Weekend
Watercooler: Gay makes me uncomfortable

• Tattoo
your love. I am a huge tattoo aficionado. Ask me and I will
show you mine. Being a gay man, I also have passion to amend the
immigration laws to allow foreign members of a same-sex couple to enjoy
the same immigration rights of married couples. In my search for ideas
for my next tattoo, I ran across a beautiful book of typographical
tattoos called “Body Type 2″ compiled by Ina
Saltz . Ms. Saltz is a graphic design teacher specializing in
typography in New York City and though she doesn’t sport any ink she was
drawn to typographic, or “intellectual” tattoos. I share with you one
of the images that speak to me. In the words of the subject, “This is
about how to touch someone you love. My partner, who is Belgian, had an
immigration problem. I was looking for a secure place for our
couple-hood, so I wanted to etch this into my skin, in a physical
placeun-threatened by immigration. I made certain it was anatomically
over my heart, and I chose Bickham Script because I wanted it to be
beautiful. And I wanted the flourish to show if I had a button-down
shirt open.” Beautiful it is physically and in sentiment. May the words I
choose to have etched in my skin have as much significance.


•
Gay Marriage Support. An editorial in the New York Times supported marriage
equality. Most conservatives will negate the editorial on the
questionable assumption that the Old Grey Lady is a tool of liberals
(don’t forget the coverage during the march to the Iraq war). The
editorial very eloquently stated “Congress has a duty to extend to
same-sex partners the rest of the benefits that are enjoyed by federal
workers whose spouses are of a different sex. It also needs to repeal
the 1996 law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a
woman.” Though not a fiery endorsement, it was an endorsement
nevertheless!


• More Bashing. O.K. I
am starting to get a complex because I write so often about Catholic
Church politics. Full disclosure: I was raised Catholic and most of my
family still belongs to the Church (weird to say because belongs infers
ownership). Though my beliefs have changed drastically since my days as
an alter boy, I understand the difference between faith and religion and
would never condemn the choice of faith or non-faith. The dogma of the
Catholic church continues to attack GLBT members and I feel a need to draw
attention to the bigotry. This week in the Boston Catholic archdiocese’s
newspaper, The Pilot , a parent of an
elementary student in a Catholic school wrote defending the choice to
not educate a child of same-sex parents inCatholic schools (particularly
elementary levels). Gay Catholic activists were, understandably, upset
over one of the three “reasons”. The author of the column, Michael
Pakaluk , fears that a child of a same-sex parent “would bring
to school something obscene or pornographic, or refer to such things in
conversation, as they go along with the same-sex lifestyle, which — as
not being related to procreation — is inherently eroticized and
pornographic.” What I found almost as offensive was the statement, “The
question arises of whether children in the custody of (one cannot say,
‘children of’) same-sex couples should be admitted to Catholic parochial
schools.” Tell me why you can’t say children of? Parsing words to
support bigotry. When will the Catholic church or those following a
strict Catholic dogma start following the tenet of Do Unto Others?

• Save the dolphins. Sometimes
it’s extremely hard for me to listen to the news. Especially when it
comes to the BP oil disaster. I just feel helpless and defeated that big
business own so much of our government that the people of this great
company cannot guarantee our safety or the safety of our lands. We ran
across an article at Ranker that gets me even more upset. We know that the oil spill is an
environmental catastrophe especially around wild lands and wild life.
Check out Ranker’s list of Top 10 Cutest Animals Threatened by BP Oil
Spill . It will make you cry. Stick around for number 11 “What You Can Do” , at least
someone issuggesting actions that may be able to save me from this
depressing cycle.