Weird day. Started with a sad kerfuffle which [temporarily publicly] exposed one local musician’s kinda disturbingly unhinged hate-mail to another local musician. Ended with gay couples lining up at courthouses across the state to get married.
My straight friends & social media acquaintances were ultra-effusive about the outcome of the series of kind of anti-climactic court rulings that collectively essentially led to marriage equality for NC. My gay friends were somewhat more nuanced in their reactions. ;-)
OMFG YAY NORTH CAROLINA SO GLAD I CAN GET MARRIED TO THE BOYFRIEND I DONT HAVE NOW
— OK McQUEEN (@lazyboneskuehn) October 10, 2014
I’ve been so immersed in the online hate spewed at women in the gaming & general tech industries lately that I guess I’m pessimistic about the power that a court ruling has to change people’s hearts & minds.
At the same time I know, of course, that the real change comes in the months & years after today, in which nothing particularly special happens, except that gay people live their lives & inherit property & visit spouses in the hospital & all that other mundane stuff that straight people have taken for granted. And in so doing, slowly, piece by piece & person by person, their lives hopefully come to be seen as normal & non-threatening.
So yeah, today is a great & wonderful & important first step down a long & winding path to something resembling equality or at least mutual understanding & respect.
I think a lot lately about a guy I know named Darren. Darren lives in Durham; he’s black, gay, HIV+, and homeless. I ran into him the other night & he was talking about some dude who was kind of creepily stalking him & making him afraid to go to the shelter.
So we have a lot of work left to do. Thankfully I think that, around here at least, everyone’s well aware of that.
Friday night exhaustion – more intense than usual, even – led to an evening on the sofa. Flipped a virtual coin & chose Transparent over Lonesome Dove (both seemingly entirely apropos choices for this particular evening).
Four episodes in, I have mixed feelings about Transparent. Jeffrey Tambor is just absolutely masterful & devastatingly great. But why do all three of the kids have to be such raging assholes? Can’t one of them be a decent human being from the outset?
Still, I always love Gaby Hoffman.