Well, the trip out to Oakland was good. Met a couple of cool guys. Never caught up on any sleep. Hung out with Simon and Lili alot, Rice a fair amount, and some with
I miss the bay area. I feel so much better socially adapted to that environment. Partially the pre-existing friends. Partially, I suspect, the concentration of geeks in the area, and probably also a denser, more transit friendly location. The density of homos and progressives probably helps too.
I went to the Creating Change conference. The first day wasn’t terribly impressive, and I still think the best part about it was the networking opportunity. Amusingly, I traveled halfway across the country and the first person I met, wholy coincidentally was someone from OutFront, our local MN homo activist org. Then I exchanged contact info with someone from the glbt programs office for the university that I see on a regular basis.
The first day sessions pretty much blew. I went to Guerilla Advertising, which was like design 101. Not very strategic, at least from their outline. Lou (outfront dude) and I blew it off to chat. And I met his husband. The next couple sessions were on Gay Men and Crystal Meth. The sense of sexual entitlement in the room was irksome. The unchallenged notion that it’s a tragic loss that gay men have to use condoms made my head want to explode. Hello, straight people have been putting restrictions on their own sexuality for millenia to deal with the reproductive consequences, leaving aside completely the STD question. This is hardly some horrific repression. This is as normal as it gets. The final one was about campus organizing, and one of the main presenters spent alot of time talking about storming the university president’s office and holding it for 22 hours, while negotiating a list of demands. I somehow doubt that shit would fly these days, even if we had real cause for it.
After that I was tempted not to return. But I’m glad I did.
The next day I went to a session put on by “Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere” (Colage). And that got me thinking about what gay marriage means in terms of families and support for existing families. The kid who has two parents providing support, one a US citizen, the other not, and unable to get a spousal advantage in becoming one. And that kid was impressive, and she was angry. She’s also making a political splash. I wish I’d seen her speak, but she wasn’t there.
The second session I went to was one that exploded out of the confines originally set for it, filling up the hall outside the room it was originally put in, a hall 8 times the size of the original room. It was called “From gay marriage to queer gentrification: radical queers critique the gay mainstream” and they had alot to say, and many people interested in listening. Apparently NGLTF, the group that organized the conference was concerned that the group would not foster dialogue.
I think there’s an important point here, one worthy of its own post, but here’s the teaser. I do think the push for gay marriage has the potential to matter for most gay people. But I also think it’s important to realize that it’s not the be all and end all. The HRC, and Outfront, and other gay mainstream political orgs, largely responds to the interests of the middle class and higher income people, as Lou put it, 35 years and older, and, of course, it’s mostly White. Why is that? What can be done about it? The group got a little shrill and alot polemic, but there were some valid points to consider.
I still haven’t been to Lucky Creation in a long time, though. I should do something about that.
If only I had been in town when you were here. 😉