The Republic of T.

This reminds me of my days as co-director of the LGBT student group in college. Once a semester, we’d spend at least one meeting sitting in a circle, telling our coming our stories when new members showed up. We stopped after we realize we could go around the room and tell each others’ stories.

How gay am I? How gay are you? Well, it’s anybody’s guess. But there’s a questionnaire that, while it won’t provide an answer, seems like an interesting diversion on an afternoon when I’m running on about two hour of sleep. I found it at Put ‘Em All On an Island, who got it from HiStoriesOfSex, who got it from wonder boy, who got it from addaboy, and after that I lost the thread.

Still, I’m too brain dead to think of anything serious to blog about. So, I’m joining the daisy chain. Check the questions after the jump, and feel free to chime in.

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Well, it’s out there. Firefox 3 is ready and waiting for me to download and install it.

In just five hours, the new version of the Firefox Web browser had as many downloads as its predecessor got during its entire first day, the software’s developers say.

Firefox 3 reached 1.6 million downloads by early evening Tuesday to match Firefox 2′s first-day downloads.

In the opening hours, Firefox’s Web site was distributing nearly 9,000 copies of the free software every minute.

Downloads continued Wednesday as Firefox supporters sought to set a world record for most software downloads in a 24-hour period.

The category is new, and Guinness World Records must certify it, a process that could take a week or longer.

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As I write this, it’s getting late, and I’m tired. It’s the day after Father’s Day; the end of the day after Father’s Day. Aside from Parker’s usual swimming lessons, we had Capitol Pride.

We marched with the Rainbow Families contingency, after spending the afternoon decorating bicycles, strollers, and wagons, meeting other families, and watching the kids play with together. We walked with Parker on his bicycle and Dylan in his stroller. It was great, being together as a family, walking with other families, and hearing the cheers of support from the people watching the parade.

I should be asleep now, especially since it will be just a few hours before Dylan wakes up, and it’ll be my turn to get up and get him back to sleep. But there’s something I’ve been wanting to write about since the California Marriage decision came down; something that’s been on my mind since I read the decision. Something that changed in a way that overwhelmed me so much that I had to walk away from my computer for a few minutes. Something changed; or didn’t change, because its something I’ve always known is true. But just hearing it validated in a way it hasn’t been before … did something to me..

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Well, I’m sure there’s going to be something wrong with this movie. It’s irreverent — and probably smart, funny, and more than a little sarcastic — and it’s about religion. Oh, and it stars Bill Maher. So, given the subject matter and all, it’s probably not nearly deferential enough.

But it sure looks good. I may not see Religulous in the theaters, but I’ll stick it in my Netflix queue when it come out on DVD.

Monday morning is usually pretty busy for me, so it seems like as good a time as any for a round-up post. I don’t get to do as much reading (or writing for that matter) as I’d like to, but when I do I always find stuff I’d like to blog about but know that I’ll never have the time. It’s a mix of blog posts and news items that that caught my eye, and usually started me thinking of something I’d like to write.

Gay couples in California will officially start getting married today. I’ve been collecting posts and articles about marriage, meaning to write a blog post, but haven’t had the time to put them all into a context and stitch them together with some kind of narrative. If I wait until I do, I never will. So, I present them here now in round-up format, with abbreviated comments where I’ve had time to think about something to say.

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Kid’s really do say the darndest things. Especially five-year-olds.

Case in point, the following conversation occurred last night, while we watched a Barney holiday special (by way of Tivo) before Parker’s bedtime.

Parker: Daddy, I want to be Santa Clause

Daddy: But I’d miss you.

Parker: But Daddy, I’d come to your house first.

Remember subprime mortgages? They’ve been nudged out of the headlines by gas prices lately, but they — and the crisis catalyzed by the collapse of the subprime market — are still news.

Bears Stearns (Remember them?) is finally, quietly sold to JP Morgan — to the tune of $2.2 billion, with taxpayers kicking in $29 billion via the Fed, to guarantee Stearns’ subprime mortgage assets.

Bank of America has been cleared to buy Countrywide Financial (Remember them?), and apparently still wants to seal the deal. (BofA didn’t want Countrywide’s no. 2 executive, and it only took them about $28 million to get rid of him.)

Meanwhile, more than 1 million homes are now in foreclosure.

We all heard the outcry when, in the midst of rising foreclosures, our government moved to bail out one of the biggest (and most reckless) Wall Street players in the subprime debacle. We know that president Bush backed the move, though he’s sworn to veto the supposed foreclosure relief bill that’s heading his way after a Senate deal saved it from oblivion. The treasury secretary defended the Stearns bailout again in mid-May. (A “preemptive strike” in light of the impending final sale, perhaps?)

But do the defenses and explanations why the Fed had to bail out Bear Stears boil down to “love they neighbor”?

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Five is a very, very loud age.

A teething baby can produce in one day the equivalent of his body weight in drool.

Teething is also very loud.

The kid’s daycare is closed for a teacher training, and I’m at home with the boys so there won’t be much blogging today. But I didn’t want to let the day pass without posting this.

Bay Windows has posted a beautiful story about the daughter of Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick coming out publicly.

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I have to admit, upon reading this my first reaction was to ask, “Haven’t the Southern Baptists learned anything from the Catholic Church?”

Under pressure to fight child sex abuse, the Southern Baptist Convention’s executive committee said Tuesday that the denomination should not create its own database to help churches identity predators or establish an office to field abuse claims.

The report decried sexual abuse as reprehensible and a sin. But the Southern Baptist principle of local church autonomy means it’s up to individual churches — and not the convention — to screen employees and take action against offenders, the committee said.

…The clergy sexual abuse scandal that struck the U.S. Roman Catholic Church starting in 2002 has also touched the Southern Baptist Convention, although to a much lesser degree. The past two years have seen a few high-profile allegations against Baptist clergy, and a key victims advocate in the Catholic crisis, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, began lobbying the Baptists.

In 2006, an executive committee panel began studying how to address the issue. Then, last year, Oklahoma pastor Wade Burleson proposed that the convention develop a database to track clergy and staff who are “credibly accused of, personally confessed to, or legally been convicted of sexual harassment or abuse.” The database would then be available to all churches.

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Image details: Apple Introduces New iPhone At Worldwide Developers Conference served by picapp.com

I admit it. I’ve been coveting the iPhone for a while now. I can’t help it. I stop and stare longing every time I see one. I was crushed when I discovered that if I’d still been at my old job in December, I’d have one by now.

But I’ve held off getting one. When it comes to many things tech-related, I’m an early adopter. Too a point.

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We all know George W. Bush is a big old wuss. He talks big. But that’s about it. Aside from strutting around on air craft carriers, that’s about all there is too him. The man is “all hat and not cattle,” we know. But was the leader of the free world scared of Karl Rove?

It sounds like it.

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Y’know, it really shouldn’t be news when people commit to each other, except maybe for a engagement announcement or wedding announcement in the paper. It definitely shouldn’t be controversial, like Bishop Gene Robinson entering a civil union with his partner of 19 years. When two people step up to the altar or the steps of city hall to declare their love for one another, their desire to name one another as kin, and their desire to commit to one another, it should be celebrated, because it means a commitment to community.

And maybe that’s why it is controversial. Because, in many ways, it’s public. But it’s also personal. Sometimes in wonderfully surprising ways, when it turns out that you know the people behind the headlines.

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No, I don’t mean that kind of lap dance. It’s something else that I refer to as a “lap dance.”

When it comes to work and blogging, I rely heavily on my MacBook. I use it every day and take it pretty much everywhere I go. I start the day with it, getting a jump on the day’s work. I open it up once I’m on the Metro (if I can find a seat) and either continue working, work on a blog post, or catch up on reading stuff I’ve marked to read offline. During the day, at work, I use it about as much as I use the PC at my desk. And in the evening, after the kids go to bed, I open it up to catch up on more reading, do some writing, or get the jump on tomorrow’s work.

This makes for some discomfort. Partly from an overheated lap, and partly from not really having a laptop work station that’s ergonomically correct. Thus starts the “lap dance.” It usually starts with me sitting at my desk. Heat or discomfort causes me to shift from one position to another, until I decide to stretch out on the floor in the family room. Again, not terribly comfortable. So I move to the couch. Again, the lap warms up. Plus, the level of the laptop isn’t quite right. So I’m back to the desk.

This is what I call the “lap dance.” And I’ve been trying to make it stop.

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After the kids go to bed, the television in our house is usually turned to one of the channels of the Discovery franchise. And, once he’s had his fill of my crime shows, the hubby usually declares that it’s time to watch something in which no one dies a horrible death. Last night, in the course of flipping channels, I caught a commercial about a show I’m definite going to watch.

I’d have missed it if I’d been a little close to the remote, because a commercial for the Duggar family — those conservative Christian darlings of the Quiverfull movement — came on, and my usual reaction is to dive for the remote while mutter something about Discovery giving these folks a platform. But fortunately, I was to slow and the remote was too far away. Otherwise I’d have missed the commercial for “Quads with Two Moms.”

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I’m all kinds of late on this, I know, but I was struck by this clip from Bill O’Reilly’s show, in which he and a guest can’t come up with a single reason to oppose same-sex marriage.

It’s an amazing four minutes, in which both O’Reilly and his guest come to the conclusion — from slightly different starting points — that there’s really “no reason” to oppose or prohibit same-sex marriage, once you’ve left aside religious “reasons.”

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It’s pretty straightforward. You read the job description. You took the job Now, do your job.

On Wednesday, San Diego County Clerk Gregory Smith said he would consider allowing clerks to bow out of processing such marriages if they had moral or religions objections.

“I was pretty shocked about all that, candidly, and pretty outraged,” San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom told Reuters in an interview.

“This is a civil marriage that civil servants have a responsibility to provide, so for civil servants on religious grounds to start passing judgments, they, I think, are breaking the core tenet of what civil service is all about.”

“I’ve got very strong religious beliefs. So now, all of a sudden, I don’t have to do certain things, even though that’s my responsibility as mayor?”

…The mayor, who said he will wed his actress girlfriend in a ceremony in Montana this summer, suggested that clerks who refused to marry gays in California should lose their jobs.

“If that is their job and they are going to be able to pick and choose based on their morality, then all of a sudden they are not doing their jobs,” said Newsom, a Democrat thinking about running for governor to succeed Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“If you don’t want to provide a marriage certificate and you’ve got a job that does that, then you should think twice about why you got the job in the first place and maybe you should get a new job,” he continued. “Talk about a slippery slope, Mr. County Clerk down in San Dieg

Here’s the thing, though. I’m willing to say the same thing for myself.

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Well, it’s pretty clear by now that I’m not going to get anything posted today, or any significant writing done. Today was Parker’s pre-school graduation, so that most of our afternoon (including dinner at Parker’s favorite restaurant.) I’ve got two or three things in mind to write about, but I’ve had them in mind for more than a week and still can’t find time to actually write about them. It’s not likely to happen this weekend either.

In the meantime, there are a lot of folks doing some great writing about some pretty interesting stuff. So, you can read them while I’m doing whatever it is that I’m doing.

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Posted without comment.

OK. I’ve just got to comment.

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Remember Truck Nutz? Remember Prius Envy? Well, it may be time for some vehicular Viagra or something, because SUV and truck sales are going soft. (NOTE: SOME OF THE STUFF BELOW THE FOLD MAY BE NSFW.)

A month of gasoline prices near $4 a gallon was enough to sour Americans’ long love affair with trucks and sport utility vehicles, pushing them back into sedans — and driving Detroit’s automakers into deeper trouble.

U.S. sales results released Tuesday showed cars outselling gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs by almost 200,000 in May — the biggest margin since 1996. That was bad news for U.S. automakers, whose lineups are heavily skewed toward large, inefficient vehicles, but a boon to their car-focused Asian rivals.

General Motors posted a sales drop of about 27% from a year earlier and said it would close four truck plants, prepare its Hummer brand for a possible sale and focus on making smaller cars. Chrysler’s 25.4% sales decline put it behind Honda in monthly sales for the first time.

And, after 17 years, Ford’s F-Series trucks were dethroned from the top sales position, falling to No. 5 behind the Honda Civic, Toyota Corolla, Toyota Camry and Honda Accord.

“I think it’s a watershed moment,” said Jim Farley, head of marketing at Ford.

For the month, overall vehicle sales in the U.S. were 1.4 million, down 8.4% from a year earlier, according to Autodata Corp. Based on the May sales rate, the industry is on pace to sell just 14.3 million vehicles this year in the U.S. In 2007, total sales were 16.1 million.

For nearly a decade, Americans bought more light trucks — a segment that includes pickups, SUVs and minivans — than cars. But starting in March, cars edged ahead. The gap widened in April, and in May, 193,559 more cars than light trucks were sold.

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