Felicitaciones, España

"We were not the first, but I am sure we will not be the last. After us will come many other countries, driven, ladies and gentlemen, by two unstoppable forces: freedom and equality." - Prime Minister of Spain Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero

In my 11th grade Sociology class, I had a contenscious issue with my teacher. He said stated that one does not truly become an adult until you become responsible for the life of another. In short, he was saying you didn't grow up until you started having kids. Even in my youth, I realized that meant that gay people don't grow up if they never have children.

Well, for the most part, the theory turned out to be correct. Moving to San Francisco proved it to me. I know more middle-aged teenagers than anywhere I've ever seen. In many cases, there really isn't much difference emotionally between a 25-year-old and a 45-year-old gay man. (I'm generalizing, I realize, but in many cases, of course not all, it is correct.) And it makes sense. We grow up, we go off to college, but after that we really veer off the track that society expects of us. We're not expected to get married or have kids, and thus in the mind of my sociology teacher, we never grow up. And empirical evidence would show him to be correct.

Until now. In February 2003, when Mayor Newsom opened marriage to same sex couples, I watched friends after friends after friends getting married. People who had been dear friends, couple who had been together for years and years, finally say their vows and have it recognized, with the rights and responsibilities that came with it. Suddenly I myself was faced with a question I'd long since given up on: Holy crap, I could get married too.

Now, far from running out and just finding someone to marry, it was different. For years I'd just given up on the idea. Not that I wouldn't ever find someone and settle down, but it could never go to the next step. Even worse, no one even really expected it of you.

Until now. Suddenly all my friends around me were getting married. I was faced now with my own singlehood.

And suddenly our expectations and the rest of society's expectations were the same. Well, maybe not all of society's. Some people want to make sure I never get married, even amend constitutions to put it under heavily guarded lock and key. But that's not my point.

My point is, I suddenly felt like a real member of society. I was given the same rights, responsibilities and expectations as everyone else. For so long, I'd felt like I'd been living in a bubble, completely separate from society. And now the bubble had burst.

And it shows. There was a recent report that STD rates among gay men fell in countries that allowed either same sex marriage or civil unions, compared to countries that did not. It turns out that gay men are now expected to find one guy, settle down and, well, grow up. That was Jesse Ventura's theory of what would happen if you allowed same sex marriage. Turns out he was right. Great empirical evidence.

And so, I'd like to say Congratulations Spain. Congratulations on treating all of your citizens with all the rights, responsibilities and expectations that everyone enjoys. And to my Spanish comrades, welcome to the rest of the world.

Onward Christian Soldiers

I was reading about reaction to the Supreme Court ruling about showing the 10 Commandments on Federal property. I was suprised at their decision, in that it was a wholesale one way or the other, that one was allowed, the other wasn't, and that there was no "test" or line of delineation defining why one was and the other wasn't. It'll probably take several rulings before a such a test or line results.

I was a bit surprised (I don't know why I should be) that religious leaders were so outright offended, specifically Christian religious leaders, as I didn't hear a single Jewish religious leader offended even though the Ten Commandments were written for Jews, not the Christians, although they're taken in toto with the writings of Jesus. After all, they did get one ruling allowed. But no, that wasn't good enough. They considered the court downright "hostle" towards their religion. Not all religion, or towards Jews, just theirs, those damned Christians.

One of my reactions, and I've talked about this before, is, why have it just be the Ten Commandments? Why not have the Ten Commandments along with works from other religions, or, God-forbid (all pun intended) maybe out of the Koran. Of course, that wouldn't sit well with many of their belief of "my God is better than your God."

So I wasn't very surprised. But I couldn't help but post about the reaction of one politician. Representative Ernest Istook, R-Oklahoma, said:

"Those people who want to express their religious beliefs on public property should enjoy the same rights that we provide to those protesting the war in Iraq."

You know, for a moment there it sounds like the two are separate and distinct, even opposite, that those expressing their religious beliefs on public property and different from those protesting the war in Iraq. I remember at protests people with signs that said "Who would Jesus carpet bomb?"

So, is Jesus pro-War? I went to Sunday School every Sunday growing up, and I don't remember the passage about Jesus fighting off those insurgent Romans, or at Catechism talking about Jesus planning a regime change.

Although the time since the Jesus, the Church, especially Catholic, has probably been in more wars than any single country. Yes, Onward Christian Soldiers.

But even Pope John Paul II specifically condemn President Bush regarding the War in Iraq, and even sent cardinals to speak directly with him to express their opposition, saying violence is against the Biblical teachings, and unilateral war would be a crime against peace and against international law.

So what's it with these American Christians? Why on Earth is there this tie between war and Christians? That passifists are just pot-smoking religion-hating (or more specifically Christian hating) hippie liberals and that the President of the Lutheran Sisters' Gun Club gets a Glock for her 16th birthday with a card that reads "God loves winners."

No seriously, I don't get it. Nothing cute or poiniant to say, just, Why?

Free to be you and me

During the State of the Union address this last year, an Iraqi woman showed her purple thumb as a sign she had voted in the elections in Iraq. A standing ovation immediately followed.

So what was the big deal? Iraq had elections before Saddam was toppled. What was new? Saddam often bragged about them, saying the people were 100% behind him, and he was elected to power.

Well, they weren't free elections. People were forced to vote for Saddam, or face serious consequences, tortue, even death. The elections were regarded by the international community as meaningless.

So today the House passed a bill to propose a constitutional amendment banning flag burning. On this side of freedom, it makes sense to most people. The flag should be respected, and flag burning is the most disrespectful (to say the least) thing you can do to it. Therefore it should be banned.

However, the flag is a symbol, one I have great respect for. However, it's because I'm free to respect it is what gives it such power. I'm not forced by law to respect it. I'm given the free will to respect it, and I do.

It's once you're on the other side of freedom that it becomes diminished. Once we're no longer free to respect the flag, it's in the constitution that you must, shades of Iraq start to form. Much the elections in Saddam's Iraq were considered meaningless, respect for the flag starts to become meaningless once you force it upon people by law.

And one of the things that makes this country great is that I'm free to speak my mind. There's many groups I don't agree with, Nazis, Klu Klux Klan, etc. But they're not illegal. I don't agree with flag burning either, but I'm not forced by law to respect it either. And that freedom is what makes the flag all the more powerful of a symbol. Curtailing that freedom means diminishing the power of our flag.

I relapsed

I'm weak. After nearly four years of almost uninterrupted sobriety, I relapsed this week. I went on a seven-day bender, and it wasn't pretty.

I must admit, I thought I had my addiction whipped. But instead I now realize I just was running away from it. I tried to escape my demons. I moved away, put myself in a situation where I thought I wouldn't have even the hint of temptation, and that was it. I focused my efforts into healthier outlets, and yet I still lapsed.

I started remodeling again.

It all started out so innocent. After meeting a friend for a movie in the South Bay, I stopped by Home Depot to pick up some tools I needed for my bike. I wandered off, and before you know it I'm down in flooring, where I have absolutely no business being in the first place. I'm weak. And I finally broke. Before you know it, I grab a shopping cart and have 7 crates of Pergo loaded up. Like I junkie jumping off the wagon, I went into an orgy of remodeling, spending hundreds of dollars. I don't know how I managed to convince myself of it but I did. Joe, you live in an apartment, you can't be doing this! Yeah, but it's not permanent. It just lies on top of the existing linoleum. It'll even be even with the other carpet. Besides, you hate the carpet in the entryway, as that building they're building next door just tracks tons of dirt onto the white carpet. It never stays clean.

Come on, you know you want it.

And so I check out. I had secretly been planning this nearly since I moved in. I never liked the linoleum in the kitchen and dining room, as it was old and permanently marked up. I had been thinking about getting a new dining room set, but why, when it would just sit on that icky old floor.

I pack up my Saturn, and I even have to put down the back seat to make it all fit. God this feels like old times, the thrill, the release. I race home on 101 and secretly stow it inside. Before you know it, I'm moving furniture, cleaning the surface, and that's when I hit bottom:

I started ripping out carpet.

Now the orgy of destruction really begins, that point where you realize: There's no going back now, baby. You don't get half pregnant.

I start pulling nails out of the concrete floors, pissing off neighbors with noise and hammering. God this carpet is disgusting! Years and years of dirt embedded in the carpet and pad. Man, this feels good to get it out.

I get it all out. Just like old times, my apartment is warm from all the vacuuming out dirt and debris, and stop for a beer. I pause from the shock and awe of devastation. My apartment looks like downtown Baghdad.

But finally, the moment of truth. I can start laying boards down. It seems like it would be pretty easy. But like anything I did, it was my first time doing this, and there's always a learning curve.

The first boards lay down pretty easy. Then trying to get large sections together proves much more difficult. One side would fit in and the other wouldn't. I find little tips and tricks along the way. Luckily the first boards are in the back where people can't see little defects. It starts to get better. But it gets late. I've pissed off my neighbors enough, at least for today.

At this point, I hadn't covered any of the entryway. I have too much detail work to do around the edges and cleaning, stripping pieces of old pad and glue and nails.

The next day I wake up like a bad hangover. I try to focus only on the good. Just look at that brand new flooring. It's a million times better. Then look at the rest. My apartment's in shambles. I do a little bit of work, cleaning and fixing up. But then I have to go to work.

At work I continue on, but after a few hours, I start needing a fix again. I make lists of things I need to do, think about the logistics of this should go here, then I need to do this, I need to pick this up. It consumes me. God I forgot what is this was like. It all looks great in the end, but does it ever end?

I share my plight with some friends and coworkers. Every day I give a report. The kitchen is 50% covered, the living room 40% covered, the entry way 0%. Every day I'd report a little more and a little more.

Thankfully by the time I write this, all areas are 90% covered. All barren areas are now covered, and I have some detail work to do around the edges, but I've come out of my bender. And it looks fabulous. I already have some ideas for area rugs to contrast, and it's my dream come true.

But, God, give me the strength I need to keep this from happening again! :-)

Wow, that flew by

First off, why is it raining out? We've had 3/4s of an inch of rain today and it's still raining. The average monthly rainfall in June is 0.01 inch. It's rained only one other day at all in June since I've moved here.

But I digress....

I'm coming up on an anniversary. On August 6, four years ago, I packed up everything I owned into a big yellow truck and started heading across the country to San Francisco. I didn't have a job when I got there (although I had been interviewing and had several leads), and wasn't exactly sure where it would take me, and that was part of the adventure. Little did I know it would take me here.

So you ask, why are you bringing this up now? August 6 isn't for almost two months, and four years isn't exactly a major milestone, like 1, 2 or 5 or 10 years. Well, I'm getting to that point.

So I loaded all my stuff up, threw a lot of it in boxes. A few months later I started work, and a couple months after that I started school. After that, there wasn't much time for else.

So that stuff stayed in boxes for the most part until today. I finished school a couple weeks ago, and been finishing everything else that's been on hold since. I got my diploma in the mail today (man that's an expensive piece of paper), and I started going through stuff. I went through my desk, got that all cleaned up. In one of my projects for school, I needed some stuff from past projects. I looked in my filing cabinet and found literally two stacks of stuff from my desk in Minneapolis I threw in the filing cabinet when I moved. I could pretty much throw that away wholesale, since I hadn't seen it in 4 years. I promised to go through it after I finished.

So tonight I started to go through it. It was really weird, like an unintended time capsule. In two cabinets, I found one cabinet full of stuff from my desk in Minneapolis. In the second cabinet I found stuff from immediately after from when I first moved to San Francisco.

In the first cabinet, it was just bills, statements, the usual stuff. I pretty much just threw it all away.

In the second cabinet, it was full of ephemera, fliers from night clubs, notes to myself ("check out this craigslist.org"), my old Minnesota license plates, the receipt from the moving van, and countless phone numbers, many from guys I have no idea anymore who they are, many who have now become very good friends who I met in those first few months since I moved here. Man did I ever get phone numbers in those days. I remember one guy stopped me in the middle of the street to give me his phone number. Ah, to be fresh meat again. :-)

Perhaps the biggest gem I came across was a Christmas letter I started writing. Things got crazy, and I started school as soon as I got back from Minneapolis and never sent it. It all seems now so, innocent. It goes a little bit into 9/11 (of course), but it's mostly about that time when everything was fresh and new. I'd love to send it out now. :-)

-----------------------

December 17, 2001

Dear Fabulous Friends,

What a year this has been. It goes without saying that this has hands down been the most memorable year of our lives. We had great times, and we've had terribly tragic times. But we must remember that this year comes after an unprecedented time of peace and prosperity. But there are good things to come out of this. Times of peace and prosperity bring times of comfort in ourselves, but it's times like these that let us truly know who our friends are. In most years, I've sent out a self-mixed CD with a small footnote to thank my friends. So in that vein, this year I decided to include a letter as well, and if you're reading this, you truly are my friend.

I feel there's a certain irony to this year. I decided to start the year in San Francisco. I remember on the afternoon of the 2nd, I was having lunch outside in a t-shirt, basking in the sun in a nearly tropical 65 degrees compared to what I was used to back home. A few hours later, I caught a flight back to Minneapolis. When I got home, there was 3 feet of snow waiting for me to plow. When my snowblower wouldn't start and I had to shovel it by hand. My own mother once said in the winter of '97 (after a record 120 inches of snow), "They say this weather builds character. Well, I have enough [expletive] character!" After another near record snowfall and near record cold last winter, I decided to make the move.

So I started to plan. By my luck, my friend and sister-from-another-mother Kevin needed a place as his roommate was buying a house. He is now renting out my house in Minneapolis. Also my friend John by total coincidence just got a job in San Mateo and would be moving out at the same time, so we could leverage the moving costs and split the driving duties. So I decided August would be a good time. After all, summer is the best time to be in Minnesota. It would be after my sister would be getting married in July, and so much stuff to do and enjoy the lakes one last time as a full-time resident there. Well, spring turned out to be the wettest on record, 17" of rain in two months. In true Minnesota fashion, it was the tip of the weather iceberg. With all that water, add a touch of head and suddenly Miami seems cool and dry. On the day I picked up my truck, it was in the 90s with another record... a dew point of 88 degrees, the highest in Minnesota history. It was almost lucky that my moving truck was delayed several hours. Instead of loading the truck in the heat of the day, we were packing in the relentless humidity of the evening. It was so humid, you could literally shake the sweat off you like a wet dog coming out of a lake. That night with a full tank of character, my friend John and I headed off down I-35. Take a right at Iowa and drive until you see a pretty red bridge.

(In retreat from Minnesota weather bashing, my friends and weather.com tell me fall in MN turned out to be beautiful, and there isn't snow on the ground yet. Of course, now that I've moved. :-) )

My move was also inspired by my sister's relocation to Long Island five years earlier, almost to the day. I was also inspired by a just as intrepid move I made almost exactly ten years previous from northern Minnesota to Minneapolis. And like my sister's move, almost immediately following the move we both faced tragic events nearly in our backyard. Days after my sister moved to New York, TWA flight 802 crashed off the coast of Long Island. And a few weeks after I moved to San Francisco, of course those tragic events of 9/11. Never before in American history had we ever seen anything like this. And never before had any of us experience the "connectedness" of this event. My now brother-in-law was driving across the Brooklyn Bridge when the first plane hit the Tower. My friend Steve lives just a short distance from the Pentagon in Arlington, VA. And Mark Bingham, a fellow San Franciscan and very close friend of several friends of mine went down on Flight 93 in a field in Pennsylvania.

But we all know all too well someone close to us who was tragically affected by 9/11. But in the months that have followed, I would like to dwell on the incredible good that has come out of this. These States are United once again. It's brought us closer in ways we couldn't have imagined. These holidays are sure to be the realization of that. I myself decided to finally get my fist tattoo, and after much self-deliberation decided to use it as a permanent testament to Mark Bingham, a true hero on that day. On Labor Day weekend, just days before 9/11, Mark was in New Orleans partying with several friends of mine. In the spirit that truly was Mark, he decided to get a temporary tattoo on his shoulder of a bear claw, one of his favorite subjects, both the California Bears (the rugby team he played for and cheered on at UC Berkeley) and the human incarnation as well. (Mark would frequently haunt the Lone Star here in San Francisco, the same as my watering hole.) He was still wearing that tattoo when his plane went down. It was just temporary at the time, but it's permanent now in our hearts and on my shoulder. It's not a memorial to his death. It's a testament to his life. :-)

And so I'm slowly getting adjusted to living in the city by the Bay. I do live in the heart of the city, and it's definitely a city. Fabulous restaurants on every corner, side-by-side with panhandlers. Every once in awhile I still see things that leave me at a loss for words. Some things humorous (like that realization walking through Chinatown that those live chickens aren't sold for pets), some things disturbing (the crazy person on the sidewalk ahead of me who suddenly feels it necessary to give everyone around him the finger), most of them harmless (the panhandler who's sign next to his cup reads "homeless my ass, I just wanna get high!"), but just things I'm not used to. (As we speak, my laptop battery just kicked in as we had a momentary power outage, arguably the first in a long time, but much more frequent here than in MN.) But as I suspected, now that I have a job and thus a routine, I feel much less like a tourist. When I first moved, I kept having this feeling like I was supposed to be catching a flight back home at some point. You can imagine how odd it was to sleep in a strange city, but in my own familiar bed.

So coming from a land where skin-on mashed potatoes is considered exotic, even my diet has taken some getting used to. Case in point: When I was in MN, I tried looking for a Thai chili sauce that I loved. I looked everywhere and couldn't find it anywhere. Here they have it in every Safeway and most corner groceries. (But on the corollary, several attempts to find buffalo wing sauce here turned out fruitless, yet Cub Foods in MN has over a dozen varieties.) And do they have to put artichokes on everything? At Escape From New York, they put artichokes on pizza. A true New Yorker wouldn't be caught dead with artichokes on their pizza! The other day I ordered a chicken ad artichoke burrito. That is just perverted. :-) But in a town that caters to every taste, I did find Chow, a nice littler homey "meat and potatoes" place on Church Street in the heart of what my friend John refers to as "Little Minnesota", for all the Minnesotans who have moved into that neighborhood. They have a wonderful chicken fusilli that's just like I used to get in the now defunct Cafe Solo in the Warehouse District of Minneapolis. If they only had wild rice hotdish. :-)

So all in all, life isn't that much different from a year ago. I'm still in the inner city, just the Mission instead of Camden. I still work downtown, just SF instead of Minneapolis. I still have a short public transit ride to work, just BART instead of MTC. And my office looks out over Market Street and the Bay Bridge instead of Nicollet Mall and the Hennepin Avenue Bridge. And I still have good friends in both places.

So while I've replaced snow in winter and mosquitoes in the summer with rain in winter and fog in the summer, my heart is still in the same place. Just this time I left my heart in Minnesota. :-)

Oh yeah, the irony bit. This year after being away for almost five months, I decided to spend the holidays in Minnesota, Christmas well spent with my family and New Year's well spent with my Minnesota friends. The irony is that I started out the year living in Minneapolis and partying in San Francisco. I'm ending it living in San Francisco and partying in Minneapolis. And with a feeling instead of being home, that eventually I do have to catch that flight back to SF. Life does have a way of making you smile like that.

I love all of you, and you continue to be in my heart and thoughts. And for my non-CA friends, come visit dammit. Like I have to twist your arms. :-)

Your friend always,

Joe

Hey I haven't done this in awhile now!

I haven't commented on current events in awhile, mostly because I've been too busy to give a lot of thought to it (although I believe the Republican's threat to remove the filibuster an attempt to remove one of the great checks and balances our founding fathers envisioned, and even the threat of its removal absolutely reprehensible, and the vast majority of Americans seem to agree with me), or there hasn't been much to comment on (the media has been pontificating enough about the Michael Jackson trial, thank you).

No, this is about the today's Supreme Court ruling that Federal authorities can prosecute users of medicinal marijuana. I might surprise you on this one: I actually agree with their ruling.

Why? Because simply put, federal law supercedes state law. It's not an ideological agreement. I think that doctors should decide what's best for their patients, not federal law. But it highlights the fact that I think states should have the power to control their own destiny.

One thing I've come to believe is that there has been this huge "sea change" (sorry for the buzz word, but it's true) in politics. Republicans used to be the party of small government. The states should have the power to control their own destiny, fiscal conservatism (repeat after me: "Borrow and spend Republicans"), and many others.

However, now Republicans have become the government that decides for me so many details about my life, including how I'm born, how I die, and now--thanks to the recent Energy bill that extends daylight savings time--even what time I wake up in the morning.

Unless of course, you're a corporation, and then you should be able to do whatever damn thing you want.

[Sidebar: Not that I believe that all corporate regulations are good. For example, I've seen Sarbanes-Oxley turn perfectly honest and good corporations divert huge resources from creating shareholder value into compliance machines. Penalize like hell those who abuse the system and leave the good guys alone, I say. I can't complain too loudly though. It's created a huge job security for me!]

But I digress.

So it's my belief that the feds shouldn't legalize medicinal marijuana. Rather, I believe that the feds should allow states to choose whether or not to legalize medicinal marijuana. This is a point I'll emphasize again and again.

This is no longer the Republican party platform. I really believe the Democrats need to reign in this former-Republican stance, because it's what Democrats believe, although more piecemeal. An official takeover of it will be a huge symbolic and classic measure that almost everyone can agree with: Let Texas be Texas, and let California be California.

And among the people, it's something widely believed. Medicinal marijuana is legal (at a state level) in many "Red" states, such as Alaska and Montana. It's just not believed among Republican leadership.

The political reprocussions are huge. There's a classic line that if you try and please everyone all the time, you'll end up pleasing no one. That is exactly what both parties have tried to do. In their pursuit, Bush won with 51 percent of the vote, Kerry 49. Neither could get more than a slight majority.

However, Kerry actually started on the idea, but never simplified it down to a few simple statements (a fault he was regularly attributed for). With that, you can say, what's your position on gay marriage? Like Cheney said in 2000, that is up to the individual states. Medicinal marijuana? Up to individual states. Death with dignity? Up to individual states. So you have no position? No, I just believe that divisive policies like this are too difficult and dividing to have one blanket policy on, and should be decided by the individual states as they are culturally and legally ready to do so.

Because it's issues like these that Republicans have used to divide this country. I believe that Democrats can take this opportunity to say, you know, I don't necessarily always agree, but I'm okay with the fact that's it's okay to disagree. It's what makes this country great, and it's not something I want to shove down your throat whether you like it or not.

And that's a party platform everyone can agree with.