The Gay Rights Movement

I just stumbled upon this video through a friend’s Facebook update and immediately felt compelled to share here. It’s a trailer for a documentary titled “Second Class Citizens” which you can sponsor via Kickstarter.

This documentary is something that is very near and dear to me; someone who is considered by my state and country a second class citizen. By extension, I am a second class citizen to all my friends and family members who continue to vote for people who fight against equality, donate money to organizations and churches who cast aspersions on who I am and look the other way all the while.

Explaining what it is like to be gay isn’t easy. I kept it a secret until I was 18 years old because I feared that I might be made a victim of harassment beyond what I was already experiencing in junior high and high school. I was so stressed out about being gay that I became physically ill; acid reflux, debilitating migraines, panic attacks & major depression.

If it wasn’t for the friends I made in college, I don’t know that I would have survived to be where I am today. Far too many people like me don’t make it through the bullying. They are commit suicide or are murdered because they or someone else was unable to accept the person they were born to be.

I can’t tell you the number of times I was verbally or physically harassed, my property vandalized and my life threatened. My first semester in college a neighbor in the dorms threaten to hang me in the stairwell because I was gay. Try explaining to your parents why you have to switch dorms when that is your reason. I never did because I never had the courage to do so.

Ryan James Yezak is hoping to produce a documentary titled “Second Class Citizens” and has created a Kickstarter campaign to help fund it. I implore you to check it out and if you find it worthy, to invest in his film. I am going to do that right now.

Rick Perry disgusts me

I try not to make it a habit of writing purely political posts but the new Rick Perry YouTube video threw me over the edge. If you like the video, you probably won’t like this post.

There is no shortage of reasons I don’t think Perry should be a presidential candidate for the Republican party. I don’t even think he should be the Governor of Texas. It’s not just because he’s a goof who embarrases most people from Texas, like myself, it’s the way he markets himself as a candidate.

For whatever reason, the loud, far right conservative politicians on the scene these days treat culture and intelligence as negative attributes. They forget that Christian law, much like Sharia law, is not United States law. They forget that smart people create solutions where others can’t. They forget a lot of things, many of which were their founding principles. I’m not talking about all Republicans, I’m talking about people like Rick Perry.

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It’s Time to End Marriage Inequality

My Twitter friend Gabe retweeted a link tonight from @Padbury that simply read, “Please watch this, ‘It’s Time’”. I stopped what I was doing and decided to click the YouTube link. What followed was one of the best marriage equality videos I have ever seen. Zero dialog, remarkably real and absolutely magical. This is what matters.

Please share this post, this video, this message with the people in your life. Also, check out http://www.getup.org.au/marriagematters. There are half a dozen ways below this video to share this with all of your friends. Take this step for marriage equality.

That is all, thanks so much.

Anti-DADT Repeal Runs Over After Debate

Wow, and I thought the debate last night was eye-opening. We have already discussed here the remarkable reactions Republican candidates have been getting to things such as killing of criminals, “Yeah! Cheers! Horray!” and sick people who are uninsured, “Let him die!” My friends and I cringed when we heard these reactions during the primary debates.

Then, last night, Rick Santorum (just Google him) shared with the audience that he would like to re-instate ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’, which was just repealed this week. Here’s how it played out. Be sure to read on to the outrageous poll after the break. Continue reading

The West Wing Tackles the Debt Ceiling

If you’ve been paying attention to the news in any form, you know that Debtageddon is on the horizon. What’s Debtageddon? It’s the day we hit our debt ceiling, the day we can no longer borrow money as a country and coincidentally the day before my birthday.

Tonight the House of Representatives were unable to pass a vote to raise the debt ceiling. The deadline before we hit true crisis mode is August 3rd. After that, no one knows just how badly our economy will be affected. Michelle Bachman thinks everything will be fine, while economists everywhere else are sounding the alarm.

By the way, pretty sure this is just the Grand Old Party, aka the Republicans and John Boehner, trying to screw me out of a great birthday. You can look at it one of three ways.

  1. My birthday will be followed by the absolute financial crash of America and we will remember it as the day before the end.
  2. Or, if you’re an optimist, all that will happen but we will remember it as the day we no longer gave a damn and had one hell of a party!
  3. Unlikely option, they agree to raise the debt ceiling and August 3rd is uneventful.

Whatever happens, the following clip from the West Wing illustrates what is going on.

It’s scary how many times I have been able to look back at this show and go, oh yeah, that exact thing is happening right now. I have a conspiracy theory that, in an effort to stay relevant a decade after his show would be canceled, Aaron Sorkin traveled to the future. There (here) he ripped headlines from Reuters and brought them back to 1999.

Or perhaps the West Wing is so accurate because it has happened 74 times before…