elfs | I gotta get a grip on my consumption of bile.

Omaha and I went to the Seattle Men's Chorus "Heartthrobs" event last night, a two-hour choral celebrating the best musical tributes to love and passion written for "boy bands" and other male rock groups of the past fifty years. The performance was wonderful, with lots of cute sing-alongs and medleys from Queen, Chicago, the zoot-suited white-guy bands of the early Rhythm & Blues era vs. the melodius black-guy bands of the same period. It was wonderful stuff all the way through.

After the concert, the lobby of McCaw Hall was turned into a discotheque and classic 70s and 80s music was pumped through the room at high volume. The gays and straights drank, danced, and mingled.

One moment that moved me most, though, was after a brief presentation by Diverse Harmony, a Gay-Straight Alliance-allied youth chorus mentored and funded by the Seattle Men's Chorus and Seattle Women's Chorus. After the kids had performed a nifty (if poorly mic'd) version of Katy Perry's "Fireworks," the directory of the SMC came out to talk about the It Gets Better project, and handed out copies of the It's Gets Better book signed by Dan Savage and his partner, Terry Miller, to each kid in Diverse Harmony, as well as offering copies of the book at the front counter to the audience after intermission.

What made me furious was that I immediately contrasted the words of love, acceptance, and acknowledgement, the whole blue state value system, that was present in that room that night.

I was especially furious at Bill Donohue of the Catholic League, and his assertion that we shouldn't let gay people marry because they still get AIDS. So, because promiscuity is a problem, we should deprive people of an institution known for its supposed monogamy.

I mean, really. I was just so mad about it all. Sad, because it was a beautiful moment.