I believe that in giving a gift, I am receiving a gift.  I believe friends are all about sharing and caring, exchanging gifts.  (Dictionary help again, GIFT is defined as 1. The act or power of giving.  2. Something given, a present.   3.  A special ability, like talent.

There is nothing in the definition about conditions of determining value, monetary or otherwise on the person being gifted.  Gifting is a powerful action.  A gift is also some THING.  It is a skill, a talent, an insight, a favor, a money making machine, etc. Why do we forget that giving was the engine by which economically poor people assert their power for as long as we have kept records?

Whether it is in the organized family structure, or in an organized group like a church, or an institutional government or private charitable organization, or unit, the concept of giving has been hijacked by the elitist corporate dehumanizing powerful bastards.  Yes, that word fits, as THEY came from whores, people who sold their soul to make or value the monetary profit gain as more important than human interests.   Why aren’t we, the People, the vast majority, doing EVERYTHING within our power to promote PEOPLE power especially, since PEOPLE have the power to survive when they recognize it and use it?   Trust me please, when they recognize, they use it.  So there is an element of education and trust involved in promoting PEOPLE POWER.   But those elements need not be stumbling blocks between friends or friends of friends.

Why are we so blind to see the significance in being kind to each other?  IF, IF, IF we networked as friends, we would identify who specifically is our group of financial gifters.  There’s that word IF.  Words are important.  Our words, though are merely symbols of energy.  Think about it.  Words do not speak louder than action, or energy.  It is action, or energy that gives the Word its power.  If you say what you mean and mean (do) what you say, then you are being clear and consistent.  You are being precise, instead of vague.  You are being honest, not deceptive.  You stand a much better chance of being understood.  Word energy in terms of efficiency should be paramount. (Hateful or harmful actions cannot be efficiently called an act of Love for example)  There is another element in our universe that we must deal with besides energy, its efficiency or wastefulness, and that element is TIME.

IF, IF, IF, you took the time to receive my gifts, knowing that I have at some point rendered you enough of my time to receive your gifts, then we would be working smarter, rather than harder.  Isn’t that interesting?  That process is the same thing rich people do to succeed and become powerful.  They take your gift of your life (your time) and pay you a pittance of money to do their work so they can claim they earned money.  But then they don’t stop.  Then they duplicate that process by taking a portion of their profits to increase the number of people working for them to gain even more.   In other words they use multiplication instead of simply adding one penny at a time to their savings.   Why not give to your friends, your life (a little bit of time and knowledge out of caring or LOVE)?  Why not give your friend’s best friend’s best friend a $3 gift to buy groceries for a meal?  What is stopping you?  Could it be selfishness?  Or is it greed?  Or is it an excuse that you are hurting too? We all are hurting economically.  Even those rich bastards are feeling the pain and loss right now.  So why discriminate based on whether you are helping ONLY your closest of friends after you do a credit check on them?  Why are you stuck on adding a penny on top of a penny?  Why haven’t you progressed (as a progressive) and started using duplication (which is a form of multiplication)?  You know mathematics better than you think.  There are more of us poor souls than there are of the fascist-acting bastards.  Why aren’t we duplicating our gifts?  So many questions, so little time.  I have answers but who will make time to hear my “poor mans” answer?  Especially when “they” and “their” propaganda have enslaved us to the notion that money must be earned.  You are told repeatedly, there is no Free Lunch.  Bullshit!  If I give you a free lunch, honey, you have a FREE  lunch.  If it was a gift and not a loan, or a business transaction, there are NO conditions on it and that money qualifies people to not even report to the Internal Revenue Service, unless they want a form filled out with your signature declaring the money listed was a gift.  Basically, they (the IRS) don’t want to know about it UNLESS the cash gift was more than $11,000  per friend (person), per calendar year.  Not long ago it was a $10,000 limitation, but because it helps rich people too, enough of the Republicans joined Democrats and justified an increase due to “inflation”.   Many more people than you realize, are already utilizing this “poor mans” “tax loophole” each year that the economy was getting better, and especially now, as people are desperate to make ends meet.  Why are my friends so dead set against hearing more details?  Might it be because of ignorance? “Forgive them Father, they know not what they do.”  To win, don’t we have to know how to use the existing rules of the game?  To assure VICTORY and SUCCESS, why are we ALL not using all possible rules laid out in our lives that work to our benefit?  Is not diversification working smarter, rather than harder?

If I listen to you and your human concerns, I am human and I process that data.  Likewise, if I am truly your friend, would you not also have an interest in giving me a little of your time to hear of my human concerns?   Especially, if you have recognition that your friend, (and his relationship with the most significant person in his life) were injured or in someway hurt, as you have to listen to their screams of anger, of outrage, of being squashed to death?

There is an overwhelming of emotions going on all the time to really ALL of us (both those who live in fear and even those who don’t), that overpowers the brain’s processing data used in rendering a decision.  This is obvious, starting with the human birth process that throws us into a world of chaos, and continues throughout the life journey of every soul on earth.  I don’t personally “know” every soul on earth, but I have not found any evidence to contradict the previous sentence.   Emotions are getting in the way of a logical decision on what is good or what is bad, what is right or what is wrong to do (action to take, path to follow, direction in life, end of destination)

I have been reduced in my life journey to a point of desperation.  Yes, maybe, depression, too.  We all get to that part of the journey.   The trick is not to stay too long, regain our balance with the universe and move on.  My words exposing my soul at this time, sounds crazy to those who don’t really know me.  I submit that not even my own mother really knows me and all about my belief system, even though it is her to which most credit should be given for the gift that I am.  But time is running out on me, as I am over 50 years old, and if I am to share my soul, this is the time.  We all have to decide when is the time and place for everything.  Being human means, it has to be an individual decision.  NO ONE ELSE has the right to render a judgement on me that it is not the right time to plant or sow that seed, or what time to harvest it (reap it).  But as I chose to concentrate these last 11 years on a “marriage” I have chosen it to be more important than any other of my human relationships.  I’m sorry, if that seems unkind to my friends, but that is the way my world turns.

So my attention and energy has greatly been spent between my job and my partner, to give a better quality to life, to give a happy home.  But I have been held back in my reaching out to others, as they make a judgement not to trust I know what I am talking about.  Or that I am worth their time.

I am not the only one whose free spirit is and has been crushed.  My partner has had to divorce himself from family ties, as the family rejected him and his spirit many years ago.  He has traveled in search of a home in his life’s painful journey, experiencing both highs and lows, in Israel, in Toronto, Canada, in Lincoln, Nebraska, in Los Angeles and winds up in Fresno coming to me like an angel in my hour of need.  I bared my soul to him immediately.  But both of us, being tortured by an existence controlled by the MIGHTY and POWERFUL “majority” clicked as far as understanding each other on the surface.  My version of events may differ from what he has told you.  This can be expected.  However, casting my actions in absolute terms, as done recently with MY FRIENDS, when for the most part I have tried to keep certain relationship problems private, is NOT really Larry Norton.  There are only a few things I recognize as absolutes in this universe.  Everything is relative because the universe is VERY diverse.  I used to be recognized as kind, as I am a kind person.  Now, however, those closest to me say I am very cruel.

My partner is hurting and says I never really liked or loved him since I invited him to share my home.  We are talking of dissolving the Domestic Partnership.  All because of words.   We had words.

Now I am being described to my friends as careless with money, emotionally sadistic,   and hateful.

Well, I do not hate people.   I hate an action, I don’t hate the person.  I hate the Republican Party, but not the individual Republican person.  I hate injustice and war.   I  always have been that way and probably always will be that way.

So, all of this means words have consequences.  I sometimes misjudge a situation and use too strong of words to make my point or I raise my voice, as anger begins to rise in me out of frustration, etc.

I have fought these battles before when I was younger.    Why do I have to fight for others again?  I thought we learned our lesson, as Democrats during the Vietnam Mistake, that other un-declared “war” that nearly tore the nation apart.  A mistake turning parents against children, siblings against siblings, gays against straights, and race against race, etc.  Last time around, we had nuclear weapons which we did not use.  Now the rest of the world will follow our example, they too will continue to develop so-called self-preservation nuclear weapons.

Anyway, right now, my partner and I are torn apart over how to best get on with what we have left of our life.  I would appreciate some attention be paid to the battles we have between each other, between him and I, and between YOU and I.  Are they worth the energy expended?  Did they help accomplish reaching our goals?  Or do our decisions and choices we make bring us apart or together?  Are we controlling our emotions, in order to keep the computers in our heads uninfected with viruses?  Are you supporting my addictions or helping to solve them?  Are you helping my Larry handle his insecurities, fears, and overly emotional outbursts or are you just watching him fall apart encouraging his speaking of absolutes and expressing how I feel, when in reality I am the only one who can express MY FEELINGS.   I should be the one to decide when and where and to whom to do that.

To  properly and completely share knowledge and experience, ideas and information, build a money-making machine, or whatever, takes time.  It takes time for me to write or speak of my life history on how I have over the decades given and developed gifts of leadership, expressions of visionary concepts, in many different situations and with very different people.  And within diverse human groupings such as:

The family;

At my church;

At school;

At Fresno State College, (the founder of GAY PEOPLES UNION, first openly gay group on campus);

Or in the City of Fresno, one of 13 Founding members of the first Metropolitan Community Church in Fresno;

And (not the first MANAGER), but a year as Manager of Fresno’s first gay bath house called Glen’s for Men Turkish Bath;

Or  at California State University, Fresno, was the first student of Social Work to be placed by The CSUF School of Social Work earning university credits developing and implementing a Peer Counseling program at the first Fresno Gay Community Center; And as Founder of the Fresno Human Rights Coalition—to first defeat the Briggs initiative, then take on other projects  promoting Human Rights for Fresno County citizens;

Or as the creator, editor, distributor of the first means of out of the closet gay liberation communication vehicles in Fresno such as the MCC Grape Vine Newsletter (1971), the Gay People’s Union Newsletter, (1975) and the Fresno Human Rights Coalition’s FRESNO INFORMER (1977-79) preceding all other “gay liberation” publicly distributed information papers;  (rags? Well, for being first, we were a pretty intellectual rag!)

Or being a Founder of Fresno’s first “gay” Democrat club, The Wilde-Stein Democrat Club

Or being the first gay person to challenge a Fresno County Department of Welfare for job discrimination based on sexual orientation; ( Note: My confrontation with  the Civil Service Commission of Fresno County had  lukewarm help from the ACLU and National Lawyers Guild and other so-called progressive Fresno attorneys and I was denied even a full hearing because the County District Attorney interpreted the State Law as applying to gender discrimination only)

So I have been in the Fresno Bee many times as an out-of-the-closet gay person demanding my human rights be respected.  I have had many letters to the editor over the years.   I have written an Opinion piece for the editors page about the wasteful “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that came as a result of “tricky dick” Clinton, another Democrat leader whose “political” judgement outweighed the judgement of the people, after gaining our trust and votes –as gay people in particular.

The reasoning behind saying this much is that, I am advised by my closest “friends”, that I have gone over the edge recently.  They tell me (they are not licensed shrinks by the way), I need to be medicated and in therapy because they don’t understand me and don’t have the capacity to be my friend and listen to me.  To have someone to fully LISTEN to me, is ALL that I have needed.  I know my aspirations of being a Minister/Pastor/Shepherd of the Flock, of being a music teacher-Minister of Music, my training as a Flutist and Pianist, my training as a Social Worker, my study of Psychology, ALL were incomplete and I lack “proper” credentials.  I have been patiently waiting to speak up, to reveal my inner self for the “right” time when I will be respectfully listened to.  That is something which does not require a Psychologist.  Even so, I will be seeing one.  But dare I say, my friends are also in need of counseling and direction if all they can do as the American “Rome Empire”, burns to the ground, is say “I (or we) can’t do anything to effect a change”.   Do not friends make an effort? At least make a phone call to get together?  Or at least send an email to make arrangements? Or send a  letter or post card?  How can a group of people function politically if all they ever see or communicate with each other is once a month at the most? (That would be only 12 times a year to sit face to face and have a 3 minute sound bite conversation, reading body language etc. to give meaning to WORDS so that we can assert our power in the existing political reality.)

Friends, I have paid my dues in the 1960’s and 1970’s.  In the 1980’s I tried to make lots of money in Los Angeles in order to return to Fresno to pay and “pave the way” the next time with my own money, if necessary.  Between 1969 and 1979 in Fresno, I had either struggled as a poor student or on a minimum wage job while attending classes and/or starting a GAY LIB movement in Fresno and protesting a long illegal, immoral war in Vietnam.    Before you judge me, that I am not worth your time to talk to with, at least base that decision on data collected more frequently.  I am not always available, as I am still a slave to a J.O.B. (Just Over Broke).  And I know my partner has needs too, as I’ve spent the last 11 years trying to be of help, trying to give of myself all I could, but sometimes one person is not enough.  One person can make a difference, though, despite what my parents think.  I have personally seen something CAN be done, if you want it bad (oops that word “bad”), I mean, strongly enough.

In conclusion, (Praise Jesus, sermon is almost over), the bottom line to me is that my trust in the words of others and their trust in mine has been a shattering experience.  So, now is the time to put the pieces together, by all the people (my friends included) doing their best.  No human is perfect.  Time heals all wounds.  But you first have to expend some energy.

Think about it, please.

Thank you.

Sincerely,      Larry D. Norton