Amazing coincidences here! I found this board because I was looking for information that could help me design more efficient home infrastructure. And now it turns out that I'm not the only one around here who's gay and also has vaguely "retro" tastes and lifestyle.
I'm a geek by profession and by culture, but I often describe myself as "mid 20th-century square." And here we find a group of people who proudly proclaim that they enjoy oldschool lifestyle, staying at home with their cats, rebuilding and using antique household machinery, and visiting with friends in a low-key manner reminiscent of the front-porch or back-fence socializing of earlier times. What a great relief, compared to the usual polarity between life-in-the-fast-lane excess, and the prevailing national tendency toward puritannical zealotry backed up by raw power.
It's good that someone started a politics topic; very interesting place to discover common ground. About which, a few thoughts...
Denying people the right to legal monogamy does not protect monogamy, morality, or anything else. It is as hateful as the old laws against interracial marriage. It is gratuitous hatred, fomented by religious extremists who do violence to their own faith, and supported with the power of the state.
Re. Scott55405 "It's almost like going through another September 11..."
Exactly! That's exactly the feeling, and I haven't had the words for it, but you are right on target.
Three years ago, religious extremists attacked America. We rolled up our sleeves as a nation united, and went to war to prevent it ever happening again. This election season, a different set of religious extremists attacked America but did it from the inside. This time they won a major round, by using a strategy of turning some of us (gay folks) into (pardon my language, but the words really do fit) the New National, to be scapegoated and despised and discriminated against, and subject to a new wave of Jim Crow laws.
If the comparison with 9-11 seems unjustified, consider the phrase "give me liberty or give me death." Consider that most of the people who join our armed forces do so with the idealistic dedication to the principle that our freedom is worth dying for. The core of our national soul is the idea that liberty and equality are every bit as important as life itself. When someone tries to make us less free or less equal before the law, they strike at the soul of America in a way that truly does bear comparison with a foreign enemy that attacks and takes our lives.
If you want to get really, really scared, put the word "dominionism" into a search engine, and read until you can't take it any more. The American equivalent of the Taliban are alive and kicking, and pulling the levers of power. Scary as hell.
As much as we'd like to stay at home, I think it's going to be necessary to stand up and fight.