I wrote a couple of the articles in this year’s Annual Portland Mercury Queer Guide. One is called “Your Nuptials Are Illegal: Five Above-the-Law Ways to Protect Your Partnership in (and from) Oregon” and the other is called “Location Is Everything: The Best Places to Get Same-Sex Married“. Pick it up on stands tomorrow in Portland, or read the transcript(s) below…

From The Portland Mercury Queer Guide: (6/14/2012)

“Location Is Everything: The Best Places to Get Same-Sex Married” (in Portland)

It could be argued that where one gets married is as important as whom one wishes to marry—particularly when it comes to same-sex weddings. Everybody has their own idea about what makes a great ceremony, but here are a few locations where you can tie the knot in town without worrying about someone kicking your ass on your big day. Read the rest of this entry »

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(Originally Published on The Huffington Post on 3/14/2012)

This past weekend my partner and I went to see a performance of A Lesson Before Dying, Romulus Linney‘s play set in a small Louisiana bayou town in 1948. It was based on the 1993 novel of the same name by Ernest J. Gaines and is about a young black man who has been wrongfully accused, convicted of murder, and awaits his death in the parish courthouse. While in court the convicted man’s life is compared to that of a hog, and this becomes his truth. His godmother enlists the unwilling aid of the town’s young plantation teacher to carry out her mission of teaching her godson to walk to the electric chair like an innocent man rather than the animal the white man has made him out to be throughout his life. Questions of racism and morality are confronted in visits between the two men for the duration of the piece and, in the end, the lessons shared and learned transform them both — along with the entire town.

After the very moving, emotional performance ended, founders of the August Wilson Red Door Project (an organization that “uses the arts as a catalyst for creating lasting, positive change in the racial ecology of Portland”) took the stage for a dialogue about the experience we had just collectively emerged from. Their organization posits that “all people, regardless of personal, cultural, and social history, internalize values and beliefs of the world they have been raised in. While some of these values and beliefs enable creative achievement and success, others create a sense of profound limitation and self-doubt. This doubt can be described as internalized oppression — a process by which people come to accept and internalize the inaccurate myths and stereotypes they have been exposed to.” The idea is that “no one is immune from having to wrestle with a sense that something is holding them back, regardless of background or privilege”, and they founded their organization on the belief that “with the right education, exposure, and support, everyone is capable of growing their capacity to create, to achieve, and to thrive.”

At one point during the very emotional post-performance chat, while illustrating how this particular story speaks to a universal human rights issue and making a correlation between the civil rights movement in the United States and some current world affairs and battles being fought in the name of race and religion in other lands, someone in the audience said the following four words about Americans: “We are past racism.” The room fell silent, aside from a few gasps. I could feel the sting in the air and could see the pain that one sentence had caused in the faces of many others in the room. Read the rest of this entry »

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(Originally published on The Huffington Post on 2/2/2012)

As you probably have heard, the Washington State Senate passed a marriage equality bill Wednesday night, clearing the way for a vote in the House, which looks poised to legalize unions for same-sex couples throughout the state. This means that if I walk out of my house in Portland, Ore. and drive across the I-5 bridge to Vancouver, Wash. (less than five miles away from my front door), I am now considered equal to my heterosexual counterparts and can legally marry the man I love, but once I drive back over that bridge to my house in the state I pay taxes to, I become a second-class citizen once again and cannot.

Well, fuck that, Oregon — and fuck that, America! How can people hate me and my love so much? All my life I have just wanted to be myself. I have wished for others to respect me as a human being in return for respecting them, but instead, I have been made to feel like something less than by my country, by my fellow man and, once again, just moments ago, by my home state.

I smell freedom across the I-5 bridge to Washington, and I want it. I deserve it. I am thrilled for my brothers and sisters in our neighboring state, but being able to see equality now just over the river has added insult to injury. Equality is mine to have as a citizen of this country and is, quite frankly, no one else’s to give. Marriage discrimination, as with any form of discrimination, is truly a cancer on our society. It destroys everything we work so hard to protect, and it weakens us. It strips away our freedom and is just plain un-American.

We are entering into a political vortex this year, with campaigns and agendas flying by every which way. I encourage you to stay focused on equality. Keep fighting to be yourself. Demand respect as a human being, and in return, respect others. Do not let your country make you feel less than any longer, because you are not. You are exactly who you are supposed to be, and don’t let the state of Oregon or any other bigots who “aren’t ready” for marriage equality tell you otherwise.

This is your country, and your love is just as beautiful as anyone else’s love. The end.

We are going to win this. All of us. Any day now…

To get involved in the LGBT community where you live, click here. Change starts with you.

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