Earlier, was browsing the latest copy of Left Turn magazine, a new issue on “Igniting the Kindred: Visions of Queer Radicalism.” As the letter from the editors says, the articles prompt thoughts on the history of multi-racial, multi-issue queer politics, and what that history offers for thinking through social movements for queer/trans liberation today.  Dean and I are excited and honored to have a little review in it we wrote of Milk, or really some thoughts on Milk in the era of Obama and Prop 8.

Anyway, voting for Best of 2008 has commenced. The Skinny Malinky has stopped campaigning among librarians and bike riders — we figure we’ve got those votes locked down — so we’re concentrating our efforts in swing states, stats departments, the heartland, and Home Depot, with phone banks dedicated to reaching gun owners and life-long ABD museum guides. As they say at the neighborhood gay bar, “Yes she can.”

(The title of the present post, btw, just to tie it all together, is how my Danish friend made during aforementioned semester abroad translated back into English the Danish version of that Pollack/Fonda masterpiece. Always intrigued by her synopsis, it was years until I was able to track the movie down.)

Over at Details (ok, not the most sociological of sources, but at least as widely read as ASR) a story about a supposed gay male baby boom suggests that having babies is the logical outcome of “the growing prevalence of domestic partnerships, civil unions, and gay marriage.” And the rise of these relationship formations apparently results from the magic combo of “greater freedom and acceptance” and “AIDS.” As in get-hitched-to-avoid-getting-HIV. If the preferred prophylactic against HIV-panic is now legal marriage, what do I need to avoid the next round of gay male staph infection freak out? Will dinner and a movie suffice?

For more on marriage (and with thanks to Greg for sending links to the above), I recently posted a law review article Dean and I wrote about biopolitics, sodomy laws, and same-sex marriage on the Writing page, but you can download it here. For a sloppier, shorter version of some of the same arguments, here’s the text of a talk I gave on marriage fever a few years ago. But really, I found out everything there was to know about marriage and weddings from  The Princess Bride, so click and learn:

Over at cruciferous, Dean has posted and commented on a talk that addresses the “cognitive surplus” of blogging, suggesting that attention and energy cultivated by watching TV is now being channeled into the blogosphere. One thing the talk fails to address — how about all the blogging about watching TV? Although on second thought, maybe that just makes the point of the talk. TV’s all, “Let’s give them something to blog about.”