Copper State Confusion

Which state has become more overrun by right-wing reactionaries, Kansas or Arizona? Amid national protests, Arizona Governor and immigration reactionary Jan Brewer veteoed a bill that would allow public businesses in the state the right to deny service to gays. It's hard to call the move an act of pragmatism or a change of heart; more than likely, the forfeiture of commerce and out-of-state revenue that this bill would've created was the likely X factor. When the NFL threatened to pull Super Bowl XLIX, just like they did 30 years ago, that might have been the final straw.

Unfortunately, these "gay Jim Crow" laws are growing quite common. As a rebuke of the many legal victories that LGBT activists enjoyed in 2012 and 2013, conservatives on the local and gubernatorial level are playing their hand. The law that Arizona shut down is close to passing in Kansas, and Idaho and Mississippi might follow suit. If these discriminatory acts pass, what have been a complicated series of legal battles are bound to get more convoluted. Are SB 1062 and its copycats really based on religious grounds, or just legalized bigotry?

Other notes from an eventful February:

+ Another Winter Olympics has come and gone. As it turned out, Sochi wasn't the polluted, psuedo-fascist hellscape that some (including myself) had feared, though as a venue it still left a lot of people underwhelmed. Considering how much was spent to spruce up the Russian resort town, perhaps it would be best if the Summer and Winter Olympics rotated exclusively between four or five different cities. Maybe LA, Tokyo, Athens, Sydney and/or London for the summer games, and Lake Placid, Albertville, Lillehammer, Nagano, and Reykjavik for the winter games? Maybe one city per continent? What are your thoughts?

+ My second attempt at producing a show went better than the first. I feel more confident in what I'm doing, and having a business partner to workshop ideas and split fees has been a boon. With that said, I'm proud to announce that we are in early talks for another run at the same theater in June 2014. If anyone is in or around Chicago on Sundays in the late Spring/early Summer, I'll keep you posted with more details.

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