Gay radio, and Prop 8 lawn signs
Went to Kam's tonight to hang out and do computery stuff (more on that in another entry, perhaps). On the way home, was wandering through the radio dial and came across "Movin 99.7," which I somehow thought was a hip-hop station but appears to focus more on "a mix of current rhythmic music and proven hits from the 80's and 90's." Anyway, on this particular show, the male host sounded possibly gay, and was talking with someone who I think was Isaac Mizrahi, who was calling the hosts "honey" and such.
So I listened a little longer, curious, and they said goodbye to Isaac and then they talked to a female caller who they said wanted to dedicate a song to her girlfriend, and I thought "Oh, they mean female friend," but no, in fact it was her romantic-partner-type girlfriend, who she met online and moved from Ohio to Texas to be with, shortly after the girlfriend had come out to her parents, and they've now been together three years. And everyone on the show treated this as completely natural and normal and ordinary, and I thought "What show is this, and what universe are they broadcasting from, and can I go live there too?"
It turns out they're a show called Radio with a Twist, "the first national, gay, commercial radio [show]. A 2-hour weekly syndicated radio program." It launched almost three years ago; its target audience is "18-49[-year-old] gay men [and] lesbians, and their 'gay-adjacent friends and families.'" It appears on at least a dozen stations around the country, mostly weekend late nights.
So I was feeling all happy about this--not really my kind of show, but I was very pleased that it was being broadcast. But to find out the name of the show, I had to keep listening for a couple minutes after I got home, and it was late so I didn't want to sit in the driveway, where I might wake my neighbors. So I drove around the block, parked at the curb a couple blocks away, and then after they gave the name of the show I turned around and came back home.
And there on the corner, half a block from my house, outside the Chinese Church In Christ, which will be my local polling station in a couple of weeks, there were two or three Yes On 8 lawn signs.
Sigh.
I saw another one of those signs a block away from here the other day. Very disappointing.
I guess I'm gonna have to get a bumper sticker. I may even have to ask my neighbors how they would feel about a No On 8 lawn sign on our shared bit of lawn out by the sidewalk. I've been reluctant to do that; I don't really want to have the argument with them that I suspect is likely to ensue, and I would have to get all four of them to agree. But I would like to let the neighborhood know (without actually having to go door-to-door and talk with people) that not everyone around here agrees with the signs that are currently out there.
I dunno if lawn signs have any tangible effect. But the Yes On 8 ones around here make me feel intimidated and sad, so I figure just in case there are others around here feeling the same way, I ought to provide a more visible No On 8 presence of some kind.
