San Francisco Pride
I promised y’all a post about San Francisco Pride, and here it is! Albeit a week late…
I went with Emily, Alonso, Jaime and Camron on Friday night and we arrived at the hostel. Whenever I go to SF I normally stay downtown or city center, but this time I wanted to stay somewhere different, so we stayed in the Mission District. That’s somewhere I’ve never been before, and there’s not much of SF I haven’t been to on one trip or another. It’s like the multicultural area of the city, like the East End of London, I guess. Anyway, it’s really nice, loads of great places to eat, a buzzing atmosphere and it seems very distinct from the rest of the city.
Saturday consisted of going to Civic Center for the party there (dance music for the first time in 10 months!), doing some shopping and then in the evening we headed to the Castro for the Pink Party. It was phenomenal – they blocked off the Castro at both ends, and the place was filled with gays. It ended at midnight though, so we ended up wandering around finding somewhere to eat and battling through the crowds…
After an unwelcome early start on Sunday, we headed to somewhere near Fisherman’s Wharf to see the parade. It started with some people I mentioned in a previous post, people who have been together for 30-ish years. I always get a little emotional at these things, particularly when I see so many straight people standing around in support, who have made the effort to come down. SF Pride isn’t quite the freak show I had expected, and I get the impression they’ve been told to tone it down. In Belfast and London, and I’m sure most other cities, Pride parades are dominated by drag queens and almost naked men. Which is fine, I don’t mind. But that’s what the media latches onto, and it gives the hideous right-wing idiots something to put in their pathetic email propaganda. Even some of the gays I’ve spoken to who are against the idea of Pride cite this as the main reason. So it was refreshing to see a genuine diversity of people represented in SF.
Here’s some photos! (And there’s loads more over at my Flickr page)
Heroes
I was going through my RSS feeds this morning when I awoke, and a post on the WordPress blog alerted me to the fact that it was National Blog Posting Month. I guess this is a little like National Novel Writing Month, only with blogs, and you have to post once a day for a month. Over the last few weeks I’ve been struggling for inspiration, and I worried that I might be getting tired of blogging, so I’m hoping this will give me the drive I need to continue…
Anyway, I digress. If you want to find out more about NaBloPoMo, click on the link above.
There doesn’t seem a theme for July yet, so for my first post of July, I’ll go with June’s theme: Heroes.
Last weekend I was at San Francisco Pride, one of the most famous and best-attended prides in the world. It was also a special year this year, as it was the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. I plan to post another time about what I got up to, but for now I’m going to tell you about my heroes.
There they are. See those signs? “George and Wayne, 29 years” “Bill and Chris, 31 years”
I don’t know these people. I’ve never seen them before, and I’ll probably never see them again. But what they’ve achieved, and what they stand for is amazing. All across America, and the world, we’re constantly being told that gay marriage will destroy the sanctity of it – and yet here’s the proof that it won’t.
These weren’t the only 3 examples in the parade, there were probably thousands and committed same-sex partners represented, many of them with healthy, happy kids. I’ll be honest, whenever I see couples like this, I get emotional. Its a sweet thing to see in world where we’re being constantly told that it can never happen, and a reminder to us all that there is some hope.
My heroes for the day: George and Wayne, Bill and Chris, and all the other same-sex couples out there proving everyone wrong.
Defying Gravity
I’m through accepting limits
‘Cause someone says they’re so
Some things I cannot change
But ’till I try, I’ll never know!
Too long I’ve been afraid of
Losing love I guess I’ve lost
Well, if that’s love
It comes at much too high a cost!
I’d sooner buy
Defying gravity
Kiss me goodbye
I’m defying gravity
And you can’t pull me down…
Hunter’s Creek Hike
Today was the first nice day in a while, so Emily, Amy and I decided to go for a hike.
We chose to go explore Hunter’s Creek, north of Reno, out through Cauglin Ranch. We couldn’t find the beginning of the trail, thanks to the useless guide we downloaded from the internet, so we decided instead to go our own way. We didn’t make it all the way though, we weren’t really prepared, and we were told along the way that it was an all day hike to the top of the creek and the waterfall. We shall no doubt return.
Here’s some photos! (more over on my flickr)
P.S. My Flickr Pro account lapsed, and I’m a poor student. If you want to be really, really nice, and help me out, feel free to gift me a Pro account.
In Limbo
I’ve been like this before.
When I’m about to embark on something new, I get restless. I’m coming to the end of my time in Reno and final year is coming much too quickly.
My project is winding up, I’m spending most of my time raising the ‘n’ numbers of my experiments. I’m compiling my final presentation, I’m reading as many papers as I can. I’m studying for my GRE exam to apply for American Graduate schools, so I can get it out of the way before I leave. I’m trawling through a list of almost 100 Honours projects trying to narrow it down to 10. Emily and I are trying to sort the new Queen’s students out with somewhere to live in August.
I’m also now properly single for the first time since I came out. Me and relationships aren’t working out. I don’t have any real desire to put much effort into them, as they’re always finite. In the back of my mind, I’m always reminded that it’s going to end. Plus, I’m a “grass is always greener” kind of guy mixed with my totally unrealistic expectations, so I’m going to try stay single for a while, see if it’s as great as everyone says it is…
It’s not all doom-and-gloom though! My brother is coming out in 10 days, and despite him not having planned anything I’m looking forward to it. The very vague plan at the minute is this:
San Francisco -> San Jose -> Monterey -> (Possibly LA) -> San Diego -> (Possibly Las Vegas) -> Reno
Oh, and June 27th is San Francisco Pride! July 4th is Independence Day. Aaaannnnd on August 14th (conveniently, my last day of work), Lisa Lampenelli will be in Reno.
Yeh, I’m going to focus on having as much fun, and doing as much as I can in my remaining 3 months here. Then, before I know it, I’ll be back in Belfast and knuckling down to the long days in the lab, studying and doing grad school applications. I’m actually really excited about it.
What An Unbelievably Depressing Week
- Laura Ling and Euna Lee, 2 American journalists working for Current.TV, caught (supposedly) on North Korean soil, sentenced to 12 years hard labour. Effectively a death sentence.
- Dr. Tiller, one of the few remaining late-term abortion doctors in the US, executed while at a church service in Wichita, KS. His alleged assassin, Scott Roeder, arrested. At his funeral, a portrait of him was shown, with the simple words “Trust Women” written beneath it in flowers.
- Conservatives gain control in almost all councils in this week’s English local elections.
- The UK government is generally falling to pieces.
- The results of the European elections are in, and the left are suffering badly, Oh, and the BNP gained 2 seats. Europe-wide, the far-right and anti-immigration parties did well, and voter turnout stood at 43%.
On the brighter side this week, Obama delivered his much-hyped speech to the Muslim world. If you haven’t seen it yet, take 15 minutes and read it, it’s well worth it.
Here’s some cute things falling asleep to restore your faith in humanity :)
Regina Spektor
Every time I hear a Regina Spektor song, I get a little nostalgic. Some of my happiest memories from my first 2 years in Belfast were spent listening to her music.
Her songs seems so simple, and yet when you listen a little harder, the lyrics often hit home, hard. Her new song, the first track to be taken from her upcoming album, Far, is a fantastic example of this. Take a couple of minutes out and listen:
Laughing With
After the jump, some more Regina Spektor…
Why Prop 8 Matters To Me
I often find myself getting very involved with politics, despite the country I’m in. When I was in Northern Ireland, I get really into it all, despite it not really have that much to do with me. I don’t align with either side, I live in South Belfast, an area more-or-less unaffected by it all, and I don’t intend on living in Northern Ireland for much of my life. All I want is to see some kind of progress towards a lasting peace.
But for the last 10 months, I’ve been in the US. Obama was elected in November, and on the very same day, Proposition 8 was passed in California. I shouldn’t care – after all, the UK has had civil partnerships since December 2005. Looking back, no-one cared. Not even the right-wing. Yet it seems to be such a big deal here. I think that part of the problem is the insistence on calling it gay “marriage”, rather than civil unions. Obama has repeatedly expressed his support for civil unions, but rarely, if ever, calls them “marriages”. Personally, I agree. I don’t like the idea of gay unions being called “marriage”. Marriage to me implies religion, and the notion that gays would want to join into an institution that fundamentally disagrees with who they are baffles me. I’m not saying all Christians hate gays, but the Bible makes it’s position clear.
Anyway, back to my original point: Why does Prop 8, and the whole gay marriage debate, matter to me? Well, the chances are high that I’ll be coming back to the US to do a PhD, which will take me 5 years. After that, I’ll probably look at staying in the US, and settling down – but if being able to get married, and have the same rights as straight people isn’t an option, it certainly makes it more unlikely that I’ll come back. That means that America is loosing potential science talent, something it can ill afford to do. With less and less students choosing to study science, and ludicrous legislation such as the recently overturned ban on stem cell research, America is falling behind. It’s time for the US to get on board with the continuing trend in the Western world of allowing gays to legally partner.
I just don’t get it. I don’t get the opposition to gay marriage. Why does it matter to people so much? Apparently it’s going to devalue their marriages? Rubbish! How would it? As Keith Olbermann so brilliantly put it:
In a time of impermanence and fly-by-night relationships, these people over here want the same chance at permanence and happiness that is your option. They don’t want to deny you yours. They don’t want to take anything away from you. They want what you want — a chance to be a little less alone in the world.
Only now you are saying to them — no. You can’t have it on these terms. Maybe something similar. If they behave. If they don’t cause too much trouble. You’ll even give them all the same legal rights — even as you’re taking away the legal right, which they already had. A world around them, still anchored in love and marriage, and you are saying, no, you can’t marry. What if somebody passed a law that said you couldn’t marry?
…
What is this, to you? Nobody is asking you to embrace their expression of love. But don’t you, as human beings, have to embrace… that love? The world is barren enough.
It is stacked against love, and against hope, and against those very few and precious emotions that enable us to go forward. Your marriage only stands a 50-50 chance of lasting, no matter how much you feel and how hard you work.
And here are people overjoyed at the prospect of just that chance, and that work, just for the hope of having that feeling. With so much hate in the world, with so much meaningless division, and people pitted against people for no good reason, this is what your religion tells you to do? With your experience of life and this world and all its sadnesses, this is what your conscience tells you to do?
