As some of you readers have heard me joke, during Election years all I do is eat, sleep & work once October hits and in November, sleep drops off that list completely. On my team there was a running joke that I worked so hard that Election Day was going to be the day I died. It is in that light that this might seem a bit delayed, but here are my thoughts on the Election results and what it means for the next few years for any interested party.

1st off I was personally overjoyed when I heard the news that in all 4 states Marriage Equality was on the ballot we won, handedly. More than any other race in the nation I was most proud that in not 1 or 2 but in ALL of the states where my civil right to marry was placed up for popular vote, that right was affirmed (or in MN’s case not rejected) by straight Americans, and more importantly given Prop 8, by religious Americans without whose support we would have failed.

In terms of the Presidential Election I spent most of the race apathetic to either candidate feeling that either way I would come out a loser. Because of this my plan was to write-in Jon Huntsman for President.Why? Because if President Obama won he would have a mandate on his last 4 years of economic policies that had helped to increase, not reduce our debt and we would be faced with a hard struggle to find a balanced budget with President Obama having less of a reason to compromise with stubborn Republicans. On the other hand if Governor Romney had won I had no doubt that he would feel the need to appease his masters on the evangelical right on social issues and propose a constitutional amendment to Gay Marriage and appoint anti-equality justices to the bench.

However, as the next couple of weeks should indicate, I might end up with a pro-equality President with a Justice Department refraining from defending DOMA at the Supreme Court, and a budget deal that will help us avoid the fiscal cliff that reduces both spending and increases revenue by both rates and eliminating deductions. Rep. Beohner seems to be playing ball with the President on a compromise and even more miraculously is getting his caucus in line despite Eric Cantor and the Tea Parties misgivings of raising any additional revenue complete with defections away from ATR’s No-Tax pledge.

Additionally I seem to have received an early (or late if you look at my hopes from 2009) Christmas present in the form of a resurgence of growing change in the Republican party. Younger Republican operatives like myself have seen 2 Presidential Elections lost utterly by policies that are too negative, counter-intuitive, and out of date with where the country is ultimately headed. Look at it this way, in 2008 America elected a very liberal president and the Republican Party’s reaction was to put forward candidates as conservative as President Obama was Liberal. While it might win you support in small races (read congressional) where turnout and mobilization of the base is crucial and when coupled with anti-establishment views effective it will ultimately cause you to lose in Senate and Presidential races where a broader audience is more engaged with the candidates.

We saw this happen in big ways when 2 Senate candidates were elected by narrow margins in their primaries because of their conservative record and who continued to run on that same conservative platform to the shock and bewilderment of the rest of America who doesn’t think in terms of legitimacy or God’s intent when it comes to something horrific as rape. Those old, evangelical, white men grew up in a world where they saw a shift from radio to TV as the primary news source and who don’t understand the important impact of the Information Era’s last 15 years in refuting stupidity (while celebrating its humor – lookin’ at you Honey Boo Boo Child) and connecting every person, every voter to a handheld fact checker. Does anyone know if Todd Akin or Richard Mourdock understand the concept of a phantom vibration whereas now more than 53% of all Americans have smartphones. In addition to connecting voters to facts the Information Era has also hyper-connected people who 20, 30, 40 years ago would never have come in contact with each other.

In 1967 the National Advisory Committee on Civil Disorders focused on figuring out what happened, why it happened, and what could be done to prevent instances of rioting that lasted nearly 2 weeks in Newark and Detroit. The Commission reported that America was “moving towards two societies, one black, one white, separate and unequal.” The report concluded that segregation had created a destructive environment in the racial ghetto that was “totally unknown to most white Americans.” The information age started online communities where the 2 Americas (or by 2000 more like 5) could combine in such a manner that younger Americans immersed in the digital age could see the racial ghettos, the sexuality ghettos, the ghettos for the dreamers, the gender ghettos and all of the segregations that made us unequal.

This same tearing down of social walls thanks the digital age is one of the main reasons the people of Egypt, particularly the youth, were able to lead a rebellion against their military dictatorship and topple their government in a matter of days, not months or years.

I call this an early Christmas present because the younger Republican political operatives are starting to take control of the party and shift it into a competitive party that doesn’t accuse women of claiming rape as an excuse to use abortion like birth control, a party that doesn’t demonize gay and lesbians who want to join society at the fundamental level of a family, a party that doesn’t cast the sins of the fathers at the feet of their children who are Americans in every way that counts except by birth, a party that doesn’t enter military actions when we don’t have a declaration of war, nor the means to pay for the war both in economic costs and in the costs to American lives.

Some of my Democrat friends have told me that they would prefer a Republican Party that continues to be as backwards as it has been, a party that refuses to see the “totally unknown” ghettos in America because it means that the Democratic majority will grow to a point where the Republican Party is irrelevant and then the needs of all of those groups that have been ghettoized will be serviced. I reject this concept on many levels but the main two reasons are; first are that a single party is always bad for democracy and if you have any doubt look at DC’s Democratic Majority and all the uncorrupted good it has produced. As Rachel Maddow said recently two healthy parties allows us to have intelligent debate about substantive issues in which will create the solution best for all parties. Second, when a political party has 90% support from a voting bloc they don’t have to do anything to promote solutions for the problems felt by those 90% because there is no danger, no fear in losing their vote. I am a realist who knows that every political party doesn’t want to help you as much as they want to help you vote for them.

So I urge all of you, regardless of party, to participate not only in the general election, but especially in the primaries. These contests decide which path your party takes, one that is towards the center with the majority of America or one on the extremes. The only reason we had politicians like Todd Akin or Richard Mourdock in 2012, or Mike Lee, Sharron Angle, Christine O’donnell, or Joe Miller in 2010 was because the extremes voted in the primary.

Aaron Sorkin famously popularized the phrase that “Decisions are made by those who show up” and currently the majority of Americans who do show up for the general election are not showing up to the primaries and conventions where the decisions that matter are made leaving the country with choices that are equally unpalatable to many Americans.

As the 2012 cycle comes to a close and the 2014/16 cycle starts up for me I urge you to support the new shift toward the center by the Republican Party as it is healthy for this country and to go vote in your primary to make the decisions that matter and not leave them in the hands of the extremes of the nation.

Yesterday I had the privilege of attending Affirmation’s annual Thanksgiving Dinner. This is the highlight of Affirmation’s DC Chapter events. Normally I am not a big fan of Thanksgiving. It was never big in my house and we always spent it with family friends and not our own family. Christmas was the bigger holiday for us.

But this year was different for me. I don’t know if it is because I have changed or because the world has changed, but this Thanksgiving I was so grateful to be surrounded by so many people who are a part of my “family” of sorts. And I think that has a lot to do with the changes that have happened inside Affirmation in the past year.

My first foray into Affirmation was tense and brief as they seemed to me to be an organization for bitter men and women who weren’t seeking anything spiritual but instead a connection of friends who had gone through similar trauma. I saw this mindset last year at the Affirmation conference in Cleveland where I presented on a couple of panels where audience members thought I wasn’t being critical enough of the Church and that the Church should “be damned for what it did to us.”

I wasn’t shocked by that mentality as I had discovered it before, but it was juxtaposed with a beautiful spiritual moment and gathering at the Kirtland temple. That same spirituality and focus on faith AND sexuality and not just sexuality was a highlight that was again on display last night.

Affirmation has a ways to go before it shakes off the perception that many have of it as an organization for bitter men and women that is far too the left of the spirit and anti-church, but I believe that the groundwork for that shift into a new generation has been happening for some time and will continue to happen as Randall Thacker steps up as the new President of Affirmation.

Randall and his partner are strong members of the LGBT community and Randall has helped open the minds of leadership here in the DC Stake and in his ward. He wants to have a renewed focus on both spirituality and sexuality within Affirmation and not just a discussion of one or the other.

I hope that Randall will become the new president and that under his leadership there will be continuation of the changes made in recent years to work with the Church on improving the lives of LGBT LDS youth instead of working at ends with the Church. And for those of you unable to attend the event just watch this short clip and imagine a room with 55 more people in it and you have an inkling of the power I felt last night.

In December of 2011 Elder Quentin L. Cook gave a commencement address entitled “Restoring Morality and Religious Freedom.” I’m going to put aside the fact that Phelps v. Snyder would indicate that we have not lost our “Religious Freedom” just like our country hasn’t been “taken from us,” for a minute.

This address was given to a BYU Idaho graduation class, however it was re-published using the same data and questionable sources despite having 8 months to review. Thus I believe the article should be held to a tighter scrutiny.

While the article talks about how we int he Church are under attack and how we can & need to work with other religious groups, Elder Cook seems to grasp at cases where religious freedom is being trampled upon. In this attempt the example he uses touches on homosexuality and being myself I am going to focus on that piece of the article.

For your reference, the article can be found here - http://www.lds.org/ensign/2012/09/restoring-morality-and-religious-freedom?lang=eng

Elder Cook in discussing the shift in our religious freedom states “A British high court recently denied a Christian family the right to foster children because the children could be “‘infected’ by Christian moral beliefs.” 21

“The ruling demonstrates just how radically things have shifted.One of the reasons the attack on moral and religious principles has been so successful is the reluctance of people of faith to express their views. 22″

When I read this I thought to look at the citation and in the footnotes, the citation links to an article from Charisma Magazine (A Pentacostal magazine who’s recent OpEd leads with “We stand with Todd Akin”) - http://www.charismamag.com/site-archives/570-news/featured-news/12897-uk-court-rules-christianity-harmful-to-children

Elder Cook’s assessment of the case in his above paragraph states the opinion of the court was that children could be “infected” by Christian moral beliefs. The article itself that he points to reads “The Judges stated that Christian beliefs on sexual ethics may be ‘inimical’ to children, and they implicitly upheld an Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) submission that children risk being ‘infected’ by Christian moral beliefs.”

By the article’s own admission the Court didn’t state that children could be “infected” by Christian moral beliefs, but that this was the opinion of the magazine. By the use of “implicitly” rather than “explicitly” we know that the court never stated that the children could be “infected.”

In fact, in reviewing the judgment of the actual case the word “infected” or any of its variations is not used once in the entire 34 page opinion. -http://www.scribd.com/doc/49752804/Johns-Approved-Judgment-2-11

Furthermore, the only reference to the view of “infection” was that during the case, the Equality and Human Rights Commission argued that children risk being ‘infected’ by Christian moral views.

Thus if we follow the daisy chain backwards Elder Cook is quoting Charisma Magazine, who is using a phrase from the arguments as a de facto representation of the courts opinion. As a graduate of Stanford Law school in 1966 and as an attorney for 27 years it is safe to presume that Elder Cook understands that arguments made in court by the winning side do not mean the judgment agreed with every argument and that without explicit reference to the argument of “infection” that there is no sound reason to suggest that the court agreed with that piece of the argument.

In fact, as a practitioner of the law, Elder Cook should have known far better than to represent the words of the British high court in such a manner as to imply that it was the court’s opinion that “children could be ‘infected’ by Christian moral beliefs.”

What is even worse though about this situation is that in looking at the previous version of this address Elder Cook doesn’t cite Charisma Magazine as a source and doesn’t quote “infected” in the text. (See http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/the-restoration-of-morality-and-religious-freedom &http://www2.byui.edu/Presentations/Transcripts/Graduation/2011_12_16_Cook.htm)

Instead it appears that this citation has been added explicitly in the past 8 months. This means that someone (Elder Cook, Correlation, an intern) felt the correct need to cite this strong assertion made by Elder Cook. In doing so they chose a source that illustrates the exact opposite without correcting the message going out to members in this month’s Ensign.

This represents either a serious mistake that needs to be corrected or perhaps something more meant to highlight religious freedom on the eve of Mitt Romney receiving the Republican nomination for President on Today.

I hope you take the time to read through Elder Cook’s address and my thoughts around this line and comment below on them.

This week I caught a showing of Spider-Man and besides the fact that I think it was very well done and much better than the 2002 version, it taught me a few valuable lessons. 1st, Martin Sheen & Sally Field are the best TV parents of my generation.

Second, and on a more serious note, I realized a flaw in my own character that I need to work on and fix. In the movie Andrew Garfield acts very naturally using a similar style as some of his other work (Boy A, Social Network & Death of a Salesman) that indicate it is Garfield and not Peter Parker doing this. There are times int he movie where he is awkward about asking Gwen Stacy out on a date and the awkwardness manifests itself in some physical motions. This drew it to my attention and during the movie I wanted to shout out and say “Just ask her out already, what’s the worst that can happen.”

It was at this point that I also remembered that he is supposed to be in High School and so this made sense. Meanwhile I am at the movie not because I took the initiative to set something up, but because a friend of mine asked if I was free and wanted to hang out. This juxtaposition of events weighed on me until today when I realized that I have been lost in high school mode when it comes to my social life. While I feel quite confident in my ability to flatly ask someone out on a date (assuming I know they are gay), and my newly found confidence to introduce myself to someone and start networking, I am still that scared little kid who is afraid to call his friends to do something fun for fear that they will say no.

I don’t know why, but I like being invited to things and not doing the inviting. I have faltered to take the initiative and it has been pointed out to me a couple of times, most recently by a great friend who is the only one who stayed in contact with me after I left DC. Not because of anything I did, but because of the effort she put into maintaining our relationship.

This is probably a fatal flaw in my dating life as well as I tend to want things to develop without effort, without initiative. This attitude might be flowing over into other areas of my life as well. It is for these reasons, and because I finally stopped re-assuring myself that I really am an adult now, that I have decided the next piece of personal progress that I am going to focus on is taking the initiative in my own social calendar.

Some of this will involve staying in contact with friends who live on the Left Coast, some will involve writing physical letters to dear friends on missions, and some of it will involve reaching out to existing & new friends in DC to actually do stuff rather than try to let things happen organically.

However this manifests itself, I feel that it will be for the better and that my life will improve because of it. I am not going to sit idly by and watch the world pass by me, I am going to take up my responsibility and reach out. This is likely to change who I am a good deal because as I write this I have thought of other areas of my life where I have faltered in being assertive, but that will be okay. Because while I might change and grow I always know the answer to the question “Who Am I?”

I am Spiderman David B. Baker

In my past anniversaries have been periods of depression and fear. I actually have had a psychological reaction when my body & sub-conscious recognize that something traumatic happened a year ago even if I haven’t remembered.

I have seen this manifest itself in August when I relive getting kicked out of BYU and, because the trauma was so intense, a year later coming out to myself. I have seen it in March around my parents divorce date. I have seen it around the holidays around  my deep depression in 2008. Remembering the anniversary of these events usually knocks me out of commission for a few days as I am feeling depressed as my psyche unconsciously relives the initial trauma. This is not unique to me, but is a human condition.

What is also a key human condition is for us to remember the good anniversaries as well as the bad and to revel in them to the point that the bad are removed from our minds.

Today is the anniversary of me getting quite possibly the coolest job in working for Google. I am truly blessed to be given the opportunity to succeed that I have and I truly hope that I have many more anniversaries in the years to come. Some will be bad, but most will be truly wonderful.

Does anyone else find that moment when you uncover another of Satan’s tactics to be just delightful? My experience as a Gay Mormon has been defined by many periods of depression, failed relationships and frustration with the Church mixed with equally happy periods of joy, imaginary dreams coming true, and peace.

As I was sitting here today the thoughts of the last few weeks crept up on me and I realized that this thought of mine that I should stop looking for love and a husband and instead marry my career is another of Satan’s techniques to make me feel like I am worth less than I truly am.

For the past while I have been contemplating just taking a clean break from my personal hopes and dreams for the future and instead focus on the future of my career and my long term goals. For a short while I loved this idea. After all I had just spent 8 months bouncing around the country for my career and I am loving every long day i spend doing work.

But lately as I started to go on dates just to stay in the loop I have started to get depressed more than usual. I have been worried about what the next steps and how I get from “A” to “D” in a slow, steady, smooth way and not in the typical LDS way of 3 dates and your engaged. I’ve never really had a relationship last for longer than a couple of months and I am terrible and even keeping friendships up for a decent amount of time (especially when separated by a lot of distance).

These thoughts have all paralyzed me, left me frozen in depression leaning more and more towards saying “Enough” and simply living a life married to my career. The problem with this is that after coming to terms with personal revelation I received int he temple about how I need to search for a husband I made a covenant with the Lord to put my trust in him and follow where he led me. That I didn’t know where to go but that if he showed me where, I would walk.

The thought to abandon this search would be breaking my covenant with the Lord. As I sat here tonight pondering all of this I remembered a line from my patriarchal blessing that reads: “[Satan] would harm you terribly if he could but, because of your determination to keep the covenants you have made, he will have no power over you.” In recalling those lines tonight it was like a light shone in on my sadness and I knew why I have been feeling terrible over the past couple of weeks.

This light unmasked the tactic Satan was using and I now can adapt to it and work to get happier. My cynical side of course tells me that this means his next tactic is going to be that much harder to spot and my optimist side tells me I’m free. Meanwhile, the realist inside is reminding me that behind every great man in history is a strong partner who is their helpmeet. How can I marry my career successfully without a partner by my side and children to motivate me to do better?

If you don’t know that this is an election year, or why this is important to me, then you should probably stop reading this blog altogether. If you also don’t like exotic vacations, then stop reading this post now.

Okay .. all 4 of you still here I have a proposition for ya’ll. Election years are a twisted ball of emotion that sucks and is wonderful at the same time. Like Ewan McGrgor says in Trainspotting “People think it’s all about misery and desperation and death and all that shit which is not to be ignored, but what they forget is the pleasure of it.” Campaigns and election work sucks. I know that at the end of October I am probably going to sear to myself “Never Again” about 1000 times. But that won’t stop me from going back because I love it so much and it feels so grand!

That being said, i know that I am going to need a LONG vacation after the election in November. Something that will let me disconnect from the world for 2 weeks and enjoy myself. My first thought is a cruise, no phone service, internet that costs more/minute than a gallon of gas, endless food, minimal planning, and total relaxation in one of 7 hot tubs. That being said I’m open to other alternatives as well besides a cruise, but that is where my mind is thinking.

Enter: My Problem. I have no travel buddies and a cruise is actually more expensive if I go solo, and likely to be more boring. So I need a travel buddy. Someone who wants to spend the last week in November and the 1st in December completely unplugged from the world on a nice vacation somewhere warm. If you feel like you are up to traveling with me let me know by filling out this form. Any and all takers are welcome and I’ve even included open-ended space for various recommendations and other thoughts should you need it.

I seriously want to have a fun time and need some cool people to come with me. So fill out the information and if I think your view of relaxation works, and that we might not kill each other on the trip than I might just pick you.

This weekend I spent time with my lovable Mormon Theologist friend Carl who blogs over at I Feel Like Schrodinger’s Cat. He made certain that I spent time watching the mother of all Space movies, based on the books that spawned Star Wars, and inspired Carl Sagan. This series is starts with “The Princess of Mars” that Disney renamed in movie form as “John Carter.”

My review will be vastly different than Carl’s as I have never read the books before in my life. That being said they will also be similar to Carl’s as we share a love of many fantastical things including Doctor Who, Star Wars, (some) Star Trek, Firefly, and pretty much anything Nerdy. In fact we will often (with our other nerdy friends and roommates long-past) get together to spend an entire night playing nerdy games, eating pizza and watching something science-fictiony. We call them “Man Nights.”

I had understood the basic premise that this was a movie about a guy (John Carter) who lived in the post-Civil War American West who was transported to Mars and had adventures. Really that was all I needed to know to get my interest piqued. Add in some sword-fighting, romance, and cool airships and I’m SO there.

To that extent, Disney/Pixar performed well. I could understand nearly everything that was going on (Unlike Tinker,Tailor, Soldier, Spy) and the mythos that the story created made sense. Cool Shiny Blue Medallion = science tech indistinguishable from magic, lower gravity = higher jumps and more strength, and bad guys = bad guys, you know the stuff you need to build a world and its set of rules.

Where the movie failed, in my view, was the casting. They tried very hard to get the races of Martian Humans (Red Men) to look similar and then distinguished them by the colors they wore, a literal Red vs. Blue scenario. This was confusing to me at one point during a rescue scene where it took me about 3 minutes to realize that the guy rescuing John Carter was Princess’s Friend and not the Evil Dude. Disney certainly got it right when they characterized evil as malificent all those years ago and yet in this film, two polar opposite characters were cut from the same mold (physically) This could have been modified while simultaneously adding a bit of racial integration into the film that was entirely white focused. (well okay, White & Green)

Other than that I thought it was a solid movie that deserved a stronger marketing push from Disney and a better title. If you have a moment this week(end) go see John Carter, it won’t let you down.

Best listened to with this song in mind:

Yesterday was my Birthday and at work I had an amazing privilege of having our chef prepare a special menu for my birthday. I chose Chicken & Beef Empanadas with Shrimp Enchiladas, a Southwestern Caesar Salad with Chicken Tortilla soup, and quite a good cake.

As I was leaving the cafeteria with a couple of my coworkers asked me if I had gotten a picture of the cake. Let me pause for a moment here to catch you guys up on a few facts of my life you may have missed.

 

I don’t take photographs that often. If you take a look at my Facebook albums you will see very few photos that aren’t simply re-shared from somewhere else. And even when I do take photographs they are usually of cool things like some jewels at the Natural History Museum or things I find funny. I hardly document my life … at all. Okay, un pause.

When my coworker asked me if I had taken a picture of it my reaction was apparently a “scoff” followed by “I don’t keep mementos” with such an air that apparently I came off as if I live a spartan existence.

It was then that I realized again, that I do live a spartan life and I’m okay with it. I packed up all my things into my car thrice over the past year, largely by duping about half of my stuff each move.

For those who gave me hallmark cards, I’m sorry they were removed from my life a long time ago, but the memory of your words were not. To all the broadway plays I’ve seen I’ve only kept a couple of your playbills but that doesn’t mean I love you any less. And to my family of whom I only have a single photo from my sister’s wedding I’m sorry. I really do love you.

I guess what I am saying is that apparently my actions make people see me as Spartan and Heartless. I don’t collect memories I dump them, and the ones I do collect live in a shoe box.

Well my life is about growing and fixing flaws I have in my character and so I have an idea that combines Vision boards, CharlieIsSoCoolLike’s Wall of Stuff, and my book of limited mementos to try and, as it were, help me find a heart.

As I have moved into a new place I not have clean, blank walls on which to make a vision-boarded wall of stuff and so over the next few weeks expect a few updates about my additions to David Baker’s “I’m totally not heartless but have feelings … Wall”