Tap...tap....Is this thing on?

By musing85

First off, thanks to Terry and the rest of the gang for putting this place together--and even more so for the tremendous work they've done in attracting such an array of talents in such a short time. I hope this will be the start of something really good that gives the GLBT community a place to congregate and find out what's going on in our parts of the world--without a lot of the hassles and the constant navel-gazing that goes on at other places (which shall go without mentioning).

For those of you who aren't already familiar with me from my participation at Daily Kos and other sites around the intertoobz (and from my own blog), my name is Michael and online I go by "musing85." By day, I'm a research administrator at a large state university that only wishes it was as successful at bringing in external funding as Harvard--but which does all right, all things considered. By night, when I'm not donning my cape and making the world safe for democracy (OK, not so much), I'm trying very hard to finish my Ph.D. in modern European history. I also have academic degrees in chemistry, classics, library and information science, and history. Over and above the sheepskins, some of the other things I've studied in the way too many years I've been involved in higher education are included philosophy, counseling, theology, biology, theater, and a handful of languages.

I'm a gay man, and that's an important part of who I am--but I want to emphasize that it's a part of my identity. It is not the be-all and end-all of my identity. There are lots of things that go into my identity, almost none of which have anything to do with whom I'd be sleeping next to at night if I were sleeping next to anyone. That said, anybody who knows me knows that I am passionate about ending the legal discrimination that is still the norm in far too many parts of this here land of the putatively free and the home of the too-infrequently brave. This is one of many things that frustrates me about the Democratic Party generally and the Obama administration in particular: for my entire adult life, Democrats have been asking me to give generously of my time, my talents, and my treasure to support them--and I have done so. But somehow, that generosity only ever flows from me toward the Democrats, never the other way around. That's got to change, and I've told the Democratic Party as much: they will get my money and my votes only when they start standing up for the issues I consider important--one of which is most definitely gay rights.