Gays at the Oscars

I'll be brief, but I wanted to highlight how excited and touched I was by the two wins for MILK last night at the Oscars. Dustin Lance Black (only 34 years old) won for Best Writing in an Original Screenplay and Sean Penn won Best Actor.

It's not often that we sit down together as a country, and hell, with people around the world watching, it's not often we sit down as a global community ... and discuss gay rights. In a forum with as much viewership and impact as the Oscars, these two wins meant an enormous amount to me. My heart swelled listening to these two speeches ... I got the chance to truly feel proud about who I am.

Many will say that this is just the first step, there's so far to go, or the impact of this will be lost because of this or that ... but I'm going to savor it.


Black's acceptance speech:

" ... When I was 13 years old, my beautiful mother and my father moved me from a conservative Mormon home in San Antonio, Texas to California, and I heard the story of Harvey Milk. And it gave me hope. It gave me the hope to live my life. It gave me the hope one day I could live my life openly as who I am and then maybe even I could even fall in love and one day get married.

I wanna, I wanna thank my mom, who has always loved me for who I am even when there was pressure not to. But most of all, if Harvey had not been taken from us 30 years ago, I think he'd want me to say to all of the gay and lesbian kids out there tonight who have been told that they are less than by their churches, by the government or by their families, that you are beautiful, wonderful creatures of value and that no matter what anyone tells you, God does love you and that very soon, I promise you, you will have equal rights federally, across this great nation of ours. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you, God, for giving us Harvey Milk."

I don't like the name Roundup anymore...

* Via TechCrunch, here, who gets these deets from Glassdoor, we have the best and worst places to work for the year.  I have taken a select few of the Top 20 to work for: Netflix (3), Whole Foods (6), Google (7), Caterpillar (16), and Apple (19).  The number 1 and 2 worst places, respectively to work are DHL Express (USA) [luckily they won't have to worry about that for long :-/] and United Airlines.

* BP is offering free WiFi at gas stations?  USA Today, here, seems to be under that impression, so we don't know if its actually fact or completely made up.  Interesting idea BP, hoping to be the next hangout?

* Rebuilding Place in Urban Space has an interesting take, here, on Washingtonian's article about Arlington and Alexandria possibly becoming the 51st state.  Why doesn't DC join in on the action?  Makes sense to me ... better than retrocession into Maryland.

* Engadget has the scoop on Ford's self-parking car - just something else that lazy Americans really need.  It should be available in two Lincoln models by 2010 ... interesting.

* Lifehacker has the deets on how to learn sign language - here.

* GGW thinks that Apple should stop toying around and design a building that the Georgetown ANC would actually like - something in the federal style.  If they wanted glass, stone, and metal - they can go build in Gallery Place or Logan.  Good point - here.

* The Clintons will be with America's Mayor on NYE assisting him in dropping the ball in Times Square.  Excitement.  Via Perez - here.

* Columbia Heights Streetscape project website is up and running - here.

* New Georgetown blog ... I personally like Vox Populi, but I'll be adding the Georgetown Metropolitan to Reader to check it out.  I'll let you know what I think.  Of particular note is that Mr. GM (as he annoyingly likes to call himself), has found the back door into Nextbus' WMATA page.  Go here and select your route, then select your stop - and you have the next bus information ... nice!

* LOL ... Cite H:

* Got an hour and a half to kill ... or just want to see a really great documentary via Joe.My.God. - The Times of Harvey Milk is up on Hulu.  I embedded it below, but you can feel free to click through because I think it'd be annoying to watch in this window.  The full link is here.  Watch:

Enough with Warren

This post is not going to be a Corrupt-esque shock that Obama chose the guy to give a speech. I'm honestly shocked that we are still talking about it ... it just proves how stupid and near-sighted most gays are. I predict that Corrupt with have a response to this ... something from the partisan left, but I look forward to it.

Obama doesn't support the gays anymore than John McCain would have. Obama, feels the same way - they are here, they are queer, and I don't care. Warren hates gays, blah blah blah ... yes we know that. Is he going to talk about homosexuality during inauguration; I doubt it. Does Obama like him for reasons non-withstanding of his position on homosexuality; probably. In all honesty, I am not in the least bit surprised - and therefore I don't care. Obama was never going to be the saviors that the gays expected him to be.

I'm going to say this (even though its going to drive Corrupt, and his other Obama-partisan politics-friends, off the charts), Obama supporters voted in favor of Prop8. The endless GOTV efforts throughout California helped Prop8 succeed, it wasn't the only reason - but it was one of many. I just had to say that.

Anyway - Warren. I think a great point was made in the VP-Debate between Conductor Biden and Games man Palin ... they both have the same position on gays. Both parties do, both campaigns did. They don't care what gays do, what happens to us, what doesn't happen to us. Biden and Obama just aren't concerned with it - its just that simple. It's clearly not a big issue for any major party. And here we are ... wasting our energy once again on something so inconsequential. Seeing the movie Milk, in which Harvey Milk organized universal support to defeat Prop6 - allowing the State of California the power to fire teachers for being gay. Why can't we do that today? What's wrong with the gay community?

Well for one ... The Human Rights Campaign is a money pit. As a supporter of gays, you are likely to get more results from putting your donation towards a drink than you would by giving it to HRC. They get nothing done. They just dilly-dally about, accomplishing nothing - and I'm sick of it. We need real leaders to motivate people ... not Joe Solmonese sending out daily emails about what matters and how they need more money to raise his salary a little higher.

Sorry about that whole long rant - point is ... Obama doesn't care about the gays now and didn't pretend to care about them when you voted for him in the primaries and general election. Get over it. Let's start tackling some bigger issues ...