How can you not be deeply in love with Rachel Maddow? I mean, the whole world is! She's everywhere, and she deserves to be. From her interview in the new issue of The Advocate:

Rachel Maddow’s not only bringing thinking back to TV news, she’s assuring herself a spot on the Mount Rushmore of broadcasting, right next to Murrow, Cronkite, and Brokaw.

. . . Maddow clearly knows what she’s talking about, but she speaks plainly, with the familiar pop-culture dialect used in real-people discussions at the bar; she described the presidential debates as “non sequitur-y” and used the jack-o’-lantern to illustrate the economy’s collapse by comparing Lehman Bros. bigwigs to kids who gorge themselves sick on Halloween candy. When exposing the rhetoric and outright lies of politicians, she ditches courtroom-style accusations for barely contained mirth. She’s sarcastic, but not bitingly so, and everyone is in on the joke—even those from whom she’s gleefully demanding honesty. Whether by nature or keen observation, she’s broken from both the holier-than-thou and gloom-and-doom approaches to punditry and offers something different: truth, with a twist. She’s now the go-to gal for people too embarrassed to admit they were getting much of their news from Jon Stewart.

More after the jump.

Even more exciting than having achieved this level of success as an out lesbian is the fact that her intelligence, wit, and fresh take on politics have overshadowed the fact that she’s an out lesbian.

. . . There, over a perfectly made old-fashioned, Maddow -- out, proud, and unafraid to go head-to-talking-head with far-right Republican Pat Buchanan -- shows the first sign of not being completely at home in the spotlight. “I feel lucky to have all this attention and all of these people wanting to talk to me about what I’m doing,” she says. “The only hesitation I have is that I’m not interested in media about media. I feel like I sometimes struggle to be interesting in talking about how I got here.”

. . . That’s probably not going to happen anytime soon. Not only is Maddow in demand for being a sign of positive change, but she’s dedicated to being an agitator for truth. “I’m trying to make an uproar,” she says. “I’m at least trying to make jokes. If you talk about something in a funny way, people think about it.

Read the full Advocate interview here. I swear, I am moments away from converting to lesbianism. Moments. (And I gotta say that I called her success explosion weeks and weeks ago!)

Speaking of Joss Whedon, in the new issue of The Advocate, Buffy The Vampire Slayer's Tom Lenk comes out. From the interview (via After Elton):

It probably doesn't come as that big of a shock to fans of Buffy that Tom is gay, which probably isn't fair, as no doubt Lenk is capable of playing a wide-range of characters. Nonetheless, Lenk pinged quite a few gaydars including Buffy creator Joss Whedon, who told The Advocate that Andrew hadn't been planned as gay, but when Lenk auditioned they decided to take the character that way since "Tom has a bit of a fey thing going on in his persona that, you know, you can't really deny." . . . Lenk says his coming out now was supposed to be timed to coincide with his first television same-sex kiss.

I think Joss should have at least given Tom one dirty sex scene with Spike. Like the one Buffy had with the vampire when they destroyed the house. Willow and Tara were definitely great, but the gayboy geeks who loved the show could've used a little boy-on-vamp something, too. Something like "True Blood!"

Pink News reports that the decision to create a LGBT High School in Chicage to combat high dropout, homeless, and suicide rates among LGBT youth has been delayed until next month.

Arne Duncan, Chicago's head of public schools, has outlined plans for a possible gay high school. Duncan's goal is to create a school where "half the students are LGBT and all students would have an interest in social justice." He said:

"If you look at national studies, you see gay and lesbian students with high dropout rates, studies show they are disproportionately homeless," he said. "I think there is a niche there we need to fill."

The school would be called the Pride Campus of Social Justice High School, and would accommodate 600 students.The school's curriculum would promote learning about gay and lesbian “heroes” such as writers Gertrude Stein and James Baldwin. Planners hope for the school to open in 2010 if the Chicago Public Schools board allows the establishment to go ahead.

This is in start contrast to that silly article in The Advocate, "The Cost of Being Gay." Pink News report also calls for Obama to directly address the crisis facing LGBT youth in America.

An article in the November 4, 2008 issue of The Advocate asks if Obama or McCain will champion gay rights in American foreign policy.

“The U.S. hasn’t been as clear and insistent on LGBT issues as it has on issues like violence against women and human trafficking,” says Michael Guest, the gay former ambassador to Romania who now serves as senior adviser to the Council for Global Equality (formerly the LGBT Foreign Policy Project).

. . . But it’s up to the next president to lead the way. One of the key uses of presidential power is “to show moral leadership,” says Scott Long, head of the LGBT program at Human Rights Watch. “Saying something about [gay rights] would be an incredibly powerful message.”

. . . In fact, Obama was asked a question on the campaign trail this year about granting asylum to gay people from other countries, to which he responded by saying the United States has “both a legal and a moral obligation to protect victims of persecution based on sexual orientation or gender identity.” That opinion is in line with his support for gay rights domestically -- and his pattern of talking about gays and lesbians on the stump.

“The U.S. should start by changing its own policies regarding LGBT people -- only then will it have a legitimate voice with which to urge other countries to do the same,” says Paula Ettelbrick.

Obama, obviously, has a stronger record on LGBT issues, but as I wrote previously, a message is sent to everyone when our leaders refuse to publicly acknowledge that we are fully human.

Who, if anyone, will deserve the blame? In the Gay City News, Kelly Jean Cogswell writes an understandably frustrated article about the very real possibility of losing the just-received right to marry in California:

Apparently, there's some fixed amount of freedom in the world, like oil in the ground, or gold, and anybody in their right mind tries to hoard it. That's the idea I get, anyway, when somebody's explaining why you can't give more rights to women (or people of color or immigrants). It'll be coming right out of their pocket, and they can't afford it.

. . . And what are embattled queer people countering that with? Ads with reassuring heterosexual faces explaining that we're not going to take over the world. That's right. The voice for same sex-marriage is embodied in smarmy hets like San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. If you want straights, you should at least get them from Massachusetts where they can attest that after several years of gay marriage nobody's civil or religious freedoms have been abridged. The sky didn't fall. Just a few maple leaves.

If the Proposition [8] passes, ending same-sex marriage, I'll blame national gay leadership, especially Democrats, that already agreed to be invisible in the Obama campaign. By banning us from the camera, they make us seem like a bunch of pervs. It's for our own good, of course. Always for our own good. Mesmerized by their homophobic voices, we've lost our pride, and the belief in our own American stories of loss and striving, like our fights to visit our partners in hospitals, share health insurance, make lives together, all the stories that could persuade a reluctant audience that does, essentially, value equality and civil rights.

How can we not all share this anger? Although there is no specific mention of Obama, his name is certainly clear here. I support Obama. I think he is a remarkable man and politician. His brilliance is what makes his failing in this area--gay marriage--so heartbreaking. When Obama, a man who has spoken and written so beautifully about his understanding of the minority American experience, refuses to support marriage for gay people, he sends a message to everyone, not just his political opponents, that we are not equal. And what are we supposed to do with that?

More after the jump.

Obama has shifted his stance on any number of issues (FISA, gun control, off-shore drilling, Reverend Wright), but he has remained firm in this -- no gay marriage. (Remember during the VP debate when Biden practically had to choke out his agreement with Palin regarding gay marriage.) In an interview with The Advocate, way back in April during the primaries, the Advocate interviewer pressed Obamaon this:

Both you and your wife speak eloquently about being told to wait your turn and how if you had done that, you might not have gone to law school or run for Senate or even president. To some extent, isn’t that what you’re asking same-sex couples to do by favoring civil unions over marriage -- to wait their turn?

Obama: I don’t ask them that. Anybody who’s been at an LGBT event with me can testify that my message is very explicit -- I don’t think that the gay and lesbian community, the LGBT community, should take its cues from me or some political leader in terms of what they think is right for them. It’s not my place to tell the LGBT community, "Wait your turn." I’m very mindful of Dr. King’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” where he says to the white clergy, "Don’t tell me to wait for my freedom."

. . . but my perspective is also shaped by the broader political and historical context in which I’m operating. And I’ve said this before -- I’m the product of a mixed marriage that would have been illegal in 12 states when I was born. That doesn’t mean that had I been an adviser to Dr. King back then, I would have told him to lead with repealing an antimiscegenation law, because it just might not have been the best strategy in terms of moving broader equality forward. That’s a decision that the LGBT community has to make. That’s not a decision for me to make.

Is it fair for the LGBT community to ask for leadership? In 1963, President Kennedy made civil rights a moral issue for the country.

Obama: But he didn’t overturn antimiscegenation. Right?

Cogswell, in the Gay City News, writes:

. . . Like with children, I suppose the only counter to miserly behavior is to explain the benefit of sharing. In the case of same-sex marriage, we could argue that it strengthens an institution plenty of heterosexuals are turning away from, and also guarantees that we queers take care of our partners so that they don't become burdens on "society."

On the other hand, if our fellow citizens refuse to share the wealth with same-sex couples, maybe we should shift our focus altogether, and demand they quit awarding any special rights to heterosexual marriages. Then we can all share the loss.

I know that pushing for marriage equality might cause a backlash. How could I not understand that? But I am listening to Obama when he says, "It’s not my place to tell the LGBT community, 'Wait your turn.'"

I hadn't planned on writing anything in response to the article "The Cost of Being Gay," featured in the October 21 issue of The Advocate, but I just came across it again, and it hit a sour note with me. Again. I know it's designed to hit sour notes, and I resent the demagoguery, but I feel a need to respond.

Take a few moments to read the article (it's pretty short) so you know what I'm talking about.

I mean, the lede is: "We all agree that sexual orientation isn’t just about whom you sleep with but how much of your identity is tied up in the things you have to buy (not to mention the price you’re willing to pay for them)."

Really? Buying things makes you gay? My take on the article after the jump.



To be absolutely clear from the outset, the writer, John Cloud, could not be more wrong. He inhabits a subset of a subset of a subset culture. Living in a gay neighborhood in New York City, he looks around him and sees nothing but people like him and concludes that those are the only people in the world. It's myopic, and it's also offensive.

How does this silly man who lives in Chelsea, vacations in The Pines, and wears nothing but designer underwear in order to feel real have the temerity to dismiss the gayness of everyone not like him? In this article, he has managed to make invisible the hundreds of millions of gay and lesbian people in this world -- the people who seek refuge from countries that torture and kill their gay citizens. Are they not really gay? ("We all agree that sexual orientation isn’t just about whom you sleep with but how much of your identity is tied up in the things you have to buy . . .") Cloud also trivializes the struggles of our own Americans who have fought and died for his right to rub sand on his jeans.

His self-control is a limited resource? He writes, "According to Pachankis, because of social stigma, gay people often feel they must work very hard to manage others’ impressions of them. We monitor our behavior more than those who don’t face stigma; gays and lesbians often carefully calibrate their social interactions so as not to seem weak. Expending that self-regulatory effort makes it harder, in turn, to exert self-control in other aspects of life, like spending. That’s why we just can’t say no to a gay cruise or a gorgeous new Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams chair."

What an irresponsible way to be irresponsible! This is the logical equilavent of: "I am buying these things because people are mean to me. I spend every bit of my self-control trying to impress people, so what else could I possibly do but buy more things? Temptation cannot be resisted. I am not responsible for my actions. Those kids who were mean to me in high school are!" He is not occasionally shallow -- he is permanently adolescent.

Or a permanent undergrad. This kind of unsophisticated thinking should be found in a freshman writing class, not The Advocate: "Psychologically speaking, delaying consumption is an act of self-regulation, a term psychologists use to mean self-control. Over the last few years research has shown that if you spend time and mental energy regulating one aspect of your life—say, how you present yourself to the world—it will be harder for you to exert self-control in other domains. Self-regulation, in short, is a resource that can be depleted, like oil."

"Psychogically speaking?" And "Research has shown?" These are close relatives of the newscaster who says, "Some people say . . . ." Perhaps writing skills are a limited resource for Cloud as well. Like oil.

He does have a shred of conscience, however. And he demonstrates it when he writes that "maybe this is all a little too convenient. I live in Chelsea; I am out at work; I am out to everyone in my family, all my friends. I don’t think I have to cope with much stigma." But if he doesn't have to cope with stigma, then what is he writing about?

This lack of logic runs throughout his article. He would make a terrible scientist. He uses his data to support a belief, no matter how much he has to twist and contort that data in order to fit it. (His little aside on poverty rates, which based on the information he provided could be within margins of error, reads like this: "We demand that gays not live in poverty! And so they don't. Problem solved.")

He wants to be a big fish in a little pond when there is an ocean of trouble out there. Good luck in that expensive crystal fish bowl.