On June 26 of this year, the movement for marriage equality reached a turning point as the Supreme Court dismissed the Proposition 8 case and overturned a key section of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which meant two things to us personally: Thom and I could get married in our home state of California, and our marriage would be recognized by the federal government. We thought the ruling wouldn’t issue for about another month, but the circuit court surprised us all by lifting its stay just a few days later, on June 28. Thom and I rushed to San Francisco City Hall to get our marriage license, and there we just happened to also witness the wedding of Kris Perry and Sandy Stier, two of the plaintiffs in the Prop 8 case. More history in the making!

On September 26, the anniversary of our “Happy Together”-themed commitment ceremony at the Cliff House four years ago, we got married at City Hall (and called it “Happy Together 2.0“).

And that weekend, we went back to the Cliff House and had a dapper party! (Photos by Levi Smith.)

Thank you to all our family and friends for your love and support. My husband (!) and I appreciate it so much. This has been an amazing year for us personally and for the advancement of civil rights in America. At the beginning of 2013, nine states and the District of Columbia had marriage equality. Since then, nine more states. Look out, 2014!

Me: I think it’s The Polar Express.
Thom: [sarcastically] The tenth one.
Me: [in kind] Polar Express 10: The Reckoning.

Wow, our dream selves can be kind of snarky.

Anyway, apparently I said the word reckoning aloud in my sleep, waking myself up as well as Thom. I immediately explained the dream to him, since I guess having your partner in bed next to you suddenly say reckoning in their sleep would be a bit disturbing. Ha!

In the beginning

Though my first blog post was written in 2002, I registered the domain rebelprince.com and put up a small website in September 2001. It was a place for a few personal pictures and I would update it weekly with stuff that was going on with me, basically for friends and family. Not quite a blog; more like a newsletter.

The Rebel Prince domain name was inspired by the Rufus Wainwright song, as those years were the height of my Rufus fandom. I still love him now, but at the time he and my fellow Rufus peeps were pretty much the center of my leisure universe: reading the message board, following the Poses tour, etc. It was never a dedicated fan site per se, but I just loved the song so much that it stuck. I later moved the site to jefftabaco.com and intended to change the blog name, but I still find Rebel Prince endearing. So it stays, for now.

Little boxes

I would link to the very first entry, dated January 25, 2002, but as I’ve migrated this blog through three publishing platforms and two domains over the years, like physical moves there is still a lot of stuff in boxes. Back in the day I started on Blogger, and at the time their system did not have separate fields for post titles. (They didn’t have a built-in commenting system either. Imagine that!) I got into the habit of writing daily blog posts made up of unrelated blurbs and made my own subheadings.

Fast forward a few years to Movable Type. I migrated my posts to the new system, which now had title fields. So I had some clean-up to do for these old posts. Over time I started either breaking them up into separate posts or just giving them the same title as the first blurb. In any case now here we are now on WordPress, which I love, and I still have several months of posts in boxes as it were. I’ll get to them someday.

Thank you

Thank you, dear readers, for, well, … reading. Especially you old-school bloggers who have become friends over the years. No doubt I’m blogging less thanks to Facebook and Twitter, but there’s nothing like a blank, open page to get the imagination going. I do love my own little patch of Internet.

These friends were having a New Year’s Eve party so I thought it would be neat if we made something from the book. I went through it and found the Mojito: rum-soaked lime cupcake with muddled minty lime cream cheese frosting. We happened to have lots of limes on hand, so this was perfect.

They were pretty straightforward to make, and tasted super yummy. There is lime juice and lime zest in the cupcake, and lime zest in the frosting and sprinkled on top, so yes, it is quite tart. And lots of sugar, so sweet.

The only strange thing was the yield: the recipe is supposed to make twelve jumbo cupcakes, but I only got ten, with the cups filled about only halfway with batter (the recipe actually calls for filling them two-thirds full). There was a lot of frosting left over, so the other day I made another batch of the cupcakes. This time I started filling the cups two-thirds full and ended up with only six cupcakes. They were big and great, but still, only six.

In any case, they were a hit at the party, and we look forward to going through the book and trying them all!

On Thursday the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco heard the final hearings of this stage of the Prop 8 case, a motion to release video of the original District Court trial and another motion to vacate that court’s decision because Judge Vaughn Walker was gay and in a long-term relationship.

Just before the hearings there was a rally outside the courthouse, where Thom and I spoke along with several other marriage equality advocates we’ve come to know over the last few years.

Here’s a loose recollection of what I said (based on my talking points I had scribbled on Post-It notes):

Hello, my name is Jeff Tabaco, and this is my partner, Thom Watson. We have been together for over eight years. We became domestic partners in 2009 and had a commitment ceremony later that year. What I want more than anything in the world is to marry this man.

But I can’t. Not here in San Francisco, in the city I was born. Not in my own home state of California. I am a proud Californian, a proud American. But I will be a prouder Californian, a prouder American — a more equal American — when the judgment striking down Prop 8 is upheld, when our rights are restored, and when I can marry the person I love.

“Gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights.” That’s what we’re fighting for, what everyone — gay, straight, and in between — should be fighting for: dignity and equal rights for all.

We are on the side of love. We are on the side of the law. And we are on the right side of history.

I’m happy to see a lot of familiar faces here today, and the joke is that we have to stop meeting like this. We’ll come to as many rallies and hearings as we have to to get our rights back. I know the next time we gather like this, it will be to celebrate a ruling upholding marriage equality for all.

Any day now the Ninth Circuit could rule on any or all of the issues before it (standing of the Proponents, these motions to release the video and to vacate the decision, and the underlying constitutional merits), but the word seems to be it could be as soon as later this month or early next year. The commentaries I’ve read also suggest that the court will deny the motion to vacate, but may find it difficult to grant the motion to release the trial video. We shall wait and see.

See also:

• The photo above is by our friend, wedding photographer, and continuing documentarian of the marriage equality cause, Julie Bernstein. For more, see her “Motions to Marry” rally photos.
• Videos of the Ninth Circuit hearings have been published: Hearing 1 (motion to release trial video) and Hearing 2 (motion to vacate).

Instead of the Epicurious pie crust, I used my fool-proof Cook’s Illustrated version. And I used pumpkin pie spice, which I already had in the pantry, instead of the called-for apple pie spice. So how’d it turn out? Well, the filling was a little runny. After cutting out the first slice, I poured off some of the thin juice from the pan. Otherwise it tasted great: sweet and spiced with a subtle ginger flavor. Finally, the sauce is a little boozy, but hey, I’m not complaining.

The second pie, which I brought to a Halloween party, was pumpkin pie. Of course. (And in fact it was pumpkin pie that started this whole pie project a year ago.) This is Cook’s Illustrated’s version, which uses canned sweet potatoes as well as pumpkin for the filling. Also at CI I looked for whipped cream recipes, and when I saw one for brown sugar and bourbon cream, I had to make it. More bourbon!

There was a fair amount of extra filling, so I kept it in the fridge and a couple of days later improvised a sort of a pot de crème. It made for a tasty post-Halloween dessert.

As usual, photos of these and some of the previous pies are in my Flickr set. Time to think about November’s pie… I was at the library recently and checked out a big book called Great Pies & Tarts, so I’m sure I’ll have more than a few ideas!

Anyway, we watch and wait. But I did want to share some of the sights and sounds from the rally that morning, courtesy of our good friends.

Check out Julie Bernstein’s site for her full set of rally photos.

Here is a video by Sean Chapin, showing the contrast between the anti- and pro-equality sides:

You really see what our side stands for: love.

At the time, I was living in Washington, D.C. (I had moved there in the summer of 2000.) On the morning of September 11, 2011, as usual I took the Metro to my office in Bethesda, Maryland, and arrived sometime around 9:00 a.m. After I settled in at my desk, a coworker came to me and said that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York. At first I thought it was an accident, “just” a plane crash, but as the morning progressed and I kept reading news about the other planes online, it became clear that this was an organized terrorist attack.

I stayed at my desk the whole morning. Some others were watching the news on TV in another part of the office, but for some reason I stayed glued to my computer and kept reloading the major news sites, though they were slow to access. By noon, our company said we could go home if we wished. So I left for my apartment, stopping at the supermarket for food on the way.

It was eerie. I lived less than a mile from the White House and a couple more miles to the Pentagon. Who knew if there would be even more attacks? I would hear helicopters and didn’t know what to think. The afternoon wore on. I called my parents and some friends to let them know I was safe, and watched more news on TV. After a while I had to turn it off and try to rest.

After blanching and much peeling, pitting, and slicing:

I was up for the new challenge of a lattice top, and I have to say, it was a lot easier than I thought it would be. For some reason I imagined having to actually weave the strips of dough, but it’s just a matter of laying down and folding back the strips, strategically of course.

After a cut and crimp (sounds like a salon treatment) and a dusting of sugar, it’s ready for the oven:

Et voilà. I’m very happy with how it turned out. Unlike a couple of the other pies I’ve made, this one set up really well via the instant tapioca (the recipe calls for potato starch, which is finer than tapioca). It’s a minor aesthetic thing, but if I were to make this again I would grind the tapioca a little more so that it disappears more easily into the filling.

Mmm, peachy! There were leftover dough strips and filling, so I made that into a kind of mini-tart, which Thom and I ate that night as a preview before sharing the pie the next day.

More photos of this and other pies are in my pie project set on Flickr.

So since the last dance diary entry several weeks ago, Level 2 of the absolute beginner workshop wrapped up at LINES. After the first few meetings I was starting to feel like the class was in a slow rut, but past the midway point the pace picked up nicely. Not only that but in the last two classes we’ve had live piano accompaniment, which is quite blissful.

At the final class this past Sunday I had some encouraging chats with a couple of the other students and the teacher about what to take next. It turns out that our teacher might not be teaching Level 3 until early next year, so in the meantime I’ll go to drop-in classes and may branch out and check out other schools in the city as well. She mentioned an advanced beginning class at ODC, which I had thought I might not be ready for, but she said that I had been dancing well in class and to check it out. Yay for confidence!

By the way I’m going to be on vacation in Anaheim starting tomorrow, so I’m going to try and carve out some time while we’re there to take a class at Anaheim Ballet. I’m totally excited about the idea of taking ballet class wherever I am, even on vacation.

Dance gear

I bought some new shoes. Thanks to Endless’s free shipping and free return shipping, I just ordered a few pairs in a range of sizes, kept the ones that fit, and returned the ones that didn’t. I ended up getting a pair of Sansha Pro 1 in black canvas. The Capezios I used previously were just a little too big. They were the smallest size in their men’s line (yes, I have relatively small feet, for a guy) so I needed to go unisex. So far, so good.

With my new Under Armour compression shirts (which are kind of flattering if I do say so myself; my workouts during the week are paying off), the dance belt, the tights, the shoes… I am looking very much the real deal.

Around town

Last week I saw a concert by Man Dance Company, an LGBT-focused dance company in San Francisco. This was my first time seeing them, and they seem like a good group of talented dancers. And let’s face it, you just don’t see male couples a lot in ballet or in mainstream dance for that matter, so their dances are kind of refreshing. The highlight for me was several pieces set to songs inspired by Brokeback Mountain. Singer Ryan Harrison and composer Shawn Kirchner were there to perform the songs live. I’d heard a couple of these songs at the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus concert earlier this year and really liked them. So it was neat to see them danced to.

I can’t find any video of the dance performance yet, but here is one of the songs, “Meet Me on the Mountain,” as performed by Ryan and Shawn at a Man Dance concert a few years ago: