Live 2 Learn

Anyone who knows me probably chuckled when they read that title cause if you know me you have to know that dangerous is something to which I could never lay claim! Seriously I am about the most non-violent, conflict avoiding, peace loving person you could ever meet. I'm a conformist at heart - I hate drawing attention to myself. I follow rules. So how come I say that I'm a dangerous man? Because my relationship with my partner threatens to destroy the sanctity of no less an institution than marriage! If my partner and I would be allowed to marry (we've been together for nine years) the family as we know it as an institution would become a thing of the past! It's very interesting to have this kind of power. I know the power must be real because the voters in a lot of states (Texas included) voted to amend their constitutions so that I can never get married there. Actually I can't even go to a state where Gay marriage is allowed and get married and then come back to T...

Today I decided to go home for lunch - my third sinus infection in two months was making me feel like I needed some alone time. After fixing a sandwich and sitting down at the table I clicked the television on to Court TV or maybe it's called TruTV now? Anyway, coverage was focused on the conclusion of a trial involving a man accused in the robbery and murder of a Gay man. It seems that three men had been arrested when they were selling the victim's car and the defendant on trial admitted that he was involved in selling the car but that he had not participated in the murder. He actually said when he found out they were going to kill the man to get the car he told them he didn't want any part of murder but would help sell the car. He must have gotten bad legal advice because admitting what he did made him as guilty as if he had pulled the trigger (or in this case, handled the knife) under Florida law. Or maybe he was just stupid because between his arrest and the time of tri...

Senator Larry Craig REPUBLICAN from Idaho resigned from the Senate after his fellow Republicans basically drummed him out, once it was revealed that he plead guilty to lesser charges attempting to make an arrest "go away" after he was caught soliciting gay sex from an undercover cop in a Minneapolis airport men's room. Whew! Long sentence. Not as long as the "sentence" former-Senator Craig will now serve - the rest of his life. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/washington/02cong.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1188833432-HihlfGKMg0zSlrXLeG3DbA I was not familiar with Craig until all this happened. He was just another stereotypical Republican homophobe voting against adding sexual orientation to the Hate Crimes Act, voting for the so-called Protection of Marriage bill, sanctimoniously condemning Bill Clinton as a "nasty, naughty, boy" when the Monica story broke. He was actively anti-gay like many Republicans and like many persecutor...

I'll start this entry by saying that I don't know exactly where I am going with it - it hasn't been thought through like my other entries but by the time I finish I hope that I understand a reaction I had a couple of weeks ago and maybe both of us can learn from it? It was my birthday and to celebrate my partner invited four of our friends to dinner at Sampaio - my favorite Brazilian restaurant in Austin. We all know each other, some better than others, so I was looking forward to a nice, relaxing, fun conversation. We are all gay, fairly liberal politically, literate, educated, well-read and skilled conversationalists - what could go wrong? Religion. Maybe that's the biggest source of difference for us and in hindsight perhaps something we should have avoided. It started innocently enough; we were talking about relationships - the six of us constituted two single guys and two couples. One of the single guys, let's call him Jay, said that he made a pact with a singl...