Left to my own devices

I've never been much of a fan of edgy humor. Wait -- that's not entirely true. When I was a kid, it did appeal to me. Isn't that kind of how it goes when you're younger? You don't fully appreciate being shielded and protected from the more harsh realities of the world, so when you're flipping through the channels, land on HBO, and hear people like George Carlin, Eddie Murphy and Andrew Dice Clay sound angry, using profanity and talking about sex, it feels like that good-sort-of-dangerous that, the kind your mind reacts to when faced with a forbidden fruit. Speaking of Eddie Murphy, it was his 1983 stand-up special, Delirious, and his 1987 follow-up, Raw , that caught my attention during the late '80s. They were both funny in their own way, and both specials were definitely homophobic . And there was the internal dichotomy for yours truly: On the one hand, it was titillating watching what amounted to adult verbal content when I wasn't supposed to. On the...

The first election I was able to vote in would have been the spring 1994 primary. The first election I actually voted in was autumn's general election of 2004. Ten years went by where my right to vote went unused. People had fought and died -- in wars and in the streets -- for my right to vote, and I'd case it aside with the usual excuses of, 'They're all crooked, anyway, so it doesn't matter,' or 'My right to vote is balanced with my right not to vote.' Meanwhile, elections came and went, policy was decided, and I'd had nary an input. Things changed in 2004, and the world (for better or worse) has George W. Bush to thank for me getting me off my keister and becoming politically involved. With the Bush administration, the two main sticking points (though there were others) were our handling of the Iraq War, and lack of seeing the LGBTQ community as equal citizens. Karl Rove's orchestration of the culture wars was in full swing, ...