Oh, wretched 2006! It seems like only yesterday. Because it kind of was.

And what a messy schizoid seesaw it was for The Gays! In early January, when 2006 was still fresh and new, it teased us something terrible. It got us all warm and fuzzy and open and vulnerable. The state senate finally (finally, finally goddamnit!) expanded the Washington Civil Rights Act to specifically include the 'mos within its basic protections, after thousands of years of serious battling. Gay souls everywhere breathed a well-deserved sigh of relief. That was lovely. But then. Then! July 26. (Or, as it's come to be called in the halls of homosexualia, "Sucks to Be Gay Thursday.")

That was the day that the evil thing called the state supreme court screamed, "MARRIAGE IS ONLY BETWEEN ONE MAN AND ONE WOMAN and THAT'S THAT!" in our faces. They said that "the people of Washington have not had in the past, nor at this time are they entitled to an expectation that they may choose to marry a person of the same sex," thus slamming the doors to the nuptial chamber for gays and lesbians (and others) for the foreseeable future, and proving once and for all that equality under the law in this state is all hat and no cattle. All we gays could do was stand there slack-jawed and stultified (and still interminably legally unmarriable), and wonder how it could be that the horrible unevolved brainless goop that crawled from the primeval sludge billions and billions of years ago to begin the journey that is man is still somehow totally running the show. The wounds that cruel and capricious 2006 inflicted upon us throb freshly still. Go to hell and fuck a shoe, 2006!