I never know what will pop out when I open my mail in the morning. Like many of you, I heard about a poll being conducted by a right-wing group (the American Family Association), went to the site, and voted in favor of gay marriage. I didn’t think much of it. All in a day. Sign a petition, forward a news item, spread around the things that interest me.

But I thought it was pretty funny when I read that the American Family Association had to abandon its plans around that poll. It was counting on getting a particular set of results, taking it to Congress, and saying, “See?” Now AFA representative Buddy Smith accuses us gay people of getting wind of the poll and “deciding to have a little fun” with it, “causing it to represent something other than what we wanted it to.” Hey, proclaiming our existence is not just a fun thing that we do. Not that we don’t enjoy it.

The thing is that the Internet is not a closed group. It’s not a bunch of cronies that meet at a high-priced club where nobody can hear what they have to say. It’s not a completely open group yet, either, but it’s getting there.

The fate of the AFA poll is particularly ironic, given that the Internet was originally developed by the military. The chart for the Internet’s birth - October 29, 1969, at 10:30 pm, in Palo Alto, Ca - has Mars in Capricorn very close to the descendent, reflecting this military affiliation. (Mars is the planet of war.)

Interestingly enough, this Mars in Capricorn makes a cardinal cross with George W. Bush’s Saturn in Cancer, Jupiter in Libra, and Aries midheaven. A cardinal cross is a tense configuration, in which each arm feels the pressure of the other three arms. It’s Mars that completes this configuration, that brings to a head all the latent tension in GW Bush’s horoscope.

Mars is like a dart, aimed right at Bush’s Saturn. And so I can be pardoned for thinking that the Internet will play a large part in the overthrow of the Bush regime.

However, the Internet chart is not kind to John Kerry’s chart either. That aforementioned Mars in Capricorn forms a yod, a karmic configuration, with Kerry’s Jupiter and Saturn. And so it will also be used as a tool against him. (Or perhaps it already is, and it’s just that nobody is sending me those e-mails.) As you can imagine, the Internet Mars in Capricorn is most compatible with Howard Dean’s chart, sextiling his Scorpio sun.

But I haven’t been able to find a solid date of birth for the Green Party, either the US one (which apparently started in January 1984 in Augusta Maine) or the international one (which I’m told started in March 1972 in Hobart, NZ). I don’t expect the exact hours, but the dates would be nice! This is one time that the Internet, source of abundant information, has let me down.

I’m thinking that the Green Party will someday be a more viable choice in national elections, and that the Internet will contribute to that. Of course, it may happen that the Republican and Democratic parties eventually get squished together into the new Repudemo party. (Say that aloud. It sounds good.) At this point, Democrats are still better than Republicans, but at times they look pretty similar - for instance, when they defend the heterosexual monopoly on marriage, or vote funds for war.

But two political parties are not enough. It’s unnatural to be limited to either/or choices. And, as a society, it makes us easier to manipulate. How many of us would vote for Kenny the Shark if he were running against Bush? (We really would. A much cooler cartoon character.) And how many of us don’t push for those we really prefer, because “she can’t win”? This two-party system isn’t set in stone, and we can change it.

In April, the focus is on choice and on communication. That’s because Venus and Mars will be together in the mutable air sign Gemini, and this conjunction will last from the full moon on the 5th until the month’s end. Gemini is the sign of options. It’s about branching pathways, the dance of a thought through the brain’s maze of associations, the blinking cursor nosing from one link to the next.

As we make choices, we create our lives. And we create our communities and the larger society in the same way. Every small choice - every opinion, every connection, everything we think and buy and read and plant - it all adds up to the world we make.

Venus is the planet of love and pleasure, while Mars, the planet of desire, is an energizing agent. When they are together, there’s a great deal of erotic energy. But since they are together in the airy sign Gemini, this will emerge most powerfully in the realm of words and ideas. People will be talking about love and sex, about pleasure and connection, about happiness. People will be sharing their stories, their recipes for bliss.

And what is Mercury doing while Venus and Mars are billing and cooing? Mercury is going retrograde right around the same time, the day after the full moon. It doesn’t turn back to direct movement until the last day of April. With Mercury retrograde in Aries, the focus will be on the past. We’ll be recalling our histories, and that will make us stronger as individuals. We acknowledge all the strands that have created us, the places and the people and the cultural trends.

And as we tell each other all the old stories, we pass along our most valuable ideas and experiences. They all become part of the branching pathways of the collective consciousness. We will walk along these pathways, choosing the possibilities that call to us. We will trace paths for each other. We will dance together sometimes, dance apart at other times, recognizing that our diversity creates more options for all of us. And we will all emerge into the clearing of a new era.

Index of Jenny Yates' Writings on Lesbian.com