Wish You Were Queer

Happy holidays, friends. We hope you are with your loved ones, however you define that, and that the hearth is brimming and that you have remembered to candy your yams. And your sweetie's. And of course, your ex's and his ex's and that twink who is staying in your garage until he can find a place.

The holidays, with their year-end time for reflection and warm/fuzzy family vibe, are as good a time as any to extend some good will to our president-elect and to send him a note of congrats and glad tidings.

While you are at it, could you remind him that we still struggle? Could you put a little note in there about how things like DOMA and the recent passage of Prop 8 and similarly hateful props discount our value as Americans and trivialize our independently declared right to pursue happiness? Could you let him know that while he and similarly privileged hetero-couplings are enjoying not only the comforts of home and family, but the security of knowing that no one outside of their unit of love may put asunder their bond? That no one has the legal right to take their property should one of them pass? That no one may prohibit them from visiting the other should one fall ill choking on so much figgy pudding?

Could you please take a moment and Send Barack Obama a Postcard? Our pals at Join the Impact have posted news of a little action called the Postcard Project on their site with all the info you need to send our new prez a lovely holiday reminder.

Simply take a postcard from your town and address it to our prez-elect's transition office:

President-elect Barack Obama
Presidential Transition Office
Kluczynski Federal Building
230 S. Dearborn St., 38th Floor
Chicago, IL 60604

Then fill in the message area with a positive plea for justice and sanity regarding our rights. The LGBTQ Civil Rights Front, the group which originally launched the project, suggests something along the lines of:

Dear President-elect Obama,

Please ask Congress to repeal DOMA! All Americans should have the right to marry. Thank you in advance for advocating for the civil rights of your LGBT citizens.

Sincerely,

[Your Name]
[Your City and State]

Then put on the appropriate postage:
First-class postcard: $0.26 each
Maximum size: 6 inches long by 4-1/4 inches high
If your card is larger than these dimensions, put on another postcard stamp or put on a full first-class letter stamp ($0.42) to be safe.

Take a picture of you holding said card and mail it off!

Then go to either groups' sites and upload a pic of you and your message. Check back to see your fabulous mug as they add new pictures each day.

With three press conferences under his belt in three days, Barack Obama has promised to hit the ground running on January 20.

Let's not let him leave us in the dust.