Darkside Rainbow

In the comments to Tuesday’s post, Mizuki highlighted a very good point: We, the gay community and our supporters, don’t have any real leader to follow. We don’t have a Martin Luther King, a Sojourner Truth, a Moses to lead us out of Egypt.

All right, that’s a little dramatic, but the point stands: we don’t have a single person to rally behind enough to give us faith, and regardless of your religious beliefs, faith in something is what drives you to get things done. Faith, motivation, a single unified message that says “We are one, we shall stand, we shall fight.” Instead we’re divided into a dozen, a thousand petty groups that squabble among each other just as much as we rail against the opposition; we can’t agree on anything, let alone which issue to tackle first. We’re too widespread, too preoccupied with other things, too many of us hidden, too many of us trapped in a feeling of helplessness. Martin Luther King could unify people across a nation. Who could do that for us?

Unfortunately, I can’t think of a single name off the bat. Some might say Barack Obama, as he is a charismatic bugger who tends to rally people to blindly support him - but while he might gather support in some areas, I don’t really see him as someone to lead on gay issues should he obtain the presidency. Same with Hillary, despite her pledges…and honestly, I can’t see myself following a call to action from any politician, unless they were so radically different that I actually felt that I could identify with them - and despite sharing a highly mixed heritage with Obama, I can’t identify with him. Don’t get me started on Hillary.

In the gay rights movement, I can’t even name anyone still living who’s made enough of an impact or any kind of significant contribution that I might even care who they are. A lot of that has to do with today’s social structure; if you aren’t a celebrity or a politician, people don’t pay attention to you and so few hear of your achievements no matter how major they may be. It’s a lot harder to lead a movement these days; people are too apathetic, too distracted by their cars, mortgages, and kids, too afraid to take a risk. Most would-be leaders - evangelists of the gay movement - give up before they even get very far, because trying to rally people to action is like trying to wade through sludge as thick as molten lead.

So enlighten me, since I admit that I’m somewhat sheltered and possibly just as apathetic. Is there someone you’d follow? Is there someone who could stand behind a podium and raise his or her voice to stir you to action and rouse your blood? If it came down to descending on Washington, gathering numbers greater than even the Million Man March:

Who would you follow in that march?

Why do I keep hearing the president’s speech from Independence Day in the back of my head?

I’m late posting today, again. Not because I was busy (although I was), or because the news is particularly uneventful; not even because the earth (or Wacom customer service) opened up and swallowed me whole into its gaping and fetid gullet.

I’m late because I’m damn tired of beating a dead horse and sounding like a broken record.

I’ve been thinking about this all morning, and realizing that it goes deeper than that; it’s not just me. I’m sick of listening to the very people that I want to fight for, the people I call my sisters and brothers in arms in the fight for gay rights. I’m sick of hearing (and saying) the same tired things over and over again with new names substituted in, the same story, the same tired old whinge. It’s all talk and very little action. I’m sick of listening to people beat the horse to death, only to spend hours more flaying the dead horse.

And then coming back to it again days later.

No wonder people don’t listen to us. No wonder people don’t take us seriously. We aren’t activists; we’re pretentious, self-entitled whiners, and it pisses me the hell off.

Talk will only get us so far when we’re too timid and afraid to do anything. Hold a parade, send a few angry letters now and then, then move back to our safe little lives, our PT cruisers and our nonfat lattes. Stay out of the line of fire. Look out for ourselves, and screw ourselves over in the process.

No.

Take a risk. Do something, no matter how small, to place yourself in the line of fire. Martin Luther King was a great speaker, a moving speaker, a man who could rouse people to action - because he was willing to take action himself, for the sake of his cause. He wasn’t afraid. He didn’t hide. We have no one like him, no single man or woman to rally behind. We’re too busy fighting among ourselves, then placating ourselves by screaming loudly now and then about how active we are in the gay community.

Words aren’t meant to be shouted just to be heard. Words are meant to carry a message. If you fight with words, fight with words that make people think. Fight with words that make people listen, rather than just complaining. Say something that means something, rather than just reciting the same old empty lines. Fight with words that matter.

And if you won’t rally behind someone else, rally behind yourself. Even if it’s a small thing, even if it’s being brave and standing up to someone who casts a slur on your life, your love, your very existence…do something. Something more than words. Something that will leave a lasting impact on someone, something that will make them stop and say, “They’re serious. They mean this; it matters to them, and this isn’t just some self-important parade.”

Don’t do it because you should. Do it because you want to; do it because you feel it from your gut. And if you don’t feel strongly enough about it to do anything, then don’t whine about it, either.

Put up or shut up. But let the goddamned horse rest in peace.

Now watch tomorrow I go back to rehasing the same old crap.

Hi. This may be disjointed, because I’m tired as hell and ready to crawl off somewhere, curl up, and pass out (and I can’t, too much work to do). But I want to post today anyway, partially because I said I would, and partially because there’s something on my mind that’s been bothering me.

I’m a member of several online writers’ groups, mostly geared towards fantasy and science fiction. The groups discuss techniques, favorite authors, genre standards, and all sorts of other things related to writing, trying to get published, trying to find an agent, the whole hoobalah. They also critique each others’ stories; I say “they” because I don’t really participate. I’m a little shy after a bad experience with a rather tyrannical mod in the first group I ever joined (no, I don’t know anything about being a tyrannical mod, do I, Indikaze and Sihaya?). Sometimes I join in the discussion if I have anything to contribute, but otherwise I stay quiet and just listen. Sometimes I learn things. Sometimes I wonder what the hell they’re smoking. It’s always an interesting experience, despite the occasional inevitable online wank.

Yesterday, though, I stayed quiet on something that I wish I hadn’t kept my mouth shut on, even though it’s a small thing and really wasn’t even related to the topic of the discussion. It was related to how commonly accepted it is to loudly express disgust at any display of homosexual contact, and it came innocently enough; it probably doesn’t help that I don’t like the guy who posted it, since he’s a self-important twit who joins every discussion with a long diatribe about how his way of doing things is better than the established industry standard. He’s unique, he’s a groundbreaker, no one understands his genius, he’s a special twatwaffle of a snowflake who needs to be smacked upside the head with a frozen mackerel. I think, though, that I would have been a little bothered no matter who said it, my dislike of him notwithstanding.

The discussion involved how various writers describe fight scenes in novels, and how some of them have obviously never swung a punch in their lives or even observed combat to try to capture some sense of realism without overdetailing. The discussion moved on to things like wrestling (actual wrestling competitions, not WWF-style sensationalism) and how referees will often break grapple holds that might otherwise go on for hours in a traditional competition while the two competitors struggle to gain even a micron’s advantage. Hour-long grapple holds are boring, apparently, and the audience might leave. The comment made was that he (the poster that I don’t like) probably wouldn’t mind watching two people locked in a pornographic position for an hour at a time, but (caps emphasis his)…TWO GUYS? Ugh.

It made me twitch. I would understand if he just expressed something along the lines of a simplified version of “I’m straight so I’m not interested in watching two guys dry hump each others’ faces”; I’m gay, so I’m not interested in watching two women dry hump each others’ faces and can understand. It was the tone of disgust and rejection that just made me pause and want to say, “Does the idea of two men being that close bother you somehow? Because you know, some of us might take issue with that sentiment.” It’s his right to feel that way. It’s just bothersome that it’s so common to casually express that as if it’s normal to say such things, and no one should mind that he’s publicly displaying disgust towards homosexual preferences.

Why didn’t I say anything? Because again, it’s his right to feel that way, and if it comes down to a matter of free speech and a matter of defending my demographic, I’m almost always going to choose free speech as long as the things said aren’t actively causing harm beyond a slightly worked nerve. That and I never want to be one of those obnoxiously oversensitive people who jumps on everyone for the slightest hint of anti-gay sentiment, no matter how loosely implied (or even inferred, because who knows what the person may have intended to imply). There has to be a line drawn between encouraging acceptance and being a complete and total twat.

At the same time, it stuck with me because it’s a symptom of a larger problem: that it is so common to casually revile all things gay, right down to the dreaded “that’s so gay” derision. It’s ingrained in people as part of normal social speech, and it eats at me until I wish I had said something, anything, just to politely point out that while he may not have intended to be hateful, he could be a little bit more tactful and it would be greatly appreciated. Just one little thing to calmly make one person aware that no, even casual unconscious gay-bashing is not acceptable.

But I didn’t, because it’s such a small battle and so open to interpretation that it’s not worth it; within a day I’ll forget about it like I do every time I catch something like that in conversation. It rarely sticks with me and makes me think for this long. I may notice, but I’m not that sensitive - and these people don’t really affect my life so I care for maybe the few milliseconds it takes to really process what they said. If it’s said as a joke, I even laugh my ass off; I’m the last person to really care about political correctness, and when I know the person’s intent I can take just about anything they might say no matter how offensive. It’s when they’re serious that I have to grit my teeth and bite my tongue.

So I wonder what it will take to make me stop and speak up. How bad will it have to get before I lose either my sense of humor or my sense of perspective and say “Hey, man, that’s not cool”?

How do you decide when you should defend yourself and when you shouldn’t?

Were you expecting something about BDSM?

Thomas Beatie has been on my mind a lot lately, mainly because I’ve been wondering what I would do in his situation, and if I could even go through with what he’s doing. One question led to another, and suddenly a million chaotic theories and thoughts were chasing each other around my mind, issues related to reproductive rights, societal behavior… everything. And out of that came more questions still - well, you see where this is going. Although these are questions that I asked myself (or more like rationalized out along a train of thought), I’d like to ask you as well. I’ll provide my own answers below each question; I’d like to hear your answers in the comments.

1. If you’re male or FtM, imagine that you’re capable of conceiving and carrying a child to term. If you’re female or MtF, imagine that you’re capable of impregnating a partner. If you could and your partner wanted it (whether it’s the only option for childbirth or one of many), would you?

Not just no, hell no - mainly because children give me the creepy-crawlies and I’m about as child-friendly as ball pool filled with rusty razor blades. I think people should have the right to pursue such avenues (such as a transwoman impregnating a biological female, or a transmale being impregnated by a biological male/artificial insemination) if that’s what makes them happiest, as it shouldn’t matter how the child was brought into the world or which parent was involved in what part of conception as long as neither parent was harmed and the child is wanted and happy. I just couldn’t do it myself, and any partner who asked me to wouldn’t be someone I’d end up with long-term, because it tends to ruin relationships if your partner doesn’t respect your decisions about children - whether you want them or not. Besides, I may have an extremely high pain threshold, but not high enough to squeeze something the size of a basketball out of any orifice of my body. No thank you, though I admire those who can.

2. Do you believe that doctors have the right to refuse treatment to patients based on their personal beliefs?

Again, hell no. I think doctors have a moral obligation above their personal beliefs, and that moral obligation is to see to the health and well-being of all their patients - which means performing procedures that they might not morally agree with. Can you imagine what would have happened to Thomas Beatie if every available doctor refused to treat his ectopic pregnancy because of personal beliefs? He could have died. The obligation to a patient’s life and its preservation stands far above any personal or religious beliefs. As long as the procedure is not damaging to the patient’s or anyone else’s mental or physical well-being, then yes, the doctor is obligated to perform it, and perform it to the best of their abilities. I can’t refuse to do one of my writing projects just because I object to my client’s obnoxiously masturbatory self-image based on my personal beliefs, and my work doesn’t even affect one’s health.

This can get into shady grey areas when it comes to optional procedures such as cosmetic surgeries or gender reassignment surgeries, but I’ll cover that in my answer to the next question, as I think that relates to safeguarding the patient’s mental well-being as well when it comes to allowing them to live happily as their chosen self without the struggles (depression, stress, etc.) that can come from being denied what they need.

3. Specifically in relation to reproductive rights: Do you think that doctors have the right to refuse to perform vasectomies on men or hysterectomies, tubal ligations, or implantation of contraceptive devices in women and FtMs based on their eligibility to breed?

…only in very specific situations, and only with consultation from an unbiased outside party.

Before you crucify me: I think that anyone, male or female, should have full control of their bodies and definitely of their reproductive systems - but I do understand somewhat why some doctors deny patients. Many doctors have been victims of malpractice suits by patients who said they wanted a certain surgery, then years later changed their minds, couldn’t have it reversed, and sued their doctor for allowing them to go through with the decision and rendering them unable to conceive. That’s one reason that doctors often deny people who are still of safe childbearing age.

But there are other reasons that I really can’t agree with - mainly patriarchal and religious stances that value a person’s ability to breed above the person themselves, their desires, and their health. Even if it would make them miserable, even if they’re staunchly against ever having children and are quite certain of their own minds, they’re told placidly that they’ll change their minds (because of course everyone wants children, it’s inconceivable that someone wouldn’t) and denied contraceptive surgeries…even if they’re getting them not to avoid children, but to transition from one gender to the other. Some people even view people who have such surgeries as sluts, who just want those surgeries so they can have indiscriminate sex with anyone and anything moving.

Those views, restrictive and condescending and dehumanizing, I cannot abide. Yes, some people do change their minds and regret it later, because they made hasty, impulsive decisions - but there are people capable of making up their minds after lengthy self-analysis, and there are perfectly normal, respectable people who just don’t want children. Ever.

The problem arises when asking a doctor to determine which is which. While a physician or surgeon is a licensed health professional, not so many serve double duty as a licensed mental health professional, capable of determining if a person is capable of making this decision in an educated adult fashion. The easiest way is just to say no, period, unless they can determine that the person is in actual physical danger and requires the procedure.

Or you could just bring in a licensed therapist.

Seriously; that would keep everyone’s balls out of the grinder. Why not make 6 months of professional therapy a pre-surgical requirement? The therapist would counsel the person on their reasons for wanting surgery to remove or limit their reproductive organs, whether it’s gender reassignment or just a serious desire not to have children, make them aware of the eventualities and pitfalls, ask all the right questions so that they analyze their motivations and don’t make the wrong decision…and at the end of the six months, determine if they’re in sound enough mind to be certain of the decision. At the end of the 6 months, both the therapist and the patient sign off on the counseling, with the patient also agreeing that they still stand by their decision and thus can’t sue the therapist or surgeon for malpractice. With that signature from the therapist, the doctor should then be bound by law to perform the procedure.

Wishful thinking, eh? Then again, there’s also the problem that the burden of personal beliefs then shifts to the therapist, who could still make judgments based on personal beliefs whether they’re supposed to or not and even though they’re trained to offer counsel without personal influence.

Then again, it’s my experience that mental health professionals are better equipped to handle these things than doctors, and can be a bit less biased…or at least put aside their bias more easily.

…now stop looking at me like that. I went to therapy voluntarily for a few months so I could kick my familial issues to the curb and get on with my life. I’m crazy, but I’m not that crazy.

So what are your answers? Would you, could you, should you?

thomas and nancy beatie, pregnant transman, male pregnancy, gender dysphoria, transgenders, transsexuals, mtf, ftm, m2f, f2m, gender identity disorder, reproductive rights, reproductive surgeries, hysterectomy, vasectomy, omg!babies!

Death of a Gay Soldier - ABC News

Major Alan Rogers was an intelligence officer who trained Iraqi soldiers. An IED in Baghdad killed him while he was out on patrol. On March 14, he was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

The Washington Post reported at the time that Rogers’ commanding officer wrote to his family: “As God would have it, he shielded two men who probably would have been killed if Alan had not been there.”

According to the Washington Blade, Rogers was also treasurer of the D.C. chapter of the American Veterans for Equal Rights, which works to overturn the ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military.

Because Rogers, it turns out, was gay.

Some, such as Andrew Sullivan, have been quite critical of the fact that Rogers’ orientation has been omitted from media accounts of his death.

Writes Andrew: “to enforce the closet even after his death cannot be explained except by a view that somehow being gay is shameful or private. I can see why outing someone who is alive and closeted is unethical; inning someone who is dead and was out is a function of utterly misplaced sensitivity, rooted in well-intentioned but incontrovertible homophobia.”

It may seem strange, but at first I took the other side. Gay or straight doesn’t matter when you gave your life in defense of your country and to save the lives of others; to act as if being gay somehow made his act more noble than it would have been if he was straight is a bit of a double standard, even if it does take a bit more gall to willingly lay down your life for a country that says “I don’t want you.” But he could have gotten out at any time. He could have publicly outed himself beyond his participation in a group striving for equality and been dismissed, and he didn’t. He chose to remain quiet, stay, and serve his country. That, along with how he lost his life, makes Major Rogers someone to be respected.

And it was that line of thinking that turned me around and made me think, “Then maybe yes, people do deserve to know; it was a part of who he was, and it shouldn’t be omitted from his life after his death.” But I still balk at this; maybe it’s my views that we’re so much more than our orientation, and I’m sick of us being boxed in as gay first and everything else after. Major Rogers was far more than a gay man and activist, and yet were those things to be mentioned in his obituary, that’s all that many of the general public would see. They wouldn’t see an honorable man who fought for others, a son, a brother, an uncle, a friend, a compatriot - whatever he was to so many people.

All they would see is a gay man, and the stereotype flung over that like a cloak to hide everything else that he was.

Is it right? No. Does that change that it’s a popular perception that too many of us perpetuate? Unfortunately, no. And would everyone think that about Rogers if his obituary had made mention of his sexuality? Of course not. America isn’t a hive mind and people have diverse perceptions and beliefs, and many people know that being gay isn’t something that you have to hide or be ashamed of - just as many people are violently opposed to it. So I can’t agree or disagree with the decision to leave his sexuality and activism out of his obituary. On one hand it would have given hope to other gay servicemembers, and maybe even shown some of those “don’t ask, don’t tell” proponents that he didn’t ask, he didn’t tell…but he still gave his life for them, and a gay man was just as good as they are.

On the other hand, it could have brought down unnecessary prejudice on his family in a time of grief when they didn’t need to deal with anything more. And in the eyes of many, it would have demoted him from a brave, honorable soldier to “just another fag.” Maybe mentioning it in his obituary would have been an act of defiance against the prejudiced. Maybe it would have been pointless. And maybe it would have just been another nuance on his life, that didn’t make a wave at all.

So I don’t know what to think. I don’t know which way to stand. The only thing I can say for certain is this:

Rest in peace, Major Rogers, and thank you.

Just don’t start playing “Taps”.

Unsurprisingly, most of the limited circle of friends allowed past my cantankerous, defensive personal space barrier are gay, lesbian, bi, or trans. Well, perhaps that is a bit surprising, considering my criticisms of prevalent shallow, judgmental behavior in the gay community - but you tend to meet like minds in places like art school. In art school I met fun, relaxed, quirky people all across the GBLTQ spectrum, and held on to quite a few friends from those years. Through them I met others, and have built a close inner circle of people who avoid triggering my typical reaction of “Don’t make me stab you with my f&#$ing pencil” every time they open their mouths.

Because of that, though, I’m admittedly sheltered from straight people. Most of the straight people I know are via my LiveJournal friends list online, and I can’t really say I know them beyond what they choose to share of their lives in daily, weekly, or monthly posts. We have little in common, in truth. We have different interests, different perspectives, different approaches to life - but then, that’s what makes them interesting, and why I enjoy reading their posts. A recent kerfluffle over at LiveJournal (yes, another one, they just can’t stop) regarding censoring of interests brought up an interesting divide, though, one addressed by Anji (yes, our own raging lesbian Republican commenter) in her journal: more straight people are offended by the censoring of words like “gay” and “yaoi” among popular interests than gay people. Gay people just don’t care.

It startled me to realize that she’s right, at least in my case. I don’t care. I didn’t care about the fact that LiveJournal might be practicing homophobic censorship during the Harry Potter fanart / ponderosa121 / boldthrough / strikethrough / do-we-really-need-to-rehash-this incident beyond the fact that it was arbitrary censorship of art in general with flawed judgments of “artistic merit”, because as far as gay rights go, it’s just not an issue.

Another reader once brought up her view that straight people don’t go out of their way to support us; in fact, they do. Straight people will raven and rant over things that don’t even make us blink, and yet will shy away from the larger issues that require more work than loud protest and posting angry diatribes online. It’s not that they don’t mean well; they’re just misguided, and so eager to defend and be pro-gay that they miss out on the things that really matter, focusing so intently on single pixels that they miss the bigger picture. (Yeah, I know, that was lame.)

There’s a clear divide between the gay community’s idea of what matters to us, and the straight community’s idea of what matters to us. It’s unavoidable, considering that we approach issues of gay rights, freedom, and censorship from wholly different perspectives, pitting internal vs. external.

It’s not a universal problem, of course. There are plenty of straight advocates who don’t sweat the small things and labor right alongside the gay community in tackling those massive issues that will take years of work and struggle to unravel, and I think if we could educate more people in the straight community about key goals for gay rights before they toss on their boxing gloves and dive into the ring, then we might make more progress under more clearly focused efforts - because for the most part, the general population just doesn’t get it. That’s why gay news coverage in major media is so sensationalist and yet oddly spotty and dismissive; that’s why LiveJournal* explodes into a hotbed of “omg first amendment free speech” outrage the moment someone says “that could be construed as homophobic censorship oh noes!” To give people fair credit, maybe these issues matter to them. If they want to fight that hard, then I admire their passion.

But I can’t help but wonder why they fight in the name of people who don’t really give a damn about the things they’re so upset about. Fight in their own name, sure. Fight in the name of whatever personal issue makes these things important to them. Fight against censorship in general, because gods know that pisses me the hell off and if that’s all it’s about, then I’m right there with you. Fight against hate speech in general; don’t ignore widespread use of “n*gger” in high schools because it’s trendier to complain about kids saying “that’s so gay”. Don’t just flip over speculated homophobic behavior in popular television while dismissing misogyny and sexual objectification that abound much more freely. Don’t just rage over Christian conservatives seeking to ban gay books from libraries; look at all the books they seek to ban, all the information they seek to repress on history, other faiths, freedom, and culture. Hell, worry about Tibet; things are a bit chaotic over there right now. When it comes to the little things, look for the bigger picture, rather than focusing on one tiny quadrant and ignoring others. But as for fighting for us?

Thank you for the support and I wish you luck, but we’ve got bigger fish to fry.

*Granted, LiveJournal is a bad example of this. Most of the people on LiveJournal are fighting for their own right to be interested in these things, and to draw and write and express themselves in regards to whatever they want without censorship; it’s about protection of expression and not about gay rights. I just used LiveJournal as Anji’s post about the mess on LJ is what prompted this line of thought. But there are quite a few waving the gay rights flag in the dust-up, and there have been several widely-publicized media incidents in which straight advocates went psycho over one or two words and were righteously offended by things that…well…most people in the gay community just shrugged off.

idk my bff vladimir putin. kgb: im in ur jurnals, endin teh free wurld by crushin on ur bois. Yes, I know these tags are entirely frivolous.

It’s turning out to be harder to get back into this than I thought. It’s funny how being away for a short time can completely throw off your flow; now that I’m back at DR, sometimes I find myself looking at this blog and thinking, “Okay, I’ve got it…now what do I do with it?” And yet I can’t abandon it; I know eventually I’ll find my stride again. The key is not quitting, or even taking too long of a break - because when you back away for a while, after a while you start telling yourself that you’ll go back soon…and yet you never return.

The same can be said of many things. I’ve been thinking of various aspects of my life where that happened; my old comic, for one, although part of that is because it’s not viable as-is. I would say my fiction writing, but I never leave that even if sometimes I bounce from story to story and feel as if I’m not getting anywhere. Even if I can only pick out one sentence a day or send out one query letter a week, I still hold tight to what is turning into one of the most important aspects of my life. What I can’t help remembering, though, is that I used to be a hospital volunteer and HIV/AIDS activist…and somehow, after I wandered away, I never wandered back.

For four years in high school I volunteered at one of the two major hospitals in my (at the time) home city; I worked the front desk, watched the gift shop, minded outpatient, even (on short-staffed nights in the emergency room and the maternity ward) helped set a few broken bones and assisted in a few live births that could probably get the hospital administration in a great deal of trouble if I ever revealed the name of the facility.

Outside of my usual four hours a night, though, I also participated in the hospital’s youth coalition, which was actually a branch of NOLAN - a New Orleans-based AIDS outreach program. We held weekly meetings, fundraisers, STD education seminars, condom distribution programs…the works. On the weekends we’d meet at a prearranged location to box up food bought with the fundraising money and, riding along with the organization’s adult mentors, bring the food to AIDS sufferers too bedridden to shop for themselves - people who had no one else. No family, no friends, no one who cared about them. Just us - bringing them food, picking up their prescription medications, taking them out for a day at the movies when they were feeling well enough for it, keeping them company with TV, books, and conversation when they weren’t.

Staying by their bedsides and helplessly watching them die, when the time came. It hurt. It hurt more than I care to remember, but it was better than letting them die alone.

All of that ended when I left for college in a different state. Suddenly I had homework, new friends, campus events, new hobbies, and yet more homework still - and I had no personal transportation or even public transportation (it was Alabama, what do you expect?) to really get anywhere. The local GBLTQ organizations were more social groups than anything else; any outreach programs were in the city, out of reach (no pun intended). My life went elsewhere. Later, after university and my move to Houston, I tried to get involved - but the GBLTQ organization that I found within reach was, again, just a social group. There are plenty of outreach groups here that I could have joined, but suddenly I found that work was in the way - work, life, and everything else. So any volunteer services that I might have gotten involved in just…faded.

And thinking about that makes me feel a little sad, a little guilty, and a little self-absorbed. I still don’t have time even now to get involved in gay rights movements, HIV/AIDS outreach programs, any of it. I’m hoping when I move to Chicago to find a more active local community (not to mention that Chicago public transportation is better, so I can get anywhere I need to go in 10-30 minutes rather than 2-3 hours), but right now I can’t help but look back on the past few years of my life and know that while it wasn’t my fault that everything else fell by the wayside while I struggled for stability, I still could have found ways to do more. What about you?

Are you involved in any aspect of the gay rights movement, or HIV/AIDS outreach and education?

        (a) Yes; I do everything I can.
        (b) Sometimes, when I have time.
        (c) No, but I’d like to be.
        (d) No, and I’m not really concerned about it.
        (e) Other/will explain in comments.

Insert appropriately clever tag here.

Normally, when I think of conspiracy theorists, I think of complete mental cases with overdeveloped technical skills and underdeveloped senses of personal hygiene, crafting tinfoil hats in their mothers’ basements and swearing that the truth is out there because their X-files posters say so. What I don’t think of is Catholic bishops, although I will admit that Catholicism does have a strong track record of nutjobs - from psychotic evangelical leaders to monks raving in the belfries. So maybe it’s not so out of place when the Right Reverend Joseph Devine sounds like he’s just about ready to shave his head and start tilting at windmills when he claims that there’s a “huge and well-orchestrated conspiracy against Christian values”:

Catholic bishop hits out at ‘gay conspiracy’ to destroy Christianity - News.Scotsman.com

One of Scotland’s most senior Catholics has launched an attack on the “gay lobby” in Scotland, claiming there is a “huge and well-orchestrated conspiracy” against Christian values. The Rt Rev Joseph Devine, Bishop of Motherwell and president of the Catholic Education Commission, said gay rights organisations aligned themselves with minority groups, such as Holocaust survivors, to project an “image of a group of people under persecution”.

He warned that the gay lobby – which he labelled “the opposition” – had mounted “a giant conspiracy” to shape public policy.

[…]In the fourth of the Gonzaga Lectures held at St Aloysius’ College in Glasgow on Tuesday, Bishop Devine said: “The homosexual lobby has been extremely effective in aligning itself with minority groups.

“It is ever-present at the service each year for the Holocaust memorial, as if to create for themselves the image of a group of people under persecution. We neglect the gay movement at our peril.

“I want to ask you if you are able to see the giant conspiracy that’s taking place before our eyes, even if we didn’t see it at the time. I take it you’re beginning to see that there is a huge and well-orchestrated conspiracy taking place, which the Catholic community missed.”

He went on: “In this New Year’s honours list, I saw actor Ian McKellen being honoured for his work on behalf of homosexuals, when a century ago Oscar Wilde was locked up and put in jail. “It’s a very small group of people, but very active and organised – and extremely indulgent. The opposition know exactly what they’re doing. We don’t.”

Oh, yes. We’re quite organized. Little do you know that the conspiracy isn’t just in the UK; it’s worldwide. We have secret global bunkers where we hoard glitter, condoms, and Tori Amos albums. Fire Island is actually a militant training camp where we’re drilled in conversion techniques, subversion strategies, and the fifty ways to kill a man with a cardboard nail file. Not only that, but we have secret decoder rings that get us discounts on spiky, gelled androgynous haircuts (you know the cut - depending on the gender of the wearer, it’s either trendyfag or sportylez, but it’s the exact same cut) in every hair salon across the planet…and our uniforms are absolutely fabulous.

Done laughing yet?

Seriously, I’ll never understand conspiracy theorists. Yes, there have been some grand conspiracies throughout history, but for the most part they were only uncovered after the fact because part of what made them such successfully complex conspiracies was that they were almost entirely covert. Gay rights movements are quite out in the open, thank you, and aren’t even remotely organized enough to begin to shield a conspiracy - unless you want to believe that the disorganization and the multiple dismal failures that we’ve suffered are a deliberate attempt to hide what’s really going on.

Er. No. Frankly, I think the gay community overall is too self-centered (myself included) to mount a massive conspiracy to threaten anything, let alone Christian values. This is just one nutjob’s persecution complex (isn’t he accusing us of the same thing?); he needs to be right so much that he has to create a massive and faceless entity acting as a collective whole to actively and deliberately cause harm to his own personal beliefs. It’s rather like when people condemn “the liberal media’. There is no single-minded machine called “the liberal media”; there are multiple media entities made up of millions of people with varying motivations and directives, all bound by nationally mandated regulations that are constantly battled over by liberal and conservative entities.

The same goes for the gay rights movement; the label is just that, a label to collectively identify the one motive unifying diverse groups and individuals who cannot be collectively labeled as good or evil, and most certainly can’t be defined as promoting a conspiracy. Each person involved in the gay rights movement is concerned with their lives, their jobs, their homes, their families, just like anyone concerned with Christian values. Each person has their own individual problems, their individual successes, and their major motivating factors in life. The fact that they all happen to believe in gay equality isn’t a conspiracy. It is, as I’ve said a million times before, a basic human desire to be treated fairly.

Perhaps a few people are actively trying to undermine Christianity - but if they’re going to judge us by a minor percentage, then perhaps we should judge all Christians by Devine.

No?

I got yer tin foil right here, biotch.

I’m a little amazed that so many readers came back so quickly after the end of my hiatus, if yesterday’s comments are any indication. It’s nice to see you guys again. What isn’t nice, however, is the following headline:

Gay Iranian Fights For Asylum In Europe - CBS News

(AP) The Netherlands’ highest court rejected a gay Iranian asylum seeker’s last-ditch bid to avoid deportation to Britain, where he fears authorities will send him back to Tehran and possible execution.

In a ruling published on its Web site Tuesday, the Council of State said Britain is responsible for Mehdi Kazemi’s case, because it was there that the 19-year-old first applied for asylum.

Gay rights campaigner Rene van Soeren said Kazemi’s Dutch lawyer was considering an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. The lawyer, Borg Palm, did not immediately return calls seeking comment. Boris van der Ham, a lawmaker who has taken up Kazemi’s cause, has tabled questions in Parliament asking the junior minister for immigration, Nebahat Albayrak, to lobby British authorities on Kazemi’s behalf. Albayrak should either urge Britain not to send Kazemi back to Iran or offer him asylum in the Netherlands, Van der Ham said in a telephone interview.

“There should be some political leadership,” he said. “I hope in Britain they will do it and otherwise we should take the boy.”

Kazemi is not expected to be deported before Albayrak has answered Van der Ham’s questions.

[…]The Netherlands relaxes its tough asylum laws for Iranian gays - virtually guaranteeing asylum to any who apply here - because of persecution they face at home. Britain, on the other hand, rejected Kazemi’s original asylum request.

Kazemi, 19, says he traveled to London to study English in 2005 and applied for asylum in Britain after learning that his lover in Iran had been executed for sodomy.

After British authorities rejected Kazemi’s application, he fled to mainland Europe and applied for asylum in the Netherlands.

However, because Kazemi had already applied for asylum and been rejected in Britain, the Dutch government is refusing to consider his case and insists he must be sent back to Britain. It cites the European Union’s 2003 Dublin Regulation, which declares that the member state where an asylum seeker first enters the EU is responsible for processing that person’s claim.

Tuesday’s court ruling upheld the Dutch position.

Palm said last week that Kazemi was in such despair he was on suicide watch in a center for rejected asylum seekers in the port city of Rotterdam.

Can the bureaucracy; this is someone’s life on the line. I feel like I’m watching a teenager say “Dad, can I go to the movies?” “Didn’t your mother already tell you no?” Or at least, that seems to be just how lightly courts are treating this case. I don’t care if Britain already rejected Kazemi’s asylum plea; they’re notorious for that, because the Home Office “doesn’t believe there’s a serious problem of persecution in Iran” (paraphrasing another article I read earlier today, can’t for the life of me find it now).

Right. They must be reading the same book as Iran’s president, who is still convinced that they don’t even have gays in Iran.

So because Britain’s Home Office has a stick lodged up their arses and don’t appear to be enjoying it (not enough lube, maybe?), the Netherlands - normally so tolerant, offering shelter to almost anyone who applies for asylum - won’t even bother with Kazemi’s case.

I hate politics.

How can people so blandly dismiss a person’s life on the basis of technicalities? How can so many people say “sorry, my hands are tied because of this document here, so sorry about that death thing”? I don’t even understand how lawmakers could sleep at night if they ever stopped to consider the number of lives needlessly ended by snarls of red tape and ridiculous policies.

The only hope right now, unless someone pulls some major strings, lies in one vague statement by Britain’s Border and Immigration Agency: “We examine with great care each individual case before removal and we will not remove anyone who we believe is at risk on their return.”

We’ll see where that gets Kazemi. Hopefully farther than it got Hassan Parhizkar.

screw your stinking tags.

Bad puns aside, while “separate but equal” doesn’t work in cases of gay society vs. hetero society, a New York judge has nonetheless established equality in the separation of married gay couples:

In First, N.Y. Judge Allows Gay Divorce
Trial Court Ruling Appears to Be State’s First Allowing Divorce From Same-Sex Marriage

In what appears to be the first ruling of its kind, a New York judge will allow a lesbian couple who married in Canada to sue for divorce.

Though New York does not allow same-sex marriages, a state trial court judge refused to dismiss a divorce and child custody suit brought by a woman, identified only as Beth R., against her former partner Donna M.

Donna M. had argued that her 2004 marriage should be invalid in New York because the state doesn’t allow same-sex marriage, but Supreme Court Justice Laura Drager found that the out-of-state marriage could still be recognized under New York law. Her ruling appears to be the first divorce case in New York from a same-sex marriage.

“What we’re seeing now is a judicial battle that’s going to be waged in [the] next few months,” said Arthur Leonard, who teaches a class on sexual orientation and the law at New York Law School. “People sometimes forget that divorce is part of marriage. People need a judicial process to untangle a relationship.”

The cynical part of me says that of course they’d grant a divorce; anything to get around allowing a gay marriage to be legally recognized in the United States. It doesn’t have to be recognized if it no longer exists, right? So hey, let’s eradicate it any way we can!

Hello, paranoid-cynical hogwash. While the thought is amusing to entertain…I don’t think so.

Back on planet earth, the reality is that while it may seem to place a negative spotlight on gay marriage to make a gay divorce so public, the ruling is actually a positive sign. Sometimes the avalanche towards equality starts with a single pebble, and often begins where we’d least expect it. Maybe we’ve got to reverse engineer this one: work backwards, starting with equality in ending a marriage instituted elsewhere, before working our way back towards finally finding equality in beginning that marriage to start with.

I don’t really have a way to close this, other than to make an announcement: I’m on hiatus until March 10th. I know that’s going to lose me some readers; some people will lose interest and never come back. That’s okay. It’s still something I need to do; I’m still dealing with balancing the job issues, and until I get rid of the Old, Horrible, Pain-in-the-Arse job and I’m no longer working full-time double duty with several part-time contracts on the side, I just can’t handle the time and effort involved in DR. It’s the one contract job I have that takes up the most of my time for the least returns, so when I start getting stressed from the workload, it’s the one that has to fall by the wayside temporarily.

In case you can’t tell, my heart hasn’t really been in it lately anyway. Too busy, distracted, and tired. I will try to do a comic for this coming Monday (March 3rd, why did I put the 7th before?), so that will continue to update as usual - and I’ll ask around the network to see if anyone wants to guest blog in my absence. Other than that, though…March 10th, once old-crappy-job is gone and I’m just handling new-shiny-writing-job and the side contracts. I’ll be back. I hope you will be, too.

~Adri

…stop looking at me like that. I’m going grey, I tell you, grey!

This is just a quick drive-by for the weekend, and a short one. I don’t have much to say, but I thought people should be made aware of this:

Dying Lesbian’s Partner Denied Access To Her

This is what we’re up against, people. This is what we face if we don’t keep fighting not to let people impose their phobias and their bigotries on the important aspects of our lives. Pond had to spend those long hours before death without her family; her partner and her children were deprived of the time needed to say goodbye and let go.

I don’t want that to be me one day. I don’t want it to be my friends, or my partner. I don’t want it to be you. I don’t want it to be anyone, suffering that in an environment that’s supposed to be a place to nurture and heal - where if the body can’t be healed, one at least tries to ease the pain of those dealing with the loss.

This is what we’re facing.

And this is why we fight.

who cares about the tags?

NJ State Commission: Civil Unions Fail Gay Couples - 365gay.com

(Mount Laurel, New Jersey) A commission established to study same-sex civil unions in New Jersey has found in its first report that civil unions create a “second-class status” for gay couples, rather than giving them equality.

The report stops short of recommending that the state allow gay marriage. But it does find that gay couples in Massachusetts, the only state that now allows same-sex marriage, do not experience some of the legal complications that those in New Jersey do.

The Associated Press obtained a copy of the initial report, which was scheduled to be made public Tuesday, the first anniversary of the state’s first civil unions.

State lawmakers made New Jersey the third state to offer civil unions with a law adopted in 2006 in reaction to a state Supreme Court ruling that year that found gay couples were entitled to the same legal protections as married couples.

The civil union law sought to give gay couples those benefits, but not the title of marriage. As a part of the same law, the review commission was created to look into whether it was working.

Let’s see. Create a hastily-patched together substitute law that is supposed to act as a panacea - or at least a pacifier - so that you can try to look proactive, all the while waving in front of gay couples, “Nah-nah, we still found away around letting you get married, so even if we’ve given you almost everything you want, we’re still better!”…

…and then you’re surprised that it fails?

Next, you’re going to tell me that water is wet.

No, really?

One, any legislation made in such haste, especially one meant to affect so many areas of life, is going to have a few little problems…and some major screwups. Complications? In the United States legal system? Why, fiddle-dee-dee, said Scarlett!

Two, separate-but-equal does not work. It has never worked. It didn’t work in the days of segregation, and it doesn’t work now. Creating a separation based on human characteristics then and there invalidates the idea of equality, because if things were truly equal then the distinction would be unnecessary.

Either drop the farce and make separation of church and state a reality by making marriage a solely religious institution - and a matter of choice - while enforcing civil unions for all, or allow fully legalized gay marriage and recognize the equality of gay citizens. Don’t try to pull that “separate but equal” BS. You’re not fooling anyone, not even yourselves. So stop wasting taxpayer money to pat yourselves on the back for being “proactive”. You’re not.

Oh, and here’s a cluebat: if you need a commission in order to tell you if something is working or not, it’s not working.

Jesus.

Flippin’ idiots.

Who elected these people again?

New Jersey, gay marriage, civil unions, and water is not, in fact, truly wet; you are, when soaked in it.

First they call us a threat to peace. Then they call us plague rats. Now we have devolved into something more simple, and yet so much more evocative; now we are the most base and vile thing of all, an essence, an embodiment, a raw and filthy thing that resides at humanity’s core.

We are evil, and so is any gay couple who wishes to raise a child.

Supporter of amendment to ban gay marriage says same-sex unions “evil” - Radio Iowa News

A proponent of a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage in Iowa says legalizing same-sex unions here would be “evil.” Iowa Family Policy Center president Chuck Hurley says children will suffer if gay couples are allowed to marry.

“From our perspective, it is evil to intentionally create a home where a child would be deprived of a mother or of a father. That is an evil act,” Hurley says. “That is a self-centered act that we already know…on average that child is going to do worse than if he or she had a mom and a dad.”

Hurley points to a study published in The Atlantic Monthly in 1993 that found children from broken homes fare far worse in life than those who came from a two-parent home. “I think it’s evil to experiment on children and intentionally…by law create households that don’t have a father or that don’t have a mother,” Hurley says. “Yes, I do believe this is a battle between good and evil.”

So now we are evil and a home without a binary-gender parental system is now a broken one - even if there are two nurturing parents, even if the opposite-sex parent would have been unfit, abusive, and/or dismissive. I don’t think this idiot quite understands the definition of a broken home. I come from a broken home, one that was never whole to begin with. My life began broken, and I bloody well fixed it with little to no help from dysfunctional and somewhat mental parents. A home with two loving, stable parents, regardless of their gender, is not broken - and it is certainly not evil.

I’m going to tell you a story. I’m going to tell you the story of a little boy, and the young man that he called “Daddy” long before he called him “big brother.”

In late 2002, I walked out of my mother’s house and out of her life, after a stormy altercation that had been building in the brief two months after college while I looked for a job in Louisiana’s sinkhole of a job market. Just as well, since she kicked me out. It was like a bad breakup; we both claim that we dumped the other. Either way, I said the most satisfying words of my life to her for the first time ever, packed up as many of my things as I could, and stood out in the driveway until well after dark until my father could find a free moment to drive the forty-odd miles between my mother’s house and his.

That day began the only period in my life when I’ve ever lived with my father, or even spent more than twenty-four hours under the same roof as him. I wasn’t looking forward to it. My stepmother and I don’t get along; I think she’s a batty, brain-dead twat with a mean streak that makes me look as sugary-sweet as Strawberry frickin’ Shortcake. But there was one bright point: I’d get to spend more than a day or two at a time with my little brother.

That was the only thing that made the next six months worth it.

Our father was constantly busy, struggling to support his family while my stepmother sat on her ever-widening arse and surfed the home shopping channel while making cooing, syrupy baby-talk that made me want to rip my hair out. She didn’t look after my little brother, and our father couldn’t when he was worn ragged and barely able to manage the time needed after work to show my brother some affection and a little discipline. The boy ran wild, wouldn’t do a thing his mother said, talked back to both his parents, and lived like a little Bohemian monkey. He was four years old when I moved in, and he couldn’t even say his alphabet - something that utterly appalled me, especially since I’d taught myself to read by age two and a half. The Pokey Little Puppy; I still know the words by heart.

So that’s where we started.

And for six months, I became my brother’s other parent. Not his mother; not the woman in the traditional relationship of husband and wife. Me. A man. A gay man.

For six months, my little brother had two fathers.

And in that six months, he learned to mind his manners. He learned, after long conversations with me about responsibility and the value of the things our father bought for him, why he needed to clean his room and take care of his video games and toys. He learned his alphabet and his numbers, and soon he was reading The Pokey Little Puppy to me. He said please, and thank you. If I asked him to do something, he did it - and if he did something wrong, he apologized for it. Never once did I have to yell at him, nor did I tolerate his mother’s screaming fits or the hand she occasionally raised to hit him. Never once did I have to do anything other than express disappointment and calmly, quietly explain to him why what he did was wrong; he quickly scrambled to mend his ways and do whatever it took to please me.

Every night I’d put him to bed and read him a story; every night I’d leave my bedroom door unlatched, because I knew within thirty minutes he’d come creeping in to snuggle up next to me, twine his fingers in the long braid of my hair, and fall asleep. He’d murmur “goodnight, Daddy.” Our father was Papa, to both of us. I was Daddy, for a very long time.

His mother he called by name, and never with an ounce of respect. She’d done nothing to earn it, not when it took an interloper in the household to undo the damage that her negligence had done to that child.

Was I a perfect parent to my little brother? No. Not even close. There were times when he frustrated me; there were times when I just had to tell him to go away and leave me alone for a little while. I don’t like children; I do like my alone time. There were days when I couldn’t stand always having him clinging to me; there were also days when he just couldn’t grasp something and it made me snarl in irritation before I bit my tongue and calmed down. I even cursed in front of him a few times; I have a foul mouth, and things slip out in casual conversation without the slightest hint of venom behind them. But was anything that I did evil?

No. And I refuse to listen to anyone who says that it was.

You can’t call a child raised by two men or two women a child from a broken home. You can’t call any nurturing environment a broken home, and you cannot automatically assign labels of “good” and “evil” simply by making them synonymous with “traditional” and “nontraditional”.

And you cannot use children to support your bigotry.

Call me evil. Tell me that I bear the mark of the devil, and then praise that woman who would dare to lay a hand on my flesh and blood in anger. Tell me that I am filthy, unclean and corrupt, for protecting and nurturing that child, for balancing my father’s workload and assisting as a second parent, for filling the role that my stepmother would not. Tell me that hell will open its gates before me and welcome me with relish for those quiet, stolen moments in which that boy felt happiness and peace, curled trustingly in his brother’s arms.

Tell me that the devil will take me for teaching a boy to behave like a human being, and offering him shelter that otherwise would have been denied.

I’ll only smile. Let hell take me. Even if I seem to have misplaced my 666, let the devil have his way with me, and let your god condemn me as evil. Call down your angels, and speak your verses from your sacred book. Exorcise me. Banish me. Damn me, in your ignorance.

It won’t change that for those six months when I was known as “Daddy”, I gave a child the love and care that he needed, and helped build the foundations for him to grow.

If that is evil…then forgive me not, my Father, for proudly have I sinned.

Kom op konijntje doe maar wiebele, wiebele! …what? It’s a tag. Shut up.

This morning I read an article in the Windy City Times that starts off asking: why not a gay president? Rather than explore the issue further, though, it only uses the question to segue into a “been there, done that” discussion of the many theories that President Lincoln was gay, as well as mentioning possibilities of a few other prominent political figures who buried their sexuality under the Oval Office’s horridly-patterned rug.

What’s past is past, though, and I’d like to ask: why not an openly gay president, right here, right now?

It may surprise you to find out that I’m not exactly in favor of a gay president. I might be in twenty years, depending on the political and social climate of the United States, but at this point in time it would be a complete and total disaster. Assuming the man or woman even managed to make it through the election, the very fact of their sexuality would divide the country more thoroughly than the nastiness that followed the Bush/Gore fiasco in Florida. Angry anti-gay proponents would erupt into a violent uproar - and that violent uproar might even translate into real violence towards local gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgenders. The scrutiny that we already receive for trying to live as equals would redouble, along with the hostility involved. Even if he (or she) never focused on gay rights, there would be constant accusations from conservatives of “pushing the gay agenda”.

And, unfortunately, they might be right. Depending on if they were fair and balanced or not, a gay president might just ignore other, more pressing issues to try to force gay rights issues through Congress. We need a good bootheel shoving some things in there, but there are problems in this country more pressing than whether or not we get our tax breaks for being married. Drugs, gang violence, political corruption, that pesky little war over across the sea… I would honestly worry that those issues would be ignored in favor of granting sweeping protections to the GBLTQ community. If I had to choose being able to marry and ending the war in Iraq…which do you think I’d pick?

The problem is that a gay president wouldn’t be able to please anyone, no matter what he/she did. (Not that that’s much different from a straight president, but still…) Focus on gay rights, and the conservative half of the country will accuse him/her of ignoring crucial issues to push an “immoral” homosexual agenda. Ignore gay rights for the sake of diplomacy, and the GBLTQ community and our supporters will accuse him/her of being a traitor or worse. Try to find a fair and even balance between both, and everyone will call the improbable gay president a floundering buffoon who can’t focus on a single issue.

The truth is that we as a nation aren’t ready for a gay president, although at some point in the near future we need one. We are and always will be a nation divided; that’s part of the foundation of this country, that people of such diverse beliefs can coexist under a single unified government. But our government is losing its ability to act in coalition with itself, our politics foster prejudice, and our policies are self-destructive. Right now anything that further fosters the divisions between the various factions of our populace would be disastrous.

The very fact that it would never happen in this day and age is proof enough that we aren’t ready. For a gay candidate to win, he or she would have to be so stunningly perfect in every way that people would adore him or her, sexuality notwithstanding. I’d like to see that happen, but it won’t. We aren’t a people who will let a politician’s personal life rest while considering their politics.

The day that an openly gay candidate actually has a chance at winning is the day that we know we’ve progressed.

gay president, lesbian president, abraham lincoln, gay rights, it’s like The Birdcage in a three-piece suit

Not updating today, kids. Sorry. I still adore you; you’re still my candy-coated 9-volt vibrators of love. (…wait, candy-coated, maybe that shouldn’t be…wouldn’t that cause…ew, nevermind.) You’re going to have to be patient with me until about March 10th or so; right now I’m working double-duty on crap for Old!Job and writing/editing for New!Job, along with this job and a few others. 60-70 hour work weeks are not fun and make for a pissy, snarly Adri. I will be updating every weekday from this point out, but I can’t promise it’ll be in the mornings as I’ll have to write when I have time and when I can think of something to say.

Right now, honestly, I can’t think of anything to say. I wanted to talk about the fact that a monument is finally being built to honor gays who suffered under the Nazi regime, and kept trying to work up a decent post…but I’m a little too scatterbrained trying to get my sh*t together for New!Job and work out how I’m going to handle this to even think of anything to say. We can count today as a day off…or even as a moment of silence for those honored for their suffering.

It’s well-deserved, anyway.

In Soviet Russia, Technorati tags YOU! …wait, isn’t this about Germany, not Russia? Anyone? Godwin? Beuller?