Kyell Gold's Blog, page 36

Prop 8 and DOMA Arguments In 10 Minutes

… courtesy of Courtney Milan, romance author and lawyer and, it turns out, pretty funny lady. She puts the oral arguments on the Prop 8 case and the DOMA case into normal-person-speak for our reading pleasure. Will gay marriage cause flesh-eating aliens to eat all children under the age of sixteen? Read and find out…

NFL Player Considering Coming Out…

As reported on SI.com. There’s really no other news. Of course, nobody knows who it is.

A Collection of Links on Same-Sex Marriage

With Prop 8/DOMA being heard by the Supreme Court this week, there are a bunch of people writing things on same-sex marriage.

There is the previously-mentioned column by Scott Fujita, NFL linebacker.

Author John Scalzi talks Ohio politics.

Meanwhile, another reason to love Starbucks: its CEO tells a shareholder that if he doesn’t like Starbucks’ support of gay marriage, “You can sell your shares of Starbucks and buy shares of another company.”

And the Mormon Church, too, is no longer a crusader in the anti-equality fight. “More than 800 Utahns gave $2.7 million to support Prop 8 in 2008, state campaign finance records show. In 2012, a total of 16 Utahns gave $1,264 to the main ballot committees against gay marriage.”

Ol’ Bob Dylan had it right. Let’s see if the Supreme Court decides to stay on the right side of history…

More Acceptance In Football

Scott Fujita joined the other NFL players who signed their names to a brief to the Supreme Court in favor of same-sex marriage, and here he writes about his family’s experiences with racial intolerance (including the birth of his father in a Japanese-American relocation camp) and how those experiences and others in our nation’s history shaped his views on same-sex marriage. A good read, and what’s heartening is his talking about the conversations going on in locker rooms. I hope that some gay players are listening to those conversations and feeling more and more comfortable with the concept of coming out.

New Story Up

I have posted a new story for y’all: Regretrospective. The term was coined back at Furry Fiesta two years ago or so by Rikoshi and Zapnut and maybe some others, and I completely did not give them credit for it, except here. Anyway! You can read it on FA or on SoFurry, whichever you like.

Next week I’m gonna be doing something cool with this story. Keovi has agreed to create an illustration for it for everyone to enjoy, and we’re going to try a mini-crowdfunding thing to pay for it. If you’d like to see the illo, toss in a dollar or two or five toward the total, and she will basically do as much work as the total would pay for if we were all commissioning her together. She has a neat idea in mind for it, and I’m excited for you guys to see it.

As an additional incentive, the top two or three donors (we will figure it out) will actually be featured in the background of the picture! If you’re a mythical or a sparklefur who wouldn’t fit into the world, we will figure something out–maybe a movie poster or something–or you can select another character to be in the background.

Anyway, all that aside, I hope you guys like the story, whether it gets an illo or not.

FWA Recap

Furry Weekend Atlanta moved to a new hotel this year, but kept the same awesome staff, and put on a good con again. Good points first: the dealer’s room ran as smoothly as I’ve ever seen one run. It was huge and spacious, and even though they tucked us into a corner, it was a corner near the front door and they got FurPlanet and Sofawolf and Blotch together with Keovi nearby, so it was a fun corner as well. A+, would deal again (and will next year, in fact).

The lineup of panels was pretty good. I got to do the “Sex in Storytelling” with Rukis, and even the interruption from next door was kind of entertaining (more on that below). Also got to talk about Novel Writing and Character Development and about gay fandoms, trying to get people in Atlanta to go to Gaylaxicon later this spring. And Fuzz and I did our third KnotSheathed, which was recorded by three devices, including my fancy microphone that I haven’t figured out how to work completely yet (after we were done, Fuzz said, “what’s this dial that says “Gain” on it?” which was on the side of the mike facing HIM and away from ME, so I never saw it, but it did explain why the mike was recording at super-low volume… oh well). I was late to the podcast because they scheduled it opposite the dance contest and I wanted to see some of that. The new room for the dance contest is pretty amazing and has a balcony, which was full. The dance contest was also broadcast live on justin.tv/furryweekend, where I think you can still go to see some FWA videos. So that was all pretty awesome.

Also cool was downtown Atlanta with its restaurants and Starbucks. I went to several different restaurants for dinner and had a great meal every night. Wanted to go back to the old con hotel and its restaurant but actually spaced on that the one time I was invited, so…d’oh. I’ll wait to go with Kit (who didn’t make the trip this year).

CCI, the con’s charity, came with a baby binturong this year. She was eleven weeks old and adorable, just all full of energy. CCI was kind enough to open from 9-10 for a private showing for dealers, who otherwise have to be in the dealers den during the hours they’re open. They are great people and I’m proud to be part of the con that helped them (part of each membership goes to their organization, I believe).

And of course, the best part of FWA is the people. I get to see a lot of folks at this con that I don’t see anywhere else, and everyone is super-nice and the hotel had a great lobby to hang out in near the bar. I actually really like the downstairs setup, a large open space where you can hang over the walkway railings and see who’s around below. Stairs lead easily from one floor to another.

Downsides to the con: well, the panel rooms. They were tucked out of the way on a floor you couldn’t even take an elevator to (you had to go up to nine and then up escalators). They were one large room partitioned into three with barriers that didn’t stretch all the way and were very clearly not soundproof. Also, somehow, Saturday morning my panel room had no tables, so BlackTeagan and I just sat and talked to people; Sunday morning the same panel room had all the tables from all the panel rooms in it, some of which had to be removed for other panels. So half my panels were disrupted by loud panels next door, or by furniture needing to be moved in and out. The con has said that the panel rooms will be moved next year.

The elevators were something everyone complained about, but they only really bothered me once, when the elevator decided it didn’t want to go to our floor after all. The light blinked out and we just kept going, past 32, up to 70 before we came back down. I know some people waited in long lines, but there were two banks, 14-45 and 45-70, and I could usually manage to get on one or the other pretty easily. It wasn’t hard to walk down from 45 to 32 if I needed to.

Oh, and the 70th floor–well, 72, really–was amazing. The Sundial Lounge rotates with a 360-degree view of Atlanta, which is a lot nicer than it sounds if you’ve never been there. Atlanta has some really nice-looking and unusual skyscrapers, and the lounge rotates quickly enough that you do a circuit in about 30-40 minutes, I’d guess. It’s a must-do if you go to FWA next year.

And if you do, come by the Sofawolf table or go to one of my panels, because I’m planning to be back too!

Equality Support from North Carolina

I have stuff to write about FWA, and a posting to make about believing you can write, but I have told Dev and Lee I will spend the day with them because they need it today, poor fellas. So here is an amazing story out of North Carolina (which is amazing mostly because it is out of North Carolina, the state that gave us Jesse Helms and Amendment One), via the ever-lovely Wonkette.

Green Street United Methodist Church in Winston-Salem says it won’t marry heterosexual couples until same sex couples can marry. Instead of marriage ceremonies, council members at Green Street United Methodist are asking pastors to only conduct relationship blessings in the sanctuary.

Go read the whole thing, and spread some messages of support for this pretty awesome church.

FWA Schedule Update!

I forgot one panel in the list I posted previously: one of my favorite ones! Rukis and I will be reprising our popular “Sex in Storytelling” panel Friday at 9:30, right before my “Gay Fandoms” panel. So here’s the complete list:

* God-Level Dinner, Friday at 6:30 (if you are God-Level, of course, and if you’re not, why not?)

* Sex in Storytelling, Friday at 9:30 pm

* Gay Fandoms, Furry and SF, Friday at 11 pm

* From Amateur to Pro, Saturday at 10:30 am

* Novel Writing, Saturday at 2 pm

* KnotSheathed Podcast, Saturday at 9:30 pm

* Character Development, Sunday at 10:30 am

I have made it safely to FWA and will be at the Sofawolf table most of today! Looking forward to seeing you guys there!

Nice Divisions Review

Fred Patten reviews Divisions for Flayrah. He excerpts large chunks of text (so he must like the writing!) and there are some spoilery things in it, but he concludes with “Divisions is full of realistic conversations ranging from polite social discourse to raunchy locker-room banter. There are no dramatic events of the suspense-thriller variety; just a very well told tale of two young gay men making a life for themselves. Read wherever there is any interest in serious gay fiction, fantasy or not.” So that’s a positive!

Another Voice In Favor of Gay Athletes

Justin Verlander, former MVP and many-time All-Star pitcher for the Detroit Tigers (who couldn’t quite get enough Giants out last year) says he wouldn’t have a problem with a gay teammate, and gets quoted correctly the first time.

The atmosphere for gay players feels very much like a “two steps forward, one step back” kind of thing, which at least is forward progress. I really do think that there is so much discussion about this that when someone finally does come out, it’ll be news for about a week before everyone gets bored of it.