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.

Out Country

My friend Stacy bought this photo at an antique store and shared it with me last night.  It is an amazing photo of a gay couple in the late 1800s in America.  These two guys, presumably, paid a photographer to set them down in front of a tintype camera and shoot a photo of their love and intimacy.

Yes, an out, gay couple in America over one hundred years ago.  Incredible. It definitely gives me hope and the strength to be out and proud in a modern America.  Yes, I can’t get married, share employment benefits or adopt (easily) a child, but if these two guys were able to live their lives together, in America, two hundred years ago, I sure can!

It should be inspiration for anyone, not just in the LGBT community but anyone who faces adversity, bigotry and challenges in this modern day America.  Which I’m pretty sure is all of us.

I hope this aside from my usual blog post has given you a little hope to overcome whatever obstacle finds its way into your path.

UPDATE: Since so many people have claimed this to be a fake, which is first offensive to me and second offensive to the purpose of this post, here is the original scan, untouched by Photoshop. The original image above was cleaned up in Photoshop to repair some of the damage 100+ years can have on a photo, I ran a “remove dust and scratches”, adjusted curves and uploaded that photo to Flickr. I personally scanned this file in using an Epson Perfection Scan V750 Pro at 4800dpi.  It’s a 1.27gb scan at well over 12000 pixels wide when at 300dpi.   I have downscaled it to 4800 pixels wide at 300dpi for this post but have done nothing else to it.

Photo links to 1920px version

You are more than welcome to download the large file here (7.2mb, 4800x7016px)

I’m not sure why so many people on Twitter and Facebook, especially one from an equality group would cast aspersions, call this a fake.

My professor who dated, preserved and revived photos like these for museums looked at my scan and said he has no reason to believe it isn’t the real deal, that the problems with the photo, the eyes, the focus, the peeling and deterioration all are elements of proof it is a legitimate image.  Hopefully we will have it in class on Monday for him to examine in person. Meanwhile, here are 12 tintype images I found on the Internet all ranging from 1860-1920. Notice the similar wear, the oxidation, corrosion, rust, scratches, peeling, the backgrounds, the density, the gradations of light, the compression of the lens and the varying clarity and focus.

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Abuse Makes You Gay?

This is just another example of how idiotic the religious right can be.  Molestation does not cause homosexuality.  I knew when I was in 2nd grade.  I had never been molested by anyone or abused or touched or… yet I knew.

Dan Savage wrote a fantastic editorial about this video, I’ll post an excerpt and link at the bottom of this post.

As a thought experiment let’s concede the point: homosexuals are made, not born (with the exception of the few of us with “biological problems”). Who do you suppose is making homosexuals out of kids from fundamentalist Christian homes? Alen Keyes has a gay kid, Randal Terry has a gay kid, Dick Cheney has a gay kid, Phyllis Schafley has a gay kid. Seattle’s Capitol Hill is crawling with gay teenagers and young adults who grew up in—and escaped from—their fundamentalist Christian homes. The documentary For the Bible Tells Me Soprofiles numerous kids from fundamentalist Christian families who grew up to be gay.

Who’s raping all these Christian kids?

Read more on Dan Savage’s awesome blog.

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People Are Stupid

from Arnold Schwarzenegger's Biography at www....Image via Wikipedia

It seems like it’s been years since I started noticing that people are stupid. Some are kinda stupid, some are not that stupid and then some are just fucking stupid. It doesn’t bother me too much when a normal person does something stupid. That only affects that one person, however, when someone with actual power does something stupid; that’s when I really get frustrated.

These sorts of things could be anything from the name Kwik Kopy to calling a bill The Defense of Marriage Act.

Quick is spelled with a “Q” and Copy is spelled with a “C”.

The Act was not defending the right for anyone to marry, it was actually attacking the ability of certain people to marry.  It’s all a misnomer that in some instances caused people to vote for something they were actually against.

I think Arnold Schwarzenegger is stupid for several reasons but the one that kills me would have to be when he vetoed the legalization of Gay Marriage in California.  He said

Voters and the state Supreme Court should decide the issue.

Schwarzenegger said it was up to the voters.  The voters elected their legislature and effectively voted to recognize gay marriage.  Those voters finally got a chance to give their say, a second time, this yes, voting just as their legislature had voted less than a year earlier.

That veto was a waste of money and time.  It cost the State of California millions of dollars, money that might have been better spent finding a solution to their failing school system and better equipping their fire departments to battle the annual summer blazes, which this year are at an all time high.

We could go in to how other politicians are stupid but I think we’d never be able to stop as it seems no one is free from making stupid, STUPID mistakes, Democrats included. (Though I do believe Republicans make a few more stupid mistakes)

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Here’s another stupid guy.  Jim Donald.  He managed to take Starbucks grow Starbucks to death and now he’s gone and Howard Schultz is back.  While Donald was growing the company, promising 15,000 stores in a matter of years and expanding to markets they were not ready to compete, Schultz was sitting in the background.  Unhappy with the massive expansion of Starbucks stores, Schultz finally voiced his opinion in September of 2007.  He stated;

Growth is good, but at what expense?!

Good point.  Seems Schultz had noticed what all of us Starbucks baristas and loyal customers noticed, that things are Starbucks were starting to really slack.  Goodbye Jim Donald and welcome back Howard Schultz, hopefully he can fix that Donald broke; how about fixing the stock which has dropped over 30 points since I was a Starbucks Partner.

Where did Jim Donald go after being pushed out of Starbucks?  Another company expanding far faster than it should, Rite Aid.  Good luck!

But lets get to the fun stupid people. There are those that videotape themselves committing crimes and posting them onto YouTube.

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I wonder who was the first genius to think, “I should provide the proof that I broke a law”.

Here’s another one, Joshua Lipton.  He thought it would be funny to go to a Halloween party as an escaped prisoner.  Never mind that there was a county prosecutor building a case against him for a DUI just a few weeks earlier.  A DUI where he seriously injured another female driver as he crashed into her car, leaving her in the hospital while he continued to drink and party, all while under age.

Sometimes these kinds of people are given a Darwin Award which is published each year.  Hilarious.

Another form of stupidity that gets me the majority of the time since I see it everyday is marketing stupidity.  Some of my favorite companies make these really stupid mistakes in their advertising campaigns, for instance.

The other night I was with Jeremy browsing Target.  Hanging from the ceiling was a calculator, it’s back to school time you know.

On the left you can see what they hung from the ceiling.  A magical calculator that spells out words with backwards numbers; on the right, you see what they should have shown, a calculator with the numbers 00734 on the screen.  They could have maybe even flipped the calculator to show the joke which really is only funny to little kids and only really funny when you spell out boobless.  But whatever.

Panera makes grammatical mistakes all of the time.  From missing punctuation marks to made up words.  It drives me mad when I see these things.  I see them all of the time.

The other day Ryan and I were in the mall when we saw a girl with nickles in her ear.  Not in her guaged out ear lobes, no.  They were in her ears.  Why the hell would you do that?  Cause you’re stupid.  That’s why.

I’ve thought a few times that I should make a blog with the soul purpose of cataloging these stupid people and stupid things I see everywhere.  This day in age it sure isn’t hard to find them.

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On a Mission (in the Mission)

Our last day in San Francisco was a busy day.  Ryan had a lot of paperwork to get processed and needed a few LiveScans for a job application and ambulance license so we marched down Powell to the Bart station.

Wow, I guess I forgot all about the Pride Parade.  Thousands of people met us at the Bart station, completely hiding it from our field of vision.  We hung out, watched a few floats go by, reveled in the fun, friendly good times and took a few pictures.

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As with any gay event, not everyone there was there to celebrate equality.  Some religious zealots where protesting the parade, the weekend, the gay marriages in California and just whatever popped into their heads.

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They blamed the fires on the gays.  They blamed the terrorist attacks in 2001 on the gays.  They blamed the salmonella on the gays.  They blamed the storms on the gays.  Apparently it’s our fault.  Sorry guys.  Our bad.

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The kicker was when he said, “If you guys are such a loving, kind and friendly people, why do you need all of these police officers?  It’s because you cause hate and destruction that they are here” and then went onto something about paying good Californian’s tax dollars for us to celebrate our heresy…

I guess what he was missing was this.  The police are there not to protect us from ourselves but from people like him.  Pride is about as safest I have ever felt in a city, day or night.  The only thing one gay guy wants to do to another gay guy is fuck him (excuse my vulgarity and obvious exaggeration).

Well anyway, we finally made it to the UPS Store for Ryan’s LiveScan only to find it had closed for Pride.  Haha, a UPS closed for Pride, how awesome.  We took a seat at Squat & Gobble for lunch while we figured out a Plan B.

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Squat & Gobble is the perfect little brunch place.  I always think of Landon when I go there.  I’m pretty sure you would love it Landon, reminds me of The Café in Washington DC only… better.  It was delicious.  While there we found another LiveScan place, hopped on a bus and back to the Mission we go.

LiveScan went easy enough, then back to the hotel.  I’m leaving Ryan here to go to Pride for a bit.  Catch you guys later!

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