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Chris Van Loan is a senior at the University of Texas in Austin. A lifelong Austin native, Chris is now a member of the Texas Youth Leadership Council -- a project of Advocates for Youth and the Texas Freedom Network.
I have been a fan of the internet webcomic Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal for a long time now. I literally go there every day because cartoonist Zach Weiner updates it roughly 7 times a week. Over the last few years the comic has become increasingly science and technology-related (which is right up my alley) but I also love what his strips have to say about sexuality - you can tell he is progressve on a lot of issues. I always appreciate when a comic has nothing to do about race or homosexuality but the strip features an interracial couple or a gay couple.
So clearly then www.nomblog.com (the National Organization for Marriage), a group whose major function is lobbying against gay marriage was not very familiar with SMBC when they hotlinked one of his comics to their front page.
When Weiner found out he quickly changed the image to this:
You can read all about it on his blog here:
www.theweinerworks.com/
He writes, "There seems to be this idea out there that action through the Internet has no important effect. Even people I really respect, like Jon Stewart, promote this idea. Well, today, I probably got a message of equality to over 100,000 people, among them members of the other side. This generation fights in a new way, but we fight just as hard."
Thank you Zach.
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In other news my 1,000 condoms from the Great American Condom Campaign came in the mail today! Whew, this is going to be a challenge but hopefully UT's Human Sexuality professor will let me distribute them before and after his class.
I was so excited by all the colors that I arranged them into a rainbow:
In the middle that is supposed to be a pot of gold with some grass and shrubs. In my excitement I hadn't thought to use the yellow Intense Ribbed on the right there for gold! Oh well, next time.
- Chris Van Loan
The lesson here: don't mess with a savvy progressive (web) activist.