Month: February 2004

I’m sitting in my office right now, which is so not where I want to be. But my Internet connection is out at home — has been out since last Sunday when yet another attempt to update my virus protection failed, my computer crashed, and lights that shouldn’t be blinking on my cable modem started blinking like mad. As near as I can guess, the modem got stuck in something like a feedback loop: the activity light keeps flashing, even when the computer is off, and my limited success at getting online for about half a minute quickly gave way to absolutely no success at all. A technician from Adelphia will be coming to my apartment sometime between 8 and 10 on Monday morning to see if they can’t figure things out.

Which is why I’m here. At work. On a Saturday. I sent out about ten e-mails yesterday afternoon on my new story for Voices of Central Pennsylvania — my editor was kind enough to let me drop the voting machine story when attempts at contacting people proved all but impossible — and I wanted to respond and see if anyone else had written. I also wanted to interview someone who left a message about the story on my answering machine yesterday, and recording interviews is much easier when you have a speakerphone at your disposal. (Which, at home, I don’t.)

I’m going to leave my office now, although I’m sure I’ll be back tomorrow. It’s a little frightening just how much I’ve come to depend on having an always-there internet connection.

It’s not completely complete, but I’ve actually gone and updated the writings section of this website. Which means I’ve fixed the broken links and uploaded missing files. Most everything’s in PDF, mainly to make things easier for me. Some of it’s pretty old; the sketches are the newest things I’ve written. Feel free to read or not, as you will.

Since it seems unlikely that they’ll print my letter to the editor (given that they’ve just today printed five letters on the same topic in a highlighted section), I’m reprinting it here:

It’s difficult to understand how a constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriages can be viewed as anything but discriminatory. One segment of the population would be denied rights that the rest of us simply take for granted. I have yet to hear an argument in favor of this discrimination that did not rest solely on fear, misguided traditionalism, misleading statistics, or religious beliefs (which should be irrelevant, given the very necessary and well established separation of church and state).

In his letter to the editor on Wednesday, February 25, Bill Berish argues that homosexuals already have the right to marry. This is extremely misleading. Gay men and women have, in some limited cases, the right to a civil union. However, this is by no means the same as marriage, nor does it carry with it the same rights, benefits, and protections under the law to which heterosexual couples are implicitly entitled. No one is demanding that religious institutions be forced to recognize or officiate at such weddings, but civil unions are not even recognized by every state, much less by the federal government. Telling same-sex partners that they should just be quiet and accept what little they can get is, quite simply, discrimination, regardless of the motives behind it. (Remember, many of the same arguments against homosexual marriage were also used against interracial marriage not so long ago. Are we prepared to say that those unions have destroyed the sanctity of marriage?)

Gay men and women do not, as near as I can tell, want additional rights. They simply want equal protection under the law. How can denying them that be anything but discriminatory?

It basically just reiterates a lot of what I’ve said here lately, but I felt like it needed to be said. Maybe I should just stop reading the campus newspaper.

It must be out of habit from trying to talk over heavy machinery: maintenance workers on campus seem to be incapable of speaking in anything quieter than a shout. It would almost be amusing if it also wasn’t so loud.