Waiting for the World to Change

On Saturday, Steve and I, along with 14,000 or so other disgruntled folks, collected near City Hall in downtown L.A. to protest the passage of Proposition 8. (Included in this blog are signs from rallys all over the nation: Seattle, Washington, D.C., New York and here in L.A. Some of them are pretty funny, if you ask me.)

Wisely, we chose to take the Gold Line into town rather than driving in. We got at the rally location about 10:20, 10 minutes before the rally was to begin. Almost immediately, we ran into Lesley, a coworker who has been gently encouraging me to get involved in the demonstrations which have been taking place almost daily since November 4.

We had a pretty good place right near the stage up against the barricade. Not only did we get good views of the speakers, but a couple of them came right through the crowd in front of us, including out esteemed chief of police, William Bratton. The best speaker, however, was Mayor Villaregosa, a person who has been behind the gay community from the very first. Here's our first Hispanic president, in my mind.

It felt really good to be out there yelling with thousands of other people, knowing that hundreds of rallies like this were being held at the very same time all over the country and in foreign cities as well. But in a lot of ways, it was like preaching to the choir. The minds we needed to change had already voted, and the next and nearest hope was the overturning of the proposition by the state Supreme Court.

So after the high of people together to make action happen, I feel as though I'm sitting around, watching and waiting to see what will happen next.

On Sunday, CBS had an hourlong interview with Barack and Michelle Obama and I had a chance to feel good all over again about his win over McCain. But there, too, we're sitting around waiting for him to take office, for the real change to begin.

And that's what it's boiling down to for me now, waiting. Waiting for the Supreme Court to make a move. Waiting to see what direction needs to be taken. Waiting to see if our marriage, only a few months old now, is going to be wiped out. Waiting to see if we're going to be robbed of that very special moment when we felt a respect and dignity anointing out joining together. That's really what the proponents of 8 want to rob us of; being able to feel like complete people whose love is honored and cherished as much as anyone else's.

We Can All Join In

You have probably seen the daily demonstrations that have been taking place in and around Los Angeles since the passage of Proposition 8. It's good to see this kind of groundswell occurring spontaneously. All of this has been organized on the Internet, with times and locations being generated daily. Well, now's your chance to get involved on a national level. No matter where you live, there will be rallies and protests organized in every state in the union.

The protests will be held on Saturday, November 15 at 1:30 East Coast, 12:30 Central, 11:30 Mountain and 10:30 West Coast time. Check out the Join the Impact Web site for a site near you. They also list public transit alternatives for getting to the rallies.

So everyone who can, join in and let the nation hear that it's about time for equal rights; acceptance, not merely tolerance.

It's about time for another groovy revolution.

Jubilation and Devastation

On Tuesday, America made it clear that race was no longer the issue it used to be. In an overwhelming electoral majority, the people of this land elected their first African-America president. In that moment, every black American realized that they could be anything they wanted; that the doors were no longer closed. Racially, the millennium had arrived for the descendants of American slaves. Blacks were no longer niggers. They had pride and hope as their personal possessions. When I saw their reactions on the television coverage of this historical event, I cried with them, recalling the struggles and sacrifices of the equal rights movements of the 1960s.

In the same moment, here in California, the electorate passed a constitutional amendment that eliminated the newly born right of gays and lesbians to marry the people they love. Here in California, by embedding it into the very Constitution that guides the state and its citizens, Californians created a new class of niggers: Fags and dykes. The words are all interchangeable and all define a separate and less equal class of citizens. And the 18,000 same-sex couples who were married during those four and a half months of equality (including yours truly) now have licenses and vows that are in legal limbo.

When I got up this morning and heard the results (52% yes, 48% no), I was devastated. I was angry. I was depressed. I was resentful. I had a mild urge to go out and firebomb a Mormon temple or a Catholic church or some such edifice of Bible-driven bigotry. I was going to call into work and take a day off because I was so upset. But then, I realized I would just sit at home and stew, making myself more miserable and not achieving anything. So I went to work.

On the train in, I looked at the people riding with me: Did she vote yes? Did he vote yes? Does he look like the type? And it was frustrating because you just can't tell. The one thing that did infect me, though, was the high spirits of so many of the black people on the train and subway. They were smiling. They were making eye contact and nodding hello. You could tell they felt like whole, complete people. And though I was still depressed about my own situation, their energy helped me continue into the day.

Finally, I realized what was happening: I had lost the feeling they had achieved. When I took my vows and married Steve, I felt whole and, for the first time in my life, my heart was completely full. My relationship was being acknowledged with the honor and dignity it deserved: the state of marriage. I was able to share that with very special people. With Tuesday's vote results, my heart had hemorrhaged and I felt less than a whole, complete person. I had become the nigger of the Religious Right.

But there are already court documents being filed. This is not the end, but the beginning of another long round of court cases, judgments and appeals to re-establish the simple right that the California Supreme Court so eloquently conferred back in May: every citizen's right to marry the person of his or her own choosing. It's just that I was hoping this one struggle would be over and the concept of elemental personal rights would start spreading beyond our borders. Guess not. But Steve and I still have our rings. We still have our valid marriage license. We still have one another. And all the good people interested enough to check in on us here on this blog.

Worra Worra Worra

It's been a while since I added anything to the blog, and then it was pretty much just video links. And the reason is because I've been fretting. I've been anxious. I've been worried.

I'm feeling pretty good about Obama's likelihood of being elected. There's no real problem there for me. Unless something very extreme occurs in the next eight days, I think we have our new president. No, it's the Prop 8 thing that really has me torn. I keep trying to explain to people that it's like the state's having an election to see if I, personally, will remain married. Is it OK, California? We really love each other, and I don't know what I'm going to do if you say no to us and yes to Prop. 8.

This whole line of thought leaves me feeling very weak and vulnerable, and that makes me angry. I don't like feeling that way. I don't like feeling like other people have usurped power over me. But that's the position I'm in -- tens of thousands of people are in -- right now and we just have to wait for the vote.

No no no no no no no no no no no no. ...no no no no no no no no no no no no no no.

I hate accentuating the negative, but it is most necessary this week.

And since I don't have any photos to share this week, I offer another video, this one from Ron Howard, Andy Griffith and Henry Winkler:

See more Ron Howard videos at Funny or Die

And for those of you who haven't seen "The Landlord" yet, I'm including that, too. It has nothing to do with elections or personal rights and freedoms, but PEARL ROCKS!:

See more Will Ferrell videos at Funny or Die

And one more to get you to go to FunnyorDie.com and browse around.

See more Adam "Ghost Panther" McKay videos at Funny or Die

Sure Hope These Hit the Airwaves

Surfing the Internet for videos on Proposition 8 is interesting. There are dozens, if not hundreds of them, both for and against (lots and lots on YouTube). Most of the ones for Yes are pious (one is even fire and brimstone, suggesting that last years fires in May were because of the court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage).

Bill Maher said Obama vs. McCain was YouTube vs. feeding tube. How true.

This set is my favorite because they parody a set of ads (PC vs Mac) that are fun and that everyone is familiar with. Check 'em out:

Now, this concept is genius


It's fun and gets the IMPORTANT concepts across


And next to these, the "Yes" ads seems so rigid


And Margaret Cho explains it for the really stupid people


Can the message be any clearer? Pass this proposition and you are creating human rights exclusion in a constitutional document. Duh.

The Corruption and Demise of SharkBoy

We have an aquarium. Steve gave it to me as a birthday present a little over two years ago. As with most new aquarium owners, we went through our share of fish dying. Luckily, the downstairs bathroom is directly opposite the aquarium, so the fishy Viking funerals were short and sweet. I'd say perhaps half a dozen fish came and went until we got the tank truly stabilized and the fish population healthy.

As I said to Steve, the nice thing about owning fish is you don't get particularly attached to them as pets. You can't stroke them, they don't make noises at you and they don't blink or rub up against you. So when one of them just doesn't make it, it's not an emotional tribulation. And then there was SharkBoy.

SharkBoy was a Bala Shark, more correctly known as Balantiocheilos melanopterus. We didn't know a whole lot about him when we got him, just that he was nice and silvery and about an inch long. We added him to the tank and he grew...and grew...and grew. Here's a shot of the tank from about a year ago, with an inset of just how big SharkBoy had gotten.

At one point we had gotten five little neons, thinking to add a small school of fish to the tank. One by one they mysteriously disappeared. And SharkBoy got larger. And the larger he got, the more confining the tank space was, and the edgier he got. It is not true that fish stop growing if the tank is small. SharkBoy grew and as he began to feel claustrophobic, he took to leaping out of the water and banging up against the glass top of the aquarium.

Recently, SharkBoy had dominated the tank, both visually and societally. We had a couple algae-eaters that just disappeared, and it's not like they can use a secret passage to escape from the tank. There was only one place they could go. We went to the aquarium store and asked if they would take SharkBoy back and resell him. They said no. We were stuck with him.

Then, last Saturday, Steve was checking for the two new algae-eaters he had purchased. They had large, splayed heads that would not easily fit down SharkBoy's gullet. We found the first one, but the second one, or shall I say the remains of the second one, half-eaten, were floating near the filter intake. More fleshy remnants waved among the plant leaves. A line had been crossed. We both knew it, though neither of us spoke a word.

Steve got out the net and opened the top of the tank. As he placed the net in, SharkBoy leapt up and over, falling six feet down onto the landing of the garage stairs then flopped, Slinky-like, stair by stair, ending next to the catbox. Steve flew down the stairs, got SharkBoy securely in the net and brought him up, where we took him to the bathroom, ready for his execution. Steve plopped him in the toilet and flushed.

But SharkBoy was just too damn big. He did not go easily into the whirlpool of death. I slammed the lid as he flopped and jumped. It was something from the Twilight Zone, this thing knocking against the toilet seat while we waited for the tank to refill. I got a plastic bag, put it over my hand and flipped open the lid. I pushed down, confining SharkBoy to the bottom of the bowl and flushed. I held the bag in place while the tank refilled. I flushed again. I removed the bag as the tank refilled a third time, then I flushed once more. All was peaceful.

Then, as I pulled the bag off my hand, from the corner of my eye I saw his head re-emerge in the bowl. "Oh, shit!" I screamed, "He's back!" I put the bag back on my hand, grabbed SharkBoy firmly around the body, inverted the bag and tied him inside and into the trash he went. I told Steve, "If you hear some flopping around in the kitchen, just ignore it." His response was, "I think I'll take the trash out."

Neither of us felt good about what we did, but it was a matter of reclaiming the aquarium. We're planning on getting some schooling fish now, little ones, that will bring back the peaceful and calming experience of watching a miniature underwater world in the living room. Rest in Peace, SharkBoy, you pushy little bastard.

In preparing the above photo for this confession/exposé, I checked online, and it turns out that, in their native Thailand, fish like SharkBoy are good eatin' fish. And damn if SharkBoy wouldn't have filled a small bun once he was filleted. But I don't think I want to consider the trauma of that experience.

Election Embedding

Here are two really good skits from Saturday Night Live. Enjoy.

A real blog entry follows soon.