Wednesday, April 25, 2012

British marriage equality ad powerful in its simplicity

From the UK:



From the filmmaker:
“One day I would like to marry my partner of almost 5 years. And the celebration of our commitment should mean no more or less than any other straight couple. I made the film to promote change and also inspire others to use their creativity to support equality.”

Via JMG


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Aww Jeeze Minnesota, you are better than this

What the ....



Time to kick the religious nuts out of office and back into their churches. Pray away the gay? It's 2012 guys. 
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Thursday, April 12, 2012

Dear Rick Santorum - You can't quit


You are the very best tool we have in making our case for full equality for our lgbt brothers and sisters. Each time you open your mouth and spew your ugly homophobic views, we gain more supporters to our cause.

Hat tip Freddie who cannot hat tip anyone because he got it off a facebook share chain.

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Tuesday, April 10, 2012

This hit home

As many of you know, my husband and I have 3 children - 2 boys and a girl - in that order. When our first born was 5 weeks old he got extremely ill. So ill, he almost died before we could get him transferred from the hospital closest to our home where he had been in intensive care for a week to the Phoenix Children's hospital where specialists (and there were only 2 in the entire state at that time, 1984, that could handle the particular problem our gravely ill child had).

Like the couple in the clip below, our child was hospitalized for a long period of time - for us - 5 months the first time and then many shorter hospitalizations thereafter. His prognosis was dire and his future - uncertain. No one could tell us that he would grow up to be a healthy, happy child with no lifetime residual problems. It was one day at a time and one hell of a stress on my husband and my relatively young marriage.

We got our first clue we were in for an extremely long haul when a group of doctors came into our son's hospital room one day and told us that they strongly recommended we see a counselor and a social worker because what we were in for can really do damage to marriages and often does. Then they continued on with the suggestion that we were welcome to move some of our furniture from home into a "special room" they reserved for the families of children that are going to be there "indefinitely".

I cannot tell you how challenging and how stressful that time in our lives was. I not only agonized over our very sick baby and his very uncertain future, but I agonized over whether our marriage could handle the challenges we had ahead of us.

Then going home, was yet another unbelievable challenge. They did not feel we should take our child home just yet, and we felt we should. We knew we had no experience managing the broviac central line he had implanted in a large vein so that meds and blood products could be administered directly into the bloodstream or the feeding tube he needed because he couldn't eat. But keeping him in the hospital had become a one step forward, 2 steps back dance because of all the secondary infections our poor little baby with the compromised immune system kept falling prey to in that very germ-y environment.

After many battles, even one in which we threatened to remove our child from every machine he was connected to and steal him away in the dark of the night if they dared give him a blood transfusion using blood that did not come from a family member. This was was 1984 and they actually told us they would give him the transfusion if they felt he needed it and we could not stop them. Our fear was that HIV was newly on the scene and they would have to use untested blood. Tests for HIV did not come available until 1985. We did, by the way, win that battle and had doctors we'd just stood toe to toe screaming in their faces later tell us they would have done the same thing. We also succeeded in talking them into training us to care for our son at home, something they had never done before.

So home we went, relieved to be out of the hospital, but scared about saying good bye to the safety net we'd depended on in the hospital. But thankfully, our son slowly started to get better and we slowly got more confident that our child was going to be ok.

But like the couple in the clip below, there are other problems that come with severely sick infants. They are usually developmentally delayed, and in our case and the couple below's case, our child could not eat. He had to learn how to eat - a challenge of epic proportions. Who knew?

Our marriage made it, but many do not. Our child made it, in fact he eventually thrived and excelled in every thing he did. And we were finally able to redefine normal for us to mean something closer to what other couples take for granted.

So seeing this clip below hit me on so many levels. I KNOW without a doubt what this loving, beautiful couple went through, sacrificed, and laid in bed at night and worried themselves sick about. I know the lack of sleep and barely being able to put one foot in front of the other but doing it because a very sick child requires it, I know the major celebrations and tears of joy over tiny victories like getting our child to put a piece of banana to his mouth, at almost 2 years of age, and eat it and keep it down.

And I KNOW that this loving, beautiful lesbian couple could teach straight married couples a thing or two about love, marriage, sacrifice, and parenting.

I have to agree with Patrick when he so aptly says:
How does Ross Douthat, who argues that well-adjusted individuals have a duty to bring children into this world, square that position with his opposition to marriage equality? If the tender loving care shown in the video above below {correction mine} isn't an example of model parenting, I don't know what is.
But I would not just single out Ross Douthat on this, I'd be dragging out the so-called marriage protectors from NOM, the Hierarchy of the Catholic Church, the Mormon Church, and all those faux Family Advocacy organizations who only advocate for families that fit their very narrow template and I'd ask them to watch this clip below and tell me why they believe this amazing couple doesn't deserve to be parents because I'll be damned if I can figure out why.



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Dear GOP, Religious Right, and Misc Homophobes everywhere


Congratulations, you've finally done it. You poked, you prodded, you race baited, you lied through your teeth, you pushed many of our precious children to suicide, you fear mongered, you twisted scientific research, and you've spread your vileness and hate to other countries.

Well we've had enough. You've successfully stirred the hornet's nest. And may you reap the "rewards" coming to you. Hate and bigotry do not pay off, even when you wrap them up in a third-grade interpretation of the bible and an American flag.

You let your hatred override your humanity. You let your ignorance override your common sense. You let your evil side conquer any good within you.  Did you not think that for every glbtq person you have spent your time, energy, and resources vilifying and dehumanizing there wasn't even a single person who loved and cherished that person?  Well I have news for you. You were so very wrong.

We are not the insignificant few:





I had been tossing around a variation of this idea for my own Chapter of PFLAG (PFLAG Phoenix). And seeing how simple but powerful PFLAG Bellevue's finished product is, I am hoping this idea will spread. And may it instill the fear of whatever into the monsters who have been hurting our glbtq children, brothers, sisters, parents, and friends for far too long.

Some background on these two clips:


The Story Behind the Love, PFLAG Videos By Lori Brown, Chair, PFLAG Bellevue, Washington
“To all the politicians who are running in 2012 we want you to know…”
These words burst out of my mind and onto the page in front of me. I was finally ready to put thoughts to paper and it took all of 2 or 3 minutes to write the script for our video. I had been trying to come up with an idea for our next PFLAG chapter project. The amazing part was that my best friend from childhood had sent a generous check to fund this before I even had any idea of what it could be. But looking back, I have realized that perhaps the “Universe” was showing me what it was supposed to be for quite a while, and proceeded to give me what I needed to accomplish it.
Last year we in the Bellevue PFLAG chapter had talked about doing an “It Gets Better” video with transgender families, and so we pursued that for a while. I can only imagine the number of lives that have been changed and saved due to this wonderful program that Dan Savage and Terry Miller created.
As I looked at a lot of the videos to help us decide how to do this, the main theme seemed to be, “You are not alone”. Yet, as I saw Adam Lambert say, “There are a ton of us in this world who are just like you, who believe in you”, I realized how right he was to say this, but like many others, he appeared on camera alone.
Well, it was time to show those who feel alone and bullied that those people who support and believe in them are here right now! They may have gone unnoticed because they look like the people you see every day. They’re walking their dogs, waiting for the bus, or shopping in the grocery store. But they are here just the same! (We are the parents, families and friends of the LGBTQ community and we are listening to what you are saying about those we love.)
[story continues below the fold]

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Saturday, April 07, 2012

This is why I love Arizona so much

Updated below

We've got to be close to the # one exporter of hate, xenophobia, homophobia, and crazy right-wing laws that  other crazy right-wing states adopt or try to out-crazy.

Oh - and let's not forget that Arizona is also the number one supplier of side-splitting, jaw-dropping, crowd-pleasing material for comedians world wide.

Dang, I am so proud to be an Arizonan right now.




And as if that wasn't enough salt in the wounds, our very own pearl-clutching editorial board at our very own Arizona Republic had to get out there and condemn The Daily Show people for not picking the right person to interview (in other words, a person who holds the same opinion as the right-winger who wrote the editorial). Mr. Right-Wing Editorialist called it a "hit job" and this "week's high point for defenders of the disbanded propaganda factory".

The editorial is titled "The truth is not as funny" which strikes me as just about as perfect a title as I can think of, just not for the same reasons he had. The real un-funny truth is, Arizona is chock-full of idiots from which The Daily Show could have chosen. And that is the very sad, definitely un-funny truth that Mr. Right-Wing Editorialist just cannot bring himself to accept. 
 
The feature consisted primarily of an interview with Michael Hicks, one of the TUSD board members who voted to end the intensely politicized program earlier this year.
A less articulate critic of the program would be impossible to find. The segment was a cringe-inducing humiliation of the tongue-tied man.
Which, of course, is why the producers sought out the hapless Mr. Hicks. Most real reporters look to board President Mark Stegeman, a University of Arizona economics instuctor, for fair understanding of the ethnic-studies issue.
But that wasn't what "The Daily Show" came looking for. It came for the cheap laughs, and poor Mr. Hicks gave them up by the bucketful.

The Arizona Republic is absolutely right, the "hapless" Mr. Hicks is a "cringe-inducing humiliation of a tongue-tied man". And sadly, Arizona seems to be the number one supplier of that commodity as well.

Update:  I got to thinking about the Daily Show clip I posted above and the fool they highlighted in it and that reminded me of another Daily Show piece from 2006 that totally skewered and idiot from Arizona, only this time, from my own humble little city. I alternated between laughing until it hurt and crying in embarrassed disgust.

The restaurant that raised the ire of Scottsdale's finest prudes is now closed, but was within walking distance of where I live. So my husband and I made it a point to give them our business whenever we were in the mood for some Pink Taco, just to spite the god-bothering fools who put our city in the cross-hairs of The Daily Show in the first place. But thankfully the Arizona Republic didn't even pretend to get their panties in a twist over this PR disaster and write a hand-wringing editorial blaming The Daily Show for picking the wrong fool to interview. Or at least I don't think they did - maybe I just blocked it out.











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Dear Mormon Church: STOP torturing your GLBT children



Good gawd how I loathe HATE in the name of some mean, spiteful, hateful, nasty God that only loves mean, spiteful, hateful, nasty "good Christians".

Happy Easter.

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Sunday, April 01, 2012

You can't judge a book by its cover - you have to read what's inside


Shy Boy and his Friend teach us why this is such a good lesson:




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For those of you who choose not to sit in church today, I offer you the perfect alternative: a dose of Dan Savage

I first listened to this in a This American Life podcast a few years ago at the gym, on an elliptical, sweating like a pig, alternating between fits of uncontained laughter and blubbering like a fool. I love Dan Savage. And on this, he nails my own love/hate (emphasis on hate at this point) relationship with the Catholic Church.



Thank you Anne Laurie for the nice start to my Sunday morning.


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