Oscar Roundup

Fosco didn't watch the Oscars (with one brief exception, as you'll see). But he did keep track of the developments via two live blogs: Ted Gideonse and Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight.com.

First off, let me congratulate the Fosco Lives! reader who correctly predicted the Best Picture winner, Ghetto Superstar, in our first ever Oscar poll. As for the four of you who foolishly voted for Brad Pitt vehicle, The Splendiferous Zeppelin Escapades of Filliam H. Muffman, well, you guys suck.

Speaking of predictions and sucking, it looks like baseball/politics statistics guru Nate Silver was out of his element. The predictions from his logistic regression model were accurate for four of the six categories he predicted. While this is better than chance, it's much worse than the "educated guesses" of insiders like Entertainment Weekly's Dave Karger (who got all six correct). Sorry, Nate: your math is powerless against Hollywood.

Fortuitously, the part of the Oscars that Fosco did see was Sean Penn's Best Actor acceptance speech. I loved that he called out the Prop 8 supporters, referring to "the shame in their grandchildren's eyes" when said grandchildren someday learn that their forebears voted for the measure. I thought this rocked.

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Be My Friend, Anne Hathaway?

Fosco isn't generally that interested in celebrities, unless they are impossibly attractive or do something incomparably stupid. Oh, and he does occasionally enjoy a good episode of "Hey Paula." But he rarely gets the feeling that he would like to hang out with or be friends with any celebrity. And yet, Fosco has been getting this huge friend crush lately for Miss Anne Hathaway. Like so much so that he's starting to think that it might be fun to get stuck next to her on a plane sometime (an idea he got from this story).

Here--I'm just going to say it... I think Anne Hathaway is really cool.

Why is Anne Hathaway so cool? Some reasons:

• She was like a teen role model (in the effortlessly enchanting Princess Diaries movies) who then graduated to showing her ample bosom and serious acting skills in the Brokeback. Not that many actresses have successfully made that transition (case in point). I think it would be fun to go dress shopping with her and joke about her boobs.
  
• She's had some bad luck with men, but she's very funny about it. Her previous boyfriend seems to have dropped the Pope's name to defraud investors (which seems like a bad idea if you are at all concerned about the ultimate destination of your immortal soul). But Anne is very funny about the whole thing, responding to Ellen's recent attempt to fix her up:
  

  "At this point I would just like him to be law abiding."

  That's comedy gold, Anne.
  
• She's really smart. And I don't just mean "Hollywood smart" or "actor smart"--you can aspire to either of those categories just by wearing glasses. No, Anne went to a reputable Seven Sisters college (although not the best one) and also NYU. She was an English and Women's Studies major (two of Fosco's faves). And recently, she used the phrase "process metaphysics" during an award acceptance speech. I don't want to get my hopes up too much, but I'm starting to suspect that Anne and I could have a meaningful conversation about literature.
  
• She's politically engaged, especially when it comes to gay rights. On a red carpet, she recently called out Obama about the Rick Warren thing. And in an interview to promote her upcoming Bridezilla movie, Anne identified her best wedding memory as her brother's same-sex wedding. (In the same interview, she also names one of Fosco's favorite songs, "Maps" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, as a must-play song for her own wedding.)
  
• Oh, and the best part about her political engagement? She puts her money where her mouth is. As Fosco documented earlier, Anne donated $10,000 to fight Prop 8 (which is a lot of money, really).
  

Now Anne, I'm sure you get this kind of thing all the time, especially from well-read gay bloggers (who are rarer than one might think...), but... well... do want to get a veggie burger at Shake Shack and talk about The Great Bolaño the next time Fosco is in NYC? Fosco will buy.

Headlines of the Day

By last night, Fosco had a full day of posts planned for today--and then all kinds of great stories showed up in the news today. There is nothing to do but to condense them all into some kind of "Headlines Digest."

• Black support for Prop 8 may have been exaggerated. Is it time to apologize to Sherri Shepherd? (Psst: the answer is NO).
  
• For you parents out there: one in five teens are sending sexually explicit photos of themselves online or via cell phone. Some parents worry whether this will come back to haunt these teens later in life. (Not unless they're stupid enough to include their faces.)
  
• Apparently, Bristol Palin is a teen role model for Alaskans. At least that seems to be the appropriate conclusion for Alaska's nineteen percent increase in teen pregnancy this year. Why is it that the states with the highest rates of teen pregnancy (Mississippi, Texas, Alaska) are also some of the most committed to religious "abstinence only" sex ed? Hmmm. Let's hope that Alaskan teens choose better names than "Twink" for their kids.
  
• Obama will nominate TV doctor Sanjay Gupta for Surgeon General. Why is this a bad idea? Well, Dr. Gupta may be an apologist for HMOs. He may also be a dick. By the way, does this mean that Greta Van Susteren should be Attorney General?

A Model of Reasonable Debate

You may have noticed that there are occasional disagreements in the Comments between Fosco and his good friend The BeeMaster (not pictured at right). Fosco and The BeeMaster go way back--in fact, The BeeMaster is one of the kindest people that Fosco knows. This may surprise you, as Fosco is pretty leftish and The BeeMaster is a fire-breathing conservative. But, stranger things have happened. In all honesty, Fosco likes to think that his ongoing discussion with The BeeMaster is a pretty nice example of Obama's dictum about "disagreeing without being disagreeable."

Most recently, Fosco and The BeeMaster have been sparring over Rick Warren and Obama. The BeeMaster has taken issue with this Fosco post on Warren and has responded in the comments section to that post. As Fosco was in the middle of a very long response to The BeeMaster's response, he realized that he should just make the whole exchange into a post on the front page of Fosco Lives!. And so here is The BeeMaster's original comment, followed by Fosco's reply. And yes, Fosco will happily append any additional response by The BeeMaster into this post.

THE BEEMASTER'S COMMENT:
When watching the Rick Warren interview in question:

http://www.beliefnet.com/Video/Beliefnet-Interviews/Rick-Warren/Rick-Warren-Interview-On-Gay-Marriage-And-Divorce.aspx

it's a stretch to say he likens gay marriage to incest and pedophilia. In the same interview, he says divorce is a greater threat to the family than gay marriage. So following the same logic would bring us to the dubious conclusion that Rick Warren thinks divorce is worse than incest and pedophilia. Since this is nonsense, one of two things must be untrue. Either Warren doesn't think divorce is worse than gay marriage, OR he doesn't consider gay marriage the same as incest and pedophilia. Watching the interview, it's clear the latter and not the former is the case.

So what's the big problem with Rick Warren praying at the inaugeration? That he opposes gay marriage? Big deal - so does Obama.

The largest group opposed to gay marriage is evangelical Christians. Vilifying Rick Warren hurts, not helps, the cause of gay marriage. It casts its supporters as harsh and (ironically) intolerant. It makes evangelicals fear that, should gay marriage become legal, their churches could be forced to perform such ceremonies or that pastors speaking out against the practice would be accused of hate crimes. Rick Warren specifically mentions this fear as the reason he supported proposition 8. Being smeared for his view makes the point more profoundly than he could ever have.

The BeeMaster


FOSCO'S RESPONSE:
It's true that I feel some ambivalence on this topic. For one thing, I don't think Rick Warren is the worst thing ever. For the most part, he seems like a pretty likable and reasonable guy (and strangely enough, Fosco looks a little like him--although Fosco has more hair). I can see why he's built such a large and successful church. Sure, I'm having a little fun with his hair plugs and the title of his book, but I even do that with people that I like.

And yes, I do recognize that Obama is opposed to gay marriage as well (as the numerous robocalls on my answering machine on November 4 reminded me). I'm not thrilled about that either.

As for the Warren interview in question, I recognize that he views divorce as a much greater threat to marriage than gay unions. Good for him! I wish that point were made more frequently.

However, that interview still includes this exchange:

WARREN: The issue to me, I'm not opposed to that as much as I'm opposed to redefinition of a 5,000 year definition of marriage. I'm opposed to having a brother and sister being together and calling that marriage. I'm opposed to an older guy marrying a child and calling that marriage. I'm opposed to one guy having multiple wives and calling that marriage.

BELIEFNET: Do you think those are equivalent to gays getting married?

WARREN: Oh , I do.

Now Warren is too savvy to use the normally-accepted words for his three examples, but he is clearly talking about
1. incest
2. pedophilia
3. polygamy
And then he explicitly agrees that these three examples are "equivalent to gay getting married." Now none of these may be as threatening to marriage as divorce (presumably because they are all much rarer), but he still makes this comparison (and has had ample opportunity to retract/clarify--especially in this transcript which includes several retrospective Warren clarifications.

So, while Warren's rhetoric may not be as inflammatory as some of the opponents of Prop 8, it's pretty clear that he wants to equate gay marriage with incest, pedophilia, and polygamy.

As for the question of whether Prop 8 would require churches to marry gay couples, I just can't understand how this keeps getting cited. As far as I can tell, every church can determine who they want to marry. Churches can set rules about marriage that go beyond (or even contradict) civil laws about marriage. The one I know best is the Catholic Church, which reserves the right to set all kinds of conditions on marriage. You can't just walk into a Catholic Church and get married. I believe the Mormons are the same. In fact, I suspect that there of plenty of churches in the South that would refuse an interracial marriage (and could legally do so).

Of course, civil authorities are not amused when rogue Mormons try to marry young girls to old men, but that's more of a case of certain child protection laws trumping religious freedom (something that, btw, pretty much all Americans agree on). And besides, that's a case of the State invalidating a religious marriage, not of the State requiring a religion to perform a specific type of marriage.

This is different, I also want to note, from recent cases in Connecticut where justices of the peace are required to conform to the law and marry gay couples. In those cases, justices of the peace are civil, not religious, authorities (although they may also have their personal religious beliefs). Civil marriage is an entirely different thing from religious marriage, and civil officials are required by law to perform any marriage that is legal. Religious officials are NOT required to perform any legal marriage, nor will they ever be.

I think Rick Warren is a smart guy and I just don't believe he is worried that his Saddleback Church will be forced to marry gay couples. He knows the difference between civil marriage laws and religious discretion in the case of marriage. I think he is bringing this up purely as a scare tactic.

As for hate speech argument, I still think Rick Warren is smart enough to know better. He's being cynical here. He knows the difference between hate speech and "politically incorrect" speech. I'm going to use race to make this point. When an old school Southern-fried racist says that Black people are inferior (or that they shouldn't marry white people), that's bigotry but it's not hate speech. Hate speech is speech that is intended to incite violence. So if Warren says that gay people shouldn't get married, he may be wrong (and he may be bigoted), but there is no court in this country that would call that hate speech. Now, if he were to say that his churchmembers should get a baseball bat and "teach gays a lesson," then we'd be in the realm of hate speech.

Now I'll be the first to agree that some gay activists (and, strangely enough, some evangelical conservatives like Huckabee) are trying to elide the distinction between bigotry and hate speech. But even liberal courts know better than to let this distinction slide. For all of the supposed liberal or conservative biases in the federal judiciary in the last twenty years, federal judges are still surprisingly protective of First Amendment rights (for which we can thank the ACLU?). All of this is a long-winded way of saying that, unless Rick Warren plans to call for gay-bashing, he doesn't need to worry about being prosecuted for hate speech. And this is the part that pisses me off: he knows this. He's a smart and sophisticated guy. Or at least, he should know this. Which leads me to the conclusion that Rick Warren is arguing in bad faith.

When it comes down to it, if Rick Warren were just to say "I oppose gay marriage because it goes against my religion," I would have to accept that. I might disagree with him. And I may try to question whether Rick Warren is interpreting the Bible correctly. But I would have to be civil about it. Because, when it comes down to it, Rick Warren would be telling the truth and trying to communicate with me in good faith. And I recognize that Rick Warren does this most of the time. But when he resorts to using scare words and prophesying legal problems that will never materialize, I have to question his honesty.

All that being said, I definitely agree with The BeeMaster's assertion that gay-marriage activists have to deal with evangelical Christians in a constructive way (and Fosco hasn't always done this, I recognize). And I hope this exchange is a step in the right direction.

A Reasonable Response to an Anti-Gay Inauguration

In case you missed it while you were playing Rock Band 2 all weekend, Frank Rich had an excellent op-ed piece in the NYTimes about the whole Rick Warren inauguration kerfuffle. Fosco, like a lot of gays, has been trying to come to terms with Obama's choice in a way that doesn't minimize its hurtfulness without overplaying its importance (and Fosco will be first to admit that he has yet to find the right balance). Luckily, Frank Rich's column does all of Fosco's work for him.

[Before we begin, I have to know: do the older pictures of Warren (like the one above) raise the issue of whether he's now sporting a hair transplant?]

But back to Rich's column...

One of the questions raised by the Warren choice is that of the extent to which people with repugnant viewpoints should be allowed "at the table" as it were. To what extent can Obama maintain something like a "big tent" of political opinion without actively banishing large sections of the US populace (like the Christian right)? In this case, a distinction needs to be made between "at the table" and "at the head of the table." Rich is right on here:

But there’s a difference between including Warren among the cacophony of voices weighing in on policy and anointing him as the inaugural’s de facto pope. You can’t blame V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire, the first openly gay Episcopal bishop and an early Obama booster, for feeling as if he’d been slapped in the face. “I’m all for Rick Warren being at the table,” he told The Times, but “we’re talking about putting someone up front and center at what will be the most-watched inauguration in history, and asking his blessing on the nation. And the God that he’s praying to is not the God that I know.”

Similarly, we have to raise the question of the balance between all the good that Rick Warren does (focusing on climate change, poverty and AIDS, for example) and his evil (comparing gay marriage to incest, pedophilia, etc.) Once again, Rich gets it:

Warren, whose ego is no less than Obama’s, likes to advertise his “commitment to model civility in America.” But as Rachel Maddow of MSNBC reminded her audience, “comparing gay relationships to child abuse” is a “strange model of civility.”

Rick Warren may be saying the right things on lots of different issues, but that doesn't change the fact that he has openly lied about gay marriage. It is one thing to say that his religion leads him to oppose gay marriage; it's another thing to raise fear and hatred by comparing gay marriage to the bogeymen of incest and child abuse. Once again, it is possible for us to condemn Rick Warren without condemning all religion.

The other big question here is why Obama, a strong supporter of (most) LGBT rights, thinks this is a good idea in the first place. Hint: there's hubris involved...

Much more to the point is the astute criticism leveled by the gay Democratic congressman Barney Frank, who, in dissenting from the Warren choice, said of Obama, “I think he overestimates his ability to get people to put aside fundamental differences.” That’s a polite way of describing the Obama cockiness.
[...]
When Obama defends Warren’s words by calling them an example of the “wide range of viewpoints” in a “diverse and noisy and opinionated” America, he is being too cute by half. He knows full well that a “viewpoint” defaming any minority group by linking it to sexual crimes like pedophilia is unacceptable.

Obama would love to be able to force a reconciliation between the gays and the evangelicals based solely on the power of his (admittedly commanding) personality. Unfortunately, however, there are conflicts that can't be mended through the power of personality or through the strategy of extreme inclusion. There are indeed issues on which we cannot "all just get along" and these are the issues that Obama, as someone who aspires to some version of progressivism, needs to take a stand on.

Of course, in the end, none of this will really matter much if Obama repeals "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," opposes a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, and works to pass ENDA. On this point, Rich quotes historian Timothy McCarthy:

McCarthy added that it’s also time “for President-elect Obama to start acting on the promises he made to the LGBT community during his campaign so that he doesn’t go down in history as another Bill Clinton, a sweet-talking swindler who would throw us under the bus for the sake of political expediency.” And “for LGBT folks to choose their battles wisely, to judge Obama on the content of his policy-making, not on the character of his ministers.”

If Obama does this, I'm willing to give him a pass on Rick Warren. So now let's get back to Rock Band.

I'm over Obama.

So Barry O has chosen Bear icon Rick Warren to pray at the Inaug. I suppose this isn't a huge surprise, except to those of us who briefly confused the word "progressive" with the word "pragmatist." Realistically, same-sex marriage is still seen as an issue on which it is possible for reasonable people to disagree and Barry is certainly making a fetish of "disagreeing without being disagreeable." Barry is sharp and he knows the best way to "govern from the center" is to kick the gays in the crotch. It's probably the right move politically.

For those of you who don't know, Rick Warren heads the Bareback MegaChurch in SoCal. He's written some book (about marine biology, I think) called The Porpoise Driven Life. He was an outspoken (and mendacious) supporter of Prop H8. Apparently, Rick Warren is some kind of "new evangelical" who is willing to take on climate change and global poverty. That's fine with me, as far as it goes. I guess that's an improvement over some evangelicals.

But at some point, wouldn't it be nice to see the words "new" or "change" applied to a movement that doesn't have the "same" "old" attitude toward the gays?

A (Hypothetical) New Addition to the Fosco Family

It's possible that Prop H8 isn't an entirely bad thing...

Now follow the logic here:

1. Once we allow same-sex couple to marry, then (as Fosco noted earlier) Fosco and his boyfriend Oz will want to get married.
   
2. And once we allow same-sex couples to get married, at some point gay couples are going to want to use advanced genetic engineering to make babies with each other.
   
3. And once that happens, it's only a matter of time until Fosco and Oz jump on the bandwagon and want to produce a child that is a genetic combination of them both.
   
4. And that leads inexorably to this:

Behold: the genetic combination of Fosco and Oz, as created on the website MakeMeBabies! (thanks, Mere, for the idea).

Of course, you may be forgiven for misrecognizing this as a baby photo of one of the Jackson Five (Marlon? Tito? Frito?). Is it just me, or does MakeMeBabies! think that either Fosco or Oz is Black?

At any rate, this horror-child must be avoided at all costs. And that's probably the best reason to support Prop H8.

Your Day Without Gay Fosco

Although he earlier poo-pooed the idea, Fosco is calling in gay to Fosco Lives! tomorrow. In fact, Fosco is swearing off the entire web for the day. Alas, he would love to avoid email as well, but he has a responsibility to his students...

Why the change of heart? Fosco read this excellent post, which included some convincing options for people (like Fosco) who can't skip work tomorrow but who want to make an impact nonetheless. The idea here is to efface one's presence economically:

Here are 5 ways you can make an impact tomorrow:
1. Volunteer your time and services after work
2. Do not buy anything
3. Do not watch TV or use your cell phone
4. Do not go online (yup, don’t even visit this site tomorrow)… Online advertising is everywhere and a simple page load could cause money to be spent.
5. Do not buy lunch (and don’t go out today to get what you need for lunch tomorrow), find something you already have and pack your lunch.

Fosco is going to try all of these (with an exception for his work-related email). In other words, Fosco is going to become as invisible as possible for the day. And he sure as hell won't be shopping at Urban Outfitters (but I guess that kinda goes without saying).

So what are you to do without new content on Fosco Lives! for a whole day? Well, without Fosco here to hector you about Prop H8, how will you keep up to date? Never fear: here's some Prop H8-related reading to do in your free time on Wednesday:

• The must-read article of the week is Newsweek's cover story on the relationship between religion and gay marriage. Guess what: religious fundamentalists may be misreading the bible (no! yes!). How so?
  

  The argument goes something like this statement, which the Rev. Richard A. Hunter, a United Methodist minister, gave to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in June: "The Bible and Jesus define marriage as between one man and one woman. The church cannot condone or bless same-sex marriages because this stands in opposition to Scripture and our tradition."
  
  To which there are two obvious responses: First, while the Bible and Jesus say many important things about love and family, neither explicitly defines marriage as between one man and one woman. And second, as the examples above illustrate, no sensible modern person wants marriage—theirs or anyone else's —to look in its particulars anything like what the Bible describes.

  In fact, Lisa Miller (the author) concludes that
  

  Scripture gives us no good reason why gays and lesbians should not be (civilly and religiously) married—and a number of excellent reasons why they should.

  Good, good stuff.
  
  
• A great article in the NYTimes about the new gay activism (a very heartening piece, actually). Apparently, gay youth are taking Prop H8 as a wakeup call to abandon the timid rhetoric of traditional gay rights organizations in favor of a more confrontational approach. This seems like a reasonable conclusion. The appeasement/assimilation strategy of groups like the Human Rights Campaign has clearly reached its limit. It turns out that people aren't just going to give full civil rights to gays as long as we act harmless enough. We are going to get our full civil rights when we demand them and when we do so with enough power and strength to make people listen.
  
  The other great thing about this article are the tantalizing hints of protests to come:
  

  But many activists seem unwilling to wait for a legal solution and have planned a series of events to keep the issue in the public eye, including a nationwide candlelight vigil later this month, a Million Gay March in Washington next spring and continued protests at county clerks’ offices throughout California.

  Fosco is so down for the Million Gay March.
  
  
• Think domestic partnership is an acceptable substitute for gay marriage? Here's a heartrending story by a gay man who is caring for his partner's developmentally disabled brother (luckily, there are also some heartwarming parts). Thanks, Todd for calling my attention to this piece.
  
  
• Did you ever notice how Mike Huckabee is a likable, penis-having (reputedly) Sarah Palin? He's just as crazy as she is, but he's actually appealing (and can string together complete sentences). He also seems to think that the gay civil rights struggle is not comparable to Black civil rights because Black people faced the threat of violence during their rights struggle (read the transcript). Sure, Huck... tell it to this guy:
  
  On this Day Without Gays, take a moment to think about those gays who are not with us anymore.

If you can't call in gay...

By now, you've probably heard that tomorrow is the Day without a Gay, a day when gays across the country (and their allies) will skip work to teach the rest of you a lesson about our indispensability (I hope none of you have Broadway tix...). But, the idea is not for all of the hooky-playing gays (and their allies) to lounge around their gay homes all day (see pic at right). Rather, we are encouraged to donate our time to community service projects.

Fosco loves the idea, of course, but as he mentioned previously, his students have a Final Exam tomorrow for which he sorta needs to be available. But luckily, Fosco is not alone: there are other gays who cannot get off work tomorrow. So what are important working gays like us supposed to do?

Luckily, the organizer

has specifically urged high school students not to walk out of their classes and assured college students they won't be disloyal to the cause if they go ahead and take their final exams. He also has listed opportunities--ranging from writing letters to members of Congress about federal gay rights legislation to spreading the word about Wednesday on social networking sites--for gay marriage backers who cannot miss work.

Or, if you prefer other options, one of the other marriage equality groups has offered another way to participate:

Join The Impact, the online community that launched protests last month over the passage of gay marriage bans in California, Florida and Arizona, has urged people to withdraw $80 from their bank accounts Wednesday to demonstrate gays' spending power, and to devote the time they might otherwise spend watching TV or surfing the Internet to volunteer work.

So what is Fosco to do? While it would probably be easiest for him to withdraw $80 from his bank account, he's not sure he actually has $80 in his bank account. I suppose he could spend his internet time volunteering. But wouldn't that be punishing you, Fosco's loyal readers? (Or is that the point?) And if gays choose not to watch television tomorrow, won't that cause "Top Chef" to tank? No one wants that. As for writing letters to members of Congress, we've already seen that Fosco has no luck (damn you, Feinstein and Boxer). So that leaves the option of promoting gay marriage rights on Facebook. Maybe Fosco will use his Facebook status message! Wow, activism sure is hard!

But seriously, Fosco will actually do something tomorrow (other than update his Facebook status) to participate in the No Gay Day. And you should too.

Prop H8: Can You Live Without Your Gays?

Now this is a protest! On Wednesday, December 10, gay people are "encouraged to call in 'gay'--and donate your time to service!" (Presumably they will have lots of time to donate to service after being fired for calling in "gay.") Read more about the protest here.

Why a day without the gays? Well,

Gay people and our allies are compassionate, sensitive, caring, mobilized, and programmed for success. A day without gays would be tragic because it would be a day without love.

You see, gays are like giant love sprinklers who spray love all over the lawn of the world, nourishing the fragile heterosexual plants. And without your love sprinkler, what will happen to your lawn? That's right: love-lawn brown spots.

Silly rhetoric aside (what does it mean that gays are "programmed for success"?), this is actually a pretty great idea--assuming that there is strong participation. It might just surprise some Californians how many people in their everyday lives are gay. And once you realize that there are gays all around you, you might be less willing to fuck with their civil rights.

Of course, this protest is also a boon for comedy, as there is the opportunity for numerous jokes here about hair-dressing, gym-teaching, etc. Hopefully, this piece at Gawker has preempted most of those jokes by doing them well in advance. The better quote from the Gawker piece is this one:

people will see that nice gay and lesbian folk are everywhere around them. Stopping traffic for their kids, delivering mail, folding t-shirts, baking bread, teaching maths, governing cities, practicing medicine, hilariously defending your civil rights in courts of law, fighting impossible wars so you don't have to, and so and so on, forever and ever.

Or even grading your final exams! That's right: Fosco has a bit of a conflict here on Wednesday as his students' final exam is scheduled for that day. Would it be a good lesson in tolerance for them if Fosco didn't show up?

Gays Respond As They Should: Musically!

Look what Fosco's boyfriend Oz found! And on the day after his birthday!

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

And here's some back story, just posted by the SF Chronicle. How can you not love Marc Shaiman? And NPH (can we please start calling him NPH?)!

Prop H8 Updh8

Yes, it's been literally days since Fosco talked to you about Prop H8. Don't worry, there is still Prop H8 news and Fosco is digesting it for you (so you don't have to!). Here are two Prop H8 titbits from the last couple of days:

• Tom Ackerman has a great trick to try on your married straight friends. As Ackerman writes:
  

  I no longer recognize marriage. It’s a new thing I’m trying.
  
  Turns out it’s fun.
  
  Yesterday I called a woman’s spouse her boyfriend.
  
  She says, correcting me, “He’s my husband,”
  “Oh,” I say, “I no longer recognize marriage.”
  
  The impact is obvious. I tried it on a man who has been in a relationship for years,
  
  “How’s your longtime companion, Jill?”
  “She’s my wife!”
  “Yeah, well, my beliefs don’t recognize marriage.”
  
  Fun. And instant, eyebrow-raising recognition. Suddenly the majority gets to feel what the minority feels. In a moment they feel what it’s like to have their relationship downgraded, and to have a much taken-for-granted right called into question because of another’s beliefs.

  Feel free to try this at home. Passive aggressive and funny... Fosco likes.
  
  
• In an NYTimes op-ed piece, Charles M. Blow considers how to sell same-sex marriage to Black people. Blow notes that Black women are likely to be the most hostile toward gay marriage (for a number of reasons, most of them unsurprising). Black women are also more likely to vote than are Black me.
  
  Blow argues that the arguments the gay community has adopted to promote marriage equality are not likely to convince Black women. Rather, he suggests we frame the debate in terms of the health of Black women! Here's the logic:
  

  [B]lacks overwhelmingly say that homosexuality isn’t morally acceptable. So many black men hide their sexual orientations and engage in risky behavior. This has resulted in large part in black women’s becoming the fastest-growing group of people with H.I.V. In a 2003 study of H.I.V.-infected people, 34 percent of infected black men said they had sex with both men and women, while only 6 percent of infected black women thought their partners were bisexual. Tragic. [...]
  
  So pitch it as a health issue. The more open blacks are to the idea of homosexuality, the more likely black men would be to discuss their sexual orientations and sexual histories. The more open they are, the less likely black women would be to put themselves at risk unwittingly. And, the more open blacks are to homosexuality over all, the more open they are likely to be to gay marriage.

  While this is worth a try, Fosco isn't convinced that it will make much of a difference. Really, what woman (of any race) is going to listen to the suggestion that she may be having sex with a closeted homosexual (or secret bisexual)? Blow's logic may make sense, but I just can't imagine any woman believing that his logic applies to her.
  

Tax law made interesting

Ooooh, the Mormons are in trouble...

According to the SFChronicle, the State of California will be investigating the Mormon Church as to "whether [it] accurately described its role in a campaign to ban gay marriage in the state."

Hmmm... Fosco can't help but wonder if this is the first step in revoking the Mormon Church's tax exempt status. As you may (not) know, churches (and other tax-exempt organizations) are not allowed to attempt to influence legislation in a substantial way. Doing so would endanger that organization's tax-exempt status. Some thoughtful observers think the Mormons crossed the line on this one. Fosco hopes this is the case. Think about what all that delicious Mormon money could do to offset California's major budget shortfall.

We're coming for your money, Mormons!

In which Fosco defends the role of the courts in democracy...

As you've probably heard, the CA Supreme Court has agreed to hear legal challenges to the despicable Prop H8. As the SF Chronicle notes,

the justices asked for written arguments to be submitted through Jan. 21. The court could hold a hearing as early as March, and a ruling would be due 90 days later.

That means that we could have a decision by mid-June.

This is good news, of course (although, as the article notes, there is reason to fear that one of the justices that originally overturned the marriage ban may not be willing to overturn Prop H8). It's also good news in that it could allow gay couples to plan late-June weddings (although, in California, a "June wedding" is possible nine months a year).

You may have noticed the little "teapot tempest" occurring in the comments section of one of Fosco's previous posts on H8. One of Fosco's friends, The Beemaster (come to think of it, why do Fosco and his friends have aliases that sound like supervillains? Count Fosco, The Beemaster, Oz... It's like a whole Legion of Doom thing...)--but anyway, The Beemaster has questioned whether relying on the courts to overturn a ballot initiative is a subversion of democracy. I have to disagree; in fact, I think court review of these kinds of things is actually one of the best features of our system of democracy because it protects the rights of minorities from whims of majorities.

Think about it. The state of Utah is 62% Mormon. That pretty much means that, if Utah allows its state constitution to be revised by a pure majority vote (like CA), the Mormons could decide to do anything they wanted to the non-Mormons. They could revoke suffrage, legalize discrimination, even require non-Mormons to wear special underwear (how ridiculous!). (Disclaimer: I don't know if the Utah constitution can be altered by a majority vote; but that doesn't change our thought experiment).

But, you say, that would never happen because the courts would prevent it (based on either the US or State constitution). Exactly.

Actually, we could even consider this in a CA context. Prop H8 passed with about 5 million votes (approx. 1/7 of the population of CA). Now there are lots of things I bet I could get 5 million Californians to vote for (especially if I had millions of dollars in Mormo cash to help me run a misleading ad campaign). Remember how they had those troubles linked to Black muslims in Oakland (at Your Black Muslim Bakery--no, that's your Black Muslim Bakery, not mine)? I bet I could get 5 million Californians to require Black muslims across the state to register with their local police departments.

Or what about Scientologists? Heck, I bet if I had enough money (enough to outspend the Cruises), I could even get 5 million CA voters to force Scientologists to get freaky facial tattoos!

My point should be ridiculously clear by now: a democracy doesn't work unless there are courts to protect minorities from impositions by the majority. Now, we can argue all day about how the CA Constitution (or the US Constitution) should be interpreted when it comes to marriage equality. Or, to put it a different way, we can argue all day about whether marriage equality is a basic civil right. But I don't think it's worth arguing that this is a question for the courts--this is exactly a question for the courts.

Excuse me while I stumble off of my soapbox to make a gin & tonic.

Week of Pictures

As Fosco surfs the web every day, he saves lots of random pictures that may be useful for blog posts. And then, at the end of the week, he realizes he isn't going to write about a bunch of them. So what to do with these poor, lost pics? How about a nice miscellaneous "Week of Pictures" post? Don't mind if I do...

• It probably wasn't necessary for the SF Chronicle to create this map; but now that they did, Fosco is fascinated. Do you wonder which neighborhoods of San Francisco voted in favor of Prop H8? Now you can see:
  
  Damn Chinatown! I need to find a new place to buy my favorite Melamine Chews.
  
  
• Remember the baby on the cover of Nirvana's "Nevermind"? Well, it appears that every fifteen years or so for the rest of your life that kid is going to recreate that CD cover. Look, he's all grown up!
  
  The next time he does this, I bet he won't be wearing those shorts. Oh, and that green money won't be worth anything.
  
  
• Is anyone surprised that George W. Bush knows how to make a filthy hand gesture that is popular with college students?
  
  
  Also, who isn't surprised that W's trashy daughter knows it too?
  
  He's raised himself a classy lady, that's for sure.
  
  
• Thanks to a recommendation by le kungfuramone, I am loving the site called Cake Wrecks (N.B., it's what you think it is). I laugh every time I see this one:
  
  Just posting this, I laughed again.
  
  Fireworks Explosion!

Now this was a day.

Last night, Fosco was flipping channels past his local news (the always amateurish KSBW Action News 8 serving Monterey, Salinas and Santa Cruz) when he caught their report on the national Marriage Equality rallies. The anchorette noted that 1000 people showed up in both Monterey and Salinas (surprising, as both cities are relatively conservative for this area). But the best part is when she said that an estimated 100 million people protested nationwide.

Of course, this number is absurdly wrong. As much as I would love for it to be true, that would mean that one third of the US population rallied in favor of gay marriage. I'm going to have to be skeptical of that figure.

But, even if this number was inflated, Saturday's rallies were still remarkable. This is like nothing I've seen in my lifetime. Here is the front page of last night's NYTimes:

If you're like Fosco, you still want to bask in the glow from yesterday's rallies. Here are some ways for you to do that:

• Towelroad's Photo Album of rallies across the country.
  
• Gawker's report on the best signs at the NYC rally.
  
• SFGate's story on the SF rally.
  
• A moving story of the Indianapolis rally (almost Fosco's home state).
  
• The story of the Santa Cruz rally. Highlight: "One man marching quietly along with his partner had penned a simple message on his sign: 'I am worthy of marriage.'" You can see that sign and read Mere's report here.
  
• Andrew Sullivan posted reports from all over the country. Start here.

This is the kind of day that fills you with hope.

Knowing Who Your Friends Are

As Fosco noted in (the depths of) his Prop 8 Omnibus, you can track donors to both sides of the Prop 8 battle using this database (always with the caveat: donations under $100 do not seem to appear in the database, which leaves Fosco out in the cold...).

It seems lots of smart and angry gays have been using this information to drive boycotts. That's fine with Fosco: political decisions (including donations) should have consequences. Don't expect Fosco to slip you his hard-earned(?) cash if you want to deprive Fosco of basic civil rights.

This information is also useful for another purpose, as described by Gloria Nieto in the same article:

"I prefer a buycott to a boycott. Yahoo, Apple, Google all opposed Prop. 8," she said, and people should buy from companies that support gay rights.

A buycott is a delightful idea (although I don't have to give Todd another reason to buy things from Apple...), but we could even expand the buycott idea a bit to include support for the cultural productions of individual donors (such as actors, etc.)

With that idea in mind, Fosco has done a bit of due diligence and come up with a list of some cultural producers who donated money to fight Prop 8. While you can do this search for any town or state, Fosco has done the dirty work already for everyone's favorite world city: New York! After combing through the records of the 1200 donors NYC donors, Fosco has identified these heroes as worthy of your support (Fosco also lists the amount of their donations):

• Alan Alda, actor, $5,000
  
• Anne Hathaway, actor, $10,000
  
• Eve Ensler, playwright (The Vagina Monologues!), $200
  
• Jonathan Adler, interior designer (and "Top Design" judge), $500
  
• Mark Doty, poet, $100
  
• Michael Ausiello, TV critic, $100
  
• Mike Signorile, gay radio host, $100
  
• Robert Gober, artist, $5,000
  
• Robin Quivers, Howard Stern co-host, $1,000
  
• T.R. Knight, actor ("Grey's Anatomy"), $100,000. That's right: A HUNDRED FUCKING GRAND.
  
• Tony Kushner, playwright (Angels in America), $15,000
  
• Wanda Sykes, actress, $19,500
  

Fosco is actually pretty impressed with some of these folks and his attitude is changing. Suddenly he likes Anne Hathaway a lot more. Ditto for Wanda Sykes. And TR Knight now has to be considered the best thing ever.

May Fosco recommend the purchase of Alan Alda's newest book?

We're here, we're queer, and we want a wedding!

By now, you know that the gays (Fosco included) are pretty angry about the whole Prop H8 thing... So there was a major protest march down Market St. in San Francisco last Friday night. Fosco and his boyfriend Oz were there. This is the story.

First, it is important to know that Fosco spent several hours (and used art supplies!) to make posters. Here is his favorite:


You can tell that the above photo is a Fosco photo because it is so blurry. Luckily, Oz was in charge of the camera during the march itself. Here are some of his excellent pictures of signs:



Hey, you know what? Queer sex is awesome!

Yes, that is a guy dressed as a nun...




Here's a good picture to remind us all what this is about:


Fosco's favorite part was marching through The Castro. Here we are marching past the eponymous theater:


Here is the guy with a bullhorn who kept chanting: "I'm gonna get maaaaaaaa-rried. Somebody wants to maaaaaaaaaa-rry me." At first it was annoying. Then it was funny. Then it was something in between. (Psst: check out the lesbian hair in the foreground!)


Here is my favorite sign of the night:


And here is a picture of Fosco and Oz. Yes, that is Fosco's unruly mustache peeking over the top of the sign. (No, it is not a centipede.)


If you are one of those who prefer live-action, check out our short video:

If you watch this video, you will see the frequent amused reactions to Fosco's "Utah" sign (at this point in the march, Fosco and Oz were standing on the sidelines). The best part is the guy in the motorized wheelchair who shows up at the end of the vid and can be heard saying "Let me tell you about Utah." Oz turned off the video at this point (which was only the polite thing to do), but I wish we had caught the guy's story on tape. He said that years ago (in the 70s I think he said), he lived in Salt Lake City and there used to be a number of gay bathhouses. He said that lots of married Mormon men would go to the baths for man sex and that they would walk around the baths in their special underwear (instead of nude or with a towel, as is the custom). He said that a lot of the guys were really good at gay sex. He was definitely nostalgic for it. What fun!


There is another rally in SF this weekend and Fosco hopes to see you there.

Your Prop 8 Omnibus

So there is this thing called Prop H8 that takes away marriage rights from CA gays (like, for example, Fosco). While the Obamagasm (which, btw, Fosco is not complaining about) has mostly kept Prop 8 out of the coverage of the MSM (although, see the eloquent Keith Olbermann plea), the internets are buzzing. So how can you make sense of it all? Who is there to read and distill all the Prop 8 coverage for you? That's where Fosco comes in.

1. First things first. Fosco needs to apologize for an earlier post in which laid partial blame on black voters for the passage of Prop 8. While there were indeed exit polls that suggested black voters supported Prop 8 at , there is good reason to be suspicious of these numbers. And, even if these numbers are correct, a thoughtful analysis reveals that the black support would still have been too small to pass the measure by itself. You can read these analyses here. Fosco plans to amend his earlier post accordingly and apologizes for jumping on this bandwagon.
   
   The question of how this black scapegoating came about is an interesting one. There has been much hand-wringing in the gay community about racism recently. This piece from Pam's House Blend is particularly thoughtful.
   But I do want to think that there are less-racist reasons why this story became a story. Because Fosco is a "literature-type," he would like suggest that the outrage over (possible) black support for Prop 8 is about the seductions of narrative. Here are two (related) explanations.
   
   Think about the surprise and anger that gay people and their allies felt on Wednesday morning when they discovered that California is so astonishingly retrograde. At that point, there was one set of exit polls available, those from CNN. The CNN exit polls were not particularly nuanced at this point, breaking down the results by five sets of demographics: age, religion, previous voting behavior (first-timers vs. regular voters), educational background, and race. All of the demographics except race followed Fosco expectations: old people are more homophobic, college graduates are more tolerant, etc. For Fosco (and, I suspect, for many people), only the last category provided any new information: the suggestion that black voters were more socially conservative than he expected (of course, as Fosco noted above, there are reasons to doubt the methodology of these exit polls and consequently their findings). But anyway, on last Wednesday morning, the exit polls seemed to offer one piece of new and interesting information (black support for the measure) that could then be subsumed into a narrative about the surprise passage of Prop 8.
   
   But, once this narrative (that black people "caused" the passage of Prop 8) became established, there was another reason why it became almost irresistible: its tragic irony. There is something in us (particularly in well-educated types) that loves a good irony and this narrative had it. The irony: the same social group (black people) that turned out in record numbers to help elect Barack Obama (a man that most gays ardently desired as president) also doomed gay marriage in California. In other words, one of Fosco's most wished-for outcomes (an Obama presidency) was fundamentally tied to Fosco's loss of civil rights. What high tragedy! No wonder this narrative was easy to embrace.
   
   Which is not to say that racism isn't implicit in these narratives (because it is, I think). My exercise here is not to excuse myself and the gay community from blaming black people for the passage of Prop 8; rather, it is to look for the ways that racism worked alongside/within other structures of meaning-production (such as narrative desire) to produce negative outcomes. Remember: complexity is a good thing.
   
   
2. So who is to blame for Prop 8? Well, as the always brilliant number-crunchers at fivethirtyeight.com note, a primary culprit is the elderly. According to Nate Silver:
   

   The good news for supporters of marriage equity is that -- and there's no polite way to put this -- the older voters aren't going to be around for all that much longer, and they'll gradually be cycled out and replaced by younger voters who grew up in a more tolerant era.

   Are we sure that we want to expand Medicare?
   
   
3. Of course, no round of blaming would be complete without Fosco's new favorite nemeses: Mormons and Catholics.
   
   Recently, Fosco focused his anger on those pesky Mormons. However, it turns out that the Catholics are a problem as well. For one thing, the involvement of the Mormons in this fight seems to have been orchestrated by the Catholic Archbishop of San Francisco George Niederauer (no, not that George Niederauer). According to an article in the SF Chronicle:
   

   The June letter from Niederauer drew in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and proved to be a critical move in building a multi-religious coalition - the backbone of the fundraising, organizing and voting support for the successful ballot measure. By bringing together Mormons and Catholics, Niederauer would align the two most powerful religious institutions in the Prop. 8 battle.

   That bastard! I just don't understand why any self-respecting Catholic would get into bed with the Mormons... Don't they know about the naked touching?
   
   As the article goes on to note, it is Catholics who responded to pulpit-pressure at the last minute who passed the measure:
   

   The last Field Poll, conducted a week before the election, showed that weekly churchgoers increased their support in the final week from 72 percent to 84 percent. Catholic support increased from 44 percent to 64 percent - a jump that accounted for 6 percent of the total California electorate.

   More proof that the Catholic Church is now waging an organized war against the individual consciences of its members (psst: Vatican II is dead).
   
   
4. And what about those Mormons? Well, they're still evil, of course (and not just because they are busily posthumously baptizing as Mormons Jews who died in the Holocaust).
   
   What were the Mormons saying at their anti-gay rallies? Here is a priceless paragraph from an article in that charmingly British "newspaper" The Economist:
   

   Mr Perkins [a Mormon] informed the crowd that gay marriage and tolerant school lessons are little more than “a recruiting process for homosexual behaviour”. Anybody who doubted the connection should take a look at Europe, where homosexuality is apparently rampant.

   That "apparently rampant" line is so deliciously dry. Nice work, Economist. (But, is Mr Perkins right?)
   
   But not all Mormons are evil. There are some who stick to their progressive beliefs, like the Feminist Mormon Housewives (kudos to you, ladies!). And such dissent is not easy, as noted by a comment to Andrew Sullivan's blog. According to the commenter:
   

   Those who openly speak disagreement with the church's orthodoxy are routinely excommunicated (you can easily Google public examples, most are secret). There are reports on public websites that Mormon Bishops even questioned individual’s actions supporting Prop 8 in “Temple Interviews,” a form of confessional where members validate that they are living up to the highest church standards.

   All of which makes the intolerance of the Catholic Church look like french kissing.
   
   So how does one deal with the Mormons? What if we actually took them at their word re: their support for other gay civil rights (just not marriage)? Well, someone has had that brilliant idea! Utah is about to become a lot more progressive...
   
   
5. And then there are just the garden-variety religious nutballs. Like the execrable flat-earther and View cohost Sherri Shepherd. This Defamer headline says it all,
   

   Sherri Shepherd Vows to Defend Biblical Definition of Marriage That She Cannot Remember,

   but you should still watch the insanity here.
   
   
6. Did you know that you can see who donated money to either side in the Prop 8 struggle? The searchable database is here.
   
   Note, this database apparently only includes donations greater than $100 (as the donations of Fosco and his friends do not appear). So don't assume that absence from the database means no donation was made.
   
   
7. Finally, what are we supposed to do about Prop H8 until it is overturned? Here are some good ideas:
   
   • refuse to pay CA taxes (caution: may only work for celebrities!)
     
   • protest, protest, protest (especially at Mormon "churches")
     
   • boycott Utah (Fosco's been onboard with this one for years)
     
   • boycott people who supported Prop 8 (See, this already worked! And worked again!)
     
   • did I mention protest?