I intended to spend this entire week blogless, enjoying my brief Canadian homecoming before heading back south. But what a strange time to attempt to avoid the internet. The aftermath of Prop 8 has ballooned into a news event I hadn’t anticipated, and feel myself scrambling to catch up. My best shot:
Oprah’s got involved, with Melissa Ethridge going on her show to rightfully announce she’s not going to pay taxes anymore.
There’s been a juicy, intensifying who-gave-money-to-Yes witchhunt, featuring the El Coyote incident, Scott Eckern, artistic director of California Musical Theatre, LAFF’s Rich Raddon, and Cinemark’s CEO, who gave a whopping $99K. Which leads into Sundance’s unfortunate involvement, where not only does is have a Cinemark theatre as one of its venues, but its also facing potential boycotts simply because its in the midst of Mormonland. I for one am totally against any Sundance boycotts – Sundance has been a HUGE GLBTQ supporter over the years and even the suggestion of such seems tactless. However, boycotting Mormon businesses in Park City? Definitely. And I think Mr. Redford needs to quickly announce that Cinemark will not be a part of the festival if he wants to keep potential boycotters at bay. But actually boycotting Sundance itself (suggested here by an idiot) is a misguided, unfair idea as far as I’m concerned.
So what else? While, it turns out old people were the ones that really gave Prop 8 its boost. And that the Mormons – the main target in all of this (though seriously: the fundamentalists hate us more, they just don’t have $20 million to throw around) – have been planning this for a while. And their efforts have resulted in a suspicious envelope being found at the LA Mormon temple, and they still don’t know what it is.
On a bit of an aside, The Advocate declared that “Gay Is The New Black” on their cover, but then inside added a question mark to the headline, leading to my disappointment. It could be worse though. They could have put fucking KATY PERRY on the cover of the OUT 100. Yes, in this time of political outrage, a not-quite-bicurious woman who exploited gay themes for her own gain by creating a song thats more about sluts than it is about anything B or L or Q deserves the cover over RACHEL MADDOW?
Back to Prop 8, though… Protests are popping up all over, with a huge showing in New York. Queerty did an awesome comparison of the march in L.A. that I gladly participated in last Saturday, showing the amazing mileage the LA folk pulled in, and showing what that distance would be in NYC.
LA’s actual route:
If that distance occurred in NYC:
Anyway, tomorrow the protests are going national, make that international – as every major Canadian city – including Montreal, where I currently sit awaiting my graduation day – is staging protests at US embassies in solidarity with our south of the border buddies. I’ll take some photos, I’m sure.
In viral video land, the week’s too best videos came from Funny or Die, creating something every homophobe should watch with an open mind:
And Keith Olbermann, who gave a speech that made me tear up, even with the awkward and overdramatic cuts to new angles:
Oh yeah, and in the midst of all this, did they just cure AIDS?
But as a reminder that marriage is just one of many, many problems, take a look at this horrible incident that happened last week up here in marriage-legalizing, liberal rights Canada. This kind of thing happens all the time, and it concerns me a lot more than whether or not I can marry.
(For a second Canadian opinion on all of this, check out this poignant first hand account of a discussion stemming from the Prop 8 aftermath)
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