Darkside Rainbow

3am. I have a horrible habit of being awake at this hour; it’s the magic hour for me, that hovering moment of breathless pause teetering just on the cusp between morning and night, that time when the sky is darkest and that deep, soft blanket of blue threatens to turn so black that you feel as if you can reach right beyond that seething envelope of atmosphere to touch the cold and endless reaches of space. The stars are always brightest at 3am, those nebulous balls of burning gas reaching thousands upon millions of light years through the void so that we, mere mortals, can see their churning and awesome vastness as nothing more than bright, merry dots against a yawning sky, eternal yet ephemeral.

Perhaps such a moment was a little too momentous for something as mundane as a craving for Dilettante’s chocolate-covered espresso beans, but then irreverence is one of my hallmarks - so I suppose it’s not so surprising that when faced with such a tableau of inspiring tranquility, I was hunched inside my jacket and swearing in six different languages about the wind crawling down the collar of my coat to where even the heavy layers of my hair couldn’t protect me, lapping its cold and stinging tongue against my neck and making me shiver for the entire walk across the street to the 24/hour Wal-Mart. It wasn’t an uncommon trip, and among the regular night employees there I’m not an uncommon sight. They know I’m a night owl, an insomniac, and a bit of a kook. They smile when they see me, ask how I’ve been, how the book’s going, man is my hair getting long - while I laugh and ask how are the kids, how is school, tease the night stockers stuck working the register when they’d rather be in the back doing their regular work.

A trip to Wal-Mart is nothing special, so I don’t feel as if I have to get particularly dressed up for it. I wouldn’t be caught dead in public in sweats and a stained t-shirt, but I didn’t think there was anything out of the ordinary about what I wore that night: faded and frayed boot-cut jeans, a black System of a Down t-shirt, my heavy black arse-whomping boots, and my new leather jacket (…which I apparently could have gotten on sale if I’d waited a little bit). Hair loose around my shoulders, reading glasses on, no jewelry save for a watch, the two tiny silver hoops piercing my right ear, and my usual black leather cord necklace. I didn’t look strange. I didn’t look bad, or good. I just looked absolutely, perfectly ordinary.

Ordinary is never good enough for Miss Priss.

Who is Miss Priss? Miss Priss is this young man of particularly diva-ish persuasion who works the night shift at Wal-Mart. Miss Priss and I have been circling each other like feral wolves vying for territory since day one, as apparently we set each others’ gaydar pinging and neither of us is particularly fond of the genus of Homosexualus Bitchinus that the other represents. I’m a scruffy, laid-back writer with a sharp tongue and oft-used deadpan look; he’s a fashion whore with a pissily-twisted mouth and a superiority complex (or an inferiority complex that he’s trying desperately to mask).

We don’t speak to each other, save for the frigid-but-required “Thank you, and have a nice day” when he’s stuck on the register and ringing up my groceries. We avoid eye contact. If I pass a group of people on the night crew that I’m familiar with and either stop to chat or just wave in passing, he gives me an evil look and will actually stalk off until I’m gone. In the same vein, if he’s working to stock an aisle that has something I need, I will detour around that aisle and come back later when he’s no longer in it. The virulent loathing seething in the air between us is so apparent that one of the greeters at the front door actually asked if Miss Priss and I had gotten into a fight at some point.

We don’t even know each others’ names.

It’s ridiculous, honestly. We have no reason to be so hostile towards one another beyond assumptions made about each other based on appearances, demeanor, and interpretation of the intent behind those quick, veiled little glances we keep shooting each other. We have no reason to dislike each other.

Or, should I say…we didn’t.

That night I snagged my espresso beans and a few other things I’d just remembered I was running low on (because foaming hand soap by the bathroom sink is such a necessity), and headed up to the only register open so late at night. #19 - all night, every night, never changes. Usually it’s covered by the sweet-faced girl who just gave birth to an adorable daughter and really should be on maternity leave, or the slender old woman with the eyeglasses too large for her face who would keep me there telling her about my novels all night, if she could. Sometimes it’s the girl with the unnaturally red hair who pegged me as an atheist on first glance and has made it her personal mission to convert me, down to humming gospel music when she sees me coming and just smiling the brightest, most engaging smile when I catch on to her and crack up laughing before asking how her day was. Miss Priss only works the register if all of them are off, or on break, or my luck is just particularly bad.

My luck was particularly bad that night.

I took my place in line behind a few others, glanced up to see who was working the register, and caught his eye just as he caught mine. Our expressions were likely identical: oh, no, not him. We both looked away sharply; he went back to ringing up the people in front of me, and I affixed a stony look on the rack of tabloids and ignored him. Even when my turn came, we cold-shouldered each other - not even the ritual greeting mandated by Wal-Mart customer service standards. He rang up my purchases, I swiped my debit card, and almost walked out without mishap. Almost.

As I snagged my bag from the little turntable (he’ll never take it off and hand it to me, and practically throws my receipt at me) and turned to leave, I heard, “…what are you supposed to be, some throwback to the eighties?”

Pause.

Blink.

Wait, what?

Excuse the @#!$ out of me?

That’s right, he went there. That silent hostility had just taken a lovely leap into the vocal, and I turned around and just looked at him, one brow practically vanishing into my hairline. I’m not normally particularly vituperative with strangers; it’s friends that I save the barbs for, as that’s my odd way of showing affection. I told myself not to say anything; I told myself to turn the other cheek and walk away. Instead I threw back flatly, “Mn. And how’s that blue vest working for you? Let me know when that look hits the runway.”

He snarled at me.

Feral wolves, indeed. I bared my teeth in a hiss, growl building in my throat; we might have gone at it right there in the store if the woman next in line hadn’t snapped her fingers impatiently and barked at him, “If you’re done flirting, a little help over here?” He glared at me, then turned back to work. I flicked my fingers at him dismissively and turned to walk out, absolutely seething.

I shouldn’t have said anything. It wasn’t worth it, and now any time we see each other there’ll likely be another verbal altercation - but I wasn’t about to take shit for wearing casual attire to Wal-Mart, especially not from an uptight little bitch sporting a cheap blue vest whose yellow smiley face constantly exhorted me to check out their Rollback prices. The fact that he came perfectly groomed to work every night, with a $100 fade in his hair and jeans and T-shirts that rather obviously came from The GAP and Banana Republic, probably contributed to the reasons why I loathed him on sight - but they sure as hell didn’t give him just cause to judge me on my fashion choices because I didn’t feel like digging my sexy International Male European suit out of the closet just to go pick up some frickin’ chocolate espresso beans.

I will never understand this fashion-obsessed culture we’ve fostered among the gay community, in which your clothing and the body you wear them on is more important than the person inside that clothing and underneath flawlessly waxed and tanned skin sheathing tight-packed muscles. There’s more to a person than that. There’s more to me than that. I am scruffy, I am scarred, I am flawed, I am utterly and unrepentantly wild and Bohemian - both inside and out. I dream in slowtime, speak in molasses and brown sugar, destroy worlds with the click of a key and rebuild them again in a myriad tumble of words like glissandos of falling glass. I love the feel of sandpaper and wood varnish under my fingers, I long to be a revolutionary, I crochet, I breathe to the deep-throbbing pulse of music, I sing atrociously, I love the sound of a V8 engine and can spend hours telling you how they work, I’m a stellar cook who still manages to nearly set the kitchen on fire any time he tries to bake something, and I melt like a purring kitten when someone touches my hair.

You can’t look at my clothing and tell that. You can’t judge the cut of my hair and know the breathless, obsessive-compulsive high that drives me to go days without sleeping while wrestling with a knotty bit of code on a new web design; you can’t look for ironed-in creases in my jeans to know that sometimes, even at age twenty-seven, I still wake up in the middle of the night terrified and sweating from the horrors that my sleeping imagination concocts. You can’t know that I love theoretical astrophysics and I’m frightened to death of spiders. You can’t know me, just because I don’t wear the brands you approve.

And you can’t define yourself by them, either.

I don’t give a damn what brand of clothing you wear. I don’t give a damn if you dare to have three hairs on your chest; I don’t give a damn if you have perfect teeth, if you drive a hot car, how often you work out, what trendy upscale restaurants you eat at. I don’t give a damn about your fashion sense. I don’t give a damn about you, if you can’t show me who you are without using your clothing and accouterments of a materialistic life to define yourself.

And I sure as hell don’t give a damn what you think of me.

#@!$ your tags right in the ear.

Guys, I won’t be updating this morning, though I’ll throw something up when I get back. I have to run out the door to run errands and have very little time to do it. A few notes for a few people:

Kaine: One of the errands I’m running is finally swinging by the post office to mail off your MP3 player. Sorry it’s taken me so long; post office is a two-mile trip without a car.

Indikaze, Lessa, and Barbara: I put in your Cafepress orders last night; as Indikaze already knows, I’m a procrastinating slob and tend to do things roughly a week to two weeks after I say I will. Plus I was waiting to hear back from a couple of other people, then gave up on waiting. Cafepress says delivery in 4-7 business days, even in Alaska.

JM and Sam: Still haven’t heard back from either of you about what you want for winning the 100-comments portion of the contest.

Okay, I’m running short on time and my hair’s still sticking up everywhere and I’m not even dressed; hafta flee.

whop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-whop-bam-TAG!

Shut it. It’s a slow news day and I’m feeling too tired and pissy to troll Google News.

Dear Adrian,

Help! I caught my husband cheating! He doesn’t know I know. My best friend saw him at a gay bar kissing a guy. I didn’t know he liked men! I was crushed! I went there the next night and he was kissing the same guy! I thought he was just tired. He’s been so distant for a while. I thought I was doing something wrong but he wouldn’t talk to me. I didn’t think he’d cheat! Not with a man!

Please don’t get mad, I’m not homophobic. I’m upset! I don’t know what to do! I love him so much. It hurts that he’d do this. I found out months ago, he’s still doing it. People have seen them in public together. I’ve seen them in public together! He didn’t know I was there. We live in a big city and he goes places he thinks he won’t see people we know! So sneaky, it’s like he’s been practicing! I wonder if there have been others.

Help! What do I do?!

Lydia in MI

Well, first, darlin’, let me say what an honor it is to get a letter written with proper grammar, punctuation, and spelling, even if you do like your exclamation points. It seems the linguistic skills of those who write me tend to be inversely proportional to their age, with a few startling exceptions (…like that last creepazoid…).

Now to address the main issue. Sweetie, you do the same thing you’d do if he was cheating on you with a woman: you gather all the evidence you can, get a good lawyer, then take the adulterous bastard to court for all he’s worth and walk away from the divorce with a smile, a new lease on life, and hopefully the house and half his pension fund. You deserve better than that.

Don’t “stick with it for the kids”, either, not if he’s going to continue his liaisons on the side. It’ll just make for a tense, unhappy home situation for the children, and a father who may come to resent them or even dismiss them. (Hey, if he’d cheat on you consistently, I don’t have much hope for his character where his kids and long-term commitment are involved, either.) Forget the love, too; love don’t live here no more. You’ll be better off with a nice martini to drown your woes in and a nice poolboy to kiss it better - or in absence of a poolboy, several battery-operated accessories that I can promise you do it better than any man.

This reminds me of the jerk who wanted my help finding a way to discreetly cheat on his wife with another man. That just made me livid; gay or straight, if you’re unhappy in a relationship, bloody well own up to it rather than trying to have your damned cake and screw it, too. You can’t keep the husband/wife for the marital perks and comforts, but still have your bimbo/f*ckpet/one twoo wuv on the side for your own strings-free pleasure. It just doesn’t work that way. It’s not fair to your spouse; hell, it’s not even fair to your little weekend sex buddy, because as long as you want to keep burning both ends of the candle they’ll never get the commitment or whatever they want out of you. All they get is a few stolen moments here and there and whatever privileges you buy them off with. It’s selfish, shallow, and even cruel. If you want to pursue relationships with someone else, just heft your effin’ balls in hand (whether you have any or not) and say so.

That includes the “honey, I’m gay” confession, too. I know that’s not easy. In fact, it’s damned scarier than the “honey, I’ve been sleeping with someone else” discussion. There’s a lot more confusion, more feelings of betrayal, more “But if you’re gay, why did you marry me?” Your spouse is going to be bitter as hell, but not nearly as bitter as long as you tell him/her up front without finding yourself a replacement first. Contingency plans of that sort aren’t a good idea. Honesty is painful, but in the end leads to better results. Readers like Jen prove that, even if her struggle - while admirable - hasn’t been easy.

So in case you can’t tell, Lydia, I’m on your side here and not particularly fond of genus Dishonestus Testicularae. (Me? Cheated on in a serious relationship before? Never!) The kind of callousness displayed by anyone who would cheat on their wife is beneath you, and I’m sorry you had to endure not only his treatment, but that discovery. Walk away, before the hurt digs any deeper. Walk away rather than giving him that kind of power over you.

I sincerely hope you have a strong network of family and friends to help you through this difficult time, and give you the love and support you need. And if not, well…my shoulder’s only an e-mail away.

Head-shakingly yours,
~Adri

ask adri, gay advice column, adultery, gay husband, divorce, oh look I’m actually tagging this thing, yup tagging, tagging, tagging and teaba–okay I’m not finishing that, Put your name on the line, along with place and time; want to stay, not to go, want to ditch the logical, why yes I am listening to Eve 6, how did you know?

While skimming the news this morning, I ran across a post on the Blade Blog alerting to a speech Mike Huckabee intended to give on his stance on various civil rights issues, including gay rights. The post itself didn’t really hold my interest; a comment by a “jeri” to the post, however, did.

jeri . on 1/25/08 5:52 AM:
the use of the term “gay marriage” is representative of a “slave mentality; it fails to recognize gay individuals as valid citizens. civil unions for gays is equivalent to a “gay marriage”. support for this concept actually demeans the GLBT population. think in the term EQUALITY. GLBT citizens are in every way equal - they pay taxes, they serve in the military, they raise families, they contribute to society. we deserve real equality, not only symbolic equality – and by definition would include marriage equality. if you don’t think in terms that demand full equality, you are supporting the proposition that you somehow do not deserve it. personally, I don’t want to validate the arguments of those want to “keep us down.”

Jeri actually elucidates a few thoughts I’ve lingered on, albeit not very clearly and using some unnecessary extremist language; saying that calling it “gay marriage” is a slave mentality is like me saying that because I’m whatever fraction African-American that Louisiana requires to grandfather me into being legally black, I’m going to renounce my slave name and run around calling myself Panther Abimbola. It’s just a little too extreme; there are times when the struggle for gay rights can be compared to the struggle for African-American rights, but this isn’t the right way to do it.

I admit that I’m less inclined to think about gay marriage as a critical issue, even though I applaud when another state legalizes it or another legislator takes a stand in the battle for that particular right - and I have been tempted to snag a willing partner and slag off to tie the knot just out of sheer spite, even if spitting in the faces of the conservative right is rather akin to spitting in the wind when saddling myself with an infuriating ball and chain (or two balls and a…nevermind). I don’t think about it often because I’m not the marrying type, and like any selfish human being I’m less interested in something that doesn’t have a personal impact on me. I can barely even cohabitate with another human being without inviting wholesale slaughter; the idea of allowing a piece of paper to lock me in stone-set oath for the rest of my life just makes my skin crawl. I will happily spend the rest of my life with a man, love and remain faithful to him - but I don’t want to feel trapped into it by the letter of the law, captured by my own honor that forces me to adhere to a vow.

The problem with marriage in my eyes, however, is that it’s part of the letter of the law in the first place. I know you’re sick of listening to me beat my favorite dead horse about the separation of church and state, but it’s the particular lack of separation that lets me agree in a rather offhand fashion with jeri - even if I approach the issue from a different perspective and hopefully explain myself a bit more clearly. Marriage is a religious institution, and it’s on religious grounds that our most vocal opponents protest our right to marry, claiming that it’s a sin in the eyes of their God, their faith, and their dead puppy Jake.

Because marriage is a religious institution, it should have no status in the eyes of the federal government beyond the same acknowledgments and occasional exemptions granted to other religious acts and institutions; that would be true equality. Remove the legal power of anything strictly defined as marriage, and one removes much of the obstacle to gay marriage. Most of us aren’t asking for recognition by any faith - or if we are, that’s another battle to be fought on a different field. Most of us are asking for recognition by the state and its governing powers.

So make marriage no longer an issue of the state, for both heterosexual and homosexual couples. Institute civil unions for all, as the primary method of conjoining one’s home, resources, and taxable value. Make the strictly-defined act of “marriage” wholly religious, a choice undertaken by those who wish to follow that path, but not one that determines whether or not they’re granted legal status as unified partners. This country was founded by people fighting for freedom of religion. Freedom of religion includes freedom not to be governed by religion, and yet in many aspects of the law, we are. We are governed by shifting faith-based ideals of what a legal union should be, thus removing the very freedom that our forefathers fought for and demeaning not only the gay population, but the American population as a whole.

Jeri says that we shouldn’t call it “gay marriage”, not if we want to be equal. I say that we shouldn’t call it “marriage” at all. This isn’t a case of “separate but equal”, further invalidating the point made about a slave mentality. This is a case of separating what makes us inequal, so that religion will not prevent a unified public governed under a fair and binding law.

A LiveJournal friend that I read rather often, Vivian, is fond of saying “Keep your God off my body.”

I say, “Keep your God off my love.”

Obligatory but useless tags. Taggity taggity tag tag tag. Whee, look at me, I’m tagging. Wait, doesn’t urban dictionary say that “tagging” is…er. Nevermind. No. No, I’m very much not tagging.

Kids? I got nothin’ today. I’m burnt out, drained, and out of whatever juice it is that fuels my random bouts of eloquence. I blame the fact that I just started a fourth new writing job (good, more good than I’m at liberty to discuss here) but for now am still working my old non-writing fill-in-the-gaps-in-the-bills job at the same time until the first check for New Writing Job clears (bad, very bad, my stress levels are through the roof), and the only thing maintaining my sanity (and staving off my infamous temper) is remembering that I’m doing all of this so I can move out of this Texan hellhole and back to Chicago, and remembering that hey, once the dust settles, I’ll finally have achieved my goal of being a full-time writer (if…not quite in the way I’d originally planned).

Gods, that’s a lot of parentheses. Why do people pay me to write, again?

In the interests of actually posting something topical rather than whining about “oh my god, earning a paycheck is so hard”, though, I did want to run through a few news articles that touch on things that have recently developed regarding issues discussed here in the past. So without further ado (and ’cause I have sh*t to do and need to get going):

CDC Disputes Study of Staph Infection Among Gays: Remember that CWA article quoting rates of MRSA infection among gays and using it as evidence that we’re all going to hell because we’re nothing more but unclean, disease-ridden sinners who spread the plague via our unnatural ways? The CDC has pretty much said “slow your roll, biatch” and is taking a closer look at those statistics and how they might have been skewed to point to those results and make MRSA out to be the next big AIDS-style “gay cancer” scare.

Gay Canadian Health Minister Offended Over Donor Ban: In another instance of official parties getting involved in the news and taking a stand against possibly skewed preconceptions and prejudices against the gay community, the Canadian Health Minister is prepared to actively fight the ban on sexually active gay men as donors of healthy, viable organs. Damn straight…er…well, not so straight, but you get the idea. It’s about time someone in politics showed some common sense, rather than persisting in cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face, as the old saying goes. It would be nice if that “someone in politics” would crop up here in America to brandish a flaming cluebat of common sense, but I don’t see that happening any time soon.

Anti-Gay Westboro Baptist Church to Picket Heath Ledger Funeral: Here’s one that’ll really piss you off. Del mentioned in the previous post about Heath Ledger’s death that the WBC (that’s right, Freddy Phelps is back again) is already making plans to picket Ledger’s funeral, accusing him of being hellbound because he promoted acceptance of gays as a “fag enabler” through starring in BrokeBack Mountain. Here’s the worst part:

That…that’s real classy, right there. Just in case you weren’t feeling the Love of God^TM (oh yeah, I’m feelin’ it, like a North Carolina glory hole), it now comes in pamphlet format, just to make sure the grief of Ledger’s family isn’t trivialized enough by these filth-spouting, batsh*t crazy nutjobs. You’re going to hell, kiddies. I’ll be there, too. Bring your own munchies, but the martinis are on me.

Man Probed On Water Polo Photos On Gay Sites: Lastly, here’s something new to help dispel the palpable air of gay martyrdom that’s starting to float around here like some choking miasma of smugness. As if the “probing” pun in a gay headline wasn’t bad enough, UC Irvine dispatcher Scott Cornelius is under investigation to find out if he took pictures of teenaged - teenaged, people - water polo players and posted them on gay websites.

…

Thanks, Scotty. As if we didn’t have enough flak to deal with with people considering all of us to be dirty, perverted pedophiles. Yeah, okay, now and then a piece of jailbait is nice to look at as long as he at least looks over eighteen, but fer Chrissakes, you don’t take pictures of these kids and post them online as potential wank material! Good gods, didn’t your Momma ever teach you better? Hell, if she didn’t smack you upside the head enough, I’d be happy to volunteer to compensate.

Idiots. Frigging idiots. The worst part is that of course someone will sound the alert, wave the torch, and raise the flag, and eventually Cornelius will come to be considered yet another example of the gay community who proves that we’re filthy pedophiles who want to make hot, sweet love to their children (typing that made me gag). If Cornelius hadn’t done anything gay-oriented, he’d just be considered another sick individual, with his sexual orientation not even a consideration.

The worst part?

There were people out there looking for photos like that.

I just hope they didn’t know that the boys were underage. I need to retain at least some faith in humanity and in the gay community, because right now I’ve barely got the thinnest thread left.

That’s it, I’m out. Ciao bella, and see you tomorrow with something of more substance.

I haven’t gotten a hit off a Technorati tag in months, so why do I tag this shite again?

If you haven’t heard, actor Heath Ledger is dead at the age of 28; he was found in his apartment last night, face-down and naked with a bottle of sleeping pills nearby. Police are are speculating drug overdose, among other causes; final cause of death is pending investigation. Ledger is known to the gay community as one of the leads in the award-winning film Brokeback Mountain, although for some reason this makes me think of Jonathan Brandis, child star of Seaquest DSV and The Neverending Story. It seems as if there’s at least one in every generation - an actor found mysteriously dead, although with Brandis they were quite sure it was suicide. With Ledger, no doubt we’ll know soon enough.

I can’t help but think, though, that these sort of stories are always tied to celebrities - who are always caught in the news fronted by sordid headlines about drinking, drugs, partying, wild sex, and domestic abuse. Celebrities are always in the public eye, always scrutinized, and often held up as examples of how we should look, dress, think, and feel, even while demonstrating exactly why their habits make them less than ideal role models. The funny part?

All of the celebrities that people so love to hate lead the exact lifestyle that the entire gay community is accused of living.

While Ledger wasn’t exactly known for a wild lifestyle, the fact that he was a celebrity immediately makes his death a tragedy to be mourned by the general public; no one suspects anything despite the fact that there were drugs involved and he could have been abusing them, although regardless of the reason any death is still a great loss. But had he been a gay pop culture icon, sordid rumors would already be flying and too many people would say that he likely brought it on himself for his profligate ways.

Then again, that’s just speculation. I’m not going to say any more, as I’m not going to use the death of a man to wave a torch. I’ve said all I wanted, and I’m done.

heath ledger, death, ambien overdose

It’s been a while since I’ve posted one of these, hasn’t it? I’ve been getting quite a few letters lately…but most of them are serious, almost intimately personal things that I don’t feel comfortable answering publicly out of respect for the people who sent them, even if they didn’t specifically ask me not to. This one, though, I felt needed to be seen - and not just for the snark value.

ok so i hope this doesnt make me werid or anything but i have acrush on my friend she knwos im a lesbian n shes ok with it but she dosnt like me back

i really really like her i think i love her

i want her to love me i get really jeloss when she flirst with guys i want her to be mine only mine i have to have her

i dream abouther

i havet o make her love me i tried kissing herto make her lesbian but it ididnt work she just laffed how can i make her lsebian dowe have to have sex can i mkae her have sex with me give her a love pill or somethin

howcan i make her loveme forever canyou make her love me

help ill do anything

rosie

Why do people ask me these questions? No, seriously, why? Do I have a sign attached to my back that says “I have an advice column, so hey, forget asking me normal stuff about coming out, self-identifying, relationships, etc; instead ask me the creepiest, freakiest sh*t you can think of”? And who the hell stuck the sign there, huh? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Wait. This is Rosie O’Donnell, isn’t it? Did Barbara turn you down again?

Seriously, what do you expect me to do? Wave my magic Southern-boy voodoo wand and make her love you? Offer you possets and potions and “love pills” and tell you that old trick about powdering your pubic hair and putting it in their coffee so that when they drink it, they begin to crave you insatiably? (…yes, that’s actually an old voodoo trick that my grandmother taught me. Difference is? I don’t actually think it works and have never been tempted to try it. Please don’t think about trying it yourself; that’s just nasty.) I can’t make anyone love you; neither can you. It’s like Aladdin’s genie. No love. No raising the dead. I don’t like either. (In fact, in my book, raising the dead is sometimes preferable to dealing with love.)

Sarcasm momentarily pushed aside, I do feel for you a little bit. I’ve had a crush on a straight guy before. It’s painful and it can make you a little desperate, though I can’t say I ever hit these sort of Misery-esque levels. I’m going to assume you’re in high school or younger, to give you the benefit of the doubt that you’re just a normal, overemotional teenager who doesn’t quite recognize how obsessively creepy her behavior sounds and not an adult Annie Wilkes in the making. And to address the issue, the best thing you can do both for yourself and for your friend is to step back, slow your roll, and find someone else to focus your crush on. Melissa Etheridge is pretty hot, or so I hear.

You can’t make anyone gay, Rosie. How would you feel if someone tried to turn you straight? I’m sure you’ve heard this one from arrogant guys before: “All she needs is the right guy to make her feel like a real woman”, followed by thick-headed, snorting, bullish laughter. Almost every lesbian’s heard something along those lines and I wouldn’t blame any of them for being enraged by it, as well as more than a little hurt. There are many gays and lesbians who’ve dealt with their friends and family trying to turn them straight, as well, whether by throwing members of the opposite sex at them or even going so far as to send them to psychiatrists and ex-gay “therapy” in the hopes of curing their sexuality.

Now think about the fact that you’re applying that same logic to your friend - wanting to change her against her will just to please yourself, rather than thinking about what makes her happy and what’s best for her. It’s not fair, and the fact that we as homosexuals are a minority who’ve suffered such indignities doesn’t make it any more fair. In fact, it’s even more wrong, because we’ve experienced enough conversion attempts to know better and to extend at least some empathy to people regardless of where they stand. Don’t forget, too, that if you managed to change her…she wouldn’t even be the same person that you fell in love with, would she?

You also need to keep in mind that regardless of her reasons, no means no. A little courting in an attempt to win someone over is harmless, if at times annoying; persistent aggressive pursuit that crosses the line into trying to forcibly change their mind is harassment, bordering on assault - and your insistence on making her have sex with you sounds a little too much like attempted rape. The more you push her, the more uncomfortable you’re going to make her; you may even frighten her. In your attempts to gain a girlfriend, you may end up not only doing things you aren’t proud of, but also end up losing the friendship of someone who matters deeply to you.

I know this isn’t the answer you wanted to hear; most of my answers aren’t. I’m not here to blow smoke and starlight-farting kittens in your face; I’m here to broadside you upside the head with a little bluntly honest perspective. Leave it alone. Walk away. It may take months or it may take years, but you’ll find someone else - someone who returns your interest in a healthy fashion. When that time comes, you’ll look back on your crush and be embarrassed that you were ever so obsessed with her, and embarrassed over the way you acted.

Here’s hoping you listen before you do anything you shouldn’t.

Brandishing a clue-by-four,
~Adri

ask adri, gay advice column, straight crush, omfg!creepy

Yesterday, April Gilford at Life as a Christian Woman sent me a link to an article on Christian Newswire, by a member of Concerned Women for America. The article discusses fears of a bacterial epidemic as cases of deadly MRSA, more commonly known as Staph, begin to rise. Staph infections are rising everywhere, but the article highlights the growing percentage among gay men. At first I saw a cause for concern, but didn’t quite see the cause for anger…until I read further.

I don’t normally copy the full text of articles; just the relevant points. But this…this must be seen.

Epidemic Feared - ‘Gays’ May Spread Deadly Staph Infection to General Population - Christian Newswire

WASHINGTON, Jan. 15 /Christian Newswire/ — Reuters has reported that, “A drug-resistant strain of potentially deadly bacteria has moved beyond the borders of U.S. hospitals and is being transmitted among gay men during sex, researchers said on Monday.

“They said methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, is beginning to appear outside hospitals in San Francisco, Boston, New York and Los Angeles.”

“‘Once this reaches the general population, it will be truly unstoppable,’ said Binh Diep, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco who led the study.”

According to the study, at this point, homosexual men are 13 times more likely to contract the potentially deadly, drug-resistant strain of staph infection, but the fear is that, because the infection is spread via skin-to-skin contact, homosexual men may soon spread it to the general population.

Matt Barber, Policy Director for Cultural issues with Concerned Women for America (CWA), said, “The medical community has known for years that homosexual conduct, especially among males, creates a breeding ground for often deadly disease. In recent years we have seen a profound resurgence in cases of HIV/AIDS, syphilis, rectal gonorrhea and many other STDs among those who call themselves ‘gay.’

“The human body is quite callous in how it handles mistreatment and the perversion of its natural functions. When two men mimic the act of heterosexual intercourse with one another, they create an environment, a biological counterfeit, wherein disease can thrive. Unnatural behaviors beget natural consequences.

“In recent years our culture has adopted a laissez faire attitude toward sexual deviancy. Television shows like Will and Grace glorify the homosexual lifestyle while our children are taught in schools that homosexuality is a perfectly healthy, alternative sexual ‘orientation.’ ‘Stay out of our bedrooms!’ we’re often commanded by militant ‘gay’ activists.

“Well, now the dangerous and possibly deadly consequence of what occurs in those bedrooms is spilling over into the general population. It’s not only frightening, it’s infuriating.

“Citizens, especially parents, need to stand up and say, ‘No More! We will no longer sit idly by while politically correct cultural elites endanger our children and larger communities through propagandist promotion of this demonstrably deadly lifestyle.’

“Why does it take a potentially deadly staph epidemic for people to acknowledge reality? Will that even do it? Enough is enough!” concluded Barber.

Is that what we are, then? Plague rats to be exterminated? Typhoid Mary crossbred with Venus as a Boy, black plague in the flesh, just another reason to hate us, brand us, lay the troubles of the world at our feet. Counterfeit they call our love. Unnatural they call our lives. Deviant they call our flesh, and perverse they call us for pleading to be seen and heard, asking for nothing more than acceptance and understanding. They seek any cause they can to vilify us, twist the truth until we are naught but devils in the eyes of a world forced to “acknowledge reality”: a false reality in which zealots will do anything to eliminate those who don’t follow their ways, more militant than those they seek to condemn.

Perhaps we should do no more than give that which we receive.

The article is right. Enough is enough. You want citizens to stand up and say “no more”? Then I will stand. I, a red-blooded American citizen, will stand and say “No more.” No more of your blame; no more of your bigotry, no more of your finger-pointing, no more of your hatred. No more of your lies, no more of your propaganda, and no more will I let you try to dictate how I live my life and who I dare to love.

I speak now to you, and you, and every living thing who would stand before us and refuse to acknowledge our worth, our equality, our validity, and the very core of our human nature. I stand before you, and I say no more will we be your scapegoats; no more will we be your demons, no more will we carry your martyrdom upon our bowed and straining shoulders.

No more will we lie down and let you trod your rough and filthy feet upon the very idea of our existence. No more will we fear your retribution, fear your violence and rejection, all while you cry that we are the ones endangering you. We have offered the olive branch, we have offered compromise, we have offered understanding and education - only to have them thrown back in our faces like so much offal. Are we so unclean? Are we so reviled? Are we, in our desire to love, so much more besmirched than those who would smear themselves with the war paint of hatred and shout from the mountaintops for the blood of our demise?

No. No, we are not. And so I say no more will I sit quietly, no more will I bite my tongue politely, no more will I leash the weapons of my words and thoughts in the hopes that some day, some how, diplomacy will gain some higher ground.

No more will I let you make me feel regret for what I am.

I will stand. I will stand, until the strength bleeds from the very limbs of those who would hurl their slurs and stones to cripple me. I will stand until the blood runs from my veins and the last breath leaves my lips, until my flesh falters and fails and yet still the fire prevails. I will stand until you cannot help but see me - me and not your dogma, see a human, a man no more or less vile than your father, brother, lover, son. I will stand until you can no longer look me in the eye and my pride becomes your shame.

No matter what you say, no matter what you do, I will stand - and dare you to knock me down.

christian news wire, homophobia, mrsa, staphylococcus aureus

One of the things that piques me most strongly about the disparity in perceptions between the heterosexual and homosexual communities is the assumption that heterosexuals are clean, wholesome people who never sleep around, never do drugs, always practice safe sex, and would never engage in intercourse with someone they weren’t wholly committed to - while homosexuals are considered promiscuous, reckless, and profligate, ridden with disease and addled by drug habits marked upon the community as clearly as heroin tracks down a junkie’s arms.

Stereotypes ignore the high rates of teenage birth among the heterosexual population, the divorce rates (often due to infidelity), the unemployment rates, the education statistics, the drug use statistics…while at the same time ignoring the high percentage of the homosexual population who believe in commitment, who practice safe sex, who are self-sufficient, drug free and responsible citizens who seek to educate themselves and contribute to society.

Neither stereotype is correct; neither positive or negative view can wholly represent either demographic, but instead only highlight extremes used as ammunition against the opposition when attempting to claim equality or even superiority. We are all greater than the sum of our parts; so, too, are the many demographics that we all represent greater than the sum of their parts. The creature that we create known as the “community” is larger than we, a giant and representative beast, faceless and almost autonomous from its many minuscule and independent cells - and like healthy skin stretched smooth over cancer cells, like tarnished scars over a strong and beating heart, that monolith of the community often lies about the very parts that comprise it.

Is the face of your community lie, or truth? Do you exemplify it or defy it? Among your demographic, where do you fit?

Do you fit the stereotype?

1.) What is your gender?

       (a) Male.
       (b) Female.
       (c) MtF trans.
       (d) FtM trans.
       (e) Androgynous/genderqueer.
       (f) Intersexed.

2.) What is your sexuality? (If you’re transgender, choose the sexuality you define yourself as with your chosen gender.)

       (a) Heterosexual.
       (b) Homosexual.
       (c) Bisexual.
       (d) Asexual.
       (e) Confused as hell.
       (f) Cannot define because genderqueer/intersexed.

3.) Are you currently in a relationship?

       (a) Yes, and I’m happy with it.
       (b) Yes, but I’m looking to end it.
       (c) No, and I’m not looking for one.
       (d) No, but I’d like to be in one.
       (e) I’m dating, but not really committed.
       (f) I’m in multiple relationships/open relationships.
       (g) I’m not sure.

4.) Are you now or have you ever been sexually active?

       (a) I have been in the past and I am now.
       (b) I have been in the past, but I’m not right now.
       (c) I’ve never been sexually active/I’m a virgin.

5.) How many sexual partners have you had in the past?

       (a) None.
       (b) None, but I have fooled around a lot beyond first base.
       (c) One to five.
       (d) Six to ten.
       (e) Eleven to twenty-five.
       (f) Twenty-six or more.
       (g) So many that I’ve lost count.
       (h) I’m not sure/I’ve never counted.
       (i) That’s private/I don’t want to discuss it publicly.

6.) Do you practice safe sex/exchange of bodily fluids?

       (a) Yes; always.
       (b) Some of the time, when I remember to.
       (c) I mean to, but I rarely remember.
       (d) It depends on my partner and if I trust them or know they’ve
        been tested.
       (e) No; never. I don’t even think about it.
       (f) I’m a virgin/I don’t fool around.

7.) Were you ever educated about the dangers of unprotected sex?

       (a) No. I’m not sure what you’re talking about.
       (b) I was never educated, but I learned on my own.
       (c) Yes; I was given educational material/instruction about
        unprotected sex.

8.) Do you or have you ever used drugs?

       (a) Yes, and I still do.
       (b) Yes, but I don’t anymore.
       (c) Yes, but I’m trying to quit.
       (d) Yes, but only lighter things; nothing hard/heavy.
       (e) No, and I never have.
       (f) No, but I would be open to trying it.

9.) How do you feel about drug use in others?

       (a) It’s their life; I don’t care.
       (b) I’m strictly against it; no one should do drugs.
       (c) I’m strictly against it, but won’t stop them as long as they don’t
        associate with me.
       (d) I’m all for it.
       (e) I’m all right with it as long as it’s regulated and done in
        moderation.

10.) Are you currently employed?

       (a) Yes, but I’m looking for other work.
       (b) Yes, but I’m not looking for other work.
       (c) No, but I’m looking for work.
       (d) No, but I’m not looking for work.
       (e) No; I’m too young to work/still in school/live with my parents.

11.) What is your highest level of education?

       (a) Some high school.
       (b) High school.
       (c) Some college.
       (d) Associate’s degree.
       (e) Bachelor’s degree.
       (f) Master’s or higher.

12.) If you have not completed your field of study, are you still studying or did you drop out?

       (a) I’ve completed my field of study.
       (b) I’m still studying.
       (c) I dropped out, but I plan to go back.
       (d) I dropped out, but I have no plans to go back.

Remember, you can answer all of these anonymously if you don’t want to vouchsafe these details with your name. I can’t even tell who you are if you choose to do so; you can just type in “Anonymous” for the name and put in a fake e-mail such as none@none.com. Everything passes through a proxy IP on a squid server, so you all look like the same IP address to me when you post anonymously - so there’s no fear that I’ll discuss your answers as associated to you.

My answers:

1.) a. 2.) b. 3.) g. 4.) b. 5.) i. 6.) a. 7.) c. 8.) e. 9.) c. 10.) a. 11.) d with a bit of e, as I have an associate’s but I’ve studied towards a bachelor’s. 12.) kind of b, kind of c, since I’ve completed one degree but want to return to finish another.

quiz, gay stereotypes, straight stereotypes

I still remember summer, on the banks of the river Tchfuncte. I remember how funny it sounded when out-of-towners tried to say the name; I remember the dusty yellow of small-town Louisiana and how that dust coated the streets, the buildings, the people, the sky. The dust coated me, a dirty little boy, a wild little brown thing crouched in the grass and watching bees drift in their drunken heaviness between the swollen, nodding white heads of clover with their winking green eyes and soft pink lips.

The world was hard and metallic then; it’s only memory that makes it soft, lending sepia edges to the curving, sterile dome of a cloudless sky. Small towns in summer were still and silent places in which the pant of a dog’s overheated breaths were a roaring, rushing sea and each car that rumbled and clanked its rusty way by was a grinding earthquake, the gears of a great golem, the twisting of a metal god in its sleep. The boats were too faraway to make much noise; louder were the soft plops of fishing lures, the droning muffled-honey speech of sleepy old men leaned back in their chairs with their bellies like the breasting brows of tugboats thrust towards the rivers. They never caught any fish, no matter how many round and gaping mouths popped bubbles on the river’s brown and eddying surface to snatch the bobbing flies from the air.

I never fished; I only watched. I touched the cool green leaves and wiggled my grimy little toes against the grass, caught dragonflies in my fingertips and dreamed. I dreamed of what I thought was a great and wondrous life, an adult world beyond the drowsy golden tableau preserved in honey and amber, the sweet-molasses sluggishness of the South in the mid-eighties. I thought I’d find magic with age; I thought I’d know things wise and serene, things that would in decades down the road find me somewhere other than on a creaking pier, snoring above the soft, wet slapping of the river against the weathered wooden piles.

The world isn’t yellow, now; it’s grey with the soft and creeping light of morning, like fingers of smoke coursing over each tree, each gable, each sidewalk corner and stroking it into the life and light of day. It’s the grey that only a city can be, that color of concrete that smells like cold wet rain, that sharpness and tang of a thousand, a million bodies all breathing the same air and exhaling the potential of a world so great that it could swallow my childhood a thousand times over. I’m still wiggling my toes and watching, bare feet against plush carpet, green grasshopper on the screen outside my window, creeping, stick-thin legs and beady eyes.

I’m still that little boy, and I’ve found no secrets, found no magic. I’ve found instead life, the days that pass until one runs into the other; I’ve found bits of myself, things that in my youth I might not have wished to know. I’ve learned that human traits such as sexuality, gender, race, and politics can strip away your innocence and leave nothing but exhaustion and a fading remnant of hope that one day, somewhere, somehow, you’ll find that quiet wonder again.

And I’ve learned that I have but one secret to give:

I miss those golden summers.

thinking

Okay, here we go, kicking off the hundred-comments party. The aim is as follows:

Fill this post with 100 comments before the comic goes live around 12:01a CST Monday, January 14th.

There are three prizes:

1st place, 100th comment: A t-shirt of any style, with either the red or pink version of the Ten Speeds shirt design, from the CafePress store. You can pick out the style and color you want when the winner is determined; I’ll pay for it and have it shipped out to you.

2nd place, 101st comment: A mug from the CafePress store with either the red or pink version of the Ten Speeds design. Something a little less embarrassing than the shirt. Again, when the winner is determined, you pick out the style and color and I’ll pay for it and ship it out.

3rd place, 102nd comment: Little pin-on buttons with the designs on them. Do I need to explain about picking and me paying and shipping again?

I’ll post a link to the store after the contest is over, as I’m still fixing and re-uploading the designs. Here’s an overly-wordy version of the rules/things to try to avoid so we keep this to sane levels while still being fun:

• Try to post something that actually has meaning, even if it’s not particularly substantial or thought-provoking. I’ll even take “I like pie” over “ljosjkljslkdfjslfdslj =)” or “OMG EPIC LULZ”. No just posting smilies or spamming meaningless crap to raise the post count. I’d prefer for your post to at least have a subject, object, and verb, and either throw a new topic into the mix (doesn’t have to be anything serious) or else respond to a comment someone else made. Have dialogue. Talk to each other. Have fun. Don’t make me shiv anyone. (…I will make an exception if anyone wants to follow the grand tradition of internet ‘tardia and post “FIRST!”)
• Basically anything that comes from a person counts as a post; pingbacks from other blogs or sites don’t. I’ll allow the pingbacks to go through, but they’ll be subtracted from the overall post count - so if there are any there, it might be post number 104 or 109 or whatever that wins just because some of the posts won’t be counted in the overall tally.
• I don’t care about language, about possibly vulgar topics, etc., even if I may refrain from joining in in kind (because you can be damned sure I’m going to be right in the thick of this hoe-down). With that said, don’t post something disgusting just for the sake of being disgusting (no, Hikaru; just no - and you know what I’m talking about). Other than that, anything goes. Laugh, play, get in arguments, start flame wars (though if you do it on any other post, there will be much wrath). Just this once, you can take your adult hats off and have a free-for-all. Hell, you can chase each other with spoons if you want to. (…there’s an old in-joke that I doubt anyone else remembers…)
• Posting links does not count as a post unless you actually say something and it’s not just linkspam.
• Same with pictures.
• Do not reply to different people in multiple posts all at once just to increase the post count. If you have something to say to multiple people at a time, do it in one post rather than in several.
• If you have multiple topics to bring up, don’t post them in multiple comments all at once; keep them to one comment. Basically, just post one comment at a time and you’ll be fine. Give someone else a chance to respond before you dive right back in.
• Unfortunately Akismet is still screwed to hell and back, which is going to put a bit of a damper on this - but I’ll do my best to keep an eye on it when I’m conscious and catch anything that comes through as quickly as possible. If you see others’ new posts showing up and yours isn’t, that means you were spamming gibberish or multiple posts and I deleted it. Or…it just didn’t go through properly.
• Both Kaine and Hikaru are disqualified from winning, just to be fair - Kaine because he won the last contest, Hikaru because he won the first and because he’s a bastard. That doesn’t mean you can’t participate and join in whatever madness ensues, though. If either of you post the 100th or 101st comments, then the prizes will go to the next people to comment.

I know that looks like a lot, but it’s pretty simple. Basically just post as you normally would and you’ll be fine. Er…to get you started, let me give you a topic: a peanut is neither a pea nor a nut. Talk amongst yourselves.

…

Okay, I’m kidding. No getting veklempt here, or however you spell it. Topic…topic…hmm. How do you feel about the gay community’s apparent need to have separate events/hangouts/possessions labeled as specifically gay (such as gay cruises, gay cafes, gay etc…)? Do you think it provides a welcome retreat for those of like minds to seek each other out and share things in safety, or do you think it’s unnecessary elitism and isolationism - or does it just not matter? (I give that one ten comments max before the whole thing derails and goes swerving into madness.)

Knock yourselves out. Let’s see if we can get this biatch to 100 before Monday.

 Update, 6:49p CST: 100 Comments Winners, 500 Comments Prize

Holy crap, people. Less than 24 hours and you’re already over 100 comments? I thought it would take all bloody weekend! Guys, we broke the effin’ post template! Well, in Firefox anyway; I’m not opening IE to check, but in Firefox the three-digit comment numbers are overlapping the border area. Anyway…the winners are:

1st place: Sam, for the 100th comment. Once the store is live (give me a couple more hours, still tweaking things) you’ll be able to pick one shirt of your choice from the Apparel section.

2nd place: Lessa, for the 101st comment. There are three styles of mug in four different designs (well, one design, variations on color and with or without text); you’ll be able to pick one mug in the style and design of your choice.

3rd place: JM, for the 102nd comment. You’ll get two 3.5″ buttons, in your choice of four designs. (Edit: Actually, you can choose between 3.5″, 2.25″, mini-buttons, and rectangular magnets - one each of two different ones, or two each of one; still updating all the store stuff and it’s up to you which you want.)

3rd place runner-up: Indikaze, for the…um…110th comment, but the first one since 100 that isn’t Sam, Lessa, JM, or me. I wasn’t going to do a runner-up, but figured it wouldn’t be fair for two out of three prizes to go to 451 Press writers - but neither would it be fair to deny those writers when they contributed to the overall insanity of the contest. So Indikaze, you’ll also get two buttons/magnets in your choice of four designs.

Now, just for the hell of it…

There is one mega prize pack available if we hit 500 comments before Monday.

That’s one hell of a challenge, but what the hell, we just might make it. I thought the 100 would be a flop, and you guys proved me wrong.

There’s only one winner (because this is getting kinda expensive, and coming out of my pocket) - but no one’s barred from winning, since this is kind of an unpredicted bonus round. Hikaru, Kaine, Sam, Lessa, JM, Indikaze - you can all win, but you’ll still be competing with everyone else who comes to the site. The prize pack will include:

• One white T-shirt with either the red/blue or blue/pink Ten Speeds deisgn on it;
• One teddy bear with one of the four design variations on its shirt;
• Your choice of either a mouse pad or a wall clock with one of the design variations on it.

Think we can make it?

comments contest, comment party

Oh, I’ve got a ripe one for you today. Check this out:

Church Denied Insurance Because of Gay Equality Policy - EDGE Boston

A church in Michigan that supports gay equality in terms of marriage and clergy ordination has been turned away by an insurance provider worried that the church’s social policies might make it a target for vandals.

The national governing board of West Adrian United Church of Christ upholds equality for gays, and that worried Brotherhood Mutual Insurance Co., reported the Wall Street Journal on Jan. 8.

Brotherhood had previously turned down churches that speak out against other denominations, demonstrate at the funerals of U.S. servicepeople, or preach violence against others.

Brotherhood also canceled the policies of some black churches during a rash of arson cases in the 1990s.

But turning away a church because of its progressive policies is something new.

I may be a bit biased here considering my less-than-eggshell hue, but the first thing that stood out to me in that article was the canceled policies of black churches. That may fly in Michigan, but down here in the South that’d get someone slapped with a lawsuit faster than Don Imus getting pimp-slapped for calling someone a nappy-headed ho. Unfortunately, denying a church for supporting gays would likely gain a raucous round of applause.

While I recognize the rights of a private business to deny service as they see fit and to act in their own best interests, and recognize that they have a point that churches that support unpopular views would be targets for vandalism, neither the logic nor the right inherent make the denial right. There’s a slippery slope between self-preservation and prejudice, and Brotherhood Mutual is teetering at the height of that slope and on the verge of careening down it at breakneck speed.

I admit that I can’t look at this fairly, though, because I have little faith in insurance companies. Their initial purpose was to protect people in extreme cases, providing them with a contingency plan and backup funds built slowly over time through regular contributions, meant for use in emergency/extreme circumstances. What they’ve become is a moneymaking machine that only wants clients whose money it can take with the least risk of having to pay out - meaning that the people who might most need insurance due to undesirable circumstances are the least likely to be granted that protection. It’s despicable that supporting gay rights suddenly makes one part of a high-risk group, suddenly undesirable to the money men of America. That sinks well below practical business survivability. There are a few trustworthy insurance companies out there, those who are genuinely interested in the well-being of their customers, but they’re rare.

I’m done. I can’t say anything else without going on a tirade. I want to get up on my soapbox and throw a fit condemning Brotherhood Mutual, but I can’t when underneath my simmering annoyance I condone their policies of denying coverage to churches who speak out against other denominations or advocate violence. On one hand, it demonstrates fairly that they’re denying people evenly based on risk rather than personal beliefs. On the other hand, it makes me feel like a biased snot for saying “oh, it’s okay to deny those people because I don’t like the way they think”. So I’m just going to walk away from that and just acknowledge that Brotherhood Mutual likely isn’t particularly homophobic; they’re just another typically sleazy insurance company trying to make as much money as possible.

So to divert to a lighter topic, don’t forget that the weekend-long 100 comments party starts at precisely midnight CST; there’ll be a post up detailing the (overly wordy) rules and the prizes, and you’ll comment to that post. The goal is to get 100 comments on a single post before Monday’s comic. Here’s hoping it won’t be a huge flop.

See you tonight/first thing tomorrow. BYOB.

~Adri

west adrian united church of christ, insurance policies, brotherhood mutual insurance company

If you’ve been trying to load this site for the past several hours (and missed today’s post), sorry everything’s been down. There was…a mess. A huge, nasty mess in the data center hosting our servers, so tangled and convoluted that it could only reasonably be called a clusterfsck. Only some sites were affected, but for those of us who were, it’s been a real pain in the petuckus waiting for everything to come back up again.

To make a long story short (basically paraphrasing the enormous statement from the data center that our Head Honcho copied over to the writer forum): Brief power outage. Generator runs for a little while, then transfers main load to the UPS. Main batteries fail. Backup batteries fail right after that. Generators go back online, troubleshooting starts. Backbone connectivity goes FTTZZZ because something went screwy with one of the switches. Half the backbones die, the other half start screaming in pain from carrying the full load. An access switch serving 16 servers died a grisly, brutal, screaming death. Oh, an APC failed too. Think we’re done? Oh, hell no. Some of the servers just tanked due to the power-related forced reboot, and have to be manually restored with an fsck (file system check, you pervs).

Or, to put it very simply, boom. Boom today, boom tomorrow. Sooner or later, always boom.

 
Yyyyeah. So when our data centers do FUBAR, they don’t half-arse it. To quote another 451 Press writer: “This definitely seems like the deluxe, full-ass version of FUBAR.”

We’re back up now, though.

What? What are you still staring at? The real content’s one post below. Go. Be outraged. Be pragmatic. Be apathetic. Be…something. I don’t know. I’m going to go be productive and write something. Later.

~Adri

omg holy crap BOOM.

Here’s a little food for thought from the U.S.’s frosty Northern cousin:

Sexually active gay men no longer allowed to donate organs - CBC News

A number of organ donation groups said Monday that they are unaware of new Health Canada regulations that mean sexually active gay men, injection drug users and other groups considered high risk will no longer be accepted as organ donors.

The new rules, which came into effect in December, are similar to the regulations for determining who can donate blood. Those rules exclude groups that are at high risk of transmitting infectious diseases such as HIV and hepatitis C and B.

Dr. Gary Levy, who heads Canada’s largest organ transplant program at Toronto’s University Health Network, said he was unaware of the new policy on organ donations.

Officials at several transplant programs in the country said because they were unaware of the new regulations, they would continue to consider all potential donor organs.

“We have not been informed, first of all, that Health Canada is considering this,” said Dr. Gary Levy, who heads Canada’s largest organ transplant program at Toronto’s University Health Network. “Obviously if Health Canada wishes to discuss that, we would hope they would engage all stakeholders.”

Dr. Peter Nickerson, director of Transplant Manitoba, which procures organs in that province, said transplant programs must now by law interview family members of the donor as part of the screening process.

“We’ll be asking about things like travel, history of infectious disease, whether they’ve [donors] been in jail — that puts you at increased risk,” Nickerson said. “Have they been an IV drug abuser in the past? Have they had tattoos? There’s a whole list of questions we go through.”

This was sent to me by one of my LiveJournal friends, who said that people have been pretty outraged over the ban on gay donors. Before you get up in arms, though, let’s break this down a little and try to look at it clearly.

Positives:

• Statistically, STD rates are higher in the GBLTQ community, so by eliminating that statistic they’re also eliminating the risk of spreading STDs to unsuspecting recipients. It’s unfortunate, but it’s also reality.
• Even if it’s only semantics, the ban is limited only to the sexually active - people who’ve engaged in intercourse with the same sex in the past five years.
• It also includes drug users, a group that should be eliminated anyway because of the damage to their organs from the choices they made to take harmful substances into their bodies and the possibility of spreading disease through shared needles. There are other risk groups banned as well.
• While shortsighted, this is a preemptive measure by the Canadian healthcare system to try to safeguard the lives of its patients, not a deliberate attempt at malice or prejudice.
• An arbitrary ban is more cost-effective and efficient than initiating new testing measures to ensure that gay and other high-risk donors aren’t carrying anything infectious.

Negatives:

• If we’re going to be realistic, one must face the fact that there are also plenty of straight people with STDs - and banning sexually active gay men from being organ donors may reduce the percentage of possibly infected donor organs, but it won’t change the fact that the healthcare system needs to develop more stringent and effective testing methods for harvested organs.
• It’s difficult enough to get healthy donor organs even without excluding a portion of the population, and by refusing to accept organs from sexually active but healthy gay men, they’re denying the possibility of an organ transplant to patients who may be in dire need.
• There’s a touch of pointlessness when it’s easy to just lie and say one isn’t gay. There is the process of interviewing family, but that can still be circumvented. Even in my fractious and contentious family, I could get them all to lie for me for a week if it meant that I could toss a kidney in a cooler to help save someone’s life.
• To be completely fair rather than targeting a specific demographic as high-risk, all donors should be tested rigorously when their organs are harvested; straight donors’ organs are (or had better be) already tested, so it should be no different for gay donors. It would create more work for the healthcare system, but it would increase the donor pool and provide a fair criteria for rejection rather than an arbitrary and preventative one.
• …there is a bit of an implied insult by lumping homosexuals in with drug users. Specifically, lumping gay men in with drug users, as you’ll notice that the ban doesn’t include lesbians.

It’s hard to judge when the U.S. has had a ban on gay blood donors since 1985, for similar reasons. In both situations, while it may be a cheaper and simpler way to reduce the numbers in risk percentages…I don’t think it’s the right way.

health canada, gay organ donors, gay blood donors

To start off the morning, Kaine won the 1,500 comments contest and is now the proud owner of a horribly pink 1GB Sandisk Sansa MP3 player with FM tuner and voice recording capabilities. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing, but Kaine, I’ll be e-mailing you (I owe you one anyway, and got a little sidetracked) regarding where you want the MP3 player sent. Poor Lessa; missed it by just one.

This weekend, we’ll be having a comment party. Yes, a comment party, as weird as that bloody well sounds. The basic idea is this: at midnight CST on Friday, I’ll put up a post solely for the sake of commenting, explaining the full rules of the party…ish…thing. The purpose is to hit 100 comments to that post alone (comments to other posts won’t count) over the course of the weekend. You can’t just spam the hell out of the post, but like I said, the post itself will explain the rules. Whoever gets the 100th post will get a t-shirt in the Cafepress style of their choice with either the pink/blue or red/blue design posted in yesterday’s comic. There may be a runner-up prize for #101. I’d say if we really wanted to, we could hit 100 posts in one day; hell, if Hikaru and I start bickering, we can manage 50 of those ourselves in just a few hours.

Moving on to the usual mini-discussions of news that occur when Adri just isn’t in the mood for a high-blood-pressure sermon:

Arthritic, sporty, gay? Your finger ratio may tell you: Although it’s pretty common knowledge that apparently the lengths of your fingers in relation to each other can determine whether or not you’re good at math, researchers have also found a correlation between various other traits and the lengths of particular fingers. Long ring fingers indicate a likelihood for osteoarthritis; “male” finger ratios hint at lesbianism. I keep surveying my hands looking for “female” finger ratios to see if that’s supposed to be an indicator of my status as a fabulous king (one queen comment and I skin you) of gay snark. Funny how this one finger in the middle keeps popping up a bit higher than the others…

Gay bar’s straight bouncer wins discrimination suit: A straight woman who worked as a bouncer in a UK gay bar often dealt with harassing comments about her sexuality - a reversal of the usual harassment of homosexuals. She also claims she was fired for it and that her employer often called her a “breeder”; while the court determined that her firing had nothing to do with her sexuality, she was still awarded a settlement for facing discrimination in the workplace - and right well she should be. I still don’t know where we get this idea that because some heterosexuals are nasty to us, that gives us the right to behave in an equally bigoted, discriminatory fashion towards them. Two wrongs don’t make a right, more cliched BS, blah blah, the point is that no one’s sexuality gives anyone the right to behave like a complete douche towards them. It’s not all right to place the shoe on the other foot and “show them how it feels”. It just makes you as bad as the people that you mock and loathe.

Wasn’t asked, told anyway: In a refreshing change, a gay servicemember (who, if you follow the link, is not only brave but quite attractive) came out on public television and wasn’t in any way rebuked or confronted about it by his unit or his commanding officers - and he’s discovered that he’s not alone. Hundreds of gay servicemembers serve active duty with their sexuality fully known by their units. Their fellow servicemembers just don’t care. Out in the field, one’s sexuality doesn’t matter. What matters is capability, and whether or not the people in your unit can put their skills to use saving your life and the lives of the soldiers and civilians around you. Too many highly skilled individuals with knowledge and experience that could be valuable in avoiding bloodshed have been barred from service for the most idiotic reasons - the top reason being that the Pentagon somehow thinks that open homosexuality in the military will foster dissent in the ranks.

Funny how people keep proving them wrong.

don’t ask don’t tell, gays in the military, gay servicemembers, darren manzella, straight harassment, heterosexual discrimination, sharon legg, finger ratios, osteoarthritis, finger lengths