Tell me what you think about your situation

I am getting fucking fired up. Three stories came up today that make me want to shout and scream and just punch people in their goddamn faces.

Portland Catholic Diocese pulls funding from homeless shelter after said shelter supported marriage equality. (Portland Press Herald)

18-year-old gay student in Georgia who got the okay to bring his boyfriend to prom has been kicked out of his own home. (macon.com)

Senator from Utah proposes amendment to HCR bill that would suspend same-sex marriage in DC until people can vote on the issue. (DC Wire)

The one where I can't make up a witty title!

I am sitting in a little café/restaurant in Dupont Circle right now, and it’s lovely. There are piles of black snow along the road, the weather is terrible and I have to lug around very heavy bags in the sleety/slushy rain but it is lovely. DC is my city. After being here for two days, I know this is where I belong. Everything is here. Every organization, every consulate, every groups of thoughtful individuals who want their voice heard is here. True, I was here at the same time as CPAC (I saw Ann Coulter within hours of arriving in the city! …ew) but I have never felt more in sync with a place than I do with DC. I didn’t get to see any museums or see any of the amazing things this city has to offer but I know I will. I belong here.

I spent two days with 600 progressive activists at an “unconference” sponsored by the New Organizing Institute. It was amazing. I swear, if you were to map my brain waves, there is no difference in the activity when I’m talking about politics than when I’m having sex. It is just such a rush. I focused my weekend on LGBT sessions and learned quite a bit. It was great! The last session I attended really got my blood going. It was discussing this idea that instead of fighting whole-hog for marriage, we need to take incremental steps. It was run by the IT director for the Approve 71 campaign out in Washington state. They won domestic partnerships statewide this past election. Thing is, they didn’t settle for it. They didn’t aim for marriage and get knocked down to DPs, this was their original intent. Is that wise? Opinions differed greatly, and I saw a stark divide among the generations. The men and women who have been fighting this battle since the 60s and 70s saw incremental steps as a victory, and we should take what we can get. My generation was much more apt to defend the idea of going for marriage and not settling for anything else. My argument for marriage, not civil unions or domestic partnerships (or “garriage”… fucking stupid) comes from New Jersey, where they have a civil unions law. So the argument for marriage was no longer “we deserve these rights and protections” but now “why civil unions aren’t enough”. That’s a very difficult conversation to have. We heard senator form NJ talking about “fixing” the civil union law and making harsher penalties for people who break that law. I’m sorry, but instilling harsher penalties for people who discriminate against LGBT couples are special rights, which is just fueling the right’s argument that we’re trying to gain those “special”, not basic, rights.

In Maine, we lost and we don’t have marriage. In Washington, they won and they don’t have marriage. In Maine, we know how to structure the marriage conversation so that it fits Mainers, but now in  Washington they have to come up with an entirely new strategy of why domestic partnerships are not enough (and maybe having to combat the question “if DPS are not enough, why didn’t you go for marriage?”) and make sure that is tailored to something that Washingtonians can understand and buy into.

It was a fun discussion, let me tell you.

While in the city I met up with a bunch of people that I worked on the Maine marriage campaign with, which was delightful. I got into the city and had dinner with three of the folks who were organizers. One lived right in the city so instead of staying with the other two (way out in Bethesda) I stayed with the one in DC we went to a few bars, came home, and promptly fucked. It was... weird. I mean it was good, but it was weird. Because there had never really been any of that tension or anything back in Maine. I'm about to meet up with him to say bye since I fly back to Maine late tonight.

The last two nights I stayed at my other friend's place also right in DC. I have had a very big crush on him since I first met him back in... September, maybe? He works for the firm that did all the polling for the campaign, super hot, super smart and really funny. I was all excited to see him because since we last saw each other, I have lost some weight, toned up a bit and, quite frankly, looked good.  Saturday morning he tells me that he wasn't going to get back into town until Sunday around 4 or 5 in the afternoon, but that his friend Chris who he works will can hide a key by the door for me that night. I get to his place, find the key (after a little confusion) and settle in. He has one roommate, but she was staying in Virginia for the night, so I had the run of the place. His bed was so. Goddamn. Comfortable. It was amazing. Like sleeping in a cloud. I sat down at 10:30 at night to watch a movie (I needed an easy night) and promptly fell asleep.

The next day he texts me with when he's going to be in and that he wants to make dinner for "everyone". I ask him who that includes and he replies him, his roommate, his friend Chris and me. And then texts me to let me know that he and Chris have kind of been seeing each other for the past month and that his roommate was a little weirded out since they had all worked together. Eugh. I felt my stomach just drop. I got over it rather quickly and was able to just go along throughout the day anyways and when I did finally meet up, the pangs of jealously weren't as bad as I had anticipated. Chris is (of course) great, and cute, and funny. 

Damnit.

But then that got me thinking (baaaaaad thinking) about something. Like the Julie/Julia project, where a woman cooked her way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking, I started toying with the idea of dating my way through the dating sites. Chemistry, e-Harmony, Match.com, Plenty of Fish and Lava Life. More to come with this as I flesh out the idea to determine it's viability.

I’m going to try to find a job in DC sometime over the next year. I think it would be a great move for me, but I’m conflicted about it. I love working in politics (let’s see if I still say that after November… I may swear it off again, but who knows?) but I really want to pursue acting, and part of me feels like moving to DC will cement that politico in me as the dominant career desire. Maybe it’s for the best, since I haven’t been on stage in a long, long time. I guess this is all up in the air and I don’t think I’ll really have to start thinking about it until the summer. At which point, I now realize, I need to test out what DC feels like then. I hear summers in DC are a new kind of hell, and that’s not really something I want to have to deal with, unless I have A/C with me everywhere I go. Which won’t happen.

In other news, I've moved and I really enjoy the new place. Still in Maine (DC is calling very, very loudly), but at least in Portland now. I've quit my job and next Monday I start working on a gubernatorial campaign.

**Note: by the time I actually post this, I'm sitting in the BWI airport (where I had to pay $9.95 to get on the goddamn network) listening to a HILARIOUS Dan Savage podcast. He is so funny, so smart, and so ridiculously sexy.

Dear 2009

FUCK YOU.

Sorry, it slipped. I tried to hold back, but you were just one shitstorm after another. I have never been so happy to see a year pass than you. Not 1998, when my best friend was killed in a skiing accident and Matthew Shepard was brutally murdered. Not 2001 when the towers came down and the US cemented itself as a reactive brute force in the world, rather than the savvy political negotiator I know it has the potential of becoming. Not 2003 when I went though hell for being accused and, after what seemed like forever, acquitted of a crime I did not commit. I mean sure, in January we finally saw someone other than an old white guy take the oath of office, but you were really just riding the coattails of 2008, so way to steal that thunder.

Really, what I'm clearly most pissed about is why 2009, of all years, was the biggest setback for marriage equality. And it's really, really difficult for me to write this without just getting angry. Angry at NOM, at S4MM, at the fucking Church, and every other organization hell-bent on making my status as a second class citizen a law. And the fact that first thing tomorrow morning - literally, first thing, at 12:01 AM - folks in the state right next door are going to be able to start getting married and us amoral, anti-family queers here in Maine need to rebuild our lives after giving so much only to be pushed back down. It's disgusting.

November 4th, 2009, was the hardest day of my life. Waking up that day and realizing all the work that my friends had put into the right was for naught was the most crippling feeing. Maybe I was naive but I really felt like we could have won. I felt like it was happening. And that morning, waking up the their smug fucking faces on the front of every newspaper made me sick.

But, 2009, tonight I will drink. I will drink to your death and I look forward to drinking away all memories of you. May the likes of you never again come around.

Dear 2010,

I'm watching you.

Two Things

First, in regards to an older post, I was wrong, I can not really understand why people of faith who are elected to represent all of the people in their district vote against equality. I guess I wanted to sound tolerant of organized religion. I don't know why, since I'm not. I never fault the individual but the church is so destructive. Hate the organization, not the individual. Hate the sin, not the sinner. Hm.

Secondly, I am really, really frustrated and disappointed in the New Jersey legislature. It is not looking good here in the Garden State (also, Garden State? How could that NOT be gay?!). Five republican Sentors (Keane, Kean, Ciesla, Bateman and Beck) came out against the bill, instead saying they could fix New jersey's Civil Unions Law, in effect saying the legislature didn't do it's job.

A few years ago, the New Jersey court system declared that restricting the benefits for "marriage" to heterosexual couples was unlawful. An institution identical to marriage was created, and the legislature was given the task of choosing either "civil union" or "marriage." They went with civil union.

The courts made it so that on paper, the two legal structures are identical so, in effect, they are claiming that there is a fundamental flaw in the New Jersey Marriage Laws. It's ridiculous. The only way to fix the law is to just call it marriage, but they can't get their heads out of their asses to see it that way.

I keep trying to remember that I am on the right side of history, the winning side, but it's hard to always look up when you keep getting slapped in the face.