If not now, when?

Today was the Multifaith Pride service that kicks off the Austin Pride weekend for 2010. I had the great pleasure to be on the planning committee for the service and got to meet and work with a wide variety of people.

Our speaker for the event was Bishop Yvette Flunder, and ladies and gentlemen, she made all our work worth the effort. If you ever get the chance to hear her speak, I encourage you to do so.

Bishop Flunder related a Martin Luther King, Jr. quote that she used as a call to action.

..."We must answer and deal with one or two myths that are still disseminated and often block powerful social action in order to grapple with the evils of society. One argument is the myth of time. This myth says in substance that only time can solve problems that we face in the area of human relations. So there are those who say to individuals struggling to make justice a reality. Why don't you wait and stop pushing so hard. If you will just be patient and wait 100 or 200 years the problem will work itself out. Well this argument still goes around. The only answer that one can give to this myth is that time is neutral. It can be used either constructively or destructively...Somewhere along the way we must see that time will never solve the problem alone but that we must help time...We must always help time and realize that the time is always right to do right."

This notion that now is not the right time to fight for LGBT equality is one that we've heard over and over again, most especially from our government. If we wait for the time to be right, nothing will happen. Change only occurs over time because there are those who will fight for it. Minds are not changed unless someone speaks out about injustice.

Now is the time to continue to fight. Federal legislation to kill DADT is only the first step. The policy is still in place and we need to continue to push for its full dismantling.  DOMA needs to be revoked. Same-sex marriage should be a right. Why should LGBTs accept the conditional justice of civil unions? Why should they accept something that is second best? We need a trans-inclusive ENDA to become the law of the land. No one should fear losing their job because of their sexual orientation or gender expression. Why should they accept that they are second class citizens?

Now is the time. We have the momentum. We must continue the fight. Gay or straight. Black or white. Male or female. If as a nation we believe that all men are created equal, now is the time to live up to that statement.

If not now, when?

Philip Spooner set to music

On April 22, 2009, Philip Spooner spoke before the Maine legislature. His testimony in favor of same-sex marriage was inspiring. So much so that Melissa Dunphy wrote this piece for the 2010 Simon Carrington Chamber Singers Composition Competition:



Watch it with the annotation on. It can be a bit hard to understand at times, but well worth the 8 minutes.

"What do you think I fought for at Omaha Beach?"  That was this man's answer to what he thought about equality for LGBTs. It should be the answer we all give.

NaBloPoMo for June

I have been a bad blogger of late; posting irregularly at best. So I've signed up for NaBloPoMo this month. This month's theme is NOW.

I like this theme. It has possibilities. Plus, NaBloPoMo has daily writing prompts for when I have brain freeze.

My current now is all about the Youngest. She's moving out today. As I speak, Hubs is packing a moving van with her and her roommate's stuff. Youngest has recruited her friends and ever present posse to help with the move. I got to help her pack over the long weekend while Hubs was helping Eldest move from one apartment to another in Denton. (Remember when you used to move on an annual or bi-annual basis? Me? Not so much. I haven't moved in 16 years. Though if memory serves, it sucks.)

After work, I get to help with the unpacking. Rah. First I pack it, then I unpack it. At least I don't have to haul it around.

So, as of this evening, we will be alone in the house. (If one can call a house with 3 dogs empty, that is.) I have been awaiting this moment with nothing short of glee. I love my Youngest but I am more than ready for her to be on her own. I am just not up to the continual parade of friends, the late nights and the floordrobe. Though the dogs will miss the last bit. It's their second favorite place to sleep. (First is our waterbed). She's just down the road in Austin and I have no doubt we'll be seeing her fairly frequently.

I've had several people tell me that I'll miss her. Maybe. But those same people (ok, not the exact same but you know what I mean) told me I'd miss my kids when they started elementary school and they were wrong then. No weeping over my babies going off to school then and none now.

Besides, I have her dog. She'll be back.

Stemming the flow - is it working or not?

BP is still working their top kill procedure. For a while on Wednesday, it looked like it was working and the flow of oil had stopped. Now we're being told the top kill procedure will continue until at least Sunday.

When I went  to the live BP feed this morning, this is what I saw:

Not much at all, really.  A long extended shot of nothing. Just what is going on is completely unclear to me, but what's missing are the oil flows that have been present in previous live feeds. Does this mean the top kill is working or just that the area is so completely flooded with mud and oil that nothing can be seen?

(I did learn something however. If you right click on the live feed and save as source, you'll get a much clearer feed than what appears on the BP site.)

Computer wizardry aside, by the time I got my screen shot converted to a JPG and inserted in this post, (which took me a while since screen shots on a Mac involve a separate piece of software, which I had to Google and then find, and it saves images as TIFF files which Blogger apparently doesn't recognize and which I then had to figure out how to convert) the live feed had changed. More oil. My guess is that the ROV started very close to the source and then pulled away for a better overall view.

So, more oil. Claims that the top kill had worked and stopped the oil flow seem to have been grossly premature.  Cause that sure doesn't look like it's working to me. Black flow is mostly oil. Whitish flow is mostly gas. Beige is evidence of blow back from the top kill. Looks black to me.

What this will mean for the Gulf ecosystem no one really knows for sure. Oil can still be found on the shores of Prince William sound 21 years after the Valdez sank. 31 years ago, an offshore well called IXTOC 1 blew off the shore of Mexico.  It's eerily similar to the  Deepwater Horizon event with the exception that it occurred in much shallower waters. Virtually everything that has been done for the DH blowout was done at IXTOC. What finally sealed that blowout? Drilling a relief well that took nine months to complete.

We're in for a long, messy summer folks.

OMG. GOP. WTF. Idaho edition

Apparently Vaughn Ward, Republican candidate for Congress, is the worst candidate ever.  At least according to TPM.

This guy has a long list of gaffes. Let's list them, shall we?

1. He thinks Puerto Rico is a foreign country
2. He reissued endorsements as the primary approached and claimed it was to make sure they were picked up by the press.
3. He campaigned to cut federal spending on financial bailouts while his wife was the primary bread winner, employed at Fannie Mae, recipient of bailout monies.
4. He plagiarized the Prez.

Seriously. Watch this side by side video created by his TEA PARTY OPPONENT.



This was the best that Idaho mainstream Repubs could come up with. I suppose this is less an OMG moment but it sure qualifies for WTF.

Money quote from Zandar:

Just because the economy is bad and there are lots of problems America faces today, doesn't magically make Republicans any more competent, folks.