If you normally read my pieces here and roll your eyes at their effusiveness that borders on the cloying, let me apologize right up front. I’m probably going to piss you off today.

Everyone else, just follow along.

I had a lot on my mind this weekend, so today is mostly about loose ends, a little bit of a lot of things, piecemeal, take it how you will.

The ex-boyfriend finally moved out of the apartment this weekend. We’d been co-habitating for two months while we figured out what came next. More conspicuous to me than the noticeable absence of Nathan is the noticeable absence of Nathan’s stuff — an empty closet, pictures off the walls, a computer desk gone, a clock missing on the bedside table. Those spaces seem more glaring, more sad than the space where he isn’t. It’s easy to forget that our relationships aren’t just between us, but they’re an accumulation of spaces, spaces we fill with things, spaces we mingle together. And when someone goes, they leave all these blank spaces behind, shadow lives.

But life isn’t all shadow. While the ex-boyfriend was packing up, I took a day trip to New Orleans to spend some time with Marc, my new beau (I guess I can call him that, here’s hoping he doesn’t read this and raises an eyebrow at the suggestion). You ever meet someone who, almost immediately, feels as though they’ve been in your life for years? Marc feels like that. It’s a delight, really. Our dates have been epic in length, (you could watch Wagner’s Ring Cycle during each of our three dates with time to get through all three Lord of the Rings movies as a chaser,) but they’ve been wonderfully comfortable and lived-in, in a way that’s not a complaint. Although, our immediate comfortable connection has made more than one person accuse of being just like lesbians. Which made me laugh. (And please don’t barrage me with “gay guys always hate on lesbians” comments. I’m on your side. I think commitment is sexy as hell.) Sometimes, our stereotypes are good, no?

Marc and I listened to Obama’s HRC speech on Sirius radio, and I have to say, it ticked me off. I got very tired of hearing all the thunderous applause at what amounted to this; ‘Hey gays, I know the things you want, and I’m telling you I want them, too. I’m just not going to tell you when, where, or how you’re going to get them.” I’m bored with the dangling carrot, and I’m tired of it being good enough for our community. Yes, on paper, Obama’s a good boyfriend, but doesn’t it feel a little like we’re always snuggling with him on the couch, telling him how much we want to turn this relationship into something serious, and he’s saying, “Oh yeah, baby, I agree, I do too, just not right now, let’s just enjoy hat we have right here.” I deserve a better boyfriend, one who not only tells me loves me, but SHOWS me. Come on Obama. We’re ready for marriage (or haven’t you noticed?) Step up to the plate, okay?

I found a quote this morning that I’m tacking up in my cubicle: “Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.” Goethe. It’s easy to get caught up in the talk, the endless and labyrinthine debates and discussions about our key issues, but the talk only gets us so far. Bullhorns and signs and blogs (although I love blogs, mind you, don’t wanna anger my web Mom and Dad) are terrific, but they only go so far. Change doesn’t really happen with Big Symbolic Gestures. It takes place in miniature, in small steps, in putting your boyfriend’s picture up on your desk at work, in being out to your family, in correcting someone who assumes you’re straight, in calling someone out for saying something negative about gay people. Yes, we can feel as though change comes when we all band together and shout for equality, but the bigger change, the lasting change, comes in increments, in small steps, in what happens between you and another person. We should focus more of our energy on that change, on what we can do to make that change happen. Eye on the big prize, hands down in the muck and mire.

Favorite moment of the weekend: Marc and I visiting his friend, Wedon, watching Wanda Sykes’ HBO stand-up special. Marc, cuddled up next to me on the couch, turns his head once it’s over and says, “Baby, you tired? If you want to go we can.” That term of endearment was a surprise and arrived unexpectedly. And while I, of course, found it totally adorable, I was also struck by the ordinariness of the moment, the reminder that this life, this moment, was no different than the lives of millions of other couples, gay and straight, that no matter how different we feel and how much we’re demonized in the public discourse, we’re always occupying beautiful, perfect and ordinary lives. We’re not going to indoctrinate children or bring down Western civilization or destroy Jesus or kill America. We’re just someone’s Baby, someone’s Boo, someone’s Honey.

Not as sexy as annihilating the world, but it’ll do.

If there’s one good thing about living in south Louisiana (and there are many, certainly more than one, it’s not quite the sinkhole it is sometimes accused of being), living in driving proximity to New Orleans would be it.

New Orleans is a really terrific city. The best way to describe the place is rich; it’s rich with history, with music, with food, with experience. It’s a city that effuses itself everywhere you turn, and in the years since Hurricane Katrina, the city’s rebirth has amped up that feeling, adding a resilience to the richness, and the place’s exuberance is steelier.

And every Labor Day weekend, Southern Decadence takes place in New Orleans. It’s, in short, a gay Mardi Gras, a weekend-long gay block party in the French Quarter. People from all over the country come down for Decadence, and as the name suggests, there’s a lot of vice running down Bourbon Street, because if New Orleans is good for anything, it’s good for giving people an excuse for excess.

I’ve lived in Louisiana all my life, but I’ve never been to Southern Decadence. It’s never been my speed (I’m a word nerd, more comfortable at Barnes and Noble than a gay bar), and even though in my early 20s I had my share of, um, extracurricular activities, now in my late early 30s — a guy’s got to hold on to youth in any way he can — the idea of decadence doesn’t seem quite so useful anymore, it’s lost a good bit of its shine.

I went this year. Sort of.

Gardner, an online friend of mine from Oregon, came down to Decadence with friends. He’s just ended a 17-year relationship, and the promise of an unfettered weekend where he could do whatever the hell he wanted with whomever the hell he wanted seemed like a perfect expression of newfound freedom. Great in theory, sure, but once he found himself here, in practice, the freedom didn’t fit quite so comfortably.

He needed a little rescuing, so I hopped in the car and drove to New Orleans.

For about an hour we walked around the French Quarter, then we grabbed a bite for lunch while an afternoon rain carried on outside. Then, we decided to go to the Audubon Zoo, and we spent four hours wandering around, checking out monkeys and giraffes, talking, laughing, hanging out.

“You know we’re the only two gay guys in the city here at the Zoo today,” Gardner said while we were checking out reptiles. “We could be our own exhibit.”

That made me think of a coffee date I had the week before with my friend Jude. We were talking about Decadence, and he offered me this:

“Back in the days when everything was about sex and partying, it was like the gay community was just in its adolescence. And now, we’re fighting for marriage, and it seems like adulthood. As a community. So Decadence seems, I don’t know, out of step with who we are.”

I get that. And listening to my friend Gardner talk about coming down here for one thing and ending up with me at the Zoo, I was struck by how that dichotomy plays out in our community all the time.

On the one hand, we’re still defining ourselves by our sexual liberation, earning an identity in it, calling freedom the ability to love who we love, be physical with who we want to be physical with and do it without shame. On the other hand, we’re asking to define ourselves in a new way — solely through the way we love, through the acknowledgement of our relationships, through our emotional and spiritual commitment to another person.

I don’t think it has to be one or the other. But I don’t think the extremes of the two can exist together without some hypocrisy being present.

It works for me, anyway. Right now. Maybe I’m missing something. Or maybe it’s really where our community is headed.

It’s an interesting time to be gay. Our community is changing. In itself. In its relationship to the world around it. And change always means, to some degree, losing something you’re carrying. And I wonder sometimes if we need to think about losing a bit of the adolescence and embrace a bit of our adulthood.

Many residents have been sporting “Brad Pitt for Mayor” T-shirts since mid-June, when a Tulane University professor and two brothers who own a New Orleans T-shirt shop joined forces to launch a quasi-campaign to convince Pitt to run. The actor founded the Make It Right organization in 2007 to build houses for low-income residents who lost their homes during Hurricane Katrina.

“He’s a family man, and you won’t have to worry about him being corrupt,” said Drew Cambre, 26, who works at a New Orleans pastry shop and has a “Brad Pitt for Mayor” sticker on his laptop computer. “Plus, he’ll help the movie industry here in New Orleans and keep a light on the city.”

Pitt said on NBC’s “Today” that he’s noticed the shirts but laughed off the idea of running.

“I don’t have a chance.”

He joked: “I’m running on the gay marriage, no religion, legalization and taxation of marijuana platform.”

Pitt is right about his chances, at least as far as the next mayoral election. He and his partner, Angelina Jolie, bought a French Quarter mansion in 2007. To be eligible, mayoral candidates must be residents of New Orleans for at least five years before the date of the election. The mayoral primary is Feb. 6, 2010.

So far more than a dozen homes have been built in the Lower 9th Ward through the Make It Right program and another eight are under construction.

Josh Harvey, 31, who sells the shirts at his Storyville T-shirt shop is donating $2 to the program for every shirt sold. The shirts retail for $20, and so far, more than $2,000 has gone to Make It Right, Harvey said.

It’s Pitt’s charity work that has some hopeful for his candidacy, even if it’s not this time around.

“He’s already doing so much good for our city, so why not?” said Stephanie Schneller, 29, who was in the shop buying Brad Pitt T-shirts for herself and a friend.

Kristoffer Bonilla, 33, and John Thomas Wray, 18, filed the lawsuit after they were refused a marriage license at city hall on April 2.

The lawsuit, which names city and state officials, alleges that the amendment overwhelmingly passed by voters in 2004, violates the U.S. Constitution.

The suit says that the denial of the right for same-sex couples violates the First Amendment “by curtailing the right to marry based upon a religious interpretation of the nature and purpose of marriage itself.”

“By failing to articulate a legitimate, compelling and secular interest for the restriction on marriage, the state has necessarily established a wholly religious civil institution,” the lawsuit says.

The suit was prepared by Bonilla himself.  He is a graduate of law school in New Orleans law school said he is not a practicing attorney.

State officials and LGBT advocates say they believe it is the first case of its kind in Louisiana.

“This has the potential to be a pretty important case,” Health and Hospitals Secretary Alan Levine told The Associated Press. Levine is one of the defendants named in the case.

Although it is the first case seeking marriage rights in the state, a challenge to the Louisiana amendment was filed shortly after it was approved by voters in 2004.  A district judge struck it down on a technicality over the way the question was put to voters. Several months later, the Louisiana Supreme Court reversed the ruling.

Louisiana also does not recognize full same-sex parenting rights. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is considering a case involving a birth certificate for a child adopted by a gay couple.

Earlier this month, the court issued a stay on an order by a lower court ordering the state to put the names of both men on the birth certificate. The full court is expected to hear arguments in the case later this year.

Oren Adar and Mickey Smith adopted their Louisiana-born son in a New York court in 2006, where a judge issued an adoption decree. 

When Smith attempted to get a new birth certificate for their child, in part so he could add his son to his health insurance, the office of Louisiana State Registrar Darlene Smith told him that Louisiana does not recognize adoption by unmarried parents and so could not issue it.

Lambda Legal filed suit on behalf of Adar and Smith in October 2007, saying that the registrar was violating the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the U.S. Constitution by refusing to recognize the New York adoption. The Constitution holds that judgments and orders issued by a court in one state are legally binding in other states as well. 

In December, U.S. District Judge Jay Zainey in New Orleans ordered the state Office of Vital Records to put the names of both fathers on the amended birth certificate.

In his ruling, Zainey said failing to amend the birth certificate violated the U.S. Constitution.

The Vatican announcement confirmed a previous decision by the priest, Rev. Gerhard Maria Wagner, to give up the promotion.

In January, Benedict promoted the 54-year-old Wagner to the post of auxiliary bishop in Linz, Austria’s third largest city.

The move sparked an outcry from Austrian Catholics and church groups who argued that the decision could motivate people to leave the Catholic church.

Wagner had questioned whether the “noticeable” increase of natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina – which devastated New Orleans in 2005 – was a result of pollution caused by humans or the result of “spiritual pollution” such as the acceptance of homosexuality.

Wagner also has characterized Harry Potter novels as satanic.

Following the controversy, Wagner said last month that he was giving up the job as auxiliary bishop.

He said he considered his decision to be in the interest of the church and that he looked forward to continuing his job as pastor in the Upper Austrian town of Windischgarsten.

The Vatican’s brief announcement Monday said the pope had “exonerated … Wagner from accepting the office of Linz auxiliary bishop.”

The Vatican’s spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, told reporters that Wagner had put forth his request to give up the job to the Vatican, and that the pope had accepted it.

Linz Diocesan Bishop Ludwig Schwarz said the Vatican’s confirmation “officially brings to a close a turbulent period for the Linz diocese and the Austrian church.”

Wagner’s promotion was one of two recent controversial decisions by the Vatican that led to unusually open criticism of Vatican policy, even from top Roman Catholic churchmen.

The other involved lifting the excommunication of a bishop who had said that no Jews were gassed during the Holocaust.

Later, the Vatican distanced itself from British Bishop Richard Williamson’s remark and demanded that he recant it.

Lifting the excommunication of Williamson and three fellow members of the traditionalist Society of St. Pius X had been part of the pope’s effort to reach out to ultraconservatives.

The decision by the Court of Appeal for the Fourth District comes a year after the Civil District Court for Orleans Parish ruled that the State Constitution does indeed grant the city of New Orleans the authority to offer health benefits to the domestic partners of city employees and maintain a registry of domestic partners for city residents. 

The anti–gay Alliance Defense Fund appealed that ruling, saying that the registry violated state laws prohibiting marriage for same–sex couples and that local governments lack the authority to govern such arrangements.

The Court of Appeal rejected those arguments.

“The registry ordinance has no effect on the Civil Code articles relating to marriage, creates no obligations between the parties who choose to register, and provides neither an enforcement mechanism nor a cause of action for which redress may be sought in courts of this state,” the three-judge panel said in a written ruling.   

“The appeal by ADF left New Orleans city employees and their families in unnecessary legal suspense for a year,” said Lambda Legal Supervising Senior Staff Attorney Ken Upton. 

The city of New Orleans extended health insurance benefits to same–sex partners of city employees in 1997, and in 1999, the city council created a domestic partner registry that allows couples to make a public declaration to care for and support each other. 

Those policies came under attack in 2002 from the ADF, on behalf of a group of city taxpayers claiming a right to challenge the laws. 

ADF argued that the city violated the state constitution which bans same-sex marriage and that the city move countered public policies that favor marriage over unmarried cohabitation.

At the city’s request, Lambda Legal joined the lawsuit, representing city employee Peter Sabi and his partner, Philip Centanni, Jr.

 Sabi and Centanni later left Louisiana, and city employee Brian Barbieri and his partner Howard Lees joined the lawsuit.

“The Court of Appeal has upheld a decision that was fair and just. The lawsuit to strip the families of gay and lesbian city employees of their health coverage was a cruel waste of everyone’s time,” said Upton.

ADF said it is considering an appeal to the Louisiana Supreme Court.

The evacuation went smoothly and the levees largely held, limiting damage from the big storm. Still some areas of the Gulf coast sustained serious damage, and eight people died in the U.S. as a result of Gustav, which had killed 94 across the Caribbean.

As Gustav advanced towards New Orleans on Saturday, Mayor Ray Nagin ordered a mass evacuation of the city, curtailing Southern Decadence, the largest gay festival in the South that was to have gone on throughout the Labor Day weekend.

It was the second time in three years that a major hurricane disrupted the massive party centered in the French Quarter.  In 2005, hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans, forcing cancellation of Southern Decadence.

The festival, which takes over the French Quarter regularly, attracted more than 100,000 people and had been one of the city’s biggest moneymakers. This year attendance was lower as concerns mounted that Gustav was heading toward the Big Easy.

The party has had its detractors in a city known for hard partying. In 2003, the state legislature passed a new indecency law that bans public nudity.

The festival also has been the target of evangelical preacher Rev Grant E. Storms, who leads a small group of demonstrators through the throngs on Bourbon Street. In the wake of Katrina, some conservative church leaders said the devastation was the result of God’s wrath on gays.

Tuesday, city officials began examining damage from Gustav.  Power is out in some areas of the city. The sewer system was damaged, and hospitals are working with skeleton crews on backup power.

But residential areas appear secure, and drinking water is safe.

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin used stark language at a Saturday night news conference to urge residents to get out of the city, calling Gustav the “storm of the century.”

“This is the real deal, not a test,” Nagin said as he issued the evacuation order Saturday night. “For everyone thinking they can ride this storm out, I have news for you: that will be one of the biggest mistakes you can make in your life.”

Gustav already has killed more than 80 people in the Caribbean.

Nagin’s evacuation order is the first test of a revamped evacuation plan designed to eliminate the chaos, looting and death that followed Katrina.

The city will not offer emergency services to those who choose stay behind, Nagin said, and there will be no “last resort” shelter as there was during Katrina, when thousands suffered inside a squalid Superdome. The city said in a news release that those not on their property after the mandatory evacuation started would be subject to arrest.

Many residents didn’t need to be ordered, with an estimated 1 million people fleeing the Gulf Coast on Saturday by bus, train, plane and car. They clogged roadways, emptied gas stations of fuel and jammed phone circuits.

Southern Decadence, held over the Labor Day Weekend, regularly attracted more than 100,000 people and had been one of the city’s biggest moneymakers. This year, attendance was lower, as concerns mounted that Gustav was heading toward the Big Easy.

The party has had its detractors in a city known for hard partying.  In 2003, the state legislature passed a new indecency law that bans public nudity.

The festival also has been the target of evangelical preacher Rev Grant E. Storms, who leads a small group of demonstrators through the throngs on Bourbon Street. In the wake of Katrina some conservative church leaders said the devastation was the result of God’s wrath on gays.

Most people fled New Orleans as Katrina approached, but a small number of people remained in the city, and amid the destruction a small parade behind a tattered rainbow flag made its way up Bourbon Street in an unofficial celebration of Southern Decadence.  The group – about two dozen people – all said they lived in the largely gay French Quarter.  Defiant, they said they were not about to flee the community despite orders from the city to do so.

In 2005, almost to the day, hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans forcing cancellation of Southern Decadence, the biggest gay festival in the South. The Labor Day Weekend party regularly attracts more than 100,000 people and is one of the city’s biggest moneymakers.

The party has had its detractors in a city known for hard partying.  In 2003 the state legislature passed a new indecency law that bans public nudity.  The festival also has been the target of evangelical preacher Rev Grant E. Storms who leads a small group of demonstrators through the throngs on Bourbon Street.

Most people fled New Orleans as Katrina approached but a small number of people remained in the city, and amid the destruction a small parade behind a tattered rainbow flag made its way up Bourbon Street in an unofficial celebration of Southern Decadence.  The group – about two dozen people – all said they lived in the largely gay French Quarter.  Defiant, they said they were not about to flee the community despite orders from the city to do so.

The bulk of the city’s LGBT community evacuated for higher ground away from he coast.  Most went to Houston.

Houston’s Montrose Counseling Center opened a food bank and organized emergency housing for displaced gays.

Wednesday night New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin left the Democratic National Convention in Denver to return home to make preparations for the possibility of a strike by Gustav. Gov. Bobby Jindal declared a state of emergency to lay the groundwork for federal assistance, and put 3,000 National Guard troops on standby.

Following Katrina the Army Corps of Engineers has spent billions of dollars to improve the levee system, but because of two quiet hurricane seasons, the flood walls have never been tested.

Gaining strength over warm Caribbean waters, Gustav is expected to again become a hurricane later today, according to the National Hurricane Center. It said maximum sustained winds rose from about 50 mph to near 70 mph overnight.

The storm triggered flooding and landslides that killed 23 people in the Caribbean.

Jindal said Wednesday that when the order expires Friday he will not renew it.

“The reason for allowing the order to lapse is that I don’t think it is necessary to create additional special categories or special rights,” Jindal told The New Orleans Advocate newspaper.

“We are firmly and strongly committed to fair treatment of all of our people and certainly don’t condone discrimination in any form,” Jindal said.

The executive order, signed by then-Gov. Kathleen Blanco, bars state agencies and contractors from various sorts of harassment and discrimination by race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, national origin political affiliation or disabilities. It was modeled after a similar anti-discrimination order issued in 1992 by then-Gov. Edwin Edwards.

The governor said that federal law already bans discrimination.  But neither federal nor Louisiana state law bars discrimination against LGBTs in employment.

That Jindal is allowing the order to expire is no surprise. He has fought it since its inception.

When Blanco announced in 2005 she was preparing the order, Jindal, then a member of Congress, joined with Sen. James David Cain and two Republican members of the Legislature to fight the measure.

It nevertheless went into effect the following year.

Jindal was widely been seen as a potential Vice Presidential running mate for John McCain.