those who were seen dancing

How did I miss that Darlene Conner is a big queer?

And I didn't think it was possible for me to love her more.

I think it's safe to assume that y'all know I'm queer, right? Happy Coming Out Day.

I've been thinking about outness in general, though, and the weird disparity between my level of outness in life vs. say, work. Even in my fairly liberal-minded company, the possibility that a person might be attracted to/date others of multiple genders doesn't occur to a lot of my colleagues. They prefer to assume that my date is my "life partner" or simply that I date boys.

Part of it is the subtlety with which people inject conversation about their dating habits - I mean, we're working, so we're likely to make assumptions rather than probe or divulge. But I wonder how much of it is about the relative lack of PR by the relative lack of community of people who are just plain old queer. Not straight. Not gay. Not lesbian. Et cetera. It seems that lots of people, in the face of subtle, don't see a multiple-gendered sexuality as an option.

Also, Al Gore co-won the Nobel! Cool. Thanks for the drowning-polar-bear nightmares.

One: David Hyde Pierce comes out of the closet. No doubt to a chorus of people saying what I said: he was IN the closet???? Does anyone else remember his one-man Off-B'way (possibly off-off) show about... well, gayness... from the 90s? If that was from the closet, I can only imagine what he does out of it.

Two: To the Earth is performing at the 2007 ROSMY art auction. You should go, and give money, because ROSMY rocks. I even like their website now, and you know what a site snob I am.

Three: My colleagues, on reading the announcement about Pride Month on the intranets, were all are there really a lot of transvestites at Wilderness Office Park? which turned into this fabulous conversation wherein I? Was not a self-righteous asshat for a change. We even talked about the idealogical tensions between feminism, the pushing-gender-boundaries trans perspective and the wrong-body trans perspective. This ties nicely into the conversation we'd had earlier about the Sex Workers Art Show wherein one of my (white, yuppie, male) colleagues was way more up on contemporary anti-porn feminism than I.

Four: Big Eden is a sweet sweet movie. Almost all of its emotional content is stilted and unsaid, and yet it is filled with the squee and the happy communityness. I have now watched it like three times, and want to hug all the fictional people in it.

Five: This isn't exactly about The Gay, but reflects the same message from the universe (namely: dumbass, stop underestimating people and faking it): Kent Beck on ease at work. He's one of the original Agile dudes, but this is an hour of him talking about people (well, programmers, but you can generalize from that) being authentic and kind with each other in a professional way. Work is like middle school - no one ever seems to feel they can get by without fakery. And yet, Mean Girls style, maybe if we just start from somewhere, we all can. This is, I believe, my lesson about the world these days.

Sometimes Overheard in the Office is inappropriate and sexist and wrong and bad, but sometimes it's filled with the delightful odor of gay stereotype.

And hey, it's always perversely funny.

I have real problems with John Kerry. He was on the Today Show this morning as I woke up (mumbling "grr, I hate you"), talking about Bush's gay marriage posturing as a feint.

So, yes, I think the Right is making gay marriage an issue to define their stance clearly on something, but it's also pretty apparent that the Left (i.e. the lovetastic city of San Francisco) is equally out there. I'm disturbed that Kerry has me defending Bush's rationale like this, but it's clear that Bush had to respond in some way. The way he has chosen is stupid and misguided and will further alienate middle-leaning socially liberal Republicans, but he had to choose. I'll assume Kerry's savvy enough to realize this, and is just capitalizing on the stupid extremism in order to pick up the middle-leaners for himself.

Because his most recent rhetoric on the subject has actually come out and stated that he is with Bush, he decidedly opposes gay marriage (no mention as previously of the civil union consolation prize), and what he doesn't like is putting a 1 man 1 woman definition of marriage in the Constitution.

Is it possible that Kerry is even more like a Republican than Gore was? And is it any wonder so many people in my cohort can barely muster the enthusiasm to vote at all?

I just try to remind myself that at least - we hope - Kerry wouldn't declare war on a woman's right to choose immediately upon taking office.