Lefty Gay

With the weather getting warmer, it’s time to start working out and jogging.  Why?  Because eventually we can’t hide in our coats and we have to wear those skinny, skinny jeans.   I thought I’d share a little motivation mix and impart my old workout mantra (before I had a boyfriend):

You Are Fat and No One Loves You (124.2mb)

This is a pretty wonderful cover of Joy Division’s Transmission by a steelband:

I just put together my summer mix for 2009, a sampling of what I’ll be listening to all summer.  I tested this out on Ft. Tilden beach this weekend and it went over pretty well.  Though sunstroke and vodka tends to smooth over people’s opinions.

DOWNLOAD MIX (116.3MB)

Moving all my junk in yesterday, one of the movers carried in a box that said “Playstation 3″ on it.  I got this from my old roommate who gave me boxes to pack with.  There were a bunch of kids hanging out front of the building I’m moving into and one started going “Oh man!!  Playstation 3!!  Awesome!!”

The older kid looking over at the box said, “Wow, you are going to get robbed.”

If there is one thing that Obama could do that would actually make me a little less angry… it’s merge my love of statistics and gay rights!  The White House is “seeking ways” to include same sex couples in the census.  It might not seem like a lot but the census could be the first time that our families and relationships count (zing!).  Also, the census is a wonderful way to capture demographic information to study society and develop policy, so anything that makes LGBT people more visible is great.  Now if only we could get a tally on trans folk…

Of course, I don’t particularly envy the administration official tasked with figuring out how to count us.  Because of the cluster-fuck that is gay rights across this country, the are almost as many different types of same-sex relationships as there are states.  For instance, in Massachusetts it’s easy to define a same-sex couple if they have been married.  But in Oklahoma there are 0 rights for same-sex couples.  Or in New York City you have domestic partnership benefits where you get a smattering of rights.  So which level do you accept as a relationship?  Do they say “You must have a full marriage” which you can only do in four states (I guess technically you also have the left over California marriages and then the two states that recognize out of state same-sex marriages)?  Do they say marriage and civil unions which you can only do in 7 states (well, technically a few more again)? Or do you include people in domestic partnerships (which is in many states, including some with gay marriage, plus a smattering of cities, counties and municipalities across the country)?

It might seem to make sense to include anyone who categorizes themselves as in a “long term same-sex partnership.”  I used that qualification in my senior thesis when I interviewed gay couples.  But this is not a very scientific qualification.  Some people together for 1 year may think of themselves as long term while a couple together for 4 years may not.  As Census workers fan out across the country, they have to be extremely standardized.  This will inevitably lead to questions of what qualifies as “long term.”   I quantified long term as seven years.  Why?  I’m not really sure.  It was arbitrary and whatever the Census picks will be just as arbitrary. (In case you were wondering, this is why ‘leaving it up to the states’ doesn’t work and this is why the framers gave us a Full Faith and Credit Clause.)

I don’t know if there is a pretty answer to this.  I don’t think the Census can count just legally recognized marriages and civil unions because it will give you only a tiny proportion of couples.  This would leave my poor brothers and sisters in places like Oklahoma and Tennessee without any representation.  It’s hard enough to be sexual minority in those places without adding more indignity by having their relationships not count.  I would find it a bit unsettling if maps come out of how many same-sex couples there are in the US and there are huge zeros over 43 states.  It’s like when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was asked at Columbia U about gays and he said “In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals, like in your country. We don’t have that in our country.” Because trust me, after the Census if gay couples in these states are ignored, some backward, knuckle-dragging Senator from Oklahoma will say this: “In Oklahoma, we don’t have homosexuals, like in your state. We don’t have that in our state. In Oklahoma, we do not have this phenomenon. I don’t know who’s told you that we have it.”

As I have mentioned before, my blog is THE PLACE for information on military frotting. Now I don’t have anything particularly interesting to add to the whole idea of frotting while enlisted, but I’ve been wondering if having openly gay people serve in the military would increase or decrease the frequency of frotting in the bunks.  My assumption is that there would actually be less since frotting strikes me as being one those activities a closeted gay would do in the dead of night when all the other cadets are sleeping. Once the closet door swings open, I’d assume there would be less frotting and more straight up… well, love making.

Anyway, I know some people are new to this blog since I decided for the first time ever to tweet it and post it on facebook.  I don’t usually talk about military frotting except that for some unknown reason it was the #1 referral from google for a few months… Now I’m just looking to attract more of the same.  I don’t usually write about sex.  Anyone who knows me knows I’m not that crass or immature.

And how do I know that more people are reading this?  My hits sextupled yesterday.  That’s right, sex-tupled.

Obama signed a memorandum yesterday granting limited benefits to federal employees in same-sex partnerships.  This is great for federal employees as well as the simple fact that any small step towards equality is good thing.  But I think this memorandum shows a little bit of a darker truth.

First, this is a memorandum and not a executive order which only makes this temporary.  As soon as Obama exits office, this could no longer apply.  It also doesn’t grant same-sex partners health benefits.  His administration claims that because of DOMA, they can’t give out the really good benefits.  I’m not a lawyer, so I’m a little confused why sick days aren’t covered by DOMA but health insurance is covered.

The memo also serves to remind us that DOMA is still the law of the land and that it discriminates.  Of course, the DOJ claims it does not.  Obama doesn’t say anything concrete about action that would actually change the laws that prevent granting full equality.  He alludes to it taking “years.”

All of these things add up to this being the smallest action he could have possibly taken. Obviously, he just wanted to try and make up for the horrible brief his DOJ filed last week.  But this simply doesn’t accomplish that.

But that’s not really the thing that bothers me about this action.  As the least possible thing he could have taken to grant even a tiny sliver of equality to LGBT people, he waited nearly five months to do so.  In the first line of his remarks he says:

Today I’m proud to issue a presidential memorandum that paves the way for long-overdue progress in our nation’s pursuit of equality.

How long-overdue was it?  If it was years overdue, maybe you should have tackled this in February.  Or was it only long-overdue last week, right around the time LGBT people started pulling out of your fundraiser?  Is that when it was long-overdue?

I don’t like that Obama wants to have this both ways (like the B’s in the LGBT).  You can’t claim that gay equality is important if you aren’t actually going to make substantial moves for our equality.  I know some people aren’t comfortable comparing miscegenation and same-sex marriage… but does Obama think if Loving v. Virginia had not happened, his parents would be thrilled to know that—even though they could not get married—if one of them happened to be hired by the federal government, they would be able to take time off to care for their loved one who does not have health insurance?

Probably not.

Dan Savage, who I would have tried to marry if someone hadn’t already claimed him, has a wonderful idea for a year long gay rights protest:

But I have suggestion for an ongoing, smaller-scale action that would have a larger impact than a one-off “march” through an empty city. My idea would need fewer than a 1000 people to succeed—730 to be exact—and it wouldn’t be over in a day. It would go on, day-in, day-out, every day, for a year. Hell, it could go on indefinitely. It involves civil disobedience and the 730 volunteers would have to be willing to get arrested. People who are unable to participate could make donations to help cover the expenses—legal expenses and travel expenses—of those who can.

Here’s the idea: one gay or lesbian couple—a couple currently denied their rights under DOMA—shows up at the entrance to the White House grounds. A different couple every day. They ask to speak to the president about DOMA. They’re refused. They sit down. They refuse to leave. They’re arrested, carried away by the police. Couples would be recruited from all over the country, demonstrating that gay marriage isn’t just an issue in liberal California or godless New England, and the media in each couple’s home city and state would be notified in advance of their arrest. The occasional famous couple—Rosie and Kelli? Ellen and Portia?—would participate to pull in celeb media. But most of the couples who come to D.C. to get arrested would be average folks. The couples would need support, legal and logistical, and we would need someone to organize media outreach and maintain a website. The website would include a photo and profile of each couple that comes to D.C. to get arrested, collect all the press, and be used to recruit couples willing to travel to D.C. and get arrested.

The action would be small scale—it would be human scale—and it would go on and on and on. It would demonstrate better than another gay march just how seriously we take this issue: we take it seriously that we’re willing to travel to D.C. and get arrested. It wouldn’t be a one-day event that the White House could ignore or bluff its way through with some lame statement about its “commitment” to ending DOMA. The couples would keep coming. Every day an arrest. Drip, drip, drip. Members of the White House press corps would see couples getting arrested every day on their way to work. Gibbs would be forced to address DOMA on a near-daily basis. The president would be asked about the issue again and again.

I think this is a great idea.  I’m actually all on board for this.  SIGN ME UP.

One caveat: My boyfriend can’t do this, but I’m happy to go with someone else.  But really I need to go with someone who is hygienic because I don’t want to deal with smelly people in my cell.

And Amy, I damn well expect you to do this when Jenn is on summer break!

I think this whole mess with the DOJ filing is a warning from President Obama.   Why?  Because (like I said before) Obama wants LGBT people have equality, but only when we’ve been good little children who make sure we keep giving him money and electing his ineffective Democratic partners in the House and Senate.

That to me is essentially what John Berry, the highest LGBT person in the Obama administration, is saying in this Advocate interview:

We have four broad legislative goals that we want to accomplish and legislation is one of these things where you’ve got to move when the opportunity strikes, so I’m going to list them in an order but it’s not necessarily going to go one, two, three, four. Obviously, I think the first opportunity is hate crimes and we’re hopeful that we can get that passed this week. We’re going to try, but if not, we’re going to keep at it until we get it passed. The second one ENDA, we want to secure that passage of ENDA, and third is we want to repeal legislatively “don’t ask don’t tell,” and fourth, we want to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act.

Now, I’m not going to pledge — and nor is the president — that this is going to be done by some certain date. The pledge and the promise is that, this will be done before the sun sets on this administration – our goal is to have this entire agenda accomplished and enacted into law so that it is secure.

The Advocate: Does that include a second term? A lot of people have talked about DOMA being pushed back until a second term.

Berry: I say this in a broad sense — our goal is to get this done on this administration’s watch.

Finally, I want to talk to you about the DOMA brief. Our strongest argument against “don’t ask, don’t tell” is that we stand with the truth. And that we, more than anyone, know the cost of lying and the terrible pain it invokes.

This president took a solemn oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States and he does not get to decide and choose which laws he enforces. He has to enforce the laws that have been enacted appropriately and that he has inherited. It would be wrong for me or any of our community to advise him to lie or to shirk his responsibility. He’s doing his job. He has made clear that he stands for the repeal of DOMA. It will be part of this administration’s agenda to accomplish that act. We ought not waste energy and angst attacking him when we should be focusing the energy and effort on getting 218 votes in the house and 60 votes in the Senate, and that’s where we ought to target the energy and the strength of this community and this president is with us, this is our agenda and it’s his agenda.

Obama and his administration are lying when they say they had to defend DOMA.  There is flexibility.  But what’s worse is the extent and vociferousness of their defense of DOMA.  They could have made a nuanced filing that articulated their concerns with the law but instead they pulled out every anti-gay argument imaginable.  Check out this post Richard Socarides, former aide to Bill Clinton:

Thus, the general rule that the DOJ must defend laws against attack is relative – like everything in Washington. And even when the DOJ does defend a law against constitutional attack, it does not have to advance every conceivable argument in doing so (such as the brief’s invocation, in a footnote, of incest and the marriage of children). In fact, many legal experts believe that in this particular case none of the issues going to the merits of whether or not DOMA is constitutional needed to be addressed to get the case thrown out. The administration’s lawyers could have simply argued, for example, that the plaintiff’s had no standing. There was no need to invoke legal theories that were not only offensive on their face, but which could put at risk future legal efforts on behalf of our civil rights.

A friend of mine said that you have to be a pretty fucked up individual to want to be the leader of something as fucked up as our government.   I never assumed Obama was infallible or perfect.  But my mistake was assuming Obama was a man of integrity and courage.  I get that LGBT equality is not massively popular politically or statistically.  But it is pretty obvious that it is morally wrong to deny LGBT people equal rights and protections.  Obama talks about making these tough decisions, that America had to stand up for what is morally right (i.e. torture).   It seems now, though, the only tough decisions he’s making is how long he can keep LGBT people disenfranchised and quiet.  I was going to say that Obama wants us to just be thankful that we have a president who doesn’t attack us.  But this DOJ filing is an attack on my community, my family, my friends and my life.  It’s one thing to ask for patience and it’s another thing to use the same bigoted language as our most devout enemies.

Obama wants to set the time line for gay rights.  Maybe we get one or two legislative victories this term (the Hate Crimes law and ENDA), but the heavy lifting comes after his re-election.  Obama knows best, right?  This DOJ filing strikes me as an admonishment to the LGBT community who want to speed things along.  It’s a like a little warning shot across our bow saying, “Don’t come any closer.”

It’s unbelievably sad this is what Obama has decided to do.  I don’t know why I keep falling back on this, but you’d assume someone who is black would get why discrimination is wrong. It reminds me of a MLK Jr. quote:

“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”

This is the most disgusting, backwards logic I have ever read.  And this is from Obama’s Justice Department.

Likewise, Section 3 of DOMA merely clarifies that federal policy is to make certain benefits available only to those persons united in heterosexual marriage, as opposed to any other possible relationship defined by law, family, or affection. As a result, gay and lesbian individuals who unite in matrimony are denied no federal benefits to which they were entitled prior to their marriage; they remain eligible for every benefit they enjoyed beforehand. DOMA simply provides, in effect, that as a result of their same-sex marriage they will not become eligible for the set of benefits that Congress has reserved exclusively to those who are related by the bonds of heterosexual marriage. In short, then, the failure in this manner to recognize a certain subset of marriages that are recognized by a certain subset of States cannot be taken as an infringement on plaintiffs’ rights, even if same-sex marriage were accepted as a fundamental right under the Constitution.

I feel sick.

Pam of Her House Blend, wrote an interesting post about the topic gay rights now versus later, which I’ve discussed before. Pam talks about Rachel Maddow’s persistent pressure on the Obama Administration to talk about gay rights and the reaction this is stirring from other progressives:

The panicked “the gays won’t shut up” progressive reaction follows a predictable get-to-the-back-of-the-bus pattern:

* He’s just been in office four+ months, give him a break.

The usual sit down in the back of the bus and shut up, you’re whining argument (haven’t we heard that before – “we have to get re-elected” “watch out for the midterms,” blah, blah). As if we should sit with our hands folded in our laps and let slide the utterly ridiculous non-answers coming out of the mouth of otherwise-articulate Press Secretary Robert Gibbs (the Blend files are filling up quickly) when he’s asked about DADT.

Man, I hope I don’t seem like I’m telling my people to shut up and stop whining. As I’ve said before, I’m conflicted about Obama and gay rights. I really really want to think that Obama is just waiting on the issues because action now would be futile. But maybe, more to the point, it’s just too depressing to think that he might have lied to us. To have admit that after dedicating a chunk of my life and money to get Obama elected, it would be beyond disheartening that he would simply turn his back on his promises for equal rights for LGBT people.

I very acutely understand how having marriage rights denied to me affects me.  I understand how the lack of immigration equality makes me live in fear.  I also understand that the world is, well, not fair.  I understand that because of politics and religion, laws can take a while.
But it’s becoming less and less reasonable to believe that Obama is a “fierce ally” for gays.  A fierce ally would stand up for equality. He would commend states for providing equality to LGBT couples. He would be condemn Prop 8 and the California Supreme Court’s ruling. A fierce ally would issue stop-loss commands to intervene in the federal government’s continued discrimination because of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.  He would say something, anything. You know how actions speak louder than words?  The absence of both speaks pretty fucking loudly.

I worry that when I say “give him some time” that I might be falling back on a very bad, paternal idea that Obama Knows Best.  For instance, he knows that gays deserve equal rights but he also knows when it’s the right time to let us have them.  Maybe after we eat our spinach?  Or maybe after he is re-elected?

I really wish someone would directly press the issues of gay rights with Obama. Brian Williams asked a stupid, bullshit question about whether or not he is a “friend” to LGBT people. Um, I don’t want a friend. I want a goddamn fierce ally. And stop asking Robert Gibbs questions too   He and the President clearly never talk about how a whole groups of Americans have their rights granted! and then removed! on a state by state basis every couple of months.

I would love for a reporter to sit Obama down and grill him:

“”You said you are a fierce ally of LGBT people, how?”

“What would you need to have happen before you would stop active discrimination in your military policies?”

“What are your plans for repeal DOMA?”

“Do you believe that ENDA should be passed and what will you do to further that?”

“How is giving same sex couples ‘civil unions’ not an example of ’separate but equal’ treatment?”

“Do you support the UAFA?  If not, how do you propose to protect LGBT families in matters of immigration?”
Is this too much to ask?

Senator Patrick Leahy is holding hearings on the Uniting American Families Act today and the NYTimes has even covered it.  I wish the article went in to a little more detail about the cruelty of our country’s immigration policies towards gay and lesbian couples but I suppose the politics of the bill are more interesting.  From what I understand the plan is to attach the UAFA to Obama’s immigration reform plans which is the only way the bill has a prayer of passing.

President Obama has stated he supports equal federal rights for gays and lesbians and immigration is a federal thing.  I’m hoping he either advocates for the bill being included in his immigration reform or at least doesn’t nix it out of hand.

More inforamtion on the issue is available at Immigration Equality.

After the not surprising but still INFURIATING decision by the California Supreme Court to uphold Prop 8, I’m getting less okay about Obama and his silence regarding the rights of the taxing-paying voters who fucking put him in office.

I am at one point angry beyond words about Prop 8 and Obama’s cowardice to stand up for equality, and really happy about the appointment of a progressive nominee to the Supreme Court. Santomayor will probably make more of a difference in regards to equality in the long run…

However, this part of a New York Times article struck me in regards to Obama’s possible thinking on the courts and it’s ties to the idea of judicial, liberal “minimalism”:

It’s true that Obama has cited Chief Justice Earl Warren as a judicial ideal, emphasizing that Warren, a former governor of California, had a sensitive understanding of the real-world effects of Supreme Court decisions. But at the same time, Obama has suggested that liberals in the Warren Court mold may have placed too much trust in the courts and not enough in political activism. “I wondered,” he writes in his book “The Audacity of Hope,” alluding to Senate battles over George W. Bush’s court appointments, “if in our reliance on the courts to vindicate not only our rights but also our values, progressives had lost too much faith in democracy.”

Well, unfortunately, I don’t have much faith in democracy since laws like Prop 8 pass and the dozens of other state level anti-gay laws pass all the time.  Things are changing, but most only through court action.  But I guess now we can’t even really rely on the courts to protect the rights of the minority from the tyranny of the majority.

from joe.my.god

There seem to be two extreme ways people are falling in regard to Obama and the Gays. The issues are as follows:
- Overturn Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
- Repeal DOMA
- Support ENDA
- Say one thing about gay people

The first group is filled with shrill rage that Obama hasn’t done any of those things in the last 4 months.

The other side is a mixture of naiveté (assuming Papa Obama has the best intentions for us) and politicking (that this is not the right time).

I’m sort of in the middle on this. I am extremely upset that Obama has ignored gay rights for the last few months. He had the bravery to support the LGBT community in the campaign, he needs to continue to do so by addressing the recent victories for marriage equality and supporting honorable troops discharged for being gay.

In fact, it makes me so angry that I can totally relate to conservative gas-bags like this:

But while Obama hasn’t done anything for us specifically, if his actions in the last few months help the economy… then he hasn’t really failed us, per se.

I also don’t know how much he’d realistically be able to do. Any legislative action to repeal DOMA, DADT, and so on would require all the Democrats and a few sympathetic Republicans. And it’s just not going to happen. But there is a case to be made that he could at the very least promote our causes instead of ignoring us. The problem is, if you throw out these issues, there is a chance it will bog down his ability to legislate other issues. While I think marriage is pretty important, I can also understand how it may take a back seat to fixing a shitty economy.

Again, he has done a lot so far. And to be honest, he’s done more things in his first months than most presidents. I give him a year to move on gay rights before I really freak out.

I understand very acutely what marriage discrimination means. But this is the real world and most people in the House and Senate don’t want gays to be equal or, more likely, don’t want to touch the issue. There is only so much the president can do.

Anyway, I think we all have to stay angry and active. We have to make sure our issues are still in the spotlight. The dialogue has to be on-going that this is an important issue. That will do more to further our cause in the long run. But, unlike the sky-is-falling Queerty, I wouldn’t assume all is lost just yet.

OTHER NEWS!

The Prop 8 decision might be coming out tomorrow. I really really hope that the court will overturn the law but from what I read coming out of the CA Supreme Court during the arguments, I’m not optimistic. And tomorrow seems like baaaad timing, since it’ll be the 30th anniversary of the White Night Riots. White Night Riots part 2 anyone?

Looks like I really want to talk about music with everyone.  Maybe I’ll rethink my career path and start doing this full time, which would be unfortunate since I’m about to take out $80,000 in loans for grad school.

The band Woods (everyone join Emusic and let me recommend you, ok?) is being hyped pretty heavily and for a fairly good reason.  Listening to their new album, Songs of Shame, makes me think of Bon Iver with a bigger band (or, I guess, if the band Bon Iver didn’t sound like one dude alone in his room).  My favorite track from the album so far is Gypsy Hand, the most upbeat and catchy song they’ve ever done:

Woods – gypsy hand

I found out about Night Control, a band mainly comprised of Christopher Curtis Smith, through Last.fm.  I’ve been trying to find more music along the lines of my on-going crushes on the bands Women and Crystal Stilts.  I eventually hunted down his album, Death Control, and have been hooked to the melodic shoe-gazing electronic, rock-ish noodlings ever since.  No Pain in Pop has two tracks from his latest album.

The conservative blogger, big pink elephant, linked to a blog post of mine from a few months ago where I stated:

By the way, some people squibble about Obama’s support of civil unions over gay marriage. I agree that it’s awful that he supports separate but equal and won’t take a stand for our full rights with marriage. But I think Obama actually supports gay marriage. He is making the politicallty safe maneuver of supporting full rights with civil unions and banking on the fact that 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 years from now the Supreme Court will declare that you can’t have to separate but equal institutions.

Tabitha points out the problem of deluding oneself in assuming Obama is going to support marriage equality. She’s right, and I don’t really believe anymore that Obama secretly supports full marriage equality. As I explained on her post:

Tabitha, you’re right that no one is ever a 100% match with every issue. Obama, though, does support most of my #1 issue which is LGBT rights (equal federal rights and protections, passing EDNA, repealing DADT, adoption rights). But gay marriage is not totally black and white because of the “civil unions” option. Obama is in the gray area on that since he argues that gays and lesbians should have all the rights and protection of marriage, he just wants to call it “civil unions” and not “marriage.” And for me, I want the rights, protections and responsibilities and not necessarily the word. I’d be happy for the federal government to classify my marriage as a “civil union” as long as it meant I had the same federal rights as any other married couple…

This is pretty much my stance on the whole Obama and Gays thing right now. I want equality for all the legal stuff and I’m flexible on the language and semantics. I would obviously prefer just to call it marriage but whatever. If the feds don’t want to call my marriage a marriage in the law books, I don’t care. If that makes religious people more comfortable with it, that is a totally acceptable compromise to me. And, really, once gays are “civilly unionized” we can call them marriages.  Eventually you’ll have so many union’d gays referring to it as “marriage” it won’t fucking matter anymore. Everyone will call it marriage and, eventually, the population at large will see them as exactly that.  And most likely after a decade of this we’ll just change the law books and call it marriage.

Unfortunately, now even I’m starting to wonder if Obama supports much of anything when it comes to teh gehs. There have been two recent editorials calling Obama out on his stance on gay issues. A recent Washington Post editorial argues against the “civil unions” argument:

Before his inauguration, President Obama called himself a “fierce advocate of equality for gay and lesbian Americans.” Now, with the same-sex marriage issue percolating in state after state and with the Pentagon’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy ripe for repeal, it’s time for Obama to put some of his political capital where his rhetoric is…

Favoring “civil unions” that accord all the rights and benefits of marriage — but that withhold the word marriage, and with it, I guess, society’s approval — amounts to another dodge. I’m concerned here with the way the law sees the relationship, not the way any particular church or religious leader sees it; that’s for worshipers, clergy and the Almighty to work out. Marriage is not just a sacrament but also a contract, and the contractual aspect is a matter of statute, not scripture.

Obama took the “civil unions” route during last year’s campaign and has stuck with it. While I see the political calculation — that was basically the position of all the major Democratic candidates — I never understood the logic. If semantics are the only difference between a civil union and a marriage, why go to the trouble of drawing a distinction? If there are genuine differences that the law should recognize, what are they?

It seems to me that equality means equality, and either you’re for it or you’re not. I believe gay marriage should be legal, and it’s hard for me to imagine how any “fierce advocate of equality” could think otherwise.

This is pretty damn true.  Unfortunately, Obama obviously doesn’t see equality as meaning marriage or, as I had optimistically assumed, he really did see it as an equality issue but knew he’d have to play politics and just err on the side of civil unions.  I’m not saying this is the right thing to do but I also can’t completely say it’s the wrong thing to do.

And what happened with repealing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell?  Well, his website was changed last week to “changing” it and not “repealing” it.  Luckily the outrage over the change got it switched back to repeal.  But the whole incident doesn’t bode well for his administrations plans.  Doesn’t promoting equality mean you go out of your way to repeal discrimination you have control over?

CNN did a report on his hesitation to address these issues:

Ten foot pole? Might sound erotically appealing at first but Obama needs to get a little closer to us. Now all along I’ve expected that Obama would probably take his sweet time to hit the gay issues especially once the economy sank. Let’s remember that Clinton got screwed early on with gays in the military. Obama wants to push through more important issues at the moment like his banking reforms and the bailouts. Fine.

But the Obama administration took the unusual step of editing their civil rights issue page and removing any references to repealing the insidious Defense of Marriage Act. This is above and beyond one of the worst laws on the books. It has to be repealed and taken down. The law causes a lot of problems such as preventing immigration equality, preventing gay couples form being counted in the Census, not forcing all states to recognize other state’s gay marriages under the constitution’s Full Faith and Credit Clause, blocks social security benefits to partners, and so on.

It’s a very bad sign that he removed this language. He explicitly campaigned on the repeal of DOMA. His support of a full repeal of DOMA was the MAIN REASON I supported him over Hillary Clinton in the primaries. I can only assume now that five states and counting have achieved marriage equality, his administration realized that repealing DOMA would essentially mean making gay marriage legal across the country. And now instead of it being a promise that could be easily delayed, it’s one that might need pay out sooner rather than later.

I guess Obama can dodge and duck the gay rights issues for a little while. And I’m okay with waiting. But I am not okay with idea that he will completely renege on this promise.  I would like to stay hopelessly optimistic and naive a little bit longer.

My friend Amy points out you can now get your letters to the editor ready… She’s sent a letter “in response to the commercial appeal’s solicitation for letters on the county’s proposed non-discrimination ordinance (which would prevent the county & its contractors from discriminating against LGBTQ folks in employment and services)”

Here’s my letter, which is leaps and bounds less eloquent and delicate than Amy’s:

Professor Richard Florida has argued that cities with more gay and lesbian people correlate to economic development.  You can read his argument here:
http://www.creativeclass.com/rfcgdb/articles/There_Goes_the_Neighborhood.pdf
If the Shelby County Commission should pass the Non-Discrimination Ordinance, the county will help ensure the protection of LGBT citizens and prevent this typically more affluent and educate group from fleeing the area.  Obviously tax cuts and no income tax aren’t making the city any better, so why not try something a little unconventional?  And, at the very least, it doesn’t hurt to err on the side of protecting people from discrimination.

More on the ordinance.

Okay, so I removed the twitter posting to my blog. I imagine if you want to read my twitter posts, you will look at my twitter posts.

Anyway, I actually like Twitter more than blogging at the moment. I think it’s because of the simple fact that throughout most of an average day, the only amount of brainpower I can muster to communicate to the world is pretty close to 140 characters. Especially when I see something funny in my google reader. Maybe I should even stick to just sharing those things through Google Reader…

But a few thoughts. First of all, the posts I get from people (who will go nameless) via my Google Reader sharing-thing are incredibly depressing. Well, it’s really only one friend who shares depressing stuff which is typically about variations of human rights abuses on female genital mutilation, but a lot of you are guilty of this. Please, my Google Reader functions on no higher a plain of intellectual thought than OMG Blog and Queerty.

Luckily no one is tweeting to me about female genital mutilation at the moment. Which is nice. It’s a reprieve. But the downside to twitter is that I get I a lot of junk I don’t care about. Specifically, cryptic messages from someone I’m following about someone I am not. For instance, it could be:

@person1 you are so right about @anon who is so exactly like #stupidfuckinghashtag

People also tweet distantly out of context. Let’s say my friend “Person1″ is tweeting 8 messages in a stream of consciousness over the course of 4 hours. I end up reading message 8 and have no idea what the hell it’s about because 1-7 are buried under 20 other tweets I got between them. Useless.

And then there are the people who occasionally twitter (probably a vast majority of people). One of my friends is very guilty of this. Let’s say I tweet 10 things everyday for a week. My friend, “Person1,” tweets every other day and is very self-absorbed and so only actually read other people’s tweets once a week. He reads one of my tweets and responds by saying, “@myusername What you said wasn’t funny, abortion isn’t a joke.” Now in any given day I will make hundreds of abortion jokes, how am I to know which one has crossed the line?

As more and more people start to use Twitter, I see how it became the next big thing and why it will very much NOT be the next big thing for very long. In ten years it may still be around in some iteration, but right now it’s too disorganized.

Twitter really reminds me of the AIM Away Messages of yore. For most of college, Away Messages functioned in exactly the same way that Twitter did. You signed on to AIM, put up an away message like “Fuck my life, I’m so sad, here’s a melodramatic Radiohead song lyric” and people could respond or, more likely, just be aware of your continued self-loathing. I can also distinctly remember a bunch of little dramas that were do to Away Messages, “He said he was sick but HE JUST PUT AN AWAY MESSAGE UP SAYING HE’S GOING TO POPROCKS TONIGHT WITH HIS EX!!!”

I liked away messages a lot more. They were on display for others to see, but you didn’t have to suffer through disorganized conversations or spend an hour sussing out what message someone is responding to you about.

So this is all to say, no more twitter posts on my blog.  You’d think popping massive quantities of vicodin and being holed up at home would spurn the blogging.  But, honestly, all I’ve been doing is reading the miserable “And The Band Played On,” watched the last two seasons of The West Wing and, FINALLY, beat Super Mario World.  Productive.