On the California Supreme Court Ruling

There are times I'm ashamed of my fellow Americans. The very negative response to the California Supreme Court's ruling that marriage equality was a right under the state Constitution just amazes me.

In all reality, the rights of full equality - inclusive of all Americans, not just some or most - is the purpose of our nation's Constitution as well. It is also embodied in our Declaration of Independence - that ALL [...] are created equal.

Why are so many people afraid of letting everybody live their lives, free of interference from government, church or society? If one person has a right, should not everybody have it as well? How selfish to think that liberty should ever be exclusive.

When I was a child, I loved what I understood America to be. I believed in it then, with the innocence an naivete of a child. As I grew older, I began to see that what I believed in was as real as Neverland, or Wonderland. Or Santa Clause, the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy. I realized that only one word suffice to define all of these things: lie.

But I'm realizing something else. That we have all been deceived and thus disillusioned by that lie. So, in response, we fail to accept the power of the words which built our nation. We the People no longer hold the power in this country, so we grab at straws, believing it's right to allow a majority to take away the rights of a minority. That a judicial system put in place to ensure the rights of the minority are not denied by the democratic process must be "activist judges" when they are simply doing their duty as proscribed in the Constitution.

If only our electoral system works as smoothly as voting for constitutional amendment to take away from our neighbors, families and friends.

But be cautious: in trying to vote in Constitutional amendments, you set a precedence. What if all the non-white Americans chose to unite against the white Americans. They nearly have the majority, and we white folks tend to blow off voting. You could wake of after election day with no rights at all. Bet you'll be wishing you hadn't gotten rid of all those "activist judges," won't you?

But the "battle" over marriage rights does not belong in the states. It's a federal right - a civil right.

And I will continue to fight for the America I loved as a child. Fight to bring true "liberty and justice" - and equality - "for all."

Ignorance is Not Justice

When I read the news item below out of Dallas, it made me very angry. How is it that after 27 years of HIV/AIDS, ignorance is still so prevalent? That fear (which is the source of most ignorance) is allowed to drive people to make rash judgments.

Read the article for my factual argument below.

HIV-positive man sentenced 35 years for spitting at officer


Thu May 15, 6:32 AM ET

DALLAS - An HIV-positive man convicted of spitting into the eye and mouth of a Dallas police officer has been sentenced to 35 years in prison.

Because a jury found that Willie Campbell used his saliva as a deadly weapon, the 42-year-old will have to serve half his sentence before becoming eligible for parole. He was sentenced Wednesday.

Campbell was being arrested in May 2006 for public intoxication when he began resisting and kicking inside the patrol car, Dallas police office Dan Waller testified.

Campbell was convicted of harassment of a public servant.


It is a well-known fact that HIV is not transmitted by saliva. Thus, the officer's life or health were never in danger, thus Mr. Campbell's saliva was not "a deadly weapon."

Which body fluids transmit HIV?


These body fluids have been shown to contain high concentrations of HIV:

blood
semen
vaginal fluid
breast milk
other body fluids containing blood

The following are additional body fluids that may transmit the virus that health care workers may come into contact with:
fluid surrounding the brain and the spinal cord
fluid surrounding bone joints
fluid surrounding an unborn baby

HIV has been found in the saliva and tears of some persons living with HIV, but in very low quantities. It is important to understand that finding a small amount of HIV in a body fluid does not necessarily mean that HIV can be transmittedby that body fluid. HIV has not been recovered from the sweat of HIV-infected persons. Contact with saliva, tears, or sweat has never been shown to result in transmission of HIV.


I am going to try and get ACLU and other rights organizations to fight for Mr. Cambpell's sentence to reduced to jail time only for a month or two. Not this fear and ignorance-driven sentence. When people are put in prison for 40 years on murder charges, this is shameful and discriminatory.

I'm ashamed that this happened in my state. Or in my country. Almost three decades after this disease was discovered, and the pandemic of ignorance rages on.

Donating to Those Needier

I have been in Austin for over four years now. I wish I could love it, but for most of this time I've been without work, and when I have managed to get hired, it's so far beneath my experience level it's depressing.

After seventeen years working at Texas A&M in a variety of fields - from graphic design to IT support to server admin to database development and database server admin - I have yet to find those jobs. If I do, I rarely get the interview, and those very few for which I have, there's always a "better candidate" that's selected.

I had to sell my car, my laptop, my iPod, my Palm, my TiVo, my DVD player, and my TV. All my CDs and DVDs and books are gone as well.

I started a job last week, but it won't pay me near what I'm worth.

But this isn't about that at all.

My second night in Austin - with quite a bit of money after cashing in my retirement account with the state - I attended a fundraiser for AIDS Services of Austin. A friend had told me about it just hours before it began.

I found myself putting $1 and $5 bills in the baskets during and after each performer. When the emcee announced that Rainbow Cattle Company had made a sizable donation, as had an anonymous donor, I knew I had to do the same. It's one reason I moved from College Station to Austin - for the opportunity to help those for whom HIV/AIDS had been far more devastating than it had been for me (after a little over seventeen years).

If I had known that two years later I'd be needing the services I had come here to support, and that every penny I gave was money that could have helped me stand on my own a bit longer, I'd still give.

I can't be selfish. I won't be selfish, despite many friends writing me off as insane for putting others before myself.

Money I make from selling AIDS awareness designs on my Cafepress shops does not go to me. I purchase art pieces from my other online stores to be donated to silent auctions. Again, I can't justify making money off a cause as important as this. I've lost my cousin, a good friend and my first partner to this disease. I'm still here so I can continue to fight for all who have died, all who are sick, and those yet to come.

I recently donated an art piece of mine to the Octopus Club's ArtErotica fundraiser for the Paul Kirbey Emergency Fund at AIDS Services of Austin. I had donated two art pieces last year, so felt it was a good event to support.

Imagine my excitement when my work sold at a high bid that was $70 over the value! I won't get that money, of course. It goes to the cause.

So, while I continue to scrape up every last thing of value to sell in order to survive - and trust me, the barrel is pretty much empty now - I will still refuse to return to the selfish man I used to be.

Give a little, give a lot. Give until it hurts. Help raise awareness, help to educate, help fight the stigma of this disease, and just as importantly, help those who are living with HIV/AIDS.

It's not just in Africa: it's everywhere. It's in America, in Texas, in Travis County, in Austin. it's in your neighborhood whether you know it or not.

Open Letter to Barack Obama

Okay. I've held my tongue long enough.

Senator Obama,

As a gay man, I'm tired of being told by a black man that I should be in the back of the bus, that I can't eat in the front of a restaurant, or that I must drink from a different water fountain.

Okay, perhaps that's not entirely true, but as a man who pays an equal share of taxes as a non-gay person does, I'm certainly not feeling that I am getting an equal share of the liberties my fellows on the 'straight' side of the fence receive.

We've been told we shouldn't be teachers, or be allowed near children. We've been blamed for AIDS and condemned and damned because of a virus which can affect and is affecting anybody. We are told we can't hold office, we can't have our jobs or our housing rights protected. We are even denied the rights to life, liberty and happiness - which are, supposedly, unalienable.

I - and the entire gay and transgendered community - am being treated like a second-class citizen. Take those few steps back in time, when you and the black race were treated as described above. How did it make you feel? Like an American, or just somebody who paid full price for a piece of the dream and got nothing in return?

Take a few more steps back, when you would never have been allowed to hold the office of Senator, nor could you have run for the office of President of the United States. Just don't step back too far, or you just might find yourself in chains. Or worse.

Last week in Oregon, you stated "We’ve got a war that is bankrupting us. And we’re going to argue about gay marriage? I mean, that doesn’t make any sense.”

Hmm. Interesting. The Vietnam war began in 1961. The Civil Rights act was passed in 1964, the Voting Rights Act in 1965 and in 1967 the Supreme Court made the ban on interracial marriage illegal. The Vietnam war raged until April 30, 1975. So, perhaps those unimportant issues which improved the lives of the black citizens of this nation should have been ignored while we were so deeply involved in war. They could have waited for a later time.

I am certainly not suggesting such a thing. I believe it is a sad "birth defect" that, despite the powerful words of our own Declaration of Independence, it took nearly 100 years for the slaves to be granted freedom, and another 100 for the civil rights act to be passed to protect that freedom.

But that does not mean that another select group of American citizens should be denied full equality. Nor does it give you the right to use your religion to support such denials of liberty.

Faith created the stigma and discrimination surrounding HIV/AIDS, and continues to do so. Faith was the problem, and is not the solution. A virus has nothing to do with religion. Period. In fact, a virus is perhaps the most secular thing there is. Keep religion out of AIDS; we remember the damage they already did to the fight against this disease. I remember.

The President of the Unites States must be secular. To oversee a nation of such diversity requires that one not put their religion before the equal rights of all people.

The America I grew up loving and believing in is one where every person has the same rights, the same opportunities. Nobody should feel themselves restricted in living their lives. Nobody. Not you, not me. Not anyone.

So consider your words carefully. How would you react if, back in the 1960's, somebody said "We’ve got a war that is bankrupting us. And we’re going to argue about CIVIL RIGHTS FOR BLACKS? I mean, that doesn’t make any sense.” What if they said that today?

A bit of perspective, walking in another man's shoes, is good for the soul. And, perhaps, the sole as well.

If you want to be a force for change, then truly change how Americans are treated in this nation. The words "with liberty and justice for all" are powerful, and mean a lot to the people of this nation. Make is so. Ensure that we truly are the land of the free, the land of the equal.