There comes a time in all great nations when it's necessary to hit the brakes and back up. My hope is that today we'll start to see Obama hit Ctrl-Z several dozen times such as:

• Rerouting funding for abstinence-only education to programs that provide education on and help obtaining condoms and birth control.
• Repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell and allow everyone who wishes serve their country with dignity and not in hiding.
• Repeal the "Defense of Marriage" Act and federally recognize same-sex unions, under whatever label, just as the federal government does opposite-sex unions.
• Provide more stringent requirements on the financial industry to prevent a occurrence of this last financial fubar.
• Hold all government agencies responsible for constitutional violations such as warrant-less wiretapping and ensure future violations do not occur.
• Mandate more fuel-efficient vehicles and remove our dependency on foreign oil.
• Listen to scientists who tell you the environment and planet is going to hell in a handbasket and act on the information.

Most of the above (with the exception of DADT) were done under Bush's watch, if not by his hand. I'm hoping over the next few months we'll see Obama make judicious use of Ctrl-Z and undoing some of Bush's (and in the case of DADT, Clinton's) screwups either via Executive Order or working with Congress. I don't think Obama is the nation's savior and I don't think I'll be happy with everything he'll do, but for the first time in 5-8 years I have some confidence in our executive branch.

And, borrowing from my friend Mark, lets hope the undo buffer is big enough to support these actions.

Tags: economics, environment, glbt

Note: This post is a long, but required, background to groking the following entry. The follow-up of that post is that we ended up leaving for Denver before the church leaders made a decision one way or the other making it a moot point. Previously it was locked to a small group of people but today I've opened it up to everyone.

Benjamin and I have been attending Flatirons Community Church for over a year now. A month ago they announced that they would be starting a Deaf ministry and were asking for volunteers. I've really missed interpreting and thought I'd try to become involved again. After contacting them once a week for three weeks (once by email, once by a note at the information desk on Sunday morning, and once via a call to their offices) they finally emailed me last week asking, in a not-so-abrupt way, what my qualifications were and how I thought I could help. I replied with my background interpreting for Gateway Community Church.

About the same time the Flatirons kicked off their BRiX campaign which in short is their campaign to build a new building as they have outgrown their current location many times over and are told they would not be able to renew their lease on the current building when it expires in 2 years.

Flatirons, like Gateway, is very gay-welcoming -- not in the affirming way, but in the same way they would welcome a perpetrator of domestic violence or an alcoholic: come and get help. For the most part this doesn't bother me, I find value in the sermons and worship and can ignore their unspoken bigoted viewpoints on homosexuality.

In a sense this is all a big episode of deja vu. Gateway did a similar building campaign for similar reasons about two (three?) years before we left Austin. We contributed financially to building the new building only to feel like we were kicked out of the church after having done so because the leadership found out I was gay. I can't bring myself to even think about giving Flatirons money towards building their new building. Every time I do I have bile rise up in the back of my throat and I become hostile and defensive.

The rational, logical, part of me realizes that I'm making a strong correlation between Flatirons and Gateway and that to date I don't have any official information that would confirm that Flatirons has the same "no gay people in leadership" position that Gateway had. Furthermore if I continue to find value and meaning in the sermon and worship, isn't that enough to helping financially?

The rare, but alive, irrational and emotional part of me, however, still has sway. It has become obvious to me over the past several weeks that Gateway's actions over two years ago hurt me much worse than I had thought. Between that and the tight race on Proposition 8 in California (including all of the lies by the "Christians" who are intent on denying equal rights to fellow human beings) I've developed a rather high aversion to the religion of my youth. I'm still trying to work through it all. I'm afraid the pseudo-rambling nature of this post highlights my internal conflict.

It's no surprise how the greatest determent to a gay person attending church is the bigots that inhabit most of them.

Tags: glbt

I'm sure you already heard, but good news from CA today! Gay marriage is legal in California!

"In contrast to earlier times, our state now recognizes that an individual's capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person and responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual's sexual orientation," the court said in the 120-page ruling, "and, more generally, that an individual's sexual orientation -- like a person's race or gender -- does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights.

"We therefore conclude that in view of the substance and significance of the fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship, the California Constitution properly must be interpreted to guarantee this basic civil right to all Californians, whether gay or heterosexual, and to same-sex couples as well as to opposite-sex couples."

Now there's two states that B and I can move to after he graduates from college!

Tags: glbt, society