Fast forward to 2008 when his and my paths crossed again. I had long since come out of the closet and was actively involved in Tempe and Phoenix community building and so it was only a matter of time before we ran into each other. He didn’t remember meeting me on the plane (and why would he?) but I did. Since then I’ve gotten to know Neil a lot better and consider him a good friend.

I’m feeling really excited for him because after years of working on his memoir, it’s about to be published. 

From the book’s website:

Neil Giuliano made his mark in politics as Mayor of Tempe, AZ, where he served his community as leader for a decade, retiring from that position in 2004. While serving as Mayor,Neil came out as a gay man and continued to serve Tempe with distinction, including winning re-election three times. After leaving office, Neil went on to serve as President of GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) for four years and currently serves as Chief Executive Officer of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation.

In June 2012, Neil’s first book “The Campaign Within: A Mayor’s Private Journey to Public Leadership” will debut. Part memoir, part inspirational autobiography, the book follows his personal and professional evolution through a life in politics, his civil rights activism, philanthropy, evolving LGBT issues, and the controversial principles behind being at the forefront of issues and action, the fortitude of our own private morality, diplomatic problem solving, and the stakes of leadership in the modern world.

I was lucky enough to read an early draft of this book and I can’t wait to see the final product. Neil is a sharp and experienced leader who thinks clearly and makes rational decisions. For Arizona politics, those kinds of qualities are rare.

I highly recommend pre-ordering this book and coming to the signing at Changing Hands on June 18 at 7 pm. You can preorder on Amazon or at Changing Hands.

The book is already getting great reviews and I can’t wait to read it.

For a more in depth discussion of the oral arguments, check out this post from the Supreme Court Blog.

To the west of Central Avenue down Washington Street, the Tea Party was having their own rally at the Capitol Building. (I read there were 25 people there and some state reps spoke about the court upholding the law.) At the march I was in, an estimated 500 people showed up. There were families, children, signs, masks, and flags. I thought the timing of the march was perfect: we hit the street at about 5 p.m., in other words, during the middle of downtown rush hour traffic. I thought that was effective. We were not allowed to march on the streets, but the sidewalks were just fine.

For the record I’m opposed to SB1070 and have been since the day the (then unelected Jan Brewer) signed it into law and I marched in the first Alto Arizona protest in May 2010.

SB1070 fails to secure the border (as Brewer always say we have to do), it separates families, it’s racist, it’s ineffective. We all agree that there must be immigration reform but SB1070 is not the way to do it. We’ll see what the Supreme Court thinks.

These are the pics I took while marching through the streets of downtown Phoenix.

April 19, 2009- high 95 (day two of Pride hit 97)

April 20, 2010- high 96 (day two of Pride hit 89)

April 16, 2011- hight 95 (day two of Pride hit 97)

And this year:

April 21, 2012- high 103 (day two of pride 105!)

Don’g get me wrong, I love the heat, but this year I said, “It is too damn hot!!” I was in the sun from 9:30 a.m. until about 4 p.m. Luckily I had managed to slather on a thin layer of SPF 4, so I was only a little bit crispy by the end of the day with just a touch of sun poisoning. (I slept like a baby.)

This was the second year I’ve been in the parade, but the first time I got to be a car. I rode with Joe Duganzic and Babe Caylor, the hosts of the Joe and Babe show on QTalk Arizona, the state’s only LGBT themed podcast network.

When we arrived in the morning to the staging area it suddenly dawned on me that I wouldn’t be able to see the parade since I was going to be in it. (Yes, I’m a blond with blond highlights.) So I went around and snapped some pictures of nearby floats and took some more photos when I got into the festival.

Phoenix Pride has come a long way since 1981 when a few LGBT activists marched from Patriots Square Park to the Capitol building with the message “We Are Here” on an evening in June to bring awareness to gay rights issues in Phoenix. 31 years later we are a part of carrying on that tradition.

I ran into Barbra Seville by the Karamba float. I adore her. Barbra has a show at the Rock at 10 p.m. every Saturday.

I hope the Karamba's float won for Best Float. It was pretty awesome.Roller derby girls. I wouldn't want to make them mad.

Personally, I prefer local coffee shops over Starbucks any day but they have been big supporters recently. NOM is after them for their support of marriage equality in Washington, so shout out to Starbucks

QTalk car with Joe and Babe

These guys show up every year. What they hope to accomplish, I'll never know. They seem like big closet cases to me.

There seemed to be a lot more tents and shaded areas this year. This was in the art expo where artists were working and selling. There was a band playing too.

This YouTube video started going around Facebook yesterday of a flash mob in front of the protestors. Emotions were running high and I feel sad to see people engaging and talking to the protestors because they need to be ignored. The protestors feed off of the attention and comments from the crowd, it makes them feel vindicated and righteous, when really they are just mean and ignorant of their own beliefs. (The flash mob part starts about  the 6 minute mark.) A song and dance is different than Bible bashing each other.

If only the Phoenix version of this project (called CityScape) were just one percent as good as City Creek, we’d have something to be proud of. But as I’ve hypothesized in the past, CityScape is the crappy first draft that Salt Lake rejected because it sucked.

So someone in the meeting said, “Take it to Phoenix! They will build anything!” A sadly, we do. To be fair, the Mormon Church threw around a few billion dollars to build City Creek whereas in Phoenix we only spent 900 million dollars. Plus Phoenix aims low and goes for the best (i.e. worst) value engineering money can buy. And thus was born CityScape – an eyesore if there ever was one, a suburban office park in the middle of downtown that spitefully ignores the city streets, a project that pays no homage to the city’s past. It’s a gray fortress that looked dated the day it opened.

Not so in Salt Lake. Callison Architecture, the firm from Seattle that designed City Creek is the same firm that designed ShittyScape, er, I mean CityScape.

What a beautiful gray fortress!

The only part of the project that isn't a failure. 1st Street was done right.

CityScape doesn’t acknowledge the historic location on which it is built. Washington Street and Central Avenue has been and is the epicenter for Phoenix. Along these streets the early settlers began to build a city in 1867. Washington Street was lined with businesses, saloons, parks, hotels and theaters. CityScape doesn’t give a crap about any of that almost as if it is purposefully trying to forget. There is one column near Central Avenue in the “park” (I use that term loosely) that has the names of early Phoenicians etched into it but almost like it was an afterthought instead of intentional.

I told the Downtown Devil a few months ago that the only way to fix this abomination would be to blow it up and start over. Then we can make it look like City Creek.

I’d rather discuss the theological criticisms about City Creek another day (for example, why a Church would spend billions on building a shopping center instead of on, I don’t know, helping the needy). The Mormon Church knows how to build a quality project (with tax-exempt money).

A lovely creek runs through the entire project. It represents the original creek that ran through town that the early settlers in Salt Lake relied on. And it was called City Creek. I learned that by reading this historical marker, one of many that is peppered throughout the project.

The creek is impressive. But there is so much attention to detail and artistic flourishes throughout that I found myself giggling with delight. For example, I liked these duck tracks in the pavement.

I like that they recognize the old city street names that once cut through what is now City Creek. This used to be Social Hall Avenue.

And check out this doggie bad dispenser. They could have gone for the cheapest, crappiest, aluminum dispenser and hidden it off to the side. Instead, this one looks (dare I say) artistic and is featured prominently in numerous locations. (CityScape in Phoenix has nothing like this. Dogs are not welcome there.)

But the best I’ve saved for last. I was so impressed by what I saw that I stood there for a moment feeling a great deal of respect for the people who designed this then made it happen. It’s not so obvious in this photo but it’s easy to see in real life. This fountain lines up exactly with the waterfall from the Conference Center to the north, as if it is one straight flow of water originating at the Conference Center. From this view you are looking north from the fountain through the City Creek project, across South Temple, across Temple Square, across North Temple, ending at the Conference Center waterfall. This blew my mind.

I could have photographed City Creek for hours. It had a sense of history, of permanence, of continuity, of beauty. Yes, it’s an open air mall, but it’s built to resemble a dense city.

The project commands respect. If only Phoenix’s CityScape did the same.

Mormon Stories filled a need within Mormon culture as a neutral, safe place for deep questioning, discussion and for many people, serious healing. As the podcast has grown, so has the Mormon Stories community. There are Facebook groups all over the country, regional conferences, meet-up groups. I’ve met so many wonderful people in Phoenix at the Mormon Stories book clubs and other social events that have been organized. At the Mormon Stories conference in February I felt at home among “my people.”

Today I am happy to announce the forthcoming addition to the Open Stories Foundation (which Mormon Stories is a part of) – Gay Mormon Stories. 

Gay Mormon Stories is a new podcast helping to build understanding within Mormonism for our gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered brothers and sisters.

Please “Like” the page on Facebook and help spread the word. Check out the Gay Mormon Stories website in the coming weeks and months for what will be some groundbreaking interviews.

The film is neither meant to be anti-Mormon nor pro-Mormon, it seeks to further the conversation of understanding homosexuality and Mormonism by approaching the issue with empathy first.

For this forthcoming film Wilcox interviewed current Mormons, former Mormons, parents, children, people in mixed-orientation marriage, activists, scholars, students… the list goes on. 

In addition to the film he started a nonprofit organization called the Empathy First Initiative to help improve the communication and conversation about what it means to be gay and Mormon as well as other issues.

From the website:

We’re a non-profit multi-media messaging campaign that encourages all of us to approach our interactions with others with empathy first. Through EFI we hope to help create a habit and culture of empathy and invite all to be a part of the larger empathy dialogue happening around the world. As we do so, together we will recognize each other as full human beings, improve the tone and quality of public discourse, and foster a deeper understanding of our collective life experiences.

I think this is a novel approach and could be a game changer in terms of how this contentious issue moves forward with love and compassion.

It’s should come as no surprise that I like stories and believe in the sacred power of storytelling, especially when we tell our own stories. As of today, there are many powerful stories from individuals on the “Far Between” website. The YouTube video that I made in December is posted on there as well. I highly recommend watching Michael’s video. It’s powerful.

“Far Between” is the origin for the “It Gets Better” video that came out of BYU a few weeks ago. The video was all over Facebook and in national news so if you haven’t seen it yet, please take 10 minutes to watch and share.

Next week, Wilcox is releasing another video, this time from straight LDS Church members who will be sharing their stories of how they emphasize with their gay and lesbian friends.

I haven’t seen an official release date for the film yet but I’ll keep my eyes open. In the meantime, you can donate money to help bring the film to completion.

Crazy Person: Commit suicide. Go and run bath, and drown yourself.

Me: Thanks for the unsolicited advice, but I happily choose to ignore you and your venom. Have a nice day.

As you’ve probably realized, I don’t usually get to report good news about the state of our civil liberties these days. But this time, I have wonderful news to report. All you spring training fans—get ready to enjoy the thrill of crossing home plate (legislatively, that is).

Governor Brewer has signed our SB 1184, a bill that limits the ability of county and state corrections officials to shackle pregnant inmates. Under this bill, corrections officials cannot shackle pregnant inmates during transportation to a facility for delivery, during labor and delivery, and during postpartum recovery. This unconstitutional practice is extremely dangerous to both mother and child. The ACLU of Arizona has pursued this legislation for years, and 2012 turned out to be our year. And with the signing of SB 1184, Arizona becomes just the 15th state in the nation to effectively ban this practice by law.

We fight some really tough battles at the state Capitol. We’re not always as successful as we’d like to be. But the signing of SB 1184 is an absolute home run. Not one legislator voted against this bill—not one. And we can be very proud that our state is just one of fifteen that has taken a lead on this critical issue. Victory feels pretty good, doesn’t it?

Many people helped us shepherd this vital piece of legislation through the process and to home plate (i.e., the governor’s desk). Please take a moment to thank some of them.

• Your legislators, who voted for the bill. If you’re not sure who your legislators are, follow this link:  http://2001.azredistricting.org/

• Senator Linda Gray, who sponsored the bill: lgray@azleg.gov; (602) 926-3376

• Governor Jan Brewer, who signed the bill. Follow this link to contact the governor’s office directly:http://www.azgovernor.gov/Contact.asp

In liberty—and today, in success

See, Arizona isn’t always crazy.

In public high schools, art and music programs always seem to be on the chopping block, while a heavy emphasis is placed on athletic programs. For students serious about sports, traditional high schools provide fields, weight rooms, pools, and dedicated coaches.

Talented athletes have more opportunities to be seen by scouts or receive scholarships than do talented artists who may not even have a chance to take an art elective until their junior year of high school. By then, too much time has passed to create a well-rounded portfolio.

Read the rest here.

I interviewed her and wrote a story that is now posted on the DPJ website. You can read it here.