Author: HFM

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National Freedom to Marry Week – Feb 11-17th

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  • Post category:GLBT Issues

National Freedom to Marry Week
10th Annual Observance
February 11-17, 2007
10 years of work
10 years of change
10 years closer to equality
All across the country, from Hawaii to Massachusetts, from California to New Jersey, we have worked together to make significant gains for same sex couples and their families. Our journey is not yet complete, but so far, we’ve come a mighty long way. Now, all we need is you. Get active. Get engaged.
Every year, right around Pres. Lincoln’s Birthday and Valentine’s Day, gay and non-gay people around the country gather in living rooms, rectories, parks and civic halls to celebrate our lives, our loves, our families and the victories of our movement from the year before. Freedom to Marry Day, Sunday, February 11th, is a day to celebrate and share our stories, reflect on the values of equality and love, while also engaging our neighbors in the movement for equality and fairness.
For the many thousands of you across the country looking for a way to get engaged locally in the fight to end discrimination in marriage, the 10th Annual Freedom to Marry Week (co-sponsored by Don’t Amend) offers the perfect opportunity.

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links for 2007-02-04

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Dan Savage Takes on Mary Cheney’s Hypocrisy

Dan Savage calls out Mary Cheney’s hypocrisy on suggesting she should be allowed privacy from media scrutiny for her decision to have a baby with her lesbian partner Heather Poe:

In today’s New York Times Mary Cheney defends her decision to get her lezbo self knocked the fuck up. Like her father, Mary Cheney believes she shouldn’t have to answer for her party’s attacks on same-sex parents.

“When Heather and I decided to have a baby, I knew it wasn’t going to be the most popular decision,” Ms. Cheney said, referring to her partner of 15 years, Heather Poe. She then gestured to her middle—any bulge disguised by a boxy jacket—and asserted: “This is a baby. This is a blessing from God. It is not a political statement. It is not a prop to be used in a debate, on either side of a political issue. It is my child.”

Nice try, Mary.
Yes, it’s a baby, not a prop. My kid isn’t a prop either, but that never stopped right-wingers from attacking me and my boyfriend over our decision to become parents. The fitness of same-sex couples to parent is very much part of the political debate thanks to the GOP and the Christian bigots that make up its lunatic “base.” You’re a Republican, Mary, you worked on both of your father’s campaigns, and you kept your mouth clamped shut while Karl Rove and George Bush ran around the country attacking gay people, gay parents, and our children in 2000, 2002, 2004, and 2006. It’s a little late to declare the private choices of gays and lesbians unfit for public debate, Mary.
And so long as your party insists on making the fitness of homosexuals to marry or parent—or, hell, exist—a subject of public debate, Mary, your decision to become a parent is germane and very much fit for public discussion and debate. The GOP’s selective embrace of some pregnant dykes—only knocked-up lesbians with powerful connections will be treated with respect—is a disconnect that demands answers. From you, from your father, from your venomous mother, from the idiot president you helped elect. Is that fair? Maybe not. Want to blame someone? Go look in the mirror—and then come out swinging, Mary—for yourself, your partner, and your child.

Read the whole thing, it’s excellent.

Continue ReadingDan Savage Takes on Mary Cheney’s Hypocrisy

links for 2007-02-03

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Groundhog predicts early spring

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  • Post category:Odd Holidays

According to the AP, Punxsutawney Phil didn’t see his shadow for the first time in several years.

Punxsutawney Phil predicts early spring
PUNXSUTAWNEY, Pa. (AP) — A new pair of hands pulled Punxsutawney Phil from his stump this year, so it was only fitting that the groundhog offered a new prediction.

Phil did not see his shadow on Friday, which, according to German folklore, means folks can expect an early spring instead of six more weeks of winter.
Since 1886, Phil has seen his shadow 96 times, hasn’t seen it 15 times and there are no records for nine years, according to the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club. The last time Phil failed to see his shadow was in 1999.

More than 15,000 revelers milled about in a misty snow waiting for the prediction, as fireworks exploded overhead and the “Pennsylvania Polka” and other music blared in the background.

A couple of Stephanie’s friends got engaged at the Pennsylvania festival, and are getting married today.

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Book Review – The Lost Art of Steam Heat

I checked The Lost Art of Steam Heat out from the library because our house has a steam-heat system and it’s working, but not exactly correctly. We’ve had a repair guy out numerous times, but he hasn’t quite fixed the rather complex system, and I wanted to understand a bit more so I could communicate with him about it.
Holohan’s book does an excellent job of explaining the physics and engineering of steam heating to lay people. These systems really are a lost art – the people who designed and installed them were very capable engineers, and every system in every house was by nature somewhat different, and required it’s own planning and calculations to build and repair.
It’s not surprising that today’s repair people don’t understand how delicately balanced steam heating is, and how to identify what the problems are.
The Lost Art of Steam Heat
by Dan Holohan
Non-Fiction
Incredibly useful for owners of steam heating systems.

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Book Review – The Boy Detective Fails

Boy Detective Fails
Boy Detective Fails
Yeah, this book comes with a decoder ring on the back flap. You don’t discover this until a chapter or two into the book when you have to decode a secret message, but I’m telling you right up front because, well, that’s so frackin’ cool.

Joe Meno’s The Boy Detective Fails is a loving homage and send up of classic kid detective stories like Encyclopedia Brown, Nancy Drew, and the Hardy Boys, but the mysteries it explores in this funny, scary, sweet, and surreal book are the grown-up mysteries of life. Billy Argo is the famous boy detective, who with his handy Junior Detective Kit and his sister Caroline and stalwart friend Fenton, rids the town of crooks and bad guys, hitting the front pages of the papers regularly. But growing up is a mystery all three children have trouble with, and ultimately, Billy must solve the mysterious death of his sister to save his own life.

The Boy Detective Fails
by Joe Meno

I highly recommend reading this book.

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Book Review – Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic

Fun Home
Fun Home
I keep putting off writing a review of Fun Home because I feel a sense of obligation to the book — one so well written deserves a well-written review, and I haven’t had it in me lately to try to write one. Here is my poor attempt to do justice to this fantastic book.

Alison Bechdel has been a popular, well-known cartoonist for over 20 years, penning the witty and and enjoyable “Dykes to Watch Out For” series, which is serialized in a number of publications and collected in book format over a dozen times.

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic is Bechdel’s extraordinary, resonant memoir, told in graphic novel form. But don’t think when you pick this up that you’d be reading a comic book – this is a piece of gorgeously-illustrated, lyrically-written literature.

Bechdel recounts her childhood, especially her relationship with her closeted and deeply conflicted father, who was both the owner of the local funeral home (the “Fun Home” of the title) and a local English teacher. Bruce Bechdel is a stern and exacting man who looms large in the lives of everyone who knows him, and Alison’s childhood is marked by both her attempts to reach out to him, and to rebel against his ideals and tastes. Bruce’s sexual orientation is an awkward and somewhat ill-kept secret in her childhood, but Alison doesn’t completely put all the pieces together until she comes out herself in college, when her mother fills in the gaps. Bruce Bechdel is killed a few months later in what may have been a suicide, and Alison is left to wonder whether her own coming-out, now overshadowed by the event, may have been a catalyst for it. Ultimately she finds a connection to her father by returning time and again to one of their mutual loves; classic literature.

Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic
by Alison Bechdel
Memoir

I highly recommend reading this book.

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links for 2007-02-02

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