It gets better

Dan Savage has launched a channel on YouTube where gay adults can tell their stories and let bullied gay kids know that life does get better:

Nine out of 10 gay teenagers experience bullying and harassment at school, and gay teens are four times likelier to attempt suicide. Many LGBT kids who do kill themselves live in rural areas, exurbs, and suburban areas, places with no gay organizations or services for queer kids.

...But gay adults aren't allowed to talk to these kids. Schools and churches don't bring us in to talk to teenagers who are being bullied. Many of these kids have homophobic parents who believe that they can prevent their gay children from growing up to be gay—or from ever coming out—by depriving them of information, resources, and positive role models.

Why are we waiting for permission to talk to these kids? We have the ability to talk directly to them right now. We don't have to wait for permission to let them know that it gets better. We can reach these kids.

Dan and Terry have already uploaded theirs. Find the video and instructions about how to submit your own here.

Christopher Hitchens

Every week I look forward to his column in Slate, but he never mentioned in it that he's got cancer. I found out this morning in this really good Roger Ebert piece and the accompanying interview with Anderson Cooper (scroll down).

This is terrible news because the world seems to be running low on people like him: a writer who tackles difficult subjects with elegance and wit; who applies his keen intellect and curiosity to moral complexities and firmly takes sides; who is unconcerned about his position in relation to popular opinion, the dictates of any party, or the good graces of the powerful. Even if I disagree with him, I seek out his opinion because I know I'll always learn something, and probably find a turn of phrase to smile at in the process.

There isn't much to smile at in this painful piece, the first account of his journey into "the sick country." He is well aware that some readers will wish him harm and suffering, but I suspect that many more of us look forward to the end of this story, when he marches back out into the land of the living again.

What Marriage Equality Looks Like

The Boston Globe's The Big Picture does it again, this time with a moving photo essay of same-sex couples getting married in places around the world where they legally can.

Not so scary, right? Although if you want to keep the warm fuzzy feeling, you may want to skip the comments section.

California Court Strikes Down Proposition 8

Judge Vaughan Walker:

"The right to marry has been historically and remains the right to choose a spouse and, with mutual consent, join together and form a household...Today, gender is not relevant to the state in determining spouses' obligations to each other and to their dependents. Relative gender composition aside, same-sex couples are situated identically to opposite-sex couples in terms of their ability to perform the rights and obligations of marriage under California law. Gender no longer forms an essential part of marriage; marriage under law is a union of equals.

Plaintiffs seek to have the state recognize their committed relationships, and plaintiffs' relationships are consistent with the core of the history, tradition and practice of marriage in the United States. Perry and Stier seek to be spouses; they seek the mutual obligation and honor that attend marriage. Zarrillo and Katami seek recognition from the state that their union is "a coming together for better or for worse, hopefully enduring, and intimate to the degree of being sacred." Plaintiffs' unions encompass the historical purpose and form of marriage. Only the plaintiffs' genders relative to one another prevent California from giving their relationships due recognition.

Plaintiffs do not seek recognition of a new right. To characterize plaintiffs' objective as "the right to same-sex marriage" would suggest that plaintiffs seek something different from what opposite-sex couples across the state enjoy--namely, marriage. Rather, plaintiffs ask California to recognize their relationships for what they are: marriages."

Walker stayed his own decision pending appeal, so there won't be any new marriage licenses in California just yet. Although the thought of marriage equality in the hands of Roberts, Alito, Thomas, and Scalia (RATS) & Co may seem discouraging, Andrew Sullivan is optimistic:

I am increasingly confident that when this case eventually gets to the Supreme Court, the logic of equality will win. Once you have conceded that gay people are a class, and that their sexual orientation is integral to their lives and immutable, and that they are not defined by sex acts that can be performed by gays and straights alike, then the ban on marriage equality is left without anything but an amorphous claim to heterosexual supremacy - or a judicially irrelevant appeal to simple custom (already invalid in five states and many countries) - to support it.

Good news!

Update: The case has now been appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. What could happen?

Protest the Catholic Church

Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens have commissioned human rights lawyers to make the case for charging Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) for his role in covering up the rape and sexual molestation of children by Catholic priests.

The pope is supposed to be coming to the UK in September, and I've been thinking about what action I can take in protest. I'm sure there will be rallies or demonstrations, and I'll definitely go, but what else? Where do you send letters in this case?

Paul Constant at The Stranger has come up with one interesting solution: excommunication. Might think about that.

Orwell on political speech

I linked to David Foster Wallace's take on the use and misuse of English in this post a while back. I should also have included something about this 1949 essay by George Orwell. While Wallace defends standard English because it prevents ambiguity, Orwell, writing particularly about political speech, argues that our reliance on hackneyed, unoriginal words and phrases corrupts our thought, which in turn further corrupts our speech.

In the past week I've found myself talking about these essays on two occasions, and recommending the Orwell to a friend in the civil service. Seemed like a good time to re-read it. Here's some good advice:

...When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualizing, you probably hunt about till you find the exact words that seem to fit it. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one’s meaning as clear as one can through pictures or sensations. Afterwards one can choose—not simply accept—the phrases that will best cover the meaning, and then switch round and decide what impressions one’s words are likely to make on another person. This last effort of the mind cuts out all stale or mixed images, all prefabricated phrases, needless repetitions, and humbug and vagueness generally. But one can often be in doubt about the effect of a word or a phrase, and one needs rules that one can rely on when instinct fails. I think the following rules will cover most cases:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.

2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.

3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.

4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.

5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.

6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything barbarous.

I thought it was just me

How many people out there think about rotating the dishes? I do. Have for years. I just don't like the idea of the ones at the bottom of the stack, or the back of the cupboard, getting dusty. What if I have people over and have to use them? Don't want to have to wash them first. So I rotate them. I put the plates and bowls away at the bottom of the pile. I shift the glasses forward and put the clean ones in the back. Am I crazy?

SCOTUS blocks video coverage of Perry v. Schwarzenegger

In a 5-4 vote, the U.S. Supreme court decided that broadcasting the trial would cause "irreparable harm" to those who defend the ban on gay marriage. In his dissent, Justice Breyer pointed out that Proposition 8 defenders "...are all experts or advocates who have either already appeared on television or Internet broadcasts, already toured the state advocating a 'yes' vote on Proposition 8".

Makes you wonder why they want to hide. Oh yeah- because their anti-gay campaigns make them look like bigoted lunatics.

Great live blogging and other coverage here.

Perry v. Schwarzenegger

Today the Federal District Court in San Francisco heard opening arguments in the lawsuit brought by two gay couples seeking to overturn Proposition 8.

Joe My God has great coverage of Proposition 8, and points to a good piece of backstory about gay marriage in the New Yorker. I'll be following the whole thing on Andrew Sullivan and Slog.

Theodore Olsen, one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs, explains why gay marriage is consistent with good ol' conservative American values:

Many of my fellow conservatives have an almost knee-jerk hostility toward gay marriage. This does not make sense, because same-sex unions promote the values conservatives prize. Marriage is one of the basic building blocks of our neighborhoods and our nation. At its best, it is a stable bond between two individuals who work to create a loving household and a social and economic partnership. We encourage couples to marry because the commitments they make to one another provide benefits not only to themselves but also to their families and communities. Marriage requires thinking beyond one's own needs. It transforms two individuals into a union based on shared aspirations, and in doing so establishes a formal investment in the well-being of society. The fact that individuals who happen to be gay want to share in this vital social institution is evidence that conservative ideals enjoy widespread acceptance. Conservatives should celebrate this, rather than lament it.

Read the whole thing. It's brilliant.

Incidentally, Olsen and his co-counsel, David Boies, were adversaries in a little 2000 U.S. Supreme Court case you may have heard of called Bush v. Gore.

"I beg pardon, sir, but New Jersey has just fallen."

During Christmas, the BBC rebroadcast the Orson Welles Sketchbook, a series of 15-minute episodes in which Welles tells anecdotes about his life and career illustrated with his own sketches. It's mesmerizing viewing. Some of the stories seem too outlandish to be true. His charisma and keen knowledge of the theater are fully on display, and watch how he captures expressions and mannerisms in his impersonations. There's also a delightfully devilish smile that appears every now and again, almost as a commentary on the person or situation being described. Brilliant.

In this episode, Welles recounts the mayhem that ensued over his broadcast of H.G. Wells's War of the Worlds:





Other episodes:
Episode 1/1, 1/2, 2/1, 2/2, 4/1, 4/2, 5/1, 5/2