We’re queer, we’re here and we’re still doing theatre

For those who think I’ve sud­denly become a het­ero­sexual because I’ve moved coun­tries for a boy, I thought I’d better up my queer con­tent quotient.

First up, I was thrilled to read from 

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that the tranny cops got off (trans­la­tion for Amer­ic­ans: all charges against the trans­gendered F2M people who dressed up as police for the G20 protest have been dropped). I’m very amused by “Reas­sured by every­one in the court that the Vil­lage People did, indeed, include a police­man, the magis­trate declared there’s ‘a Vil­lage People-style defence’ for demon­strat­ors and dis­missed the final charges.”

Second, when I was volun­teer­ing last night at Billy de Frank, the coördinators decided to put on the first ever Pres­id­en­tial debate on “lgbt” issues instead of a movie. So there I am, in a room with a bunch of teen­aged queer kids, a couple of coördinators, and staff watch­ing this land­mark dis­cus­sion from Obama and Clin­ton and Edwards talk­ing dir­ectly about these issues. I’m still very bored by the whole mar­riage and mil­it­ary debate — I com­pletely under­stand about get­ting equal rights, but the rad­ical part of me is still want­ing to know why anyone is demand­ing to get into antique insti­tu­tions we should be over­haul­ing or abol­ish­ing in the first place… (yes, I know I’m now engaged… believe me, there have been many dis­cus­sions about what that actu­ally means. Neither of us care about telling the state; we’re inter­ested in com­mit­ment to each other). The reac­tions from the teens was fas­cin­at­ing: listen­ing to them talk about who they thought was good, which issues inter­ested them. One guy said “that’s all fine, but he’s too soft to be a leader,” about hippy dippy love guru  Kucinich. 

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, your heart would have been warmed by the two boys entwined on the sofa talk­ing about how latino rights fed into the debate when New Mexico gov­ernor Bill Richard­son was talk­ing. Some of the kids will turn 18 just before the elec­tion. They’re excited about voting. Others miss out and they’re frus­trated. Only one of the boys was sit­ting there with a gaggle of girl­friends gig­gling about stuff and not really paying atten­tion, but when he did pay atten­tion, he was informed and some­what cyn­ical. It was a really cool experience.