Angel Hernandez and Marvin Alvarado from Youth Radio DC send this video commentary about gay marriage. In Los Angeles, Youth Radio reporter Anne Santos discovers the Democratic candidates aren’t the awesome allies we we want them to be.
i myself have different feelings about gay marriage. color me queer, but i’m not so much for the state-sanctioned institution of marriage, fortified with a plethora of financial and psychological privileges. i wish folks who choose whatever kind of relationship – whether queer collective mixed-family living, leave it to beaver nuclear fam style, perma-single, BFF households with no kids, whatever– should be validated by society.
i feel like institutional homophobia has forced queers to the negotiating table over an issue that invokes all kind of patriarchal, middle class, citizen-oriented values: marriage as a “higher form” of relationship, “freedom to marry,” with flags waving, etc.
NO offense to my LBGTQ community organizing around this issue! i know its a strategic entry point… and i am all about strategic entry points as a place to start shifting paradigms. it’s the place where we start to push, so that more doors open- so that the conversation about concepts like family and marriage widen and break apart where they no longer serve us. the gay marriage issue is the place where we identify and combat homophobia and transphobia.
p.s. i am all for self-designed rituals (public or private) to celebrate love and connection, formerly know as “the wedding.”
when i got to my grrlfriend’s house tonight, there was a medium size box overflowing with hair products. her roommate, who is a hair stylist, left the bounty of products in the hopes that i might scour the box for something i like. i myself moved recently, and in the process i demanded my roommate at the time and my partner to force me to dispose of an absurd amount of crusty, ancient cosmetics that up until then i could not bear to part with for no other reason that i was ashamed of producing… waste.
i’m still struggling to separate my desire to decrease the ole ecological footprint… from my knack for hoarding nasty eyeshadow. there must be a better way?
it was painful to watch the sour, second hand lip glosses from high school (no joke) make their way to the trash bin… but i knew i was kidding myself that it was some how helping the environment to store them.
tonight, my horror at the box of potential throw-aways before me wore off as soon as i realized… it was indeed a bounty of hair product delight. i don’t even use a lot of product in my hair, but my socialization around “quality,” creamy, yummy-smelling stuff is pretty deep. bath and body works’ cherry blossom shimmer body lotion?? score! achem– i mean…
of course i’ll take the hair crap! i can’t imagine all these 20-something, fabulous and more than half filled bottles going to trash.
the whole affair got me thinking about the massive amounts of crap united-statians produce on a daily basis. it’s no news to any one that we are notorious wasters. but my mind has been grappling with the vast systemic nature of the whole affair.
it got me thinking about what it would take to regulate our own damn selves. Continue Reading »
