Peeking out from under the covers

I'm spending as little time as possible online today. I'm also avoiding any television more taxing than Disney Channel. I hate election season, and this year I fear election day. I haven't been this scared since '88, and that year I watched "Apocalypse Now" because it was less frightening than watching election returns. I do not want to have to bust out my "America is scary." t-shirt tomorrow, but I will if I have to. It's been in figurative mothballs for four years, and I'd like to keep it that way, thanks. If you're in the US, for the love of freedom, GO VOTE! NOW!

Valentine's Day Celebration

There are many things I could say about Valentine's Day, and very few of them are positive. I'm simply not a fan of this so-called "holiday." But this year there is something genuinely worth celebrating. You see, my state, the Evergreen State, the great state of Washington has finally legalized same-sex marriage. Wheee! The governor, as she promised, signed the bill into law just yesterday. Of course, the haters will come out and try to gather signatures against so that we have to vote over it on November's ballot; that sucks, but it is just part of the process. I'm not complacent that they'll go down in flames, but I am hopeful. You see, just the other year we already had a vote on marriage equality, or more accurately marriage near-equality. We have a domestic partnership law that is marriage-in-all-but-name. (The new law replaces it, btw.) Well, guess what? When asked to vote on it in 2009, "Washington voted in favor ... becoming the first state to ratify an 'everything but marriage' domestic partner law." Haters may hate, but the majority here are big believers in "live and let live." It's too much to hope that the bigots won't get enough signatures to put a repeal vote on the ballot for November, but even cynical me wants to believe that my state's voters will again do the right thing.

So, not being a huge Valentine's Day fan, myself, I will instead celebrate equality today.

Fate intervenes again

I'd been wondering what to blog about when fate once more saved my ass. Wanna know how? Okay, I'll tell. ;)

When I get the sudden urge to tidy/organize, more often than not it applies to something that no one will ever see. Case in point: yesterday I decided I needed to put things away in the big cedar trunk in my basement. Some stuff had been out since New Year's Eve. Oy, right? So I opened up the trunk to find all the random paper from which the china had been unpacked back in November for Thanksgiving. Double oy. Those dishes found a home in the meantime so I unpacked the rest of them to make room for what needed to go back in. Low and behold, I got to the bottom of the box and there was a page of the local newspaper from when the china had first been packed away. The headline: " 'Refinements' sought in gays policy". The date on the paper: Friday, July 16, 1993. (Tells you how often I've used the china, doesn't it?) Can you guess what the article was about? I'll give you three guesses... It was about the proposal for the military's 'don't ask, don't tell' policy. A policy that was backwards and outdated even before it was proposed. I think the only positive thing it could possibly have spawned, and I freely admit I'm reaching here, is the potential for m/m military romances laden with secrecy and angst. So, that said, anyone know of any? I'm suddenly in the mood to read about, oh, let's say a Navy SEAL in love with the tough-but-geeky sergeant who works in the tech department; or maybe the Marine lieutenant at sea who's having a hot romance with a Navy pilot (who is being recruited for the Blue Angels), only to discover that his ex-lover is also stationed on the same aircraft carrier. Anyone? If it's out there, I wanna know about it. It's the only silver lining I can think of for a policy that forces people to lie just to keep their jobs.

Change is good.

I have such disparate things to think about today. On the one hand, I'm pleased with myself because I finished the first draft of the paranormal investigators novel I started this past NaNoWriMo. I want to toot my own horn about having accomplished one of my three stated goals for 2009. But at the same time my personal achievement is awfully small when compared to what I watched this morning on MSNBC. In fact, I'm still watching. America elected and has now sworn in the first African-American president. That's big, you know? (Okay, understatement of the century, but you get it.) His address was eloquent, intelligent, somber, thoughtful, and yet to my ears also very hopeful. There are too many brilliant things in the speech to comment on, so I'll comment on the one that made me most hopeful: "The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness." Now, I am not an optimist, nor do I look at the world through Bono's rose-colored glasses. I know that neither Obama nor Biden spoke out in favor marriage equality during the campaign. Indeed, in the one VP debate I watched, Biden spoke against it. Part of me is still royally pissed off about that. The analytical part of me understands that you have to play your cards close to your chest--especially in a presidential campaign. You have win the job first. Only then can you accomplish any goal. I can only hope, based on what President Obama said, that marriage equality is one of his goals. "...all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness." Damn right.

You can find the full transcript here, and undoubtedly a lot of other places. I recommend you go read it. Better yet, go watch the presidential address online if you missed it live. I'm sure there are oodles of places where you'll find it. It's more than worth the 19 minutes out of your day.