Click photos to enlarge

What is it? Well, it’s the ceiling that was over my head the moment I discovered that Ash is now available for preorder on Amazon.com! WOOT! No, the cover and book description haven’t been uploaded yet, but so what!

This is also a great opportunity for me to tell you that the official publication date for Ash is September 1, 2009. That actually means books might start appearing in bookstores a couple of weeks earlier, because the “release date” (the date the books start shipping from the warehouse) is August 12. Yes, my stars have aligned, and Ash is totally gonna be a Leo. Just like me!

So, after I stared at my mostly blank Amazon.com listing for awhile, I left my seat (can you guess where I was?) and went for a walk. One of the first things I saw was this pedicab chained to a parking meter.

The back of it was painted so nicely!

Then I crossed Dolores Street, one of my favorite streets, and hurriedly snapped this photo while in the middle of the road.

Shortly after that, I came to a sight that truly exemplifies (at least for me) the streets of San Francisco:

Random piece of furniture accompanied by a single shoe on the sidewalk. Things I wanna know: Who threw that chair out and why? Did anybody famous sit on it? Why only one shoe? Did the owner keep the other one? These things shall remain unknown.

After my trek through the streets, I met up with my friend Sarah Pecora to discuss potential future Lo-Down video blogs. However, we got sidetracked by one of our favorite pastimes (bitching) and also ordered copious amounts of Chinese takeout. Yum.

I was going to end this week’s Photo Friday with the takeout, because really, what could possibly top that? Well, this blurry camera phone photo taken at the Bologna Children’s Book Fair last month:

Look at that! That’s a giant poster of my book cover next to Grace Lin‘s beautiful Where the Mountain Meets the Moon! This is my first sighting of Ash (at least in poster form) out in the world without me. (Thanks to my editor for sending the pic!) Yes, my book got to go to gorgeous Italy, while I was staying home and working on its prequel.

Oops, I didn’t mean to let that out of the bag just yet. More info next week! Have a great weekend!

Although many analysts aren’t feeling very positive after the hearings, I refuse to write off our cause until the California Supreme Court issues its decision. And even if they vote to uphold Prop. 8, that doesn’t mean that our fight for equality is over. I strongly believe that every loss simply brings us closer to the ultimate win — and I do think it will come sooner rather than later. Maybe not this year, but it will come.

The state that once shut out all of my Chinese ancestors from stepping foot in this country eventually did change its tune. It takes time for people to adjust to change — and change is the only thing we can rely on. In my short lifetime alone, rights for LGBT people have advanced by leaps and bounds. There is no going back; there is just the insistent resistance to moving forward that is the ordinary response of most human beings. But I assure you: They cannot resist the change forever.

I took a lot of photos yesterday. I was surprised at how close both sides were in the protest outside the courthouse and in the Civic Center. Pro-Prop. 8 people rubbed shoulders with same-sex marriage supporters. I actually heard people arguing in the street about why same-sex marriage opponents are so invested in preventing gay sex.

At one point I felt almost overwhelmed by it all, and I have to admit that I found the anti-gay marriage people frightening. Their signs called down the damnation of their god on my head, and though I know they think they are saving me — and my queer community — I have to wonder: Do they know that their voices are thick with hatred? Do they know that only makes me turn away from them, as they are clearly turning away from me?

So here are my photos from the day. It was a day I won’t forget. (Click photos to enlarge.)

San Francisco City Hall, and one of many news vehicles

Civic Center early in the morning

Two queer bunnies watch the jumbo-tron in Civic Center

Protestors outside the Supreme Court building

Mark Leno outside the courthouse

Along McAllister St. in front of the courthouse

Outside the courthouse after the hearings

To watch the live blog and join in with your own comments, go here on Thursday, March 4 from 9 a.m. to noon PT. Hope to see you there!

However, you might have noticed that Bishop Robinson’s prayer was not aired by HBO. HBO said that decision was made by the inaugural committee, and the inaugural committee agreed that they made a mistake. Yet another one, involving LGBT people.

Now, HBO will add Bishop Robinson’s prayer to the rebroadcast of Sunday’s We Are One concert that will air on the Jumbotron screens today before the inauguration, and in later televised rebroadcasts. Currently, the only version you can see is this videotaped one by Sarah Pulliam of Christianity Today:

What I liked about Bishop Robinson’s prayer was that it was not aggressively religious. As he told the Concord Monitor, “I will be careful not to be especially Christian in my prayer. This is a prayer for the whole nation.”

Bishop Robinson also spoke clearly about discrimination and intolerance, particularly in regard to LGBT people. There are so many vocal right-wing Christians that they often drown out the voices of other Christians — the kind like Bishop Robinson — who embrace humanity in all its diversity. On this inauguration day, I think that Bishop Robinson’s words are ones we would do well to remember:

Bless us with anger – at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Bless us with discomfort – at the easy, simplistic “answers” we’ve preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.

Bless us with patience – and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be “fixed” anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.

Bless us with humility – open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world.

Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance – replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences.

Read the complete text of his prayer here.

I was truly infuriated when I first found out that a homophobic, anti-choice, conservative Christian pastor was going to be speaking at the inauguration of a man who was voted into office because he promised to be a (somewhat) progressive change-maker. Instead, we get more of the same — the granting of a presidential seal of approval to a bigot.

Obama made a big mistake by inviting Rick Warren to his inauguration. It’s not the straw that broke the camel’s back; our back was already nearly crushed by the passage of Prop. 8. That was a gigantic, blaring wake-up call to LGBT people, forcing us to realize that a slim majority of Americans can quickly and easily take away our civil rights. Now that we have struggled to rise up again, does Obama really think we’re going to roll over and take it?

What the Warren invitation means is that inequality and discrimination is still acceptable — as long as it’s directed at LGBT people. We may have known this before, but this has pounded it home with a sledgehammer. It’s still OK to be homophobic in this country; otherwise, why would a known homophobe be invited to speak at Obama’s inauguration?

It appears that even Obama, who knows a thing or two about discrimination, doesn’t understand that an invitation to Rick Warren means that he is condoning discrimination against LGBT people. No, he thinks it’s just about a disagreement.

What that means is that our battle for equality is far from over. If our leaders still don’t recognize homophobia when it is rampant in their faces, we must explain it to them. I have no idea how, but that one thing is clear to me: Our leaders can’t champion our rights if they don’t even understand that they are taking ours away.

While I recognize and empathize with all the anger and dismay that has erupted in the wake of Obama’s decision, I think that once we have vented and fumed as much as we want, it’s time to figure out how to connect with the straight people who don’t get it. I have never been an activist, and I don’t know how to do this. But I’m willing to try.

Here are some more excellent signs that I saw today:

It has been really amazing to read about all the protests across the country. I was really heartened by the turnout, and while the passage of Prop. 8 was totally depressing, it has resulted in a re-energized and determined queer community. Go gays!

Anyone who has studied popular culture or cultural studies will be familiar with the idea that entertainment reflects broader cultural beliefs. I also believe that the connection between entertainment and cultural beliefs is an active one–I do think that entertainment has the power to change the way people feel about issues. Americans have seen a man of color in the White House on long-running, popular television series three times recently: twice on 24, with President David Palmer (Dennis Haysbert) and his brother, President Wayne Palmer (D.B. Woodside), and on The West Wing, with President Matt Santos (Jimmy Smits). The media has even noted distinct and sometimes uncanny parallels between Matt Santos’ fictional election campaign and Barack Obama’s.

That means that Americans have gotten accustomed to seeing a man of color in the White House. (I might add that the only woman in the fictional White House in recent times, Geena Davis in Commander in Chief, didn’t fare so well. I’m hoping Cherry Jones in the next season of 24 does a little better.)

Anyone who doubts the power of TV to naturalize a previously rejected idea would do well to remember what happened after Ellen DeGeneres came out in 1997. No, it didn’t make everybody support gay people, but it made a difference one person at a time. It made a lot of parents take a more open and accepting look at their own children. This year after she married Portia de Rossi, the outpouring of support for her was incredible to see.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough. And I think it’s partly because her relationship with Portia is a celebrity relationship. We can still look at them from afar and admire them as colorful icons of Hollywood liberalism; they don’t necessarily speak to middle Americans as a reality. We need a lesbian or gay couple on prime-time television, on a highly rated TV show, and we need them to be main characters with prominent story lines. They must have real, whole lives, including relationships. And let’s be honest: these lesbians need to be popular characters.

Yes, I know there’s a great gay couple on Brothers & Sisters (also on ABC), but Brothers & Sisters has ranked at No. 37 and 38 in the ratings since it debuted. Grey’s Anatomy has always been a top 10 show, with several million more viewers than Brothers & Sisters gets. The Callica story line was set to be one of the most highly watched lesbian story lines on prime-time television ever. ABC’s decision to fire Brooke Smith and de-gay future story lines, in retrospect, seems like a forecast for Proposition 8 (which, incidentally, won by a slim margin in Los Angeles County, where those ABC suits work).

To all those ABC execs who decided to pull the plug on the Callica story line because of its “explicit” nature (since when does intelligently written, humorous metaphor = explicit sexuality?), I am ashamed of you. I thought you–the network previously known as Gay-B-C–were more enlightened. If, as the L.A. Times suggests, the reason for Smith’s firing was because she wasn’t thin and hot enough to play a lesbian on TV, then Hollywood really is as pathetic as everyone says it is.

But it’s not only Hollywood suits who are to blame. I read a number of the comments online about the Grey’s Anatomy de-gaying, and it was incredibly disheartening to see so many people disparaging Brooke Smith’s character because she was unattractive, or rejecting the Callica story line because it made them “uncomfortable.” I have no doubt that ABC took the opinions of those bigoted viewers to heart before they decided to de-gay Grey’s. And if Americans can’t stand to see lesbians in a relationship on TV, do you think they’re going to support them getting married in real life? Not by a long shot.

It makes me think that we’re going to have to wait long and hard for same-sex marriage to be a possibility in California again.

I’m sure that given the fact that the people involved were human, some of them inconveniently fell in love with each other, but generally speaking, the wife’s job was to give birth to an heir (usually a male son), and the husband’s job was to provide for them. Did I mention that the bride herself had little or no say in the matter?

It sounds like something out of long-ago and far away, but this kind of practice was alive and well scarcely a century ago in China. I would guess that it is still being practiced in some cultures today.

But not in ours. Not by a long shot.

My indignation about the institution of marriage was stoked by a lot of anthropology courses, as well as a willful blindness to evidence that these marriage contracts could, in some cases, be manipulated by the women involved for their own benefit. Obviously, being a woman in a pre-feminist, androcentric culture was no Sex and the City, but it wasn’t always Clan of the Cave Bear, either.

The fact is, the institution of marriage changes. It is still changing. As NCLR’s executive director, Kate Kendell, said in her Forum appearance last week, marriage has evolved so that women now have rights within it. It has evolved to include people of different races. It is now evolving to include same-sex couples. And I think when this union between two people includes two people of the same sex, most of those traditional limitations simply crumble. These days, in most of the world, marriage is about two people making a commitment to care for each other for the remainder of their lives.

And yes, it is different to say “I’m married” than “I’m in a civil union” or “I’m domestically partnered.” Come on. Anybody who thinks they’re the same is fooling themselves.

That’s why I’m voting no on Proposition 8. And it doesn’t hurt that there’s this great 8 Against 8 campaign, in which eight lesbian bloggers, including a few of my faves (Dorothy Surrenders and Grace the Spot, plus, the Sugarbutch Chronicles is just sexy) are banding together to raise $8,000 to fight Prop. 8. It’s three days into their eight-day fundraising initiative — which is just about as grassroots as you can get — and they’ve already raised $ 7,284 as of Wednesday at noon! You can help them meet exceed their goal by donating here.

This election season has been interminably long, and I admit I am exhausted by it. But this is one cause I can support entirely. A couple of months ago I remember feeling a little self-conscious when I was with my girlfriend in an area that wasn’t necessarily gay-friendly — the kind of place that makes you wonder whether it’s a good idea to hold holds in public. But I surprised myself by thinking: I can get married to another woman now, in California. Who cares if these people don’t like it? And I held her hand.

That’s why I believe in marriage.

GWEN IFILL: Let’s try to avoid nuance, Senator. Do you support gay marriage?

JOE BIDEN: No. Barack Obama nor I support redefining from a civil side what constitutes marriage. We do not support that. That is basically the decision to be able to be able to be left to faiths and people who practice their faiths the determination what you call it.

The bottom line though is, and I’m glad to hear the governor, I take her at her word, obviously, that she think there should be no civil rights distinction, none whatsoever, between a committed gay couple and a committed heterosexual couple. If that’s the case, we really don’t have a difference.

GWEN IFILL: Is that what you said?

SARAH PALIN: Your question to him was whether he supported gay marriage and my answer is the same as his and it is that I do not.

And after Palin’s remark, everybody laughed.

Let’s take a moment here. Joe Biden and Barack Obama agree with Sarah Palin and John McCain about how they do not support same-sex marriage. OK, I’m not an idiot. I know that nobody who is a serious contender for president is going to support same-sex marriage. But tonight I realized that this is freaking insane. Here we have the people who want to be the leaders of our country agreeing to discriminate against gay people. Well, thank God that we can all agree on something these days (that was sarcasm).

You know what else is wrong with this picture? I’m pretty sure that Obama and Biden personally support their gay friends who want to get married. I think there’s a possibility that John McCain does, too. (I believe Sarah Palin when she says she doesn’t support gay marriage.)

You know what a person is called when he says one thing but believes another? Hypocrite.

I’m not saying that there aren’t serious issues at stake in this election including, obviously, the war in Iraq and the financial meltdown on Wall Street. And I know that cultural change comes slowly. But it disgusts me that politicians asking for our votes openly invite us to support their hypocrisy and publicly express their homophobia.