they were handing these out at halloween in the castro

which was really tame this year since they outlawed booze and violence;
you had to pass through police barricades to get in (that was my job,
standing at one of the barricades with a bucket trying to coerce folks
to cough up a $3 suggested donation to support local nonprofits
(like SFSI), not real successfully I might add.

I'm not really obsessed with the gay marriage issue, it's just that I
totally can't figure out why people in certain (red) areas of the country are
so threatened by it. The same sex couples that want to get married are as
conventional in every other way as heteros that want to get married. I
mean, it's so obvious that being gay isn't a choice, and by denying gays to
marry, the state is basically punishing them and acting as an arbiter of
customs, and getting dangerously close to being in cahoots with religion.
It's all fear and hate based.

I don't know why the center part of the US is the way it is; I suspect it's a
matter of prevailing culture. There are pockets of progressive attitudes everywhere,
college towns and boho neighborhoods. It's just that on the coasts it's the prevailing
culture.

I mean, today I went to a grant application workshop for the San Francisco Foundation,
a community foundation with the 7th largest endowment in the US. As part of their
mission to support diversity, your non profit gets extra points if you serve the transgender
community (among others), as well as have transgendered persons in your organization
(yep, it's a special category on the application). Imagine that! Sometimes I'm amazed at how
far we've come, at least in this neck of the woods.