Tuesday, December 09, 2008

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.

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