Before getting into more fun topics like, I don't know...porn, I thought I'd start out with an interesting political tidbit. Obama's been in office for less than a week at this point - hell the paint's still drying - but there is one massive, glaring change that's already happened that hasn't been talked about that much. The White House website. I know the only thing I've seen in the news about the new site was that it switched over from Bush to Obama at noon on Inauguration day. I guess it's not dynamic enough to get much attention, but it was enough to pique my interest. So I thought I'd go dig around a bit and see what it was like. Not that I ever visited Bush's White House site - Purely for health reasons, mind you. Blood pressure couldn't take it - but this seemed like something new and fun to visit.
Check out http://www.whitehouse.gov/ and take a look at the first thing under The Agenda up top. Civil Rights. (OK, so it's arranged alphabetically, and "C"'s pretty early in the alphabet, but it's still first damn it!) In any case, with it's own set of agendas within Civil Rights is "Support for the LGBT Community". I knew I voted for this guy for a reason. It goes on to outline support for civil unions and federal rights, expanding adoption rights and hate crime statuses, denying a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, supporting AIDS prevention and so on. Whether or not you voted for him (Seriously, is there anyone who didn't? And no, it doesn't count if you didn't vote at all) that's pretty good. Especially when compared to the previous administration's White House site conveniently archived for our perusal at http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/. Deep breath before diving in people. Air's kind of toxic. And musty. In any case, notice the complete lack of interest in civil liberties. But hey, we already knew that. After all, civil liberty is just a breeding ground for Terrorism! Most glaringly, though for all the Bush administration's website acknowledged, we didn't even exist for 8 years.
So what does all this mean for the gay community? How the hell should I know? I'm not a social or political analyst. Though, let's face it, there's still plenty of bigoted congresspeople and state governments out there. And realistically, there's a lot on our new president's plate before we even get to any kind of rights. But it's there. It's support from up top that will hopefully some day make its way down to state and local governments, police and medical support and so on.
And yeah, I know that's not a picture of the White House. My research has led me to believe rainbows just don't like it. Maybe that'll change in the next few years. In the meantime, I say a giant phallic symbol penetrating a rainbow is just as good.