As a gay atheist (gaytheist?), I’ve made my share of compromises in life. Just to get through the day-to-day, you know. It’s simply easier for me to play a game or portray a desire I don’t feel or pretend a holy devotion over a meal or during a wedding, bowing my head and lip-synching to Biblical passages and even softly saying an “Amen” at the end of a prayer to a God or Savior I don’t believe exists.

I’ve been able to stop pretending to heterosexual desires over the last few years. When I’m not in San Francisco or among friends, I still have to remind myself that even looking too closely at a man I might find attractive could result in physical harm, though the chances of that actually happening are very much diminished now that I favor travel to major cities rather than rural townships where cosmopolitan (modern) thinking isn’t widely practiced. I’m not about to start prancing around in heels and a wig and screaming for equal rights, and not because I think there’s anything wrong with that but because heels are extremely uncomfortable and I have no need of a wig — frankly, I have too much hair as it is.

But the other part of my life that sometimes requires disguising, the part where I try to “fit in” with Christians, mostly, but also the occasional Jew or Muslim or Hindu — though I must admit that the latter mingling usually only involves eating regional foods rather than finding myself at prayer with them — the part where I bow my head in prayer and all that? I’m done with it. I’m done pretending. I’m out of the closet.

I am openly atheist.

Continue reading "Resolved: No More God Pretending"

This is not another rant about Proposition 8, per se, though it does necessarily encompass the arguments for and against it, as well as pretty much every Presidential election over the past 20 years or so, and any legislation at a local, state or federal level.

I often hear that “we live in a democracy!” and that “the majority rules!” and that “in our democratic form of government, it’s one person - one vote!” These are phrases used in arguments to assail those that may be in the minority, or who think that in the United States, laws are always passed by the popular vote and depend on getting a majority, however slim, and that’s that. End game. No more discussion.

Friends, we do not live in a democracy and we have never lived in a democracy. The United States is a democratic republic. We rarely do anything based on one person - one vote, which would be true in a democracy. In that case, we would have no need for a congress, or a state assembly, or a town council, or a house of representatives because everything would require a vote of the people to pass.

In a democratic republic, we elect officials to speak for us. We have a representative democracy. We elect the people we believe will best represent our interests or opinions and send them to these other voting bodies and they make the laws for us. We elect the judges who interpret the constitution of our state or country, or we elect the person who appoints those judges. We don’t vote on what is constitutional. We elect other people — who are hopefully better educated and more familiar with those documents — to make those judgements.

A republic is any government that is not lead by a hereditary monarch or dictator or Pope, for example. A republic is a government (like ours) in which the people, or a part of the people, have a say in the government. Things are not decided by fiat, they are put to a vote, even if that vote is not by the general population but by their elected representatives.

So whenever someone’s argument comes down to “it was elected on by popular vote because we live in a democracy!” you are allowed to roll your eyes and smirk and feel slightly superior because you know the truth. This is also why the president is not elected by popular vote, but by the electoral college. You’re not voting for the president, you’re voting for someone who will vote for the president you told them to. The electors are technically free to vote for anyone they want to, so this is why Barack Obama will not actually be voted in as President Elect until December 15th, when the electors meet to cast their votes on our behalf for the next president of the United States, which will presumably be Barack Obama.

We do not live in a democracy. We live in a representative democracy. We live in a democratic republic.

After Proposition 8, which attempts to inserts a phrase that defines marriage as only between one man and one woman into our state Constitution, passed here in California, my initial reaction was that it was inevitable.

Even though, only weeks before election day, defeat of the anti-gay marriage was as much as 19 points ahead in some polls, by the day of the election the decision was neck-and-neck, and even though California is often depicted as some insane liberal haven filled with wackos, deviants and drug abusers, that really only applies to us here in San Francisco, and more particularly Berkeley. The Yes on 8 bandwagon was bound to gain steam and roll over those of us who were hoping that maybe this time logic would prevail over fear and prejudice, though I, personally, had faith in the tendency of the electorate to say one thing to pollsters, but vote differently once they were in the privacy of the ballot box.

You might tell a stranger who wants to publish your opinion that you’re in favor of freedom and justice for all, but when you’re all alone and it’s time to stamp the ballot, it’s easy to just be yourself. And my faith in the darker nature of us all has not been diminished.

Not long after it became clear that Prop. 8 was going to pass, opponents representing my rights took their case to court in an attempt to overturn and throw out the vote. Frankly, I’m against that tactic. For one thing, they only did that after the vote didn’t go our way. If it really was an illegal proposition, why didn’t they do something like that before the vote? Was it because everyone thought it would be defeated? I also think that, as much as I hate to admit it, the proponents have a point. This has been voted on twice now, and each time the majority spoke. If we’re going to get our rights, I’d prefer to do it in an environment where we’re not constantly under legal threat to have them removed all over again. Not that defeat of Prop. 8 necessarily meant that they wouldn’t get another million signatures in two year’s time and try it again, but if the population of California had voted against it this time, perhaps another proposition would have been harder to come by.

Maybe California, and certainly the rest of the nation (with the exception of Massachusetts) isn’t ready to provide equal rights to every citizen. Apparently, the idea of marriage is chockablock with too many minefields. This particular legal contract, it’s too darned… oh what’s the word? Sacred! Too darned sacred to too much of the population to allow anyone other than “one man and one woman” to be married, and that definition is, according to public comments I read at CNN and elsewhere, thousands of years old. Even as old as mankind itself! Older than, like, anything! And changing it will result in several really horrible things that will destroy all of society, even us gays who don’t know what we’re toying with.

So I’ve decided to try to meet some of those doubts and fears head-on. I’ve taken the liberty of copying verbatim some of the comments in support of Prop. 8 that concerned citizens left in various articles about the subject at CNN.com, and I’d like to address them one by one.

Continue reading "The Voices of the Peoples"

How to tell if you’re straight, and what you can do to hide it from others.

With the recent decision by California to strip straight couples of their Constitutional right to marriage — a decision already echoed in one way or another by 29 other states, including GeorgiaArkansas voters’ (sorry, it’s easy to get confused, but since neither state allows you to get married, who cares?) recent approval of denying straight people from adopting children — I feel it’s important now to help those of you struggling with your lifestyle choice, and to help you fit in with those of us who are normal.

I know you may be feeling depressed right now, but please believe that not all of us gay people think you’re entirely sick, depraved, abnormal and not deserving of love. After all, marriage is almost exactly the same as a civil union, accept for some of the things about next of kin and so forth, but since you so rarely stay with your partners for more than a few years and insist on fooling around so much, does that really matter? And this was in no way a referendum on legitimizing prejudice or discrimination with an attempt to place these definitions into the state constitution. We don’t hate you.

We just think you’re not entitled to the same rights as us. I mean, really, how can you possibly argue with that while you’re cheating on your spouses and wearing those outlandish clothes?

Continue reading "Straight to the Point"

I know I’m late to the party but on the eve of the election and with the strong possibility that Proposition 8 here in California will remove the right to marry whom I may wish to marry (something I never considered possible and merely accepted as another impossibility because I am gay and therefore less fortunate in terms of rights than others who pay taxes just like I do) I would just like to point out a few things to anyone considering voting in favor of Prop. 8 because you’re scared that allowing us gays to marry will ruin civilization forever and make children into monstrous sexual deviants.

• A domestic partnership is not the same as marriage. If it is the same as marriage, I would like to propose that we do away with marriage entirely and only have domestic partnerships. Now, feel the same way about domestic partnerships?
• I am not in a “lifestyle choice.” I am gay. Choice had no point in my life, and if there was a choice it came very late in life and it was to finally like myself and stop believing I was the horrible person others believed me to be.
• A yes vote on Prop. 8 removes rights, it doesn’t define them.
• I don’t think this has anything to do with race or the fact that California used to deny other people the right to marriage based on skin color. This is about me and my rights, and the desire by some to strip me of them. Because I am gay.
• Maybe your yes vote doesn’t mean you hate me. It only feels that way to me.

It’s weird to me that this is happening at all. I never would have believed there would ever be a question about equal rights for homosexuals on a state ballot during my lifetime. I always sort of expected and accepted that I would forever be a second-class citizen because I came out of the closet at last and managed at last to accept myself, never believing that everyone/anyone else would.

But here we are. And here it is.

Please, if anything I ever wrote, said, made or designed had a positive effect on you or someone you know, if you know anyone else who is gay, or if you understand that everyone should be treated the same way when it comes to questions of love and happiness, vote no tomorrow on Proposition 8.

Please. Vote no.

I’m surprised that anyone anywhere thinks they can do anything they want to with something they “found” on the web and not have anyone else anywhere notice that they did it. Frankly, if the web has done anything besides remind us all that there is someone else out there with the same sexual deviance as you, it is the inevitability of the documentation of every fucking thing all the fucking time.

Take, for example, the Case of the Expensive T-shirt Designer That Didn’t Bother to Do His or Her Proper Research Regarding the Origin of the Particular Flickr Account Owner of the Image They Thought They Could Simply Borrow-Slash-Steal for Part of the Graphic on One of Their Over-Priced Garments Except That They Had No Right to Do So and Then They Got Caught by the Originator’s Boyfriend.

Deepak Chopra may consider that there’s no such thing as coincidence, in which case God has a fucking great sense of humor and suddenly a lot of the crap I put up with on a daily basis makes a little more sense when considered in relation to the fact that a lot of it is done in the name of God and there isn’t one, but the sequence of events that had to conspire together to lead up to what ended up happening during my recent trip to New York City are just slim enough when taken one at a time and incredibly odd when combined together to make me reconsider my opinion about fate.

And, yes, if you think I’m going to abandon my love for run-on sentences at some point in the future on this, my blog, then you’re as insane as Deepak Chopra, though probably a lot less financially well off, so maybe you should shut up about how dumb he is or how annoying I am and write your own damn series of books about how other people should live. Go, you.

Continue reading "Serendipity by Proxy"

On a recent trip to New York, the following thing happened; I am using my Macbook Pro and suddenly Finder and Safari both lock up, showing me the rolling beach ball of eternity and refusing to do much else. Consequently, I press my finger to the power button until my machine shuts itself off so I can reboot and start again.

Aside: This happens a lot more than it did on Windows. But I am somehow more forgiving of it on my Apple. I am asked repeatedly “Did you try to force quit the application?” to which I always reply “Of course” while thinking to myself, “Why should I the need to continually force-quit applications be any better than the need to continually force-boot the whole blasted mess?” But I digress.

After rebooting and hearing the familiar Apple “Taa daaah!” start up chime, I am greeted with a dark screen and nothing else. No sign from the universe that the OS is starting up, no login, nothing but a big, black, blank screen.

Continue reading "Blind in One Eye"

Here’s the thing. So, okay, what the fuck is wrong with John McCain? The reason I ask is because it seems like this isn’t the guy I was used to seeing on The Daily Show joking around with Jon Stewart and yukking it up with Dave Letterman. This guy is like, whoa, what the fuck? I mean, I knew he was an angry old dude, that was always apparent, but it used to be that he had a sense of humor and was, you know, for a Republican, fairly level-headed.

I should say that for a Republican in this day and age when Republican equates with people who are more concerned that Jesus is happy that if everyone else actually living on the planet who aren’t Saviors was happy.

Now, I know perfectly well that there are sensible Republicans, because I know one or two, and there are sensible Christians as well, and it’s a shame that a small albeit boisterous minority has highjacked that political party because they realized that if they plugged in to the, shall we say, vehemently angry (who need someone or somthing to blame for anything they disagree with, and that tends to be abortion and the gays and flag burning and gay flag burners who are aborting and getting married and marrying gay abortions) who can be lured to the voting booths because they’re incensed, incensed I tell you, by the way modern American culture (that’s you and me, in case you were wondering) is going to hell, apparently literally, while the rest of us with a more lessez faire atttude about things in general, live and let live, whatever you do in your bedroom, all teaching is good, and so forth are in direct opposition to their opinions about sequestering us all in some ignorant, narrow-minded view of a world where we should live in fear of being judged by some powerful invisible all-knowing force who occasionally decides to destroy a city or trun people into salt or demand the death of a first-born or whatever (and those are His good qualities) but thinks using sex organs for something other than pumping out babies to pump out more babies in a never-ending cycle of procreation with no other end-goal as far as I know except to eventually die and go live with this judgmental egotist because he considers himself perfect and not you, you fornicating flag burning gay abortion!

Sorry, I’m on a jet flying to New York while I write this and I had to wake up at 4AM and I’m on my fourth cup of coffee.

Continue reading "Impalin' Ourselves"