Author: lux

Another San Francisco First

It’s nice that this should happen 2 days before Valentine’s Day: the first gay marriage license was issued in San Francisco today.

To be completely honest, this is an issue I have struggled with. As much as intellectually I have no problem with the equal protection clause of the Constitution meaning that gay couples should be able to marry just like straight couples, in my heart, I am uncomfortable with the concept.

At any rate, I’ve been giving this issue a lot of thought. As I said, the concept of real, legal gay marriage has pushed my comfort zone quite a bit. I can’t even pin down exactly why I feel that way, except to say that it’s not something I am used to. I know that must sound pretty lame, and maybe it is. And as someone who’s generally on the liberal side of the political spectrum, it’s not at all ‘correct’ (how I hate that word) to say that gay marriage makes you uncomfortable. I’ve wondered whether I might be hurting some of my friends’ feelings by saying how I feel here in this blog. But I think honesty is the better policy. I hope that my struggle to come to terms with the issue will be met with respect. And if reading this does make one of my friends feel bad — please, let me know so we can talk about it.

My parents sent something of a mixed message when it came to homosexuality. It wasn’t a subject often discussed, but if it were to come up, they didn’t have much positive to say about homosexuality. On the other hand, they’ve employed an openly gay man for the better part of 20 years. The fact that this entire time he and his partner have been living together has never seemed to bother them at all – they’ve always treated him with total respect, asked how his partner was doing, and so on. Like I said, that sends a pretty mixed message.

Things were different when I was growing up. Even living in New York City, with an active passion for the theater & arts, I don’t think it really registered on me what “gay” meant until I was in junior high. I had a couple of more or less openly gay teachers in high school and of course, gay colleagues during my career in the theater, but back then (the mid-late 1980s) the issue of the day was AIDS. People were much more concerned about staying alive than about whether or not they could get married. But still, my world was a heterosexual one and marriage was something that a man and a woman did.

Ultimately, what finally pushed me over into the pro-gay marriage camp was a piece Andrew Sullivan wrote called “Here Comes the Groom – The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage“. It’s a well-written piece that essentially says this: Marriage is an institution created to help stabilize society, and that people who enter into it take on both benefits and obligations. We should be encouraging people to marry because ultimately it’s good for society; certainly better than the potential quagmire that ‘domestic partnerships’ open up.

Sullivan is himself gay, so it’s not surprising that he should favor gay marriage. Still, his argument is sound and it was enough to help me come to terms with the question. I may feel a little queasy about it, but the first legal gay marriage in America has been performed. It will be very interesting to see what happens next.

The New Rationale for War

I can’t stand to watch President Bush speak, so as with the recent state of the union address, I waited for the audio transcript to see what he had to say. And what do I see but this new, improved rationale for making war on Iraq:

He [Hussein] had used weapons. He had manufactured weapons. He had funded suicide bombers into Israel. He had terrorist connections. In other words, all of those ingredients said to me: Threat.

This to me is NOT any kind of rationale for making war on a country that is more than 3000 miles away from the US border. Where is the clear and present danger? Hussein was, and is, not a nice guy by any means. But for us to go in and kick him out when we let any number of other dictators across the globe do what they want just makes us look bad.

Oh, and in the “unintended irony” department, we have this Bush quote:

See, free societies are societies that don’t develop weapons of mass terror.

There are so many different ways to deconstruct that one, I could be posting all night. I’ll just point out that there’s either a tremendous double standard there, or that America is not truly a free society. Or possibly both.

Bah.

Belated thoughts on BoobGate

Scott and I watched the entire Super Bowl halftime show this year. Not that we were particularly fond of any of the artists — some of them I’d never heard of before — but the rest of the party had migrated into other rooms and for whatever reason we stayed on the couch. So I saw Boobgate as it happened.

We weren’t quite sure whether we’d even seen a naked breast, it was on screen so short an amount of time. It was not a topic of conversation when the rest of the party wandered back into the room. If someone had asked me about the show, I’d more likely have said how overall the show sucked, or something about Kid Rock’s wearing the US flag as a poncho, than about Janet Jackson. So it really surprised me to see the avalanche of press the situation has gotten.

What really bugs me about the whole thing is, why aren’t more people mad at Justin Timberlake? He was the instigator. He grabbed her boob and ripped off the clothing covering it. I’m not a lawyer but it seems possible to me that what he did approached the legal definition of sexual assault. So why are so many people mad at her?

I was listening to a local talk radio show coming home from work last night and the guy on the air said that it’s all because America is racist and that if Janet Jackson weren’t black, things would have been different. I’m not sure I agree with that, mostly because I don’t think of Janet Jackson as being black. She’s so mainstream and so light-skinned that her color is not what immediately comes to mind for me. I think of Halle Berry in a similar light. They’re entertainers first; their skin color is a very distant second.

At any rate, I don’t think this is necessarily a racial issue. I’m not sure what the real reason is. It could be sexism, or the hypocritical morality that so many Americans embrace, or just a slow news week.

Whatever the reason, it’s a huge tempest made out of a very small teapot. Anyone who thinks that two flashing seconds of breast exposure on TV was indecent or immoral or would somehow harm their children is an idiot.

WalMart breeds a late New Year's resolution

Very interesting article in today’s SFGate.com. In a nutshell, here’s the issue:

Wal-Mart could save Bay Area grocery shoppers as a whole $382 million to $1.13 billion per year — roughly 5 to 13 percent of their expected annual spending on groceries — if the growth forecasts hold true, the report says.

On the flip side, the average Bay Area grocery-store employee can expect to lose $21,000 from his or her current annual wage-and-benefits package of $42,552 per year, the report warns.

From where I sit, this just seems like another example of cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face. Granted, downward pressure on the wages in one segment of the employment market does not translate to downward pressure across the board, but it’s indicative of a theme in corporate beliefs these days.

As I’ve said in these pages before, this ongoing downward pressure in wages and tendency towards outsourcing jobs is one that I consider hugely dangerous to America as a whole. We are sacrificing our future for short-term profits. Because when everyone is making less than $30K a year, who is going to buy all these goods and services?

It’s also a good argument for taking your destiny into your own hands, via self-employment and/or starting your own business. If you can.

It’s been a few years since my own business venture failed, and I still bear the scars. The biggest one being a loss of confidence that I really can do what I set out to do. That’s been ameliorated somewhat over the last year or so by my discovery that I am pretty good at this retail stuff, but it’s not entirely gone either. And my credit’s still screwed.

I’ve always said that despite the scars, I’d want to do it again some day. And I still believe that. But I haven’t given a lot of thought to how I’m going to make that happen. It’s a little late for New Year’s resolutions, but perhaps that should be mine for 2004 – to start thinking seriously about what I’m going to do about my career. With the economy and Bay Area job market so screwed, I’ve basically been in a reactive, not proactive mode. I don’t know if the economy has changed all that much, but I’m getting tired of letting the current take me where it will. I need to start doing more of my own choosing, not what others choose for me.

A self-image booster

I had an extremely pleasant surprise on Friday morning. I’d taken 5 days off work — ‘use it or lose it’ vacation time was about to run out — and waiting for me when I got to the store my frst day back was a blooming plant in a basket, with a card signed by all my staff to welcome me back.

I was extremely moved by the gesture — it’s not like I was gone that long nor has anything especially unusual happened. I have a good crew that seems happy with me (and vice versa), so it’s not like them doing something nice for me was all that out of character. But I’m not exactly the princess of self-esteem, though, so it was a complete surprise that they would think to do something so nice for me.

It’s also kind of funny that I should be given a plant right after I blogged about my orchid. I’m reasonably sure none of them reads my blog, so it’s probably just coincidence. Now I have to figure out how to keep the new addition to the house from being chewed on by the cats. Tommy has already taken some preliminary nibbles.

Who needs a blooming onion?

I’ve got a blooming orchid!

orchid

We don’t generally keep plants in the house, because the cats tend to munch on them. However, last year I was given an orchid as a gift. I stuck it in the kitchen window, watered it every couple of days, and wondered if it would ever do anything after the blooms it came with finally withered and fell off. At one point a few months ago, I was inspired to prune the plant a bit, and that must have been a good idea, because after I did so it started to put out new shoots. As you can see, they’ve culminated in several nice blossoms, with buds showing promise of more to come.

This is what it looks like in its usual spot:
orchid in window

It definitely brightens up the kitchen, and so far the cats have left it alone. Now I need to figure out how to transplant orchids – this one has really started to outgrow the pot it came in.