Classes continue to be fun to teach, but this is the end of a second long week of giving tests and grading. This new compressed calendar is kicking my butt...that and teaching out of two new books with two new syllabii.

Tomorrow night I've bought a table at the Friends Committee on Legislation Fund Raiser, which ought to be lots of fun. It's down in Whittier again, one of the nicest little towns in Southern California. So I will enjoy seeing the town again and spending time with old friends while at the same time getting an update on current legislation in California. This being an election year it ought to make for an enlightening night.

Kio Sansone and Paul Gracie called me this week from Hawai'i. I didn't get to spend anytime with Paul and the twins at Pacific Yearly Meeting of Friends. Paul is coming in for the AFSC board meeting here in Los Angeles next week and so I'll at least get to spend time with him. Haven't seen Kio and Paul's twins in a long time. They must be getting close to 5 years old now. So Paul and I will go out to dinner. Then Kio invited me to take his place and sit at their table at an awards ceremony for gay parents. I think I'll have to wear a tux. That ought to be interesting. Haven't been in one of those in years!

A long time ago Paul and I were invited to talk about being gay parents at a gay pride in Honolulu and Paul still treats me like a gay pioneer. It's fun to remember when Jaemon was tiny and bringing him with me to talk about being gay to classes at Iowa State University. In those days being gay, out, and a parent blew folks out of the water. These days I think most of my gay friends are parents. Poor Jaemon has had a Dad who's always been on the edge and these days is even jumping off the edge to hang glide!

Though things are much more open these days, I feel especially sorry for those gay folks who are parents and have to put up with the awful discrimination that still exists. Gay parents are still treated in our society as freaks, and their children must put up with the burden of that discrimination. How folks can justify such discrimination under the guise of morality is beyond me. Those folks who are against gay marriage are like those folks who were in favor of the misogeny laws against inter-racial marriage. In fact, if you listen carefully you will hear the same arguments that were used by the Moral Majority to keep inter-racial marriage from happening! Listen carefuly to those arguments and you will find yourself back in the 50's listening to those who used the Bible and morality to justify keeping blacks and whites from marrying each other! Today we think it's stupid to keep whites and blacks from marrying each other. Hopefully in a few years we'll also think it's stupid for society to keep two same gender people who love each other from marrying. Society has always had an interest in encouraging stable relationships, including gay relationships. But those moral bigots would like to on the one hand prevent us from marrying and being parents and on hte other hand call us promiscuoous because we have sex and aren't married! Bigotry has always been about putting people in such double-binds. You can't marry and because you're not married we can discriminate! Discrimination always requires such screwed up logic!

Ignorance is the most common preventable illness...