UNDER ATTACK?

To me, it is a very strange thing to feel like we're under attack.  And by "we" I mean gay men and women in the United States.   2008 was a political disaster for gay rights.

Arizona, Florida, and California all passed constitutional amendments banning gay marriage.  Arkansas voted, actually voted to prevent gay & women from legally adopting children.  

The President elected is allowing Rick Warren to give the blessing at what will be the most watch inauguration in American history.  The real sin of Prop. 8 in California is what people actually had legally taken away from them.  It is one thing for Arizona or Florida to ban what does not yet exist, but quite another to invalide someone's legal marriage.  

And now I read that Pope, during his Christmas message, comparing gay rights and marriage to the destruction of the human race.  While I understand that the Church comes down on the side of pro-creation and life, coming down on the side of hating someone who already exists and serves the Lord on God's Earth seems like going too far.

To me, it feels like it's open season on gay men and women's rights.

So here's what I would like to know for 2009:  Will President Obama allow gay men & women to openly serve in the United States military?  The desegregation of the military definitely helped in the civil rights movement.  And so should it for gay rights.  Will the California Supreme Court invalidate Prop. 8?  With Prop. 8, the seeds of newly re-energized internet based gay political activism is brewing.  And I would really like to my money into a new wave of political activism.  I want to support an ACT UP for the 21st century.

I feel strongly that the leaders and board of the Human Rights Campaign & the Gay & Lesbian Task Force should all have resigned after this election.  Such a humiliating defeat was unacceptable for me to continue to put my hard earned money into a losing strategy.  I want to put my money into a newly motivated generation who are looking outward to the status of gay rights in the second decade of the 21st century.  This decade is lost and we cannot afford to lose another 10 years.

THE CONCERT I MOST WANT TO SEE

I have seen music legends in concert. The list is too long to even start naming all the artists and bands I've seen in concert. It is well over 500 concerts by over 200 artists or groups. But there are some notable absences of artists whom I would LOVE to see in concert. My Top 3:

#3 - Michael Jackson. Yes, we would be getting the 50 year old Michael Jackson, but it would still be an amazing show nonetheless.

#2 - Whitney Houston. Hopefully drug free and just waiting for a diva comeback of epic proportions.

#1 - ABBA - the pop supergroup has said they will never get back together, but ABBA is definitely a concert I would LOVE to see. The Mamma Mia movie was terrible, the musical was not much better. And no one does ABBA like the original ABBA. And while I'm talking about Mamma Mia. Here's my theory on its popularity, especially in Europe. I was watching Mamma Mia on an early Monday evening in Munich, Germany in September. The cinema was mostly populated with middle aged women, all of whom were singing along to all the songs. Mamma Mia was terribly directed, close up when it should have been a long shot, a long shot when it should have been close up.....just poor direction overall. Back to Europe.....why the movie has done so well isn't so much because of the movie, it's because of the memories. Women all over the world were watching ABBA and remembering their youth (in this case their teenage years in the 70's). Music has such a strong connection to memories and Mamma Mia allows the moviegoer to remember their youth. And 2 hours of remembering your youth is more than worth the 8 euro price of admission.

UPDATE: on March 5, 2009, Michael Jackson announced he's touring beginning July 2009 in London: http://www.michaeljackson.com/

UPDATE 2: Michael Jackson passed away on June 25, 2009 at 50 years old. May he find peace in death that he never had while he was alive.

PONZI RHYMES WITH FONZIE

I know that felons are not supposed to profit from their crimes, but I would sure love to read a book written by Bernie Madoff.  The man almost pulled off the biggest Ponzi scheme in world history.  What I want to know where and how Bernie Madoff thinks his morality went off the rails.  How do you make the decision to defraud, lie, steal, and cheat on a daily basis?  Was it ego?  Did he just think he was smarter than everyone else?  I want to hear his pitch, when he made a decision to pull a Ponzi scheme, how he did the faulty accounting and how he lied to the SEC.  I really want to read the last chapter (written so far, I assume the trial will be just as scintillating), about the weeks when it started to collapse.  What would be fair and appropriate is if the profits from his book went to paying back his victims.  

If there's one life lesson relearned, if it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Interestingly enough, every era that has a downfall has a face to put to it.  The 80's junk bond scandel had Michael Milken and this one has Bernie Madoff.

UPDATE:  This is hilarious - http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/12/business/12palm.html?em

PHILADELPHIA TO MILK

Lately I've been on a big kick watching "older" (relative term) movies.  I just finished watching the 1993 movie Philadelphia.  It starred Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, Joanne Woodward, Jason Robards, Antonio Banderas, and was under the direction of the great Jonathan Demme with music by Bruce Springsteen.

What's so thought provoking is that at the time, it was a hugely risky movie.  Would an audience (or anyone for that matter?) show up at the cinema and pay money to see an AIDS movie?  Tom Hanks was betting his career playing a gay man, in an age where a straight actor playing a gay man had never been done (yet).  Tom Hanks was at the height of his career, and he choose to do this brave, important picture.  In a sense, Tom Hanks trailerblazed straight actors playing gay roles by winning his second acting Academy Award for Philadelphia.  Hollywood found a great human angle on the AIDS epidemic and made a great film about it.

And now, 15 years later, we have another seminal gay film, populated almost entirely with straight actors in gay roles, and it is no less powerful of a film.  MILK was an amazing film.  Political, but human and another landmark film about gay rights at another cross roads of the gay rights movement.  No less important a film than Philadelphia was in 1993.  Both films were brave, bold, and full of love.  I hope that what Philadelphia did for AIDS, Milk does for gay rights.

Of course, I'm political.  But what the gay rights movement has never been able to successfully articulate is that gay rights is about EQUAL rights.  We want to be able to do the exact same things that our straight friends and family can do.  Equal rights in the 21st century....we've come so far, but we have so much further to go.

So President Obama, Rick Warren can speak, but in the midst of righting the United States, we would like to openly serve in the U.S. military.  And we would like our country to allow us the right to be married to the man or woman that we love.  Equality.

UPDATE:  Sean Penn won the Academy Award for Best Actor for playing Harvey Milk, and my friend Dustin Lance Black won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.  Film Editor Elliot Graham was nominated, but unfortunately did not win.  He was run over by the Slumdog train.....