I love National Coming Out Day, because it gives me an excuse to run this panel from Fumi Yoshinaga’s Antique Bakery. (I rarely, if ever, actually feel the need to justify running a Yoshinaga panel, but it’s extra nice when it’s thematically appropriate.)
So, for those of you who are new or haven’t been paying attention, hi! I’m gay, in addition to being an obsessive nerd.
I have to say, I didn’t really need to begin National Coming Out Day by watching The Today Show’s Matt Lauer giving New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino the opportunity to talk about gay men in Speedos grinding on parade floats and how this brainwashes children by way of defending his unequivocally anti-gay statements to an orthodox religious group over the weekend, but I’m hoping it will motivate even the most disenchanted liberal and moderate voters to go to the polls and make a statement against the kind of bigoted crazies who seem to be gaining perfectly alarming amounts of momentum in the current election cycle as we simultaneously become aware of perfectly horrifying acts of anti-gay violence and young people being driven to suicide.
Updated: And by the way, the major disappointment of not attending this year’s New York Comic-Con and Anime Festival was missing out on the Gay for You? Yaoi and Yuri Manga for GBLTQ Readers panel. Fortunately, Erica (Okazu) Friedman has a round-up of the panel’s highlights and recommended titles.