I’m sitting in the jury assembly room in San Francisco thinking about two historical moments: today’s DOMA case at the Supreme Court, and the singularly principled action of the editorial board of the Journal of Library Administration, which resigned en masse after concluding that “it is not possible to produce a quality journal under the […]
I lift my informal blogging sabbatical (I’m writing too much to blog, if that makes sense) to note that a few weeks back someone I’m related to (I don’t even want to admit how closely) forwarded a hysterical email composed of various paranoid forwards that postulated, incorrectly, that the federal government was hell-bent on limiting […]
Harvey Milk’s Birthday, 1979 Originally uploaded by freerangelibrarian Last night the news that New Hampshire had passed a marriage-equality bill to legalize same-sex marriage in January didn’t even lead the stories. This turn of events — the sixth state to pass this historic civil-rights legislation — is now just part of the rolling stone of […]
Oh, I know why. We have mortgages and car payments to make, and jobs to keep, and we don’t want to be seen as so Uppity that giving us rights is a scary proposition. Or we have children to worry about, or neighbors we don’t want throwing rocks in our windows. We also know that […]
I’m posting these American Library Association policies as an accompaniment to my YouTube video for ALA’s presidential candidates. Note: the ALA policy manual online is six months out-of-date; I had to get corrected text from an ALA member. So no quibbling from the candidates that this submission is a day late! 7.1.1 The ALA will […]
I wonder if years from now I will be more taken with where I saw Milk — in a weary, mostly empty theater in Tallahassee, sitting amid a small clutch of Southern gays and liberals (going at least by their Birkenstocks and hybrid cars) — than that I saw it at all. Milk is a […]
David Strunk Hummel died of AIDS on July 30, 1987, one more casualty in what should never have become an epidemic in the first place. I met David in San Francisco in the late 1970s, when we were both campaigning against the Briggs Initiative. He was like a brother to me in many senses of […]
Dateline: Brisbane, Australia So the downside of the election is that voters in California, Arizona, and Florida trounced gay-marriage rights. Sandy and I have received very sympathetic mail from friends. I am still turning it over in my head. I gave my first talk yesterday and to my relief it went well (Lizanne was terrific), […]
Just over four years ago, in front of family and friends and a few surprised tourists, Sandy and I were married at San Francisco City Hall. Our marriage was eventually declared invalid, and the recent ruling in California won’t change that. We can get married again in California (or Massachusetts, or Canada), and probably will, […]
“‘ “I find the comparison between civil rights based on race and supposed new rights being granted for what amounts to deviant behavior to be really kind of ridiculous. There is no comparison. A black as a person does not by being black harm anyone. Gay rights is a collective delusion that’s being attempted. And […]