doubting thom

If you only read the RSS feed of elf-reflection, you may not be aware of my other blog pursuits, the “quicklinks” I maintain separately of cool, unusual, topical or otherwise interesting links I come across during my surfing. The first one of these secondary blogs, serendipity :: a journey of elf-discovery, XML is the catch-all site for the bulk of these links. Two others are devoted to more narrow topics: the Prius blog XML aggregates links to articles and discussion about the Toyota Prius hybrid, while sputnik :: atomic age style in a quantum world XML, the newest at just a day old, is a repository of links to sites and resources about atomic age, retro, midcentury modern and other related modern and contemporary style, architecture and design.

Beating me to the punch yet again, Jeff has blogged about our dinner Friday night at Nectar. This restaurant, in the spot near the Kennedy Center formerly occupied by another favorite of mine, Zuki Moon (home of the best homemade caramel and green tea ice creams), really was quite nice. It’s a little pricey (one appetizer, two entrees, one dessert, one ginger ale, and two coffees–and we had no wine or cocktails–ran us just shy of $100 before tip) for frequent visits, but definitely worth checking out for a special occasion.

In addition to the odd mix of over- and under-attentiveness (on the one hand, one server came over to pour more water every five minutes or so, but all failed to offer seconds on bread or to bring the check until we specifically asked, well after it was clear we were waiting), there was an interesting melange among the furnishings of the common–one server made a point of telling us that the candle holders were available at Target, when he thought I was admiring them–and unique–the beautiful glass plate on which Jeff’s salmon was served is part of the owner’s private collection, and is signed by the glassmaker.

I had the duck which, like several of their entrees, interestingly and appealingly is not a single item but a medley, consisting in this case of rare duck tenderloins in a wine sauce, a small salad on duck carpaccio, a duck leg on polenta, and foie gras with a delicate mint sauce. And the individual baked Alaska I had for dessert was spectacular, though the hazelnut praline ice cream within the absolutely perfect meringue was perhaps a touch still too hard to eat easily; the “invisible chocolate” sauce–a clear chocolate liquer–poured over it, though, added another interesting touch to the dessert.

In a bold but very successful move, Nectar doesn’t own a walk-in freezer, so the menu changes sometimes as frequently as daily according to whatever ingredients are available freshest that day. So use the menu on the web site only as a guide to possibilities rather than as a strict reference.

Jeff has reported on our Friday night outing to see the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington’s all-male performance of Bye Bye Birdie, and I concur that it was a fun show. I knew beforehand that all the roles would be played by men, but had assumed that the roles usually played by women would be done in drag. While, as Jeff notes, that was done for a few roles (notably Mae Peterson and Mrs. Macafee, as well as Kim’s best friend Ursula), the Chorus also took the inspired step of reworking the two female leads–“Rosie” (short for “Roosevelt”) Alvarez and Kim Macafee, the intended recipient of Conrad Birdie’s “last kiss”–as male characters.

And what a world those changes created–in this production, Sweet Apple, Ohio is part of an alternate U.S. where some boys kiss girls, some kiss boys, and some kiss both, and it’s all completely normal, unremarkable and “really sincere.” In the world of this production, even adult married men aren’t immune to the swoon-producing effects of Conrad’s pelvic thrusts.

And the recasting of the Shriner’s meeting as the back room of a leather bar was priceless–this scene, and the hunky actors in it, received some of the night’s loudest applause and obvious audience appreciation.

As states across the U.S. continue to move toward banning gay marriage and, in many cases, any legal protection for gay men and lesbians in long-term relationships, the rest of the world keeps moving forward.

The Observer reported yesterday that laws giving gay couples the equivalent legal recognition and rights accorded to marriage will be unveiled this coming Wednesday.

The first laws giving gay people the right to “marry” are to be unveiled this week in one of the most significant changes to Britain’s social make-up since the passing of equal opportunities legislation in the 1960s.

Attempting to show it still has a radical edge, the Government will say that all couples who sign up to a committed relationship should have the same rights, regardless of sexual orientation. …

Under the Civil Partnerships Bill to be published on Wednesday, same-sex couples will be able to sign a register held by the register office in a procedure similar to a marriage. Although the Govern ment will insist it is not officially a “marriage” but rather a contract between two people, the fact that couples will have to announce their intentions beforehand in a similar way to the reading of the banns before a wedding reveals its true effect.

Couples will have rights to pensions similar to married couples, will not have to pay inheritance tax on property passed between them when one dies and will have access to hospital records similar to that allowed for a spouse. …

A Whitehall source said it simply and best, “It is about equality. It is not about special favours–they will have the right to commit to one another and the responsibilities that brings.”

Last night I got a note that someone on Orkut had added me to her friend’s list. Soon thereafter I got an email from the person in question asking me if I were the Thom Watson she’d known from Harvard, and also pointing out that we have some real-life friends in common.

It turns out that while the latter is true, and I did go to Harvard (class of 1984), I was not the specific Thom Watson (class of 1991) she knew.

As a kid I already was aware of professional golfer Tom Watson; the founder of IBM, Thomas J. Watson; and even Southern Populist leader, Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel. I thought that my spelling of Thom with an h, however, would help my name stand out a little.

And in the small pre- and early-Internet world, it did. Between 1994 and 2000, sites owned by or related to me generally were the only ones returned for the search term “Thom Watson.” No more, though. My personal site is still the first result from Google, and other sites with which I’ve been affiliated speckle the results, but even the more unusual spelling now returns a plethora of results, many of which I’ve tied to specific individuals. At a minimum, there’s the:

• Psychic Healer and Reiki Practitioner, also known as “Grandfather RavenWolf”;
• Florida sports journalist;
• Maine politician (Representative, D-Bath);
• Producer and director at the Studio Theatre of Bath, Bath, Maine;
• Music licensing professional, stage actor and film coordinator. This one sometimes gets confused with me, because we’ve both done work over the years for PBS;
• Diocese of Coventry (U.K.) Board of Education member;
• Guitarist for New Zealand band “Head Like a Hole” and frontman for band “Cassette”;
• Former member of the Concord Arizona “Blue Devils” Drum and Bugle Corps;
• Keyboardist, vocalist and percussionist for “moth,” a “three-piece gothic soundscape ensemble”;
• Project manager at a Texas architecture firm and president of the Bulverde (TX) chapter of Optimists International;
• Dabbs Area Vocational Center (Birmingham, Alabama) welding test supervisor; and
• Everett (WA) Community College Maintenance Supervisor.

We’re nothing if not a diverse bunch, we Thom Watsons.

I‘ve been remiss. On Monday I received a wonderful surprise. When I got home from work there was a package for me from Amazon; inside was a copy of the terrifically funny Muriel’s Wedding DVD from my wishlist, a gift for no apparent reason from the wonderful woman over at Go Fish.

I sent a private thank-you, but I also wanted to take the opportunity to publicly thank her for the “Happy March” present. Thanks, sweetie!

A proposed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage was tweaked Monday to give states the right to recognize same-sex civil unions, but sponsors shied away from including language that could squelch legal challenges in Utah to the constitutionality of prohibiting polygamy. …

Still, the Colorado senator [Wayne Allard] acknowledged that he and [Colorado Rep. Carolyn] Musgrave purposefully did not define marriage as a union between “one man and one woman,” which would have effectively eliminated any possible ambiguity over the unconstitutionality of plural marriage, which Congress outlawed in 1882.

“We had a real definite debate on that,” said Allard. “If you say ‘one man and one woman,’ that creates issues about divorces and remarrying, so we didn’t want to go into that. So that’s why we have ‘a man and a woman.’ ”

The Salt Lake Tribune, March 23, 2004

Every day these folks make it clearer and clearer that the intent of the Federal Marriage Amendment is not, in fact, to “preserve the sanctity of marriage” but merely to enshrine in the Constitution their contempt (if not outright hatred) of and bigotry towards gay people.

Given that they were so careful about the language in this one phrase, though, it certainly belies their claims until recently that the original language of the amendment wouldn’t prohibit legislated (as opposed to constitutionally or judicially mandated, which they still intend to ban–so it’s ok for Congress to take away rights using the federal constitution, but not for states to given them with their own) civil unions, language they’ve now changed explicitly.

I must admit to some gleefulness contemplating the potential fallout if they hadn’t seen this potential problem with their words, and had ended up constitutionally prohibiting divorce and remarriage.

[Via Bug]

File under “Yet Another Reason to Move to Canada”

Following similar rulings from Ontario and British Columbia, the Quebec Court of Appeals (the province’s top court) ruled today that same-sex couples indeed have the right to marry.

Both Eugene Volokh and Considerettes had something to say recently about Wednesday’s story in the Las Vegas Sun reporting that two student legislators at Western Oregon University have launched an effort to ban the Red Cross from conducting blood drives on campus, claiming that the donor screening process discriminates against gays. To wit, the Red Cross bars any man who has had sex with another man since 1977, even once, from donating blood; its contention is that this helps protect the nation’s blood supply from HIV-tainted blood.

While I agree with one conclusion of both Volokh and the author of Considerettes that this has the potential of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and I personally wouldn’t support a ban on blood drives (Volokh invokes the words “mighty foolish” and “folly”), I think that both bloggers have missed an opportunity to look at the full story and the history behind the Red Cross’s stance and the FDA regulations, since medical research and the blood supply advisory community tend to believe that there is no scientific basis for the categorical ban, and to see whether there might actually be some anti-gay discrimination or at least some logical inconsistencies in the Red Cross’s policies that go beyond their stated public health rationale for rejecting blood from any man who has had a single episode of sex with another male.

• If you are a woman who has had sex, no matter how many times, with a man who has had sex with another man, you are asked to refrain from giving blood only for a year after your last sexual experience with that man.
• Similarly, if you are a man who has had sex, no matter how many times, with prostitutes, as long as you’ve never had sex with another man you also are asked to refrain from giving blood only for a year after your last sexual experience with a prostitute.
• If you are a woman who has been raped, even if you have no idea of the sexual history of the man who raped you, you may begin to donate blood again one year after the rape.
• However, if you are a male who has had sex with another man, even once, since 1977, you are prohibited from giving blood. Even if you have been celibate, in a monogamous relationship or have engaged only in heterosexual activity since, and test negative for HIV, you still may not donate blood.

According to the CDC, racial and ethnic minority populations in the United States, primarily African-Americans and Hispanics, make up more than 60 percent of the HIV infections in the U.S. Yet the FDC and the Red Cross do not ban African-Americans, Hispanics, or those who are engaged in heterosexual sexual relationships with African-Americans or Hispanics from donating blood.

Among new HIV infections in the U.S., sixty percent of men were infected through homosexual sex. However, seventy-five percent of women were infected through heterosexual sex, yet we do not categorically ban heterosexual women from donating blood.

The ban as written seems to have a double-standard. The same risky acts performed by heterosexuals generally merit only a twelve-month waiting period to donate blood, while for gay men status alone, regardless of sexual history for the past 27 years, suffices for a categorical ban.

Finally, the Red Cross hides behind the FDA, claiming that it is the FDA’s regulations that require the ban. However, they do not disclose that the Red Cross, as a member of the FDA Blood Products Advisory Committee, has been the lone voice preventing any change to the FDA’s regulations, while FDA staff and its other advisory organizations have suggested that the categorical ban is unjustified and unwise in the face of the ongoing blood shortages the country has continued to encounter over recent years.

In testimony at a watershed meeting of the FDA Blood Products Advisory Committee in September 2000, where the FDA was reviewing possible modifications to the gay ban, the American Association of Blood Banks (AABB) strongly advocated changes, and America’s Blood Centers (ABC), which collects nearly half of all the nation’s blood supply, also supported modifications. The American Red Cross (ARC) stood alone in opposing any change. Roehr reviews reports that the Red Cross opposes changes for financial reasons, and seeks to market itself as the “safest” source of blood through a policy which is not scientifically justified. BPAC support for changing FDA policy failed at that meeting by only one vote.

A recounting of events over the last few years clearly indicates that opposition to changing the policy on blood donation by gay men does not come from the FDA staff, the association representing professionals in the field, or the association representing agencies that collect about half of the blood in the United States. Opposition to changing the policy comes primarily, one is tempted to say solely, from the American Red Cross, which wields a de facto veto over the process.

The power of the Red Cross comes from the fact that it is a centralized behemoth that carries out a multitude of activities with an annual budget of about three billion dollars. It has a massive public relations machine that maintains its iconic image before the American public. The other organizations may represent equal or greater interests in the field of blood donation and use, but their resources are diffused and they are no match for the ARC.

What motivates the American Red Cross to maintain its opposition to changing the policy? Their rhetoric focuses on maintaining minimal risk within the blood supply, but that is at odds with the policy of the AABB to which many of their professional members belong.

Some past board members and lower level officials resigned from the Red Cross in past years, charging that the ARC was homophobic. ARC spokesmen have denied the charge, but the legacy of suspicion remains.

It seems likely that money, marketing, and sheer arrogance are factors contributing to ARC’s maintenance of the policy….

Regardless the course taken, it seems likely that internal and external pressure will have to be brought to bear on the American Red Cross for it to abandon its lone opposition to changing the policy. Even if the FDA decides to modify the policy, the ARC can always undercut it by maintaining its own, stricter policy. The most effective public argument in moving the ARC is likely to be one of identifying their position as one adopted for strictly for financial reasons, to save processing costs, while discriminating against a segment of American society when there is no valid scientific reason to do so.

From an article in the March 22 issue of TIME entitled “Raising the volume”:

As the Bush team sorts out its internal mechanics, it will press the advantage of incumbency. Administration sources tell TIME that employees at the Department of Homeland Security have been asked to keep their eyes open for opportunities to pose the President in settings that might highlight the Administration’s efforts to make the nation safer. The goal, they are being told, is to provide Bush with one homeland-security photo-op a month.

Well, I sure feel safer now, knowing how employees at DHS are being asked to spend their time.

A recent article on Alternet, “Cashing in on Tragedy,” also points out the inherent hypocrisy in tactics like these:

While the White House now says Bush “has every right” to politicize 9/11 and the War on Terror, it was President Bush and Vice President Cheney who reassured Congress after 9/11 that national security would never be used for political purposes. On 1/23/02, President Bush said, ” I have no ambition whatsoever to use [national security] as a political issue.” On 5/17/02, Vice President Cheney even said legitimate questions about the White House’s failure to better defend America before 9/11 were “thoroughly irresponsible and totally unworthy of national leaders in a time of war.” On 3/4/03, Senate Intelligence Committee Ranking Member Richard Shelby (R-AL) was asked if his party should use the war for political gain and responded, “Absolutely not. And as a Republican, I would deplore such tactics. I think that what we’ve got to do in a bipartisan way, as Americans, is win this war.”