Filed by Trevor at 11:25 pm under Activism, Catholicism, Gay Agenda, Humanism, Love, Sex Ed
No Comments

This evening I attended Chicago Opera Vanguard’s second annual AIDS Quilt Songbook, which not only functions as a valuable fundraiser for outreach programs in the city, but is also a fantastic exhibition of local composers and performers. To boot, this year’s concert was held at Center on Halsted, which was an even more appropriate venue and didn’t require schlepping down to Hyde Park again. Bonus.
(Keep reading…)

Filed by Trevor at 12:05 am under Activism, Humanism, Shameless Plugs, Social Issues
No Comments

Rather than carry on the way I normally do and preface this entry with loads of backstory and ancillary details that relate in no way to anything else, I’ll be direct: in just over a month I will begin six months of training for the Chicago AIDS Marathon to be held on October 11th, and along the way I will also be participating in the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention’s Out of the Darkness Overnight Walk. This is hugely out of character for me and I’m absolutely terrified, but paradoxically this is precisely why I have confidence this is the path I need to take.
(Keep reading…)

Filed by Lance at 12:47 pm under Activism, Fightin' Words, GOP, Gay Agenda, General, Politics, Religion, Social Issues
2 Comments

As a sure sign that we’ve elected the right man for the job, Mr. President-Elect is in hot water with some of his most ardent supporters for doing exactly what we elected him to do… it’s just that he’s not only going to do it with his most ardent supporters.

The lineup for Obama’s inauguration ceremony was announced yesterday, which includes Rick Warren delivering the Invocation. Rick Warren is the pastor of Saddleback [mega-]Church in Lake Forest, California and author of The Purpose Driven Life, which is one of my Mom’s favorites, and which I never finished reading. Warren has been credited with broadening Evangelical’s focus to social issues that aren’t gay marriage and abortion, including AIDS and poverty, which can be like getting a rabid bulldog to recite Milton.

It’s no secret that Warren supported Proposition 8, and is opposed to abortion and stem-cell research, and when the Inauguration committee released the news Warren will pray at No. 44’s Oath of Office, The Human Rights Campaign sent this letter to Mr. President-Elect:
(Keep reading…)

Filed by Trevor at 1:59 am under Activism, Fightin' Words, Gay Agenda, Homophobia, Love, Politics
No Comments

“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 11:20 pm under Activism, General
No Comments

All righty then.

It’s been a while. Apologies. I have a handful of excuses for disappearing from this blog, one of them being the absence of my own personal laptop at home. There have been three posts in the last two and a half months, and they were so far in between that tipyourwaiter.org can be considered “dormant” for that time period.

But that time period is over now. I have my laptop again. And I didn’t even have to bribe anyone.
(Keep reading…)

Filed by Trevor at 11:22 pm under Activism, Love, Politics
No Comments

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
No Comments

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 Stephen at 10:56 pm under Activism, Religion
No Comments

“Charity and personal force are the only investments worth anything.”
– Walt Whitman

The first year I was in Chicago, my heart broke at the homelessness everywhere. In my hometown in Ohio, there were no homeless people. At all. And in the “big city,” which was Akron, you’d see one or two homeless people a week. It just wasn’t heard of, and when you did see them, you were safely in your car so you didn’t have to make the hard choice to lie to them and say you don’t really have any spare change in your pocket.
(Keep reading…)

Filed by Trevor at 12:27 am under Activism
No Comments

This is the best perspective on the WGA strike I’ve seen so far, brought to you by none other than the main writing staff from The Office, which of course includes probably my most perplexing celebrity crush ever, Paul Lieberstein. Watch it. It’s well worth it.

Filed by Bil at 1:31 am under Activism, The Arts
2 Comments

So — having met with our legendary Third Napoleon, Per Diem has made some genuine progress in terms of not just forming the company but putting plans into motion. We have set guidelines and deadlines. We have made solid decisions (accidentally) and kept some of our ambiguities (on purpose). We’re on the road and inching forward.

One particular deadline we have set for ourselves is to decide on our shows for next year by the end of next month. We all agree this is the smart way to do it, because the longer we wait, the harder things will be. So we will plan WELL in advance.

We’re going to be doing a play I wrote just as a little introductory showcase-type play to kick things off, and then the official era of this company will begin. I’ve been spending so much time talking about this introductory play and so much time thinking about future plays (for, like, when we have money to spend on shows) that I hadn’t yet really thought about the first show of the actual season that I want to do.

Suddenly, there’s all this pressure to find a good show that means a lot to me that we can do for little to no budget. That means lots and lots of reading in my immediate future…it’ll be just like college all over again, except this time I really do have to read everything. Because the consequences matter.

In addition to Per Diem, I have also been cooking up a project with Trevor that should go live sometime this season…and oh, don’t worry, dear reader(s), you’ll hear all about it. It’s going to be SUPER-fun. It might also be therapeutic.

Oh — speaking of SUPER-fun and theatre…if you live in or near Chicago, go see “Crucible the Musible!” You won’t regret it. But you will regret it if you don’t see it, ’cause it’s pretty much the best show in the history of theatre.