Over the weekend, I caused a bit of a stir on my Facebook page when I posted the following update:  “Christopher White wonders why straight people like to take over queer spaces.  Actually, not wonders, but FUCK OFF!”  I was a bit surprised when some of my straight friends reacted to this statement, and I felt a need to explain. My explanation seemed to fan the flames of the discussion, and I marveled at the gays vs. straights dialogue that unfolded. 

Here’s the deal.  On Friday, a brief filed by the U.S. Department of Justice defending the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) hit the blogosphere.  Many of us felt that this brief took the defense to a heinous level by using court cases regarding incest and pedophilia to support upholding this discriminatory legislation and wondered if the ghost of administrations past (specifically W’s admin) had taken a role in drafting the brief. It stated that homosexuals were not denied any rights or had any rights taken away by DOMA.   If we want the rights afforded to married couples, all we have to do is get married – to someone of the opposite gender.  Spending...

I was a bridesmaid last weekend.  For those of you who don't know me, I'm approximately five foot six (some days slightly taller), have been described as "stocky", and wear a full beard and glasses - not typical bridesmaid material.  Of course, my duties as a nontraditional bridesmaid were performed as part of a nontraditional bridal party in a quite nontraditional queer wedding. A group of gorgeous people, some old friends, some new, gathered in Battery Park in Lower Manhattan on a beautiful, sunny Sunday afternoon to celebrate not merely the union of a couple but a union of biological families, created families, and close friends.  We laughed and cried, ate and drank, and danced until our feet were sore and our dresses and tuxes were soaked with the sweet sweat of a joyous occasion and rockin' party.  We admired the late evening sunlight on the ferries, sailboats, cruise liners, and on Lady Liberty in New York Harbor.  For a few hours, we set aside our daily struggles and embraced one another as one big, fat, queer, gender variant, heteronormative, divorced, adopted, remarried, tattooed, pierced, fancy dressed lovefest.

It was not too different than my very own gay on gay wedding celebration that took place a month earlier among the Redwoods in Northern California; we had gotten married earlier in the year on November 4, when it was still legal. My husband, David, and I gathered with our family and friends to celebrate our...

The Iowa Supreme Court became the fourth state supreme court in the United States to overturn laws against same-sex marriages. The decision, which passed unanimously, means that gay couples in Iowa will be able to marry in 21 days.

The justices said in their decision, “We have a constitutional duty to ensure equal protection of the law...If gay and lesbian people must submit to different treatment without an exceedingly persuasive justification, they are deprived of the benefits of the principle of equal protection upon which the rule of law is founded.”

The justices acknowledge a possible backlash by marriage equality opponents based on their religious beliefs, and the justices included language addressing those concerns. They maintained that marriage is a civil contract and should not affect religious freedom of Iowans that object to marriage equality based on religious beliefs.

Marriage equality opponents will likely try to overturn the decision in the legislature and by popular vote. But according to The New York Times the attempt will take at least two years. Iowa's laws requires the state legislature to vote to reinstate the ban in two consecutive sessions before it can go to popular vote.

Be on the look out for a special season of June...

Proposition 8 passed in California on November 4th, 2008 and The Advocate released its issue #1021 in December 2008, featuring the text "Gay is the New Black" on its cover ... and I'm just now blogging about this all on February 16, 2009.  The issue remains: race and racism must be addressed among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer communalities, sexuality and heterosexism must be addressed among communities of color, and the relationship between LGBTQ and communities of color must be assessed and improved.

I'm sure most people know the story by now: immediately following the November 4th election in the US, statistics were released indicating the passage of Proposition 8, which bans same-sex marriage in the state of California.  Included in these numbers were breakdowns by a variety of sociodemographic variables.  The number that caused quite a stir: an overwhelming majority of Black voters in CA approved the proposition.  These numbers were taken out of context, leading to an explicit blame for the proposition's passage on Black Americans.  Although later reports, including one from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, report a much lower percentage of Black voters who supported the proposition, the issue remains: racial hostility among LGBTQ people reared its ugly head.  Even today, with a much lower number of Blacks favoring the proposition's passage, critiques of...

According to my mom, I was a "good little boy" who didn't cry much and seemed to be happy most of the time. I was a small boy with strawberry blonde hair and a smattering of freckles across my face. My mom has told me that I was very sensitive to how others were feeling and that I was always very curious.  I started talking and reading fairly young and often drove my parents and grandparents to the brink of insanity with my constant questions of hows and whys about the world and how things worked.  I remember being allowed to play dress up in high heels and makeup, and spending hours in the kitchen alternating between creating new recipes (all of which my brave grandmother willingly tasted) and dissecting the hearts, gizzards, and other organs that came with the turkeys cooked for Thanksgiving dinners.  I didn't care much for sports and preferred to spend my afternoons putting on puppet shows or switching between playing beauty shop and operating room in my grandmother's front bathroom where my clients and patients were one and the same (you always want to have gorgeous hair when having an appendectomy!).

I also remember being treated differently than other children at a very early age.  Okay, maybe I was a little weird and precocious, but I noticed that there was something about me that made parents...