egad. this is the week before the week in which i visit two schools in seven days, and i am Very Busy. it's a good thing, really.

while you're waiting for something substantial, here's a list of places that are performing gay marriages (courtesy of laurel, who currently has time to think about such things and then e-mail them to people):

"San Francisco, CA
Sandoval County, NM (but that may not hold up)
New Paltz and Nyack, NY
Multnomah County (Portland), OR
Asbury Park, NJ
Massachusetts is coming soon
Seattle is in court
Vermont has civil unions"

she also writes

"maybe this should be a game. we can place bets on the next jurisdiction to start marrying gay folks. whoever wins gets a toaster."

the toaster joke is an old one. remember the coming-out episode of ellen?

in addition, a good times article on transgender issues at colleges (i know, i'm kind of shocked too). it seems to me that there are an increasing number of trans-people at swarthmore these days, which is quite a development given the generally centrist social/cultural/political/aesthetic shift of the college population. it is amusing to me to remember just how new trans issues were to me when i first arrived at swat, and how difficult they can be. "ze" and "hir" and bathrooms and biographical problems with tenses remind us continually of just how limited our usual notions about gender are -- many of the kids profiled in the article seemed to face more challenges from androgyny, transformation, and indeterminateness than from living entirely inside a new identity. in any case, interesting stuff.