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.'"

Synopses via moviefone.

W. - Josh Brolin stars as George W. Bush in this Oliver Stone biopic that traces the head of state's rise to power from a privileged alcoholic to a born-again Christian whose belief in religious destiny helped move him to the top ranks of political power. Co-written by Stanley G. Weiser, Bush is produced by fellow Stone collaborators Moritz Borman and Jon Kilik, with Elizabeth Banks co-starring as the first lady, James Cromwell as the elder President Bush, Ellen Burstyn as Barbara Bush and Richard Dreyfuss as Vice President Dick Cheney. (PG-13)

I want to see this one for the same reasons everyone else does Manohla Dargis reviews the movie in The New York Times:"The pleasure of Mr. Stone’s work has never been located in restraint but in excess, a commitment to extremes that can drown out the world or, as in this film, give it newly vivid, hilarious and horrible form."

Filth and Wisdom - After more than two decades as one of the world's most recognizable stars, Madonna steps behind the camera for the first time with this comedy-drama about a handful of bohemians struggling to make a name for themselves in London, which she both wrote and directed.

I mean, we all know that film is not her most flattering medium, but I feel kind of bad for her. She is getting divorced from her director husband. What if her own directorial debut bombs while she's trying to reestablish her independence? Manohla Dargis reviews this one as well. One of her kinder lines:"'Filth and Wisdom' is a ridiculously easy target, but it also creaks and strains with more ambition than most mainstream throwaways that just recycle the usual guns and poses."

More movies that I really don't want to see after the jump.


Max Payne - Rockstar Games' double-gunned action franchise comes to the big screen thanks to director John Moore (The Omen) and Mark Wahlberg, who embodies the title character of Max Payne, a widowed cop hell-bent on delivering justice no matter what the cost as he investigates a string of killings in his city. Mila Kunis and Chris O'Donnell head up the supporting cast, with Beau Thorne adapting the screenplay for the 20th Century Fox production. (PG-13)



The Secret Life of Bees - Dakota Fanning and Jennifer Hudson star as two friends who run away from home in order to solve the mystery surrounding one of their mothers in this adaptation of Sue Monk Kidd's best-selling coming-of-age novel, The Secret Life of Bees. Queen Latifah, Sophie Okonedo, Alicia Keys, and Tristan Wilds co-star in picture as three sisters who take the two girls in and teach them to care for and raise bees. Gina Prince-Bythewood (Love & Basketball) provides the adaptation as well as the direction for the Overbrook Entertainment production.

Sex Drive - Eighteen-year-old Ian Lafferty sets out on a cross country drive with his best friends Lance and Felicia in order to lose his virginity to a red-hot babe he met on the Internet. But the journey, filled with hilarious misadventures and raunchy escapades, teaches all three more than they expected about life and love. Randy, raucous and unexpectedly romantic, 'Sex Drive' follows three friends on the road trip of a lifetime!



What Just Happened - 'What Just Happened' is a winningly sharp comedy about two nail-biting, back-stabbing, roller-coaster weeks in the world of a middle-aged Hollywood producer -- as he tries to juggle an actual life with an outrageous series of crises in his day job.

on Vimeo.
Via Gizmodo: "[T]his Fin-Fish R/C blimp floats so gracefully through the air that it is liable to hypnotize you at your office desk until quittin' time."

I kind of hope this is a little bit real.
Via I'm Not Obsessed.
Reba McEntire Reincarnated?

Michael Musto wants to get laid . . . to rest here.

Man vs Wild's Bear Grylls naked again. Kinda NSFW, but it looks like it was really cold, so there's not, uh, a lot to see.

People Magazine's with this week's Five Funniest Moments of Daytime TV

Leona Lewis gets booed?

The airdates of The Final 10 Battlestar Galactica episodes

Boys dancing in their underwear on omgblog.

The official Britney Spears site launches

How do you get over your fear of acting like a pig? Dan Savage says, "Here’s the thing about male piggishness, kiddo: women dig it; fags do too." I think the fags might just dig it a little bit more . . . .

Steve Kelley, copyright 2008 Creators Syndicate

McCain is funny: “I’m the underdog, but there are signs of hope. I can’t shake the feeling that some people here are pulling for me. I am delighted to see you here tonight, Hillary.”

National Review Writer: Obama Likely Would Have Been Aborted, Had It Been Legal

The Temperament Factor: Who's Best Suited to the Job? Time's lengthy article navigates the places where personality meets challenge.

Interview with Treasury Secretary Paulson: "The steps we’ve taken are absolutely the right steps. They are bold steps. They are strong steps to stabilize the financial markets and inject confidence into the banking system along with capital."

Economists prescribe deeper deficit: Balanced government budget no recession cure. "The financial crisis has rocked the economy's foundations, but it also has opened a window of opportunity for the next president."


Great interview with Madeleine Albright on the candidates' foreign policy views, the mishandling of the Iraq war, and her time as Secretary of State. She says Obama reminds her of Bill Clinton.

Apparently, we take our bathroom habits for granted when we really shouldn't because, like James Kotecki's political satire, American toilet hygiene is not something to be especially proud of. But no one is talking about how using toilet paper is not the best way to get clean "down there."

The world divides into water cultures and paper cultures. This comes into quite stark relief in Japan because Japan used to be a paper culture. Two hundred years ago they used sticks or stones or paper. And now, because Japan has had a toilet revolution, they've turned into a water culture, and they have very high-tech toilets with in-built bidets and drying systems that can massage you and probably sing to you.

But the U.S. and the U.K. stubbornly remain paper cultures, and attempts to introduce bidet toilets have failed. Hygienically, bidet toilets are infinitely superior. Using toilet paper to clean yourself down there makes about as much hygienic sense as cleaning yourself with a towel and imagining you're rubbing off the dirt. We've got a very unhygienic way of cleaning a place of our body that we would like to be very clean.

Overall, better bathroom hygiene "has added 20 years to the modern lifespan, so this thing that we won't even discuss is actually responsible for perhaps decades of all of our lives." But, like lots of things, we could be doing it better.

Head over to Salon to read the full article.

Via DNA Magazine. Two more NSFW shots after the jump.

click thumbnails to enlarge