I have a dream that one day President Bush will be able to talk about protecting the "sanctity" of marriage while also using the words "gay" and "lesbian." I don't understand why it's such a difficult thing for him to do -- if you're going to fuck over a few million Americans, the least you can do is refer to them by name instead of nimbly dancing around what you're doing.

It's not an abstract issue, George. Just say it. Say "Gays and lesbians should not be allowed to marry. They're icky and they're going to destroy the country." Rick Santorum doesn't seem to have problems saying it. Pat Robertson doesn't. What's wrong with your ability to say it? I know I'm not lucky enough for it to be guilt, as though you were playing a neat semantic game to avoid culpability in writing discrimination into the Constitution.

And can you and your Republican cronies stop this tired line of pretending allowing gays to marry will suddenly make straight men decide to marry other men? I know a lot of straight men, and I've wanted to bed my share of them. None of them were holding out for a legal framework for a long-term relationship with me, okay? They didn't want to have sex with me because they like having sex with women. Gay people have been marrying in Massachusetts for over a month, and yet I still can't get the hottie at the 7-11 to look at me. You're barking up the wrong gay tree with that argument.

I agree with everything you say about how important marriage is to our culture, except for that none of those are reasons to exclude gays and lesbians. That's what galls me the most about the situation. If you'd pull your head out of your ass (and I know it's wedged in tight with that Bible the fundamentalists keep shoving in there) long enough to look at some gay couples, you'd probably see they're not much different than the straight couples you know.

Just try to avoid mental pictures of them fucking each other in the ass, okay? I know you're from that breed of straight guy who's nearly incapable of seeing gay men without giggly-horrified thoughts of them taking up the butt, but try. Okay? It's rude. We don't picture you fucking Laura.

It's that time again, kiddies. Friday is here, and that means another column by yours truly. Again, I'm finding ways to take shots at the Bush administration in particular and Republicans in general. I'm in serious danger of sounding like a broken record, but they're sooooooo good at giving me material, y'know?

Republican dogs of war are making a mess of the carpet

By TERRY L. ESTEP

Wow, that didn't take long.

Before Kerry could finish announcing the choice of Sen. John Edwards as his running mate on the Democrat presidential ticket, the Republican attack dogs had already started their work of chewing up the candidate. A series of Web sites covering every possible choice listed the foibles and policy decisions which would drive a wedge between voters. The "Who Is John Edwards?" page quickly labeled him "a disingenuous, unaccomplished liberal and friend to personal injury trial lawyers."

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For further amusement, check out "Why the Homosexual Movement has Won," a interesting column on SBC Baptist Press. The author references the success of After the Ball, a public relations manual for the gay community which was the first piece of gay non-fiction I purchased during my coming-out process. Then follow it up with Landover Baptist's Is My Little Baby Going to Be Gay?.

Yeah, I decided to go with a new look for the site. It's all part of my long-term redesign with plans to eventually collapse the Random Notes archives into this style. I want to move to a more dynamic setup where I can makes changes to the template all at once instead of page-by-laborious-page.

I'm usually on the fence when it comes to outing someone against their will. I know how horrified I would've been if someone had taken that choice away from me. John Aravosis makes a strong argument about why those rules do not apply to staffers of anti-gay congressmen. I agree with him on this one; if you're gay and helping that anti-gay Republican garden gnome Rick Santorum, you're a schmuck and deserve to be exposed.

It's high time we stopped treating grown men and women as children who simply need a hug. These people don't need a hug; they need a swift kick in the ass. They are, for the most part, well-educated, highly paid adults who are perfectly aware of the harm they are causing.

Yet still they choose to perform their roles. To suggest that all, or even a majority, are closet cases living on the fringes of gay life, and thus deserving of our pity, is a fiction. They may work against our civil rights by day, but they surely enjoy its benefits by night.

I didn't do much today except shuffle my books from one shelf to another in a pitiful attempt to create a sense of change. The attempt was triggered when I realized I'd devoted one of my inset shelves to Tom Clancy paperbacks. Is that really necessary?

"You just want people to think you're butch," my sister April said when I told her what I was doing.

I think Clive Barker and Harlan Ellison look much better in that space. I also moved The Alleged Cat (a stuffed kitty given to me many moons ago) to the top shelf with the bears and Meeko. They look like a jury up there.

Other than that, I haven't done anything except sleep through The Return of the King and Independence Day.

Speaking of, April sent a link to the Be a Bush Stylist page. It's a cute little paper-doll set-up using President Bush as its model. I was a little horrified to see you can strip him completely naked. Insert Abu-Ghraib reference here, etc.

Somewhere in my collection is a White House paper-doll book featuring the Clintons and the Gores. I think Chelsea is on one of the pages. I don't remember where I got it. Was it a gift? Damn, that's going to bug me all week.