Lt. Dan Choi, an individual who has inadvertently become the face of repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell in the US, got arrested last week for an act of civil disobedience wherein he chained himself to the gates of the White House to draw attention to the issue. What started out with Choi apparently gatecrashing a Human Rights Campaign rally with Kathy Griffin ended with Choi marching to the front of the White House and handcuffing himself to the fence. He was arrested, along with the co-chair of GetEqual, Robin McGehee, and Cpt. Jim Pietrangelo (who had also chained himself alongside Choi). What had begun as a photo op for HRC got hijacked by Choi and, tellingly, HRC refused to get themselves involved.

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Long has the stereotype of the "gamer" crowd been one of lonely, overweight nerds living in the basements of their parents, with no social contact with the outside world beyond virtual interactions in video games. One company with a clear aim to capitalize on this perception is GameCrush, who have announced that they're creating a new service which hooks said depressed, isolated gamers up with "PlayDates" in the form of supposed hot women who just want to game, man.

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While excited gamers this week have been treated to the first full expansion to BioWare's epic RPG Dragon Age: Origins, customers who purchased the Mac port of the game are left wondering when they'll get in on the latest content themselves. Since being launched the Mac port hasn't been supported in the least, and nobody at any of the involved companies have confirmed or denied whether or not the expansion will be coming to OSX.

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Earlier today, Australia's largest video game retailer, EB Games, delivered forty-six thousand submissions to the federal Attorney-General's department supporting their recent discussion paper around creating an R18+ classification for video games. EB Games collected submissions in all of their stores across Australia, as well as online, and in just two weeks it collected the staggering number of favorable statements advocating such a classification for 18+ video games.

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In an article on Tuesday over at The Bulletin (Philadelphia's family newspaper), Susan Brinkmann explores a growing problem facing today's "avid gamers" and their immortal souls. Specifically, a rise in the proliferation of satanic-themed video games targeting God, Catholicism specifically and Judeo-Christianity in general. Most of the article is built up on quotes by a 32 year old named Lance Christian who declares matter-of-factly that "the devil has a new tool to work with in this age of technology, and the majority of adults in a position of responsibility are left in the dark."

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Confirming their dedication to previous announcements, Ubisoft has recently said that the PC version of Assassin's Creed 2 will utilize their latest attempt at DRM, necessitating an always-on internet connection for the duration of your game time. Rock Paper Shotgun says that this is "open contempt for paying customers" and, frankly, I agree with them.

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A thread was recently started at the GayGamer.net forums around the following rant about modern gay rights, implicitly blaming the fact that we don't have gay marriage and full equality on things like the overt sexuality demonstrated at pride parades or the effeminacy of some gay men. The latter I have complained about here a few times already, but I added a wall of text to the discussion thread after the majority of comments amounted to "I think this guy is completely right." Sadly the guy isn't completely right and most of his perspective is incredibly nasty and self-hating, but as I've lamented before, it's a perspective shared by most gay people my age and younger. As the GayGamer.net forums require a registered account to read, I was asked if I could post my "essay" someplace else so it could be linked to.

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