Filed by Trevor at 1:59 am under Activism, Fightin' Words, Gay Agenda, Homophobia, Love, Politics
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“What is the “gay agenda” anyway? Is it assless wedding gowns?” — Margaret Cho

“Marriage is one of the basic civil rights of man, fundamental to our very existence and survival. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discrimination. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State.” — Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States; Loving vs. Virginia, 1967

For want of the ability to officially voice my opposition to Proposition 8 in my home state on Election Day, this past Saturday I joined 2,000 others in a massive protest against the measure — itself just one cog in a wheel that spanned the entire country in one coordinated effort. I feel the events of the day were covered more eloquently by Bil’s earlier post, so I will say simply that twice in as many weeks I have joyfully marched the streets of Downtown Chicago, and at no other point in my adult life have I ever felt so connected as I do now. Regardless of what lies ahead for us as a community and for us as a nation, there is relief and hope in the knowledge that this is a city of kindred spirits.
(Keep reading…)

Filed by Bil at 7:31 pm under Environmentality, Fightin' Words, Politics
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So — evidently, the Democrats couldn’t rally in the ninth to get the ban on offshore drilling renewed. Boo. What do I have against offshore drilling? Well, not a lot, really, mainly it’s that it could DESTROY THE WORLD.

Never mind that some places are still all-natural. Never mind that it’s a short-term solution to a recurring and immediate problem that will take more than five years to have an effect. Never mind that it delays the inevitability that we must ween ourselves off crude oil. Never mind that the potential for disastrous oil spills goes up when the amount of oil being carried across the water goes up. What really galls me is that the fucking oil companies win. I hate that.

Actually, it really is about weening ourselves off gas entirely. The reason this is an immediate issue is because the reserves we are currently drilling into are starting to run a little dry (speculatively, of course, no one is really sure WHEN they will run dry), and the pro-off-shore-drilling mouths are saying we need to open up new, untapped reserves. This tends to happen a few times each century, and everybody always forgets about the last time it happened, because – why? New, untapped reserves were tapped. Or, in some cases, currently-tapped foreign reserves were taken by our government and sold to us at lower prices.

Oh, stop. I’m sitting on my couch, eating apple pie, drinking beer, and watching baseball in the background. I don’t think my patriotism is in question.

This time around, the Republicans and Big Oil want to drill in Alaska, as well as offshore in other states on both coasts, which are all domestic. So the gas would be cheaper. In theory.

Here’s the thing. The gas will run out here, too. It is not an unlimited supply. There is a finite amount of crude oil in the Earth. This problem will come back in the future. I don’t doubt that it will offer some relief in the meantime, even if it’s not as much as they say it will, but the main issue is that it’s not permanent. It’s like Novocaine.

Now seriously. There are 21 different gas-electric hybrid vehicles available on the market today. By late next year there will be more. By 2010 or 2011 we may even have the Honda FCX Clarity and others like it being mass-produced. This is especially exciting, because a) the hydrogen-driven car produces not smoke, but water, and nowhere near as much heat as a regular combustion engine; and b) hydrogen is the most abundant substance in the universe. We can get hydrogen from other planets if we need to. We can’t get oil, but we can get hydrogen. And we can make hydrogen by breaking down all the shit we don’t use anymore, like plastic furniture and Stussy T-shirts.

Wind energy is making strides. Solar panels on individual houses are getting more and more popular. Why are we lagging? Why is the government squabbling over whether or not to allow drilling off-shore? Well, probably because Big Oil owns most of the government, but also probably because the fix seems to easy to resist. No one is against other forms of renewable energy (except Sarah Palin), but no one seems willing to make it happen. Would it be so hard for us to actually focus and work towards this goal? And would it kill us to put up with the high gas prices while we do it?

I dunno. Maybe that can be our new New Deal. The next Great Depression is just around the corner, so maybe the government can create jobs again building renewable energy devices and fancy new car engines. It worked with the Hoover Dam. Let’s do us one better.

Filed by Bil at 1:41 pm under Damn Hippies, Fightin' Words, GOP, Gay Agenda, Homophobia, Politics, Religion
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Ordinarily I don’t like to just leave a link to a news article without really expanding on it by adding my own thoughts, but I don’t have much time right now and I really wanted to put these out there:

1) Totally Gay Happy Meals/It is the end of the nutball Christian right. Here is your proof. To go

A sharply-written (and delightfully snarky) article about how the Religious Right has lost its power over America because the public has been bored with them for some time now.

2) McCain’s Problem: Not Age, but Condition

An article by Alec Baldwin for the Huffington Post with a very rational and appropriate warning not to alienate our elders by labeling John McCain as simply “old.”

Read and discuss. I’ll be back. (Coming up next – probably – all about the most interesting rehearsal process I have ever experienced, and some shameless personal promotion for the play I’m acting in…)

Filed by Bil at 1:19 pm under Fightin' Words, GOP, Politics
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Oh, Dennis Kucinich…bless that man’s heart.

(It gets interesting about 2 minutes in…)

Thirty-five (count ‘em, thirty-five!) Articles of Impeachment against George W. Bush have been introduced to the House of Representatives by Mr. K, and, while I appreciate the gesture, the timing could not be much worse. Bush has barely half a year left in the white house; Impeachment proceedings, as I recall from the last decade, take much longer than that. Anyway, the Articles probably won’t go anywhere in the House. At this point — not to sound too cynical — it’s really just a statement, since the Democrats don’t really have the power right now to carry out an impeachment. And, being that we are now getting geared up for what will probably be a very ugly presidential campaign, the GOP will probably spin this statement into a “Democrats Hate America!” campaign. I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s what they do. It’s what they’re good at.

And Kucinich tried to impeach Cheney last year (remember?) and even in 2007 it was too little too late. I don’t like feeling that way — I really would like to see this administration forcefully removed from office — but it’s hard to have faith in this process.

You know what else is kind of bugging me? There seems to be a prevailing mindset for this upcoming presidential season of “I was for the war/I was against the war when it all began,” and that mindset is a pretty distracting from the fact that the war is still in progress. We know the facts of the past, there is no point in repeating them. I want to hear what each candidate will do about the current state of things.

Note - if we are to take McCain at his word, we already know he will do nothing to stop the war. So what I really mean is I want to hear what Obama has planned.

Filed by Bil at 11:25 pm under Politics, Pop Culture, The Science
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I’ve discovered a fantastic blog called Lucid Movement (http://www.lucidmovement.com). It’s basically an archive of clips of things breaking, bouncing, exploding, wafting, etc. filmed with high-speed cameras. It’s excellent. Here is a taste of what you’ll get over there:

I can watch this stuff for hours.
(Keep reading…)

Filed by Trevor at 11:22 pm under Activism, Love, Politics
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Bil told me he has been waiting for me to respond to the court ruling legalizing marriage for gays and lesbians in California, so after a week, here I am. I certainly don’t wish my silence to be misconstrued as apathy toward the subject matter; rather, it’s difficult to articulate exactly what I’m feeling right now. But I’ll try.

Right. So about last Thursday. Half of the TVs where I work during the day are tuned to CNN, and when I saw the initial reports about gay marriage being legalized in a certain part of the world, the location was ambiguous (the sound is muted, so all I had to go on were the banners), so I assumed it was another European country that had made the ruling. In fact, I was in the middle of my usual speech about how California, while not explicitly legalizing gay marriage, has the most liberal domestic partnership laws in the nation, when it became clear that it was, in fact, my home state that had overturned the ban on gay marriage passed in 2000. But I didn’t cheer. Maybe I should have. Instead, I stood with my hand over my mouth and wondered why the hell I ever left to begin with.
(Keep reading…)

Filed by Bil at 8:58 pm under Activism, Gay Agenda, Love, Politics, Social Issues
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California Supreme Court overturns gay marriage ban

The good news is piling up fast around here. Case in point: California courts declared that a ban on gay marriage is illegal. This post comes a couple days after the actual news, and I can’t really say anything poetic about it all, even though I want to, but you must understand that this makes me really happy. Super-happy. Not because I’m gay and unmarried (I am neither), but it’s kind of a point of shame for me that our country still thinks that gay folks are second-class citizens. Other countries have legalized it. We haven’t. In fact, in some of our states here in the USA, marriage between a man and a man or a woman and a woman is constitutionally forbidden. That means permanently no-no. And while I am not a member of the oppressed party, the oppression appalls me.

So, when I heard that my home state has decided that discrimination of this sort is – yes – unconstitutional, I felt a massive surge of pride run through my veins. I felt the same pride about Massachusetts, because I lived there for one year. But one year does not compare to the 23 years I spent living in California. That’s 23 times more joy and relief and hopefulness for the future that I’m getting right now. Rock on, California!

Unfortunately, I also cannot help but remain somewhat cynical. I know our country pretty well, and I think there will be some trouble down the road because of this (this being an election year and all). And there has been a rather strong response from both sides of the debate. But I’m not going to bother with all that just yet. Fuck it all for now. For now, I’m just going to enjoy it. Hooray, progress!

Filed by Bil at 12:24 pm under Politics, Racism, The Media
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Yeah, yeah, yeah, more politics crap. I know.

Listen up, though, young folks. This particular speech by presidential candidate Barack Obama may very well go down as one the great speeches in our nation’s history. Or it might be forgotten by next week, you never really know. But if you’ve got forty minutes to spare, check this video out. Even if you’re not an Obama fan, it might be good to be able to talk knowingly about this speech some day.

Filed by Bil at 5:27 pm under GOP, Politics, Pop Culture
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As you may or may not have heard five billion times by now, New York Democratic Governor Eliot Spitzer is in some hot water because he hired a pricey hooker after a career of prosecuting powerful men who hire pricey hookers. We have all seen this before, and if there’s one thing that we as a nation should be able to agree upon by now (but for some reason aren’t), it’s that political party really has nothing to do with the fact that some politicians are just plain old douche bags.

Okay, sure, perhaps Eliot Spitzer should resign, perhaps not. Honestly, as a resident of a state that is NOT New York, I don’t think I could make a valid argument either way. I don’t know what their funny laws are. Is prostitution illegal up there? Isn’t it illegal in every state but Nevada?

NY Repbulican threaten to impeach Spitzer

Let’s just slow down a little bit though. Who said anything about impeach?
(Keep reading…)

Filed by Chelsea at 9:48 am under General, Politics, Racism, Social Issues
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Tim Wise, anti-racism activist and author of one of my favorite and oft-recommended books, White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son , has written some essays recently on Obama voters and the myth of reverse racism. I’m keeping up with them because he is my MySpace friend (the only person listed as both a friend and a person I’d like to meet), proving that MySpace CAN be used for good as well as evil.

I won’t quote his most recent article extensively here, because I want you to read it. But here’s a little taste:

In other words, if voting for a white person because of their race is racism, then so too must be voting for a black person because of theirs. So see, those black Obama boosters are every bit as racist as we are, maybe more so, because they’re breaking his way by about eighty-five percent, while whites are splitting between Obama and Clinton by about fifty-fifty. So if anything, the e-mailer said, it was blacks who were more racist and whites whose voting behavior portended open-mindedness.

Such an argument–which is really the political equivalent of “Why can’t we have white history month, I mean, we have black history month?”–suggests how far we have to go in this nation simply to have a productive dialogue about race, let alone to really conquer racism.

Check out the full article here: http://www.lipmagazine.org/~timwise/Obama2.html and give yourself a pat on the back for keeping up with political critique. Even if you (I) do it on MySpace.