A couple of weeks ago, I drove over to Columbus, Georgia to visit my birth mom, Callie. As always, we had a great time.

She and I don’t see one another as much as we’d like, and we’ve only known each other for 11 years, but our relationship is as simple and easy as those I share with lifelong friends — and much less strained than the relationships I have with some of my adoptive family.

(Topic for future discussion: if kids avoided meeting their parents until they were adults, would family get-togethers be less awkward?)

Anyway, during my visit, Callie proposed that we drive down to Plains, Georgia to meet Jimmy Carter. I thought, “Sure, who wouldn’t want to do that?” There was just one catch: the meeting would take place at a church, after we’d sat through Sunday school and a church service.

Ugh.

I don’t mean to be one of “those people” — those people who go on and on about how the church has scarred them for life. But I freely admit that my adolescence would’ve been way more enjoyable if I hadn’t spent one-seventh of it sitting in small-town Baptist churches, listening to fire-and-brimstone speeches about homosexuality and other alleged ills.

College saved me. Not only did I have great teachers who broadened my perspectives on history, literature, religion, and countless other topics, but I was no longer obligated to attend Sunday services. I got over fiery, bigoted Baptist rhetoric simply by turning it off. And I’ve never looked back.

So, when I heard Callie’s suggestion, I was of two minds: on the one hand, I thought, “Oh, this ought to make for an interesting adventure”, and on the other I thought, “But do I really have to go to Sunday school?”

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I am a rock
I am an island
I am the egg man
I am the walrus
I am legend
I’m a Yankee Doodle dandy
I’m Rob Bass
I am Sasha Fierce
I am, I am, I am Superman
I’m the bottom
I’m the one and only dominator
I am the lizard king
I’m king of the world
I am the passenger
I’m a celebrity
I’m in jail
I am curious (yellow)
I am what I am
I’m a believer
I’m with stupid
I am a camera
I am the cheese
I’m too sexy
I’m losing you
I am 16
I’m walking on sunshine
I am Sam
I am woman
I’m your man
I am your father
But I’m a cheerleader.

I’m cold, I’m wet, and I’m just plain scared.

Jermaine Stewart was a Soul Train dancer who had a few hits in the mid-1980s, including the boisterous chastity anthem “We Don’t Have to Take Our Clothes Off.” If Grace Jones and a drag queen had a baby, and the baby were an Hermès scarf, and the scarf could lip-synch and spin and wear a peplum frill jacket and sombrero over spandex biker pants in a way that says Alexis Carrington, Greg LeMond, and “olé!” at the same time, that baby would be Jermaine Stewart. The outfits didn’t make Stewart a thing. The hair did. He often wore it down to his chin, and it was the straightest thing about him. It was, in a word, perfect. A lot of black women lost sleep over that hair. Every time he swung it out of his face it was like a slap to theirs.

— Wesley Morris, writing about hairstyles of the NBA [via Elizabeth]

 

Thirty-one years: that’s how long we’ve been dealing with AIDS in America.

It’s nearly impossible to imagine what life would’ve been like without this disease — and I mean that literally. As of 2010, the average American was 37.2 years old. Assuming that most children become aware of AIDS in grade school (or later), the majority of Americans living today have never known a world without AIDS.

And yet, we don’t talk about AIDS much anymore — at least, not as much as we used to. That’s probably because fewer people are dying of it.

HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is now treatable with a host of medications. Many of those come in a convenient one-pill form that patients take once a day, just as they would a multivitamin.

As a result, life expectancies for those who receive HIV treatment is on the rise. In fact, recent studies in the U.K. have found that HIV-positive individuals who reach age 60 may actually live longer than their HIV-negative peers, perhaps because they visit their doctors more often for monitoring.

But AIDS is not over. Not by a long shot:

• Over 33 million people around the globe are infected with HIV. And while infection rates are generally falling in the U.S., in other parts of the world, they’re on the rise.
• Today, there are a range of drugs to treat HIV, and they’re hugely effective, but they are also very expensive. Even in a wealthy nation like the U.S., only 33% of HIV-positive Americans have prescriptions for such drugs.
• Though people are living longer thanks to powerful new medications, there’s some evidence to suggest that having HIV can lead to other health problems unrelated to the virus, like heart attacks. As the HIV-positive population continues to grow — due to new infections and longer lifespans — we’ll need to confront these challenges.

One week ago today, Republicans awoke to a nasty post-election hangover. Conservative pundits chewed fistfuls of aspirin, combed their matted hair, turned to the cameras with weary smiles, and made excuses for the staggering defeat that caught them completely off-guard but which math enthusiasts saw coming from miles away.

David Brooks — who is articulate, but never as smart as I’d like him to be — bemoaned the fact that America had lost its Protestant groove (i.e. work ethic). Bill O’Reilly — who is neither as articulate or as smart as anyone would like him to be — went further, grumbling that today’s voters “want stuff“.

To which I say, NO SHIT, DUMBASS. Hell yes, we want stuff:

• We want a healthcare system that allows us to keep arms and legs, not pay them.
• We want public schools that train leaders and innovators, not standardized test-takers.
• We want federally funded programs in the arts and humanities, which aren’t “niceties”, but are key to our quality of life.
• We want to see Americans treated equally, regardless of their sexual orientation.

We want all that. And we will be happy to pay for it.

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No matter what policy, law or judicial decision is put into place, marriage is the only institution that unites a man and a woman to each other and to any children born of their union. It is either this, or it is nothing at all. In view of the fact that every child has a mother and a father, our society either respects the basic right of every child to be raised by his or her mother and father together and so supports the true and unique meaning of marriage for the good of children, or it does not.

In a society marked by increasing poverty and family fragmentation, marriage needs to be strengthened, promoted, and defended, not redefined…. I hope and pray that political leaders, judges, and all people will seek to honor this foundational and common sense truth of marriage.

— Salvatore Cordileone, archbishop and wax figurine impersonator, whining in the wake of Tuesday’s marriage equality wins 

I’ve asked before, but I’ll ask again: why do we let (allegedly) celibate religious figures tell secular citizens what to do with their reproductive organs? It makes about as much sense as having an Amish mechanic. Or a Christian Scientist oncologist.

Cordileone’s arguments are holier than the pope’s underwear. By which I mean they are full of massive, gaping holes, chasms of unfathomable logic. Someone really ought to darn those briefs. Or damn them, take your pick.

Cordileone — drunk-driving, gay-hating Cordileone — is doing that ridiculous thing where religious conservatives insist that marriage has always been about procreation. If that were true, only married women would be able to get pregnant. (Which, according to Todd Akin, is scientifically provable.)

No, marriage is really about the accumulation of wealth. That is why, in many parts of the world, marriages are still arranged. That is why Mormons, Muslims, and those of other faiths have traditionally taken multiple wives. That is why, until very recently, even here in the U.S., wives were chattel, property. They had a job, and that job was to bring in the money.

True, a portion of that money was meant to come from the kiddies they were busy cranking out. But wifey was also expected to bring some cash to the marriage. This is the sole reason for the longstanding tradition of the dowry, which is basically seed money for the household. (Think about that a sec, and the pun will come. [See what I did there?])

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Nope.

Which leads you to one of three conclusions:

1. There is no god.

2. There is a god, but he’s totally hands-off.

3. There is a god, and he likes gays, women, Muppets, and pot more than bigotry and selfishness.

Your call.

Me, I’ll say this: even though Obama didn’t enjoy the electoral vote landslide yesterday that he did in 2008, this win is far more meaningful to me.

The 2008 election was marred by the passage of Proposition 8 in California — a state that also voted heavily for Obama. That means that huge chunks of the electorate voted against LGBT rights while voting for a man who had the most progressive views on LGBT rights of any presidential candidate in U.S. history. That hurt.

Thankfully, the following four years saw huge progress in America. We passed hate crimes legislation. We reformed healthcare, making life easier for those living with chronic diseases like HIV, which has disproportionately affected the LGBT community in the U.S.  We did away with “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”.

And last night, we elected a man who did something that no sitting president has ever done by announcing his support for marriage equality. Wingnuts on the religious right said it doomed him, but the right was proven wrong.

Gay is, apparently, okay.

But I’m not just happy about Obama’s win. Tammy Baldwin became the first openly gay person elected to the U.S. Senate. One of the judges who helped legalize same-sex marriage in Iowa — Justice David Wiggins — was retained.

And for the first time ever, marriage equality was supported by voters in three states. It may well go our way in all four states where it was on the ballot: we’re still waiting for the votes to come in.

That makes this election so much sweeter than the last one. Hopefully, it will even serve as a bit of solace for my gay Republican friends. (Yes, I have them.) At least they’ll get to eat half their cake — though honestly, they were only going to get half a cake either way.

Congrats, all.