I sometimes don’t blog because nothing’s going on. Now I’m dragging my feet because there’s too much to say.

I can’t decide if I’m suffering from a bastard relative of writers’ block (bloggers’ block?), or if I just don’t want to take the mental energy to actually write something.

I guess it would be more appropriate (and succinct) to say, “I’m being lazy.”

Not to be too evil, but: Good news of the week part 1: Hot enough down there for ya, Strom?

It also reminds me of this little gem.

Good news of the week part 2: the improving socio-political climate.

The Supreme Court decision “put a little fire in my veins,” as my grandmother would say. It’s been quite a while since I’ve been any sort of activist. Domesticity placed me in an “everyday activist” sort of role, just doing my thing without thinking about it, hoping my nonchalance about my so-called “lifestyle” was making a point in itself.

No longer was I an angry, young man—not even an angry young man who just happened to be gay. I’d been pacified by “tolerance” and the blatant lack of discomfort in my daily life. I’d failed to realize that the only reason everyone seemed so okay with my sexuality was because, intentionally or not, I’d surrounded myself with people and places that I knew were okay with it.

See, it really is the gay clubs’ fault.

If I were to take myself out of my comfortable gay-friendly world, would I recognize the real world now?

What about the scared 14-year old in Idaho contemplating suicide because there’s no one around like him? The teenage lesbian in Nebraska taunted at school everyday? The high-school student thrown out of his house because he dared come out? The married man struggling to come out of the closet? The elderly widower fighting with a bitter family for his partner’s belongings?

They are still out there, aren’t they?

How quickly I forgot the struggles.

But as I slowly realize the effect Lawrence v. Texas is going to have on the rest of our lives, I am again fueled by that youthful desire to fight for what I believe.

When I was coming out in 1996-97, the Internet was still very much in its pre-adolescence, but it seemed to be the primetime for gay youth websites, from personal sites, to online mags, to support organizations. I remember when X/Y’s first issue hit newsstands, and the battle I had with myself over getting up the nerve to buy it. You’d never believe how much time I spent at Oasis, Blair, ELIGHT, and a dozen others.

Then again, you might believe it because some of you were there, too.

The Internet has changed so drastically since then, and I get the feeling that the few queer youth sites remaining are no longer necessary in the way they once were. If so, that’s great news. But I also think that there was a certain coming-of-age that the Internet allowed my generation of queer youth. Where are today’s gay teenagers getting that? I don’t believe it’s the same place straight kids are; we haven’t come that far, yet.

The only site that even comes close to what I’m desperately (and poorly) trying to explain is Young Gay America, and even it is more focused on the real world than anything I could have imagined “back in the day.” Their concept, by the way, is a great idea I wish I’d had the guts to do a few years ago.

I wonder what 17-year-old me would think of 22-year-old me and my life now. I’m afraid it wouldn’t be good. I expected a lot more of myself, and that kid would be disgusted with my current socio-political apathy.

Somebody who has a clue, please help me out here. Am I right? Is the Internet no longer the only safe haven? What’s it like to be young, gay, and coming out? I’m not that damn old, and I haven’t been out that long, but I feel so out of touch with the whole process.

The greater battle for young queer kids is still going on somewhere out there, isn’t it?

It makes me very nostalgic and a little sad. How and why did I end up retired from the fighting?