thomascwaters.com

How Gay is this cake?

Today’s post requires interactivity and some singing. As I try and blow out the candle on my blog’s birthday cake, I expect to hear everyone singing on or off tune- I don’t care, but sing! Exactly 1 year ago, today, I posted my first blog entry to thomascwaters.com, and now, 775 posts later, I’m celebrating! That first post wasn’t much, except it was the start, and over time a lot has happened, not to mention al those posts, and the almost 40 drafts I have started but haven’t finished. I want to do three things in this post today. 1) I want to say a bit about my story, and how or why this blog has come about; 2) I want to point out a few of my favorite posts from the last year; and 3) I want to say something about what I hope will happen over the next year.

Why I’m blogging at thomascwaters.com

I have blogged on and off for a number if years, on my .mac site, since iWeb has a built in blogging capability. Some of those posts still exist, others have been wiped away, as I have messed up that site and the only way  to move forward was to redo it from scratch. Blogging there, was never very focused, and always more personal. For example, one of my favorites from there, is a post about visiting the Betsy Ross house in Philadelphia, and now gone, there was a series of posts about masculinity, identity and growing older written while I was on a gay cruise. Sites published to a .Mac account aren’t indexed by Google, and while some friends visited, the posts had limited traffic. Still it was a start. I also had worked on a podcast called Queer Look at the Bible, also published to my ,Mac account, and distributed via iTunes. Not many episodes were created, but I fell away from working on the show, not sure if anyone was really listening. However it remained an important project to me.

Last September I read about Podcamp Pittsburgh on Twitter. I had been following Chris Brogan, and then, Justin Kownacki- and I decided to attend PCPGH as a way to get back on track with my podcast. I wanted to learn WordPress, move my blog to WordPress and become rich and famous, or at least get a few people to actually listen to my podcast. I met Andy Quayle of Tubu.net, and set up two domains on his site. The idea was to use a personal site, thomascwaters.com, as a place to experiment and learn WordPress and then implement what I learned on my podcast’s site, QLATB.com.

I have heard over the past few months, a number of younger LGBT activists talk about how last year’s election and defeat in California- Prop 8- inspired them to become activists and bloggers. It impacted me heavily too. I had made only 3 posts, and then came Prop 8! My partner and I were away on vacation at an all gay resort, and watching Obama win and Prop 8 pass was exhilerating and maddening al at the same time. After the first few posts, my focus turned to the election, election results, prop 8 and the fight for gay rights, and all of a sudden, thomascwaters was a gay activist blog and I haven’t regretted a single moment of it. I have used it as a way to learn WordPress, and there have been a few attempts to really get the podcast going, but my time, energy, passion and purpose have all found a home here on this blog. I didn’t become a blogger or activist because of Prop 8, but Prop 8 was an instigation to turn my voice towards something meaningful to me in a way I hadn’t experienced before.

A Few Favorite Posts

There have been a few real highlights over the year, but today I wanted to mention just a few that were important to me for a few reasons. They aren’t in any particular order.

Gay Kiss, El Paso Texas and Follow up post

These two posts marked a change in the way I was treating information I found on the web, especially in blogs. I usually spend some time surfing around and reading stuff. But at one point I started to look specifically at right-wing blogs. Rather than just respond to them, I started to investigate what they were saying, and this was a fun example. I found the claims being made to be insane, so I called the city council, the mayor’s office and the newspaper in El Paso to get the real story.

Posts about Transgender, Transexual, and Intersex

The linked post started a long dialogue about if the “T” in LBGT or GLBTQ belonged there, and if it included or silenced Transexual and Intersex individuals. There are a number of other posts that talk about the same or related topics, just search by keyword. In my opinion, this is one of the most important things I’ve written about all year. The issue of having agency, and voice for all those who are covered (this is debatable) within the pink alphabet soup communities of LGBT/GLBTQ/[add your initials here]  is a topic that we must talk about and explore if the goal is understood as full equality for all. Here in the US, we have states where a same-sex couple can get married by a Transgender or Transexual person can be fired, simply for being TG/TS. That is as far from equal rights as we can get, although there may be some gay and lesbian activists OK with it.

Mommies, Babies, and Ideas

This was a post where I felt I was doing, in a blog post all the stuff I really want to be doing. Not only passing along information, but offering my ideas as to what is underneath the story.

I can probably find a bunch more posts that were favorites for one reason or another, especially from some of the earlier posts, but I’m happy to point out these three. Al of my blog posts are searchable via keyword, or category.

Looking Ahead

At this year’s Podcamp Pittsburgh, I listened to a blogger talk about how to make your blog successful. for her, successful meant writing a blog that is honest and will provide something meaningful to be read. For her, that meant read by her daughter, and for me, it is broader than that, although I am going to work hard not to be focused on the number or hits, and number or subscribed readers or feeds. Am I glad I have added [whatever post] as content to the world today? Is the blogosphere a bit more complete because of it, or is it just a bit more cluttered? That will be a guide.

I do expect to try and dig into Queer Look at the Bible again. Maybe this time I’ll get it off the ground and keep it running. I still believe it is a critical dialogue needed , especially in today’s political climate where religion is a powerful force in the battle to oppress full equality. God, isn’t the problem. I expect, I’ll be writing a post similar to this over on that site, so check it out.

Shameless plea: in lieu of a birthday gift to the blog, please consider clicking the “Buy me a Cup of Coffee” banner in the far right or at the bottom of the post. Donations to the blog made this way are few and far between but it really helps defray the costs of keeping the blog going. Pretend this is public radio and go ahead and make a donation to keep me on the air, OK?

I have a few other projects I’d like to work on, so at times thomascwaters.com, may take a bit of a back seat, or it may just be the frame for these new ventures. But I have a clearer sense of where I’m going today, unlike those early posts about prop 8 written reactionarily to my frustration and anger.

Two people in the last week have commented that my blog is a place they turn to find out who they need to call, or what they need to know about queer politics. I haven’t really intended to be that type of blog per se. There are a number of good, and much bigger blogs than mine that cover a wider assortment of queer news. But It has me thinking about how can I better highlight calls to action? How can I do a better job of giving readers a sense of how can they make a difference by doing one thing- making a call or sending an email or whatever. I’ll probably try and focus a bit more on this as the next year unfolds.

Thanks to you my readers for being there and supporting me and my blog. Here’s to another great year of blogging!

Photo by by Shoshanah