rivers_bend

I AM SO SO HAPPY RIGHT NOW. OBAMA WON. MARRIAGE EQUALITY WON. WOMEN IN THE SENATE. QUEER WOMEN ELECTED. SO MANY GREAT THINGS.

But I cried the hardest when Obama said "gay or straight" in his speech. I literally do not begin to have the words for how much that meant for me. And now I have to go to bed, but I am so so relieved that we have a result at all, and that we have the result we have.

The pictures coming out of New York this week are amazing. I keep doing that thing where I'm grinning like a lunatic while tears crowd my eyelashes. So much love and happiness, coming at a time when there is so much hatred and sadness in the world.

My two favourite pictures so far are these:


Niagra Falls lit up with rainbow lights. (from approximately everywhere on the internet)


Myron Levine and Phillip Linderman finally married after 51 years together. FIFTY-ONE YEARS. (from the Guardian here)

I have so much to say about all this, but it's way too much to say right now, just a jumble of words caught in my chest. Fifty-one years. I just...

The pictures coming out of New York this week are amazing. I keep doing that thing where I'm grinning like a lunatic while tears crowd my eyelashes. So much love and happiness, coming at a time when there is so much hatred and sadness in the world.

My two favourite pictures so far are these:


Niagra Falls lit up with rainbow lights. (from approximately everywhere on the internet)


Myron Levine and Phillip Linderman finally married after 51 years together. FIFTY-ONE YEARS. (from the Guardian here)

I have so much to say about all this, but it's way too much to say right now, just a jumble of words caught in my chest. Fifty-one years. I just...

I come from a long, long line of proud New Yorkers, including governors and state senators from days of yore. Though I am a California girl born and bred, I'm feeling awfully proud of my New York stock tonight! Well done to everyone who worked so hard lobbying and to those senators pushing their colleagues to do the right thing :D



The New York Times article

The Autostraddle celebration post

A belated Happy Valentine's Day to you all.

The world is conspiring this week to remind me how lucky I am to have been raised by the parents I have. Today, it was this:

This:

Elton John held a fund-raiser concert last night, raising over $3 million to help the American Foundation for Equal Rights fight the Proposition 8 court case still working its way through the California court system. As frustrating as it is that we need to fight this battle at all--that it's even a battle--I look at the progress made between 1990 and 2008, and the progress made between 2008 and now, and I feel like things are looking (and speeding) up. As my mom said last night, "The arguments are getting more and more tired, and the people making them are looking more and more ridiculous."

From The Advocate's report:

Adam Lambert, towering over everyone on the red carpet (except for the bronze trenchcoat-clad Lynch), said he hoped the Perry case would still eventually reach the U.S. Supreme Court. “People talk about protecting the ‘sanctity’ of marriage. Honestly, how about we protect the sanctity of our Constitution?”


I've been having some flail over the Golden Globes, too:



add in the hospital visitation rights issue, and Don't Ask, Don't Tell, and yeah.

I feel like 2011 is going to be a good year.

Thanks to the fact that I can't seem to stop waking up at six in the morning even though it's been five years since I had to, I was checking my twitter feed at 6:04 and saw @barackobama's tweet of the link to the livestream of the signing of the repeal of DADT. Obama, as he is wont to do, gave a moving and wonderful speech. I, as I am wont to do, cried in all the right places. And I am so glad this finally got done and that the ball on this is finally seriously rolling. I eagerly await the "military readiness" that will mean this law will be fully enacted and not just voted on and signed.

The most moving part for me was the acknowledgment that men and women are being asked to give up their integrity in order to serve their country. That it's difficult to be asked to keep secrets, to lie. And that these people are willing to fight for rights that they don't have themselves. These queer men and women are fighting so that other people may keep the lifestyle queer soldiers have no access to. Thank you, president Obama for putting that in your speech. And I dearly hope that you were laying groundwork for soon-to-come laws that will mean these soldiers who can die for their country can also enjoy its basic freedoms. I'm trying to be patient.

But as wonderful as this moment was, and as glad as I am that I saw it happen, it is hard to be patient when one is being told that she lives in a country where "All men and women are created equal," but in most states equality doesn't extend to the right to marry, and in many states it doesn't extend to the right to keep a picture of your family on her desk at work and also keep your job, and in many states that family picture won't include children if you were planning on adopting, and in many states it doesn't include the right to rent any one-bedroom apartment you want with your partner. These are not SPECIAL rights. This is not the expectation to be let in to that exclusive club that only 2% of the town belongs to anyway where you can hand the keys to your $25,000 car over to a gold-jacketed valet and go get a massage and play golf. This is basic life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness stuff.

We are not the first group of people to be denied basic human rights and freedoms in this country which touts equality for all. Not by any stretch of the imagination. And in two-and-a-quarter centuries, great strides have been made. For that I am grateful. And I am so glad this day has come. This morning I want to celebrate that we got here. But I don't plan on resting on my laurels, and I hope my representatives in Sacramento and Washington don't plan to either.

Six years ago last night, Adam Lambert joined the Zodiac Show playing at the Music Box theater. He dressed in feathers and makeup, and poured his heart and soul and frustration into a performance of Change is Gonna Come. Four years later, the producers of American Idol asked him to sing it in the show's finale. Adam saw it as coming full circle. But last night the circle really came around as he performed the song again, on the same stage, same guitar player up there with him, after a six-month, nearly sold-out world tour, and with a Grammy Nomination under his belt. Last night I was too filled with the pleasure and joy and wonder of the moment to cry, but I'm writing this with tears in my eyes now. It was so incredible to be there, to think about the changes I've seen in the 20 years since I walked into my first queer students' meeting at UCSC, in the last two years since I watched Proposition 8 pass, in the last year since I stood in my aunt's living room at Thanksgiving with a newspaper in my hand, picture of Adam kissing Tommy at the AMAs in full color on the front and explained why it was so fucking important to me that it happened, and that Adam wasn't apologizing. That he'd done nothing wrong. Last night it felt like he was singing with heart and soul and hope.



( and before that, a lot of other awesome happened )

The other thing that happened was NOH8 posted the picture they took of Tommy Joe Ratliff. He is in every way the most amazing bass player Adam could possibly have found. I'm not cutting it because it's too damn pretty. Sorry if it confuses your browser.


you can buy this picture, or pictures of other people, or t-shirts, or bumper stickers, or many other things at http://www.noh8campaign.com/ to help support their cause. Funds raised by the NOH8 Campaign will be used to continue promoting and raising awareness for Marriage Equality and anti-discrimination on a global level through an educational and interactive media campaign. It's a spoke in the wheel.

Cheeks made a vid about the repeal of Prop 8, which is both hilarious and sadly true (at least to my experience). It also has an important message.



The hearteyes I have for this man, though. Seriously. And he's doing a performance with Tom Lenk (Andrew from Buffy) written by Jane Espensen (writer of too much awesome to list) and I really want to go! It could kind of be done on my way home from Atlanta to see Adam, but I'm not sure if I can do the flights that way without it costing a fortune. Thinking of it, though. It was so worth it to go down for the Laramie Project performance last year.

as a TOTALLY random aside: I am in De Smet, South Dakota, aka "The Little Town on the Prairie." It's totally surreal. Laura Ingalls and her family almost froze and starved to death about a quarter of a mile from where I am now sitting and making use of the hotel's free wifi, with a/c blasting. THIS HURTS MY BRAIN.