Meanwhile, California activists are getting national attention for calling on the queer and allied community to boycott Utah, including putting pressure on Robert Redford to move the Sundance Film Festival to another state. And over 20,000 people in my other former home of San Francisco marched in protest last night as well.

I feel uniquely invested in these things–as a person born in Utah and very fond of the local queer community, as a person raised within the Mormon faith, as a person who worked for the Sundance Film Festival, and as a person who was living in San Francisco on that historic day when the California Supreme Court recognized my right to marry the person of my choosing.

That said, I’d like to propose an alternative to boycotting Utah. Support Utah’s strong and growing queer community instead. Nothing would strike at the heart of the Mormon voice more than helping change the climate in Utah to one of genuine celebration of queer diversity. And there is already so much good work being done in Utah, it just needs more help.

For example, in 2004, when Utah faced its own anti-gay marriage amendment, Summit County (home to Park City and the Sundance Film Festival) voted 61% against amending the state constitution. Salt Lake County managed to reach a 46% vote of “no.” While the rest of the state was massively anti-gay, these two counties showed a greater degree of understanding that anyone expected. Furthermore, Salt Lake’s former mayor, Rocky Anderson, was named one of the nation’s top 10 allies to the LGBT community, and the politicians who ran to fill his seat seemed ready to trip over each other in their efforts to get the queer vote. Utah has elected three openly lesbian or gay people to political office.

Utah’s queer community boasts a very large regional Pride festival, a fantastic community center, a strong and active statewide PAC, numerous social and political organizations, a wonderful community newspaper, impressive student clubs at many high schools and universities, and much more. Is it San Francisco, no? But it’s doing a hell of a lot better than Cincinnati (or, with apologies to my friends there, Las Vegas).

So if you really want to protest the LDS involvement in anti-queer politics, I suggest taking away the one asset they think is safe, the hearts and attitudes of their home base. Donate to the Utah Pride Center, donate to Equality Utah, buy advertising in QSaltLake, and support the Utah queer community, because I can tell you from personal experience that they are doing more on a day-to-day basis to change attitudes and opinions than many Californians do in a year. Just watch Jesse’s videos and try to tell me that you disagree.

The trailer for Milk was released today. Please ignore the commercial for another crappy film at the start of this embed, it’s the only embeddable copy I could find. But you can download the trailer for free through iTunes.

To be honest, this trailer caused the first pangs of homesickness for San Francisco. If I could pack up and go home right now, I would. But I can’t, and I have other things to focus on.

The staffing agency I’m working with asked me to revise my resume today. Most people need help making their resume impressive. Mine was too intimidating and I was asked to remove the words “manager” and “editor” entirely. In other words, cut all but two of my actual job titles going back to college. Anyway, we’ll see if the new and humble resume scores more points in the job hunt.

I’m bracing myself for tonight’s convention coverage. I’ve got news for the McCain-Palin campaign, the scrutiny of Palin and the vetting process is not “nonsense” and it won’t go away just because you stamp your foot and act forcefully. After all the bullshit nonsense about Rev. Wright, I can’t wait for the mainstream media to pick apart the Wasilla Bible Church and Pastor Larry Kroon. For instance, Palin was in the audience when they had David Brickner of Jews for Jesus as a special guest. Brickner has described terrorist attacks on Israelis as God’s “judgment of unbelief” of Jews who haven’t embraced Christianity. Palin’s church apparently supports ex-gay reparative therapy. Or we can back up a couple years to Palin’s former long-term pastor, Ed Kalnins of the Wasilla Assembly of God, who

preached that critics of President Bush will be banished to hell; questioned whether people who voted for Sen. John Kerry in 2004 would be accepted to heaven; charged that the 9/11 terrorist attacks and war in Iraq were part of a war “contending for your faith;” and said that Jesus “operated from that position of war mode.”

Family and children may be “off limits” but surely pastors and religious affiliations are not, right? I mean, the Republicans couldn’t possible imply that questioning a candidate’s fitness to lead and policy positions might be dangerously affected by extremist and offensive religious leaders, right?

Will someone please ask Joe Lieberman, once praised for the historic moment as the first Jewish person selected as vice presidential nominee on a major party ticket, how he feels about endorsing a woman who was reverently listening to David Brickner less than three weeks ago?

(click to go to my Flickr photoset)

After having coffee with my buddy Zander this morning, I swung by the Dore Alley/Up Your Alley Street Festival. I figured it was going to be a good long time before I saw a bunch of old guys walking the streets completely naked without the police putting a stop to it. It’s one of the little ways in which Cincinnati will be different from San Francisco.

I remember when I attended Dore Alley for the first time. I was so shocked and amazed. This time, nothing really phased me and I ended up leaving early because I was bored. True, the weather was a bit on the overcast and cold side, scaring away all but the most dedicated of nekkid freaks, but it was not the same.

Well, tomorrow is departure day. I don’t know what my internet time is going to be like, but I’m certain to be updating Twitter as I travel across the country.

Today was our staff outing to the Giants game. Also known as “get drunk on the company dime during work hours” day. The game went pretty much as I expected – slow and boring without much to do. So I had a couple drinks, ate nasty ballpark food, and finished reading this week’s comic book bounty. I got mocked for reading X-Men in the middle of a ball game, but I didn’t really care. It was hot, I was in the sun, and I’d had two big mixed drinks already.

To my surprise, though, the game got somewhat interesting in the end. After the Giants score in the 8th, the final inning was fairly dramatic as the Nationals got runners to 2nd and 3rd base with one out. After the Giants got their second out off a pop fly, the whole crowd was literally on their feet for the last batter.

Anyway, I had good time with some of my friends from the office and followed the day with a salad for dinner at Harvey’s in the Castro. I think I’m going to try and hit some of my favorite spots over the last few days, which means I need to plan a trip to Lower Haight for veggie sausage, Fisherman’s Wharf for clam chowder, and Upper Haight for noodles. I don’t know that I time to fit all those trips in.

Tomorrow night I’m doing the farewell drinks with coworkers past and present at Ginger’s in the Financial District. Ginger Trois has become the official unofficial place for parting drinks when Out & Equal staffers part ways with the organization.

Days like today, when the sun is out and I’m having fun, make me certain I’m really going to miss this city.

Ewan McGregor hugs a nekkid boy for Angeleno magazine. Thanks to the kids at ohnotheydidnt.

I have one goal this weekend, my penultimate in the city. I will get laid. I’ve been busting my ass in the gym for three months, quit smoking, studied for and scored well on the LSAT, and through it all I’ve been a good boy. I’m in Gay Mecca for another 10 days, I need to take advantage of them.

I may also go see Mamma Mia since The Dark Knight in IMAX is sold out through the weekend.

Why is it that every time WordPress puts out an upgrade, it take me hours to figure out why the “automatic upgrade” has taken my site and/or my back-end login offline? I suspect the problem isn’t entirely my fault, but it probably is.

On the plus side, I’ve now noticed the “password protect” function on WordPress where I can give reading access only to those people with a particular password. In light of recent drama, we may or may not choose to utilize that function in the future. Some of the other WordPress 2.6 changes are cool. I like the caption function for images even if it is easier for me to go in and code the html myself for fine control.

Despite the San Francisco summer resetting to default (“The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco” – often attributed to Mark Twain incorrectly), I had a very pleasant lunch down by the Embarcadero today. When I first moved to town, I used to enjoy hanging out in the sun down there while looking for work.

So I grabbed a quick sandwich and found a sunny spot in the grass to read for a bit. It was nice and relaxing.

Slower day at work today. The first major hurdle in my final project is over. The next one comes when we present pages to crazy boss lady next week.

Jennifer and I have spent the past few days alternating turns at cheering each other up over work stupidity and family drama. I’m starting to suspect we’re entirely too much alike when cycles of random family and professional chaos start to sync up.

Need to start job hunting in Cincy, but I think anybody that puts up job listings on Craigslist so that you spend two hours formatting your resume and cover letter, only to receive an auto-reply directing you to a different job board when you finally do hit send… well, those people ought to be shot. It’s the very opposite of the kind of behavior that might inspire me to make use of your site. Do you hear that, Beyond.com? Stupid fucking spam scam.

The Harlequin by Laurell K. Hamilton… I’m happy to report that LKH is finally giving us some plot that isn’t sex, sex, sex. This book comes the closest to capturing the tone and feel of her early Anita Blake books that I enjoyed so much. It’s not that she’s done away with the sex, it’s that it doesn’t overwhelm the plot… which features Anita solving a crime and fighting new monsters. It almost makes me want to go ahead and read the next book in hardcover. I won’t, but I’m glad to see LKH getting this series back on track. (See some of my previous Anita Blake series comments here and here)

Anyway, on to the big event…

Sunday morning I slept in until a reasonable weekend hour and made my way downtown without rush, which was a novel experience in itself. No rushing to meet up with friends, no being in charge of anything, no plans and no drama. I didn’t even care if I saw the whole thing. Even so, I still got to the Parade with time to spare. I stationed myself near the grandstand and was able to watch about 3 hours of parade. The weather went from gray and overcast to sunny and warm while I was standing there getting sunburned because I didn’t think I’d need sunscreen.

After the parade, I made my way into the Festival for a little while. I quickly came to the realization that without a radio in my hand or friends to entertain, I have no idea what to do at Pride. I wandered by some booths, had a couple drinks, talked to a few cute guys, then called it a day. In fact, I had time to go to the gym, do some shopping (groceries and new sunglasses), and head home for an early evening with Safeway sushi for dinner.

Anyway, there are a buttload (bigger than an assload, smaller than a truckload) of photos from the parade after the jump…

It started, as always, with the Dykes on Bikes…

Rather quickly, it became obvious that there would be an overriding theme to this year’s parade…

Marriage, marriage, marriage! It’s enough to make a single guy side with the freakshows protectors…

All kidding aside, there was definitely a greater sense of celebration this year than I’ve ever experienced in 11 years of Pride events.

We had our celebrities like Margaret Cho…

Gloria Allred…

The legal team that won the CA Marriage case…

Cyndi Lauper…

And Mayor Gavin Newsom, who inspired more enthusiastic screaming than *Nsync circa 2001…

And the usual assortment of outrageous costumes, political and social advocacy groups, fun, and hunky men…

You can see the whole Pride Weekend flickr set

I took a personal day today – primarily because my driver’s license was set to expire on my birthday (which is coming up at the end of the month) and it was time to get California legal. All things considered, it wasn’t the worst DMV trip I’ve ever made. The pre-DMV drama was the worst because I couldn’t find my birth certificate (which is always true when I need it). After an hour and a half of searching, I found it in an envelope, inside a folder, inside my important documents file. Where it was, you know, supposed to be.

Anyway, I ran into both my roommates at the DMV, which is sorta funny. What are the odds we’d all be there on the same day without knowing it ahead of time?

After taking my written test and being assured that my permanent license will arrive before I have to board an airplane on June 12, I wandered over to Haight for a couple hours study. Eventually, I got restless and decided to take a walk down to Church & Market. Along the way, though, I passed Buena Vista Park and, on a whim, decided to explore it (I’d never checked it out before). Stairs and stairs and stairs later, I came out the other side and followed the perimeter around back to Haight.

I was glad I took the detour. It was a lovely park and a perfect day to explore and climb.

After another session with my trainer, I ended the night with another few hours of study at what is quickly becoming my “usual” place to study, Church Street Cafe. It was such a relaxing day, I wish I didn’t have to go back to work tomorrow (but judging from the quick peak I took at my email, I do).

Saw this lovely tree on the way to work. 99% of the time, I remember this tree as being ugly bare branches under gray-colored sky, so this splash of pink on a sunny spring day was a welcome change.

I’m also on day 2 of the Wellbutrin. That’s right, it’s time for my annual “I’m quitting smoking” phase. Although this time, I’m medicating. I’m trying to limit myself to 7 cigarettes today and it’s already difficult, although the medicine really hasn’t had time to build up to its effective point.

Anyway, I expect I’m going to be fairly bitchy this week.

I was trying to study during my lunch break and got incredibly interrupted by the Saint Stupid’s Day parade. It literally came right down into the little area where I usually find a patch of sun to study for an hour. Then the nekkid people stood right in front of me. I just put away my homework and decided to take pictures with my camera phone instead.

For three decades Bishop Joey has been leading the parade of stupidity through downtown San Francisco and this year was the stupiderest.

Mildly NSFW photos included behind cut and in the full set…

Full set of 18 photos at my flickr account.