in which i have feelings about prop 8

As I'm sure you know by now, Judge Vaughn Walker overturned Prop 8 yesterday afternoon. Proposition 8 was passed by voters in 2008 and effectively repealed same-sex marriage in California.

Obviously, it was a big deal to repeal same-sex marriage in one of the most stereotypically liberal places in the country. There were protests, there were rallies, there were viral video campaigns, there were celebrity speak-outs. Barack Obama had just been elected president around the same time. We - anyone who could be construed as even kind of liberal - were all certain that The World Was Going To Change For The Better. It was going to be great! "Yes we can," we had said. We did!

I remember November 5, 2008. We were all high off the announcement of President-Elect Barack Obama; we were full of joy and hope. We were proud to be Americans, Americans who had just elected our first African-American president, we were going to be Liberal Progressives and we had silenced McCain and Palin. I mostly remember being glad that the election was over so I wouldn't have to hear anything about it anymore; nobody would be chasing me across the street begging me to vote!

The next day, I remember hearing that Prop 8 had passed. I remember being kind of hurt and but still riding high from the night before. It's going to be okay, I thought. It won't be nearly as bad as the past eight years. We have Obama, not Bush. It's going to be okay. (I also remember not wanting to put all my trust for a country in one person; I remember not entirely liking Obama's LGBT policies and plans and I remember being distrustful of political promises. I knew that I was being stupid and naive, so easily deluded by our Liberal Progressiveness! But I wanted to believe, oh how I wanted to believe.)

I put Prop 8 out of my mind. California's far away, I thought. Things can change still. Other states will pass civil unions. There are 49 other states. It's scary to know that same-sex marriages can and will be repealed, but at least they had them, right? New Hampshire had just begun to talk about it. It was an exciting time. My home state of Massachusetts was the first state to legalize gay marriage, and I was hoping to see the same live-free-or-die philosophy honored in my adopted home state. New Hampshire's civil union ruling went into effect on January 1 of this year. It is exciting to be young and queer in the midst of this political process.

I kept pushing Prop 8 out of my head as more states started to institute civil unions. It's a frustratingly slow process; it doesn't always feel like you are moving forward. Sometimes it feels like you are moving backwards.

On the road to LGBTQ+ equality, every state that starts to think about civil unions is a baby step. Every state that passed civil unions and/or same-sex marriage is another baby step. I have friends who are not in support of marriage, calling it a heterosexist institution. But before you can overthrow an institution you need to have it securely in place. Baby steps. Gay marriage with full civil liberties will eventually become Non-Modifier Marriage. We need marriage before we can overthrow marriage.

Straight folks can get married and divorced and married and divorced; something like 50% of marriages end in divorce. Maybe you are the one ruining the institution of marriage. How does that feel? Not so good, right?

Here's the thing about being gay: you are repeatedly told that your identity is inherently wrong. Being gay is the scariest fucking thing, every single day.

This past fall, Maine was voting on legalizing civil unions. In October, I went to a concert in Portland and saw many God Hates Fags signs while I was there. Maine, twenty minutes away from me at UNH, didn't feel like a very safe place anymore.

Maine's civil unions bill didn't pass. I read the news that morning, heartbroken, and cried for a while. How could this happen? How could this happen so close to me? And then I remembered Prop 8. I remembered how many lives these rulings touch and affect. I couldn't believe I had forgotten about it.

Knowing that California has reversed their ruling makes me so, so happy because it is a huge step towards equality. Of course there are going to be appeals, and of course it's going to keep going on and on in circles for a while. But yesterday was a huge, huge victory for so many people. And not just in California - this struggle for equality is worldwide.

I can't wait to tell my kids about it one day.

Tweet tweet (Or: Now back to our regularly-scheduled deconstruction)

So I joined Twitter, as you may have figured out by now. Judge away, I don't blame you. I can claim I was doing it for "research purposes" but whatever, I have a twitter account. I was bored one day and it provides another time-waster during funemployment. For the most part, it's a depository of links to some of the articles I've written. I don't think my minute-to-minute actions are especially interesting; perhaps that makes me a bad Twitter user. I have a hard enough time coming up with things to write about on here! But at the same time I also feel like I have Joined The Internet. I am now - officially - An Internet Person.

Basically, we can boil down the twitter experience to the following sentence: Twitter has been rather lamentable but simultaneously REALLY INTERESTING, and once you get accustomed to getting your information in that way, it is very difficult to disconnect. I've been on there for about a month now, and the longer you're on it the more it grows on you. It's kind of unfortunate.

What I like about Twitter is that it offers information in an ingenious way. It's kind of like having your own personal newsfeed only about things that you care about, which is really cool. I think 140 characters is limiting - I am very bad at keeping sentences succinct, and don't text messages get 160 characters? - but at the same time it's almost a challenge to see how simply you can state something. Linguistically, Twitter is amazing! (Also, I don't shut up about linguistics.)

It also offers something called Trending Twitter Topics, which are Things Many People Are Talking About. These are fascinating, and it's amazing to see how people create new words in real-time! You can tell what is catching on and what isn't, what makes a good catchphrase and what does not. It also shows what is Really Important on a Global Scale; it's kind of like a Global Newsfeed unto itself. Another thing I do really like about twitter is that it allows you to search users' tweets for specific words, which is occasionally really helpful.

But, I'm also not following a lot of people. I'm following 40 accounts right now, which isn't too bad, but I feel like my Twitter experience would greatly benefit from having friends to have conversations with, but at the same time that seems like a wildly inefficient form of communication. Are you on twitter? You should follow me (@heatherfro).

Slick as an oil spill, baby

I am finally catching up on this whole BP Oil Spill. Apparently this happened in April ... and is still ongoing. Shit.

I wonder how much longer this will continue. I'm nervous though; everyone keeps talking about how much this affects the poor animals (I think by now everyone has seen pictures of the ducks covered in oil) but we're saying much less about the ecosystem. And, we're entirely disregarding how this affects all of us. The United States is very oil dependent; it's going to be a huge problem economically, even though it will create a huge number of jobs for environmental scientists, biologists, zoologists/wildlife ecologists, and chemists. Time will tell if this is The Biggest Oil Spill Ever, but there's been some big ones in the past.

This is what it would look like if the spill was where I live (I live in Southern MA).

there is life after college!

I wish I had some exciting unemployment stories for you, but for the most part I have been sitting around watching episodes of 30 Rock for hours on end, reading a lot, conducting important research on pop songs featuring Ludacris (he's the best part of every single one of them, and believe me, he's featured in a lot of songs) and watching Trending Twitter Topics for new words (did you know that this whole Boston water crisis is called the 'aqua apocalypse'?). Oh, and I've been chased around my house by the most terrifying ants of all time - these fuckers are about 1/3 of an inch long and do not die.

As you can tell, it has been an exciting week and a half of unemployment. But now, through some miracle, I have a job offer!

As I have said before, I have a tendency to have very interesting summers, though entirely by accident. This summer I have an offer to be employed by the Budweiser Corporation, a part of the Anheuser-Busch Companies, as a receptionist in Medford, MA. Yes! You read that correctly: BEER SUMMER.

And it would be fun.

But there is a problem: I got this job through Craigslist, without an interview. They want me to fill out a credit report to prove that I am who I claim to be. This screams SKETCHY! I'm hoping to actually go to Medford and meet these people before I agree to anything. I have 36 hours left on my offer; I hope they get back to me!