Earlier this month I celebrated my 39th birthday. Not the big one that everyone makes a huge deal out of, but the one before. Only I realized that I was celebrating the completion of my 39th year, the start of my 40th.

My birthday has always been a useful divider for me, and recently has become what New Year’s Day is for others, a day to kick off the next year or so of time, redefine goals, start a new path.

This year’s path is quite a doozy.

Due to various reasons which I won’t get into, this year brings with it some massive changes. For one, I’m moving out of my apartment. I’m moving out of New York City. This may not seem like that big a deal, but it’s been my home for the past seven years, and New York is among the short list of places (London, Seattle, parts of California) that have felt like home to me. I’m heading back to my home town, where my family still lives, to figure out my next move. I once told myself I would never go back, but sometimes you have to take a step backwards in order to find sure footing for the sprint ahead.

Distance-wise, it’s not that far from Manhattan, but it feels far. Especially without the benefit of NY public transportation and lacking a car. It will be…an adjustment. But it’s not forever. And it’s a safe place to be.

There will be some advantages. I will get to write more. I will be closer to job opportunities. The rest…well, we’ll see. But I’m optimistic that this is a step that will ultimately help me.

The path stretches out before me. Wish me a bon voyage and I’ll be on my way. But I’m pretty certain I’ll be back before too long. I’ll keep you all posted along the way.

I don’t typically get political on this blog and that’s mostly because there are numerous people that I surround myself with who are better at this thing, more eloquent, than I am. But sometimes I feel the need to say something.

Over the past few weeks we’ve seen some amazing events transpire across the world, one of which being the people in Egypt succeeding in ousting the dictator, Mubarak, and calling for what I think we all hope will be democratic elections in the region. And there are now people in Bahrain, in Yemen, in Tehran, and other cities calling for similar democratic process. And I sit here and watch them risk their lives, their blood, for a better life and wait for what seems like the inevitable response, that we stand in solidarity with them. And yet it doesn’t come. The US government “condemns” but does little else. There are no peacekeeping forces. There are no sanctions. Even the UN is mute in the face of this massive wave of democracy. And I see, and mourn in the face of the inherent hypocrisy in what this country claims to stand for, and what it actually does. We, as a country, are being schooled in what the fight for democracy actually is, and the lie of what this country stands for is made plain for everyone.

And yet it’s not just fighting in other countries. Recently, in addition to seeing the rights of LGBT people being trampled across this country, we have recently seen an attack on education in this country, on unions, and on the right for women to choose what happens with their bodies. There has even been an initiative that would make it easier for people to legally kill abortion doctors.

This is unacceptable.

We must protect the right for all of our people to healthcare, including the right for women to have counseling and aid and, if they choose to, abortions. We must protect the right for people to unionize in the face of a government that is all too quick to cut the programs that help support workers and their families. And we must protect and defend the rights of all of us to have equal protection and liberty under the law.

This is not negotiable.

I am heartened by the Democrats in Wisconsin who chose to remove themselves rather than participate in an action that was blatantly in defiance of the very ideas this country was founded upon. I am heartened by the protests that are being planned in response to the cutting of funding to Planned Parenthood, an organization that seeks to do good by reaching out to women across our country.

It’s not enough.

A few years ago I watched and wept as Obama was elected as the President of the United States and I thought it heralded a change in this country, a wave of tolerance and progressive action that I could be proud of. I know I was proud of my country that night. Since then, there have been few moments where I’ve had anything near that level of pride. Don’t ask, don’t tell has become a battleground. Guantanamo Bay, they now say, can never be closed. The promise that I thought we could count on has not come to pass.

So it’s up to us. We have to fight all this bullshit wherever it rears its head. We have to fight for the rights of women, for minorities, for LGBT individuals, for anyone who doesn’t have a voice that’s protected by politicians or lobbyists or corporate interests or the rich or the strong. We have to support the efforts of other people around the world to protect their own rights and their lives and families.

This can take the shape of donations,  protests, or simply tweeting information about what’s really happening. But we need to do something. They depend on us to be quiescent, to be distracted by our daily lives, by our consumerism, by television, by the Internet, by the Grammys, by all the little things that occupy our time. But these things are important. Not because CNN tells us so, or because Fox News is covering them, but because they ultimately affect our lives and the lives of the people around us. Because, without hyperbole, they mean the difference between life and death.

That is too important to let slide.

I know I’m probably preaching to the choir when it comes to people reading this. But at the very least, I stand with you, unless you stand against us. And if so, we will not let you pass.

It’s too fucking important.

I had a sad day this past weekend. I don’t know why. Maybe it was the fact that I just gave up coffee and I was bereft of its mood-enhancing abilities. Or maybe my life has just been so full of happiness lately that I was owed some sadness. It doesn’t matter.

But as I often do at such times, I thought of my mother. And I thought of how she was the one person in my life, the one person in the world, who ever truly loved me unconditionally. Don’t get me wrong  – the rest of my family loves me. I don’t doubt that. But my mother loved in a way that was threaded through with acceptance. With the idea that I love you for everything that you are and everything that you can be and despite all the things inside yourself that you might consider flaws or weaknesses. It was a love that said – you can be yourself, and I will always be there for you.

Only she’s no longer there. And that pretty much sucks.

It’s a tough realization. To know that the safety net is gone. To know that when you’re scared and lonely, when the world turns its face away, that there’s nowhere to go. No safe, warm embrace to take shelter in. It makes the world more cold and lonely.

Then I was reading about the series of suicides lately by LGBT teens (Raymond Chase, Tyler Clementi, Asher Brown, Billy Lucas, and Seth Walsh) who have been facing persecution and intolerance and it just pushed me over the edge. I can’t claim to know what it’s like to grow up gay in an intolerant climate. I can’t really imagine what it feels like to face that kind of hatred and lack of acceptance at every turn. I can only claim to know what it’s like to feel different, to feel alone and misunderstood and like something of a Changeling left behind in a child’s place. And if that is just the tiniest fraction of what these kids are feeling then that crushes my heart into tiny pieces. I want them all to have someone like my mother who will love and accept them for who they are. I want them all to have communities that will stand up against all aspects of homophobia. I’m heartened to see LGBT adults like Dan Savage and Ellen Degeneres reaching out to these kids and trying to explain that things will get better. I hope it reaches people. I hope it helps to bring some light into dark places.

When I was a freshman at university, living on an all-male floor in a dorm, there was this one kid, Jim, who came out during the year. As far as I know he wasn’t tormented, but he was certainly treated differently. And the other guys would talk about him behind his back. I never did. But I will always despise myself for not defending him. For not speaking up. I saw him a few years later at a pride parade in NY and he seemed happy and doing well and we talked for a bit and I was glad. But I will always remember him and how I basically failed in being the kind of person I want to be.

Doing nothing is not enough. Doing nothing right now is leading to kids dying. Doing nothing means leaving people alone to suffer while the world tears at them from all sides. I don’t know what it is that I can do right now, but I want to do something. I need to do something.

So I will. Why don’t you join me?