Sundays.

I dread going to work on Mondays like everybody else, but at the same time, I think I appreciate my job most on the weekends. When I wake up on Saturday and think about what I did that week, I can say that I fought for something. I decided what I wanted, and spent my time and energy pushing us closer.

On Sunday when I think, "Hell. I have to go to work tomorrow," I'm also thinking, "I'll get something done this week. I know it."

People at the doors are stupid, and blind, and too preoccupied with the petty proscribed lives that they were always told they'd have, and never thought could change. But when I leave their doors, they're a little less so. It's exhausting, and I'm always a hair's breadth from not raising enough money to keep coming back to this job every day. But hell. At least it's worth doing.

Sometime this week when someone tells me that they don't get involved in this stuff, or that they don't want to talk to someone from CAC, I'm just going to smile, and tell them, "That's cool. In the end... we're going to win."

Because we will. Because we're the only ones who have something to wear ourselves out for, and that means everything. During the week I'm tired but on weekends it's easier to see what my job is for, and who I am when I'm doing it. I can get a better perspective on those things, and I really do like what I see.

Man...

Why in the world should it take me more than an hour to try and explain to a Marine that using the word "Hajji" to refer to all terrorists/Arabs/Muslims/whatever is racist, and that this makes it bad?

Gaaah, such a waste of my time and energy. But whatever. Maybe some white person that he'll actually listen to will give him the lecture again later, and then maybe he'll get another one, and eventually we'll wear his ignorant ass down into something resembling decency. If the best I can do for the universe is to waste a little time explaining to someone that it's not okay to talk about people that way... then hell, I guess I can do that much.

Seriously obnoxious, though. This shit is not fucking sorcery, people. I get that in the military the norm is to be racist to the enemies you kill and rape the allies you serve with, but the rest of the world cannot fucking operate that way. At least, not in my goddamn IM windows. If that's the only space I can police, then so be it.

Shameless Boasting

Look what we have!



Handfasting hasn't happened yet, and we won't be doing any of the legal end of things for quite some time (changing of names mainly, since we aren't signing a marriage contract as long as the laws are discriminatory), but we have our indestructible engagement rings. Look at them!

Yet another "Oh, except you" for LGBT Americans

So pissed.

From reannon.

Iowa, we were so proud of you. Now two Republican state reps have proposed to EXCLUDE LGBT kids from the Safe Schools law that protects kids from harassment and bullying. What. The. Fuck. It's right here: the bill itself.

What bothers me more is the utter lack of news coverage. It's all on the blogs. Come on, Iowa newspapers! I realize TV's been on Super Bowl for the last three days, but you still have pages to fill!

Windschitl, the guy who started this, is part of Iowa's "Liberty Agenda." (He also looks about 12 years old. It has brilliantly camouflaged itself by putting two conservative-friendly and fairly inoffensive ideas around this: "Allow Iowans to vote on the definition of marriage." The other two are "restore the number of state troopers to pre-1998 levels" and "the Iowa Good Neighbor Act," which lets neighbors and grandparents watch kids after school without registering as day care providers.

Iowa Pride Network has more. This is the sort of thing that sneaks in under the radar, guys. Iowans, wanna shout some? Clearly no one's hearing yet.

*tears her hair out*

We're gonna be hearing about this for a while...

You know how California is getting sued over Prop 8 because it's a flagrant violation of the Constitution?

The anti-equal-rights activists just realized they got randomly assigned a gay judge.

Oops!

I mean, we're all having a good laugh over this because they're seriously standing up in front of a gay man and attempting to convince him of the essential depravity of gay people (including predictable but bizarre assertions about their propensity to rape children). Their case was shit before--and they knew it (and you can tell they've known it from the start by the way they've tried to hide their arguments and lie about their motives and backing), but now this.

The down-side is that they'll obviously turn this into another narrative about the oppressive liberal establishment imposing its Supah Sekrit Homo Commie Agenda on the Good Decent Christian People of this nation. Never mind that according to the Constitution, we have judges to doublecheck laws and make sure they're Constitutional; actually using them is "unamerican."

Walker here is damned if he does, damned if he doesn't. On the one hand, he has the option to cement into judicial precedent his own status as a second-class citizen. On the other hand, if he brings the 14th Amendment into the discussion, the defendants in the case will slink off growling about how gays are so mentally twisted that they aren't even qualified to evaluate the Constitutionality of laws.

Can't be teachers, can't be parents, can't be judges, can't be married, can't be people. Same old, same old. They were going to find a reason to pretend an unfavorable ruling isn't legitimate. We just know now in advance what that's going to be.