Gay Marriage is cool and the Pope is a Jerk

Every year the Pope gives a message on January 1st for "World Peace Day," which Wikipedia tells me is actually in September, so maybe the pope is just late? I don't know. I didn't actually know about this tradition until we read some of the Pope's statements on global climate change for my eco-theology class. But now this year's statement has come across my radar, too, because it's awful: Pope Benedict is giving his World Peace Day message on the threat that gay marriage poses to peace and justice.

So that's pretty screwed up. Especially given a new study that shows that marriage significantly improves the mental health of same-sex couples.

Meanwhile, Focus on the Family says that gay identities are just a social construct. Technically, he's right, but heterosexual identities are a social construct too, and we let people with them get married, so I don't entirely see his point.

I actually don't have any witty commentary, these articles just made me angry, so I thought I would share before I go back to my typically scheduled being a socially constructed threat to peace and justice.

Human Sexuality as Explained by Nerdfighters

So my little sister is REALLY into these YouTube bloggers called the Nerd Fighters. I've only seen a couple of their videos, but this one came to my attention today and I thought I'd share it!

We talked about this model a lot in my Gender and Society class; there are actually theorists who prefer not to look at sex as a binary biological category at all, because there is a lot of potential diversity, and the way that we understand sex is mediated by society, so it's socially constructed. So the whole "sex = biology, gender = society" model isn't perfect. But I do think it's a really useful way to start people thinking about sex and gender in more complicated ways, and this video covers all the possible variety involved therein pretty well I think!

DC is the Best City

This is part of a new advertising campaign promoting respect for transgender people. DC had problems recently with violence against trans people, so I'm really excited to see them responding to it. The advertisements explain that discrimination against people for their gender identity or expression is illegal in the District, and gives contact information for people who have been discriminated against to report it. Good stuff!

Happy Birthday Harvey Milk

This is quoted in its entirety from my favorite religion blog Monkey Mind, because it was so pretty I just had to share:

Sorry you’re not here to see what is going on, Harvey.

But, your call to be recruited has been heard & continues to be heard.

The struggle continues…

And every day more hearts see the justice of your call

Meanwhile, in North Carolina, a pastor suggested rounding up all the queers and leaving them to "die out." Keep it classy, North Carolina.

Scenes from the Big Gay Weekend

A few weeks ago Out in UL had a whole series of events - first BICS, the Board of Irish College Societies Awards, then Queerbash, our big annual party, and then Sparkles, a day of queer-themed workshops. Here's some highlights!

BICS


"We've been out-gayed," we whispered to each other as the first presentation of the awards day started and we surveyed the competition. Other clubs had come far more together-looking than us, in matching hoodies or t-shirts, but another of the LGBT societies had gone all-out. They wore rainbow flags draped around their shoulders, and rode scooters wrapped in glittery decorations. When their name was called, they honked the scooters' horns, and another club from their university, a circus society, juggled encouragingly.

Photo by BICS

There were several LGBT societies nominated for a bunch of different awards. We were up against the students with the scooters, in addition to a bunch of unrelated societies, for Best Event; Cork's LGBT society was up for Best Society. For the most part, we didn't get to chat with them; much of the day was spent running back and forth to the different interviews that were the last part of our score before the awards were announced.

We finished the interviews and the presentations, and went to make ourselves cute for the dinner, award ceremony and dance. We were up for Best Event, Best Improved Society, and Best Individual; two other UL societies were up for awards, as well. Some of the big universities, like DCU, won often, and chanted loudly as their societies went up to collect: "DCU! DCU!" We weren't really expecting to win anything, and we lost for Best Event, so when our name was called for Best Improved Society, there was a little moment of shock while we all tried to figure out what to do. The entire club went up to collect the award -  we hadn't talked about it at all, just sort of all leapt to our feet. And I know I'm only here for a semester, and didn't do anything really to contribute to our victory, but I was really proud to be standing on the stage hearing the other societies from our school chanting: "UL! UL! UL!"

Queerbash


I didn't perform at Queerbash, but you wouldn't have known it from the amount of time I spent in the little upstairs space where the performers waited to start; Anne's choir was on first, and naturally the show started late, because these things always start late. We chatted through the sound check and the start of the party, singing along with the practice for the final number and watching people start to arrive. Eventually the show started and I went to join the rest of my friends downstairs. The choir sang a suitably dramatic song, the Drama Society and Dance Society both performed, Candy Warhol (a local drag performer) ate a baby on stage (yeah, that was weird). Eventually Return to Sender, a local rock band who I really really like, took the stage, and the dancing portion of the evening began.

After Return to Sender and before the DJ took over for the night, Niall called all of the performers up onto the stage for a chorus line. I was not a performer, but the last song was one of my favorites - "Drumming Song" by Florence and the Machine - so I followed Anne to the stage door anyway and sang along with all the performers. This week at the last Out in UL meeting we all shared our favorite memories from the year, and this was definitely one of mine - it was just such a spontaneous, exciting thing. When the song ended we went and found our group again, and the DJ started up, and the dancing continued.

I'm going to be honest - I'm not very good at parties. I love dancing with my friends, and the music was fantastic, but by 1am my "awkward-at-social-events" mode had fully kicked in and I was starting to wonder anxiously when the event would end. Anne and I had lost our friends, and a slower song came on, so we started dancing just the two of us. And then "Raise Your Glass," which I forever associate with Nationals baseball games, came on, and then "Born This Way" (it was, after all, a gay event), and the next thing I knew we had been dancing for more than half an hour and I hadn't nervously checked my watch or worried about looking silly or thought about sneaking away for the entire time.

Sparkles


Billie was the leader of the first workshop of the day, and you could tell she was cool because she had spiked purple hair. "Who here has done a sexual empowerment workshop before?" she asked. Only one of us had, so she went through the ground rules, and then explained that we were going to go around the circle and get to know each other a bit. "The question is: What is your greatest erogenous zone? What turns you on?"

Which was not how I had quite expected to spend my Saturday morning.

What followed was a discussion on the finer details of what, exactly, makes a good kiss; virginity and queer-ginity; and how the hell you even define sex anyway. I didn't really have any stories to share, but it was fascinating listening to everyone else's; Billie kept pointing out that it's weird that we don't tell people about these things even though they're obviously such an important part of our lives, and I agree.

I was nervous through the first two panels because I had organized the third, inviting two guest speakers from the Mid West Interfaith Network, and I worried that the speakers wouldn't be able to find their way there, or that something would go horribly wrong. Fortunately, they both found us without problem and a really interesting discussion ensued, though perhaps a bit more sobering than the sexual empowerment talk. My favorite thing was flipping through the feminist and queer Haggadah (Passover prayer books) our Jewish speaker brought. I didn't get to attend a sedar this year, but I've loved the ones I've attended (especially when I was the youngest and got to read some of the stories and invite Elijah in!), so it was nice getting to connect to that tradition at least a little bit through looking at these books.

Inside the pillow fort.

Bonus


After Sparkles, Anne and I made a pillow fort. We brought blankets from her house to mine and stole all of the cushions from the couch downstairs. Once our brilliant fort was constructed, with only minimal catastrophe and things falling loudly from shelves, we watched Buffy inside and ate oreos until we fell asleep.

Language and Madness

A picture of Christ Church College in
Oxford, which I keep meaning to write
about but haven't yet.

Did you guys read the Rolling Stone article that came out a little bit ago about the suicides in Michelle Bachmann's district? It was heartbreaking and infuriating and definitely worth a read. But today Feministe had a response analyzing the language different people - the principle, the students - used to talk about the suicides, and it was really interesting.

He argued that using terms like "mental health" takes the responsibility away from the school and puts it on the students - they didn't kill themselves because the school created or allowed horrible conditions, they killed themselves because there was something wrong with them. He used a quote from a girl at the school who went to psychiatric treatment, listing all of the things she'd been diagnosed with as something she "had" - "They said I had anger, depression, suicidal ideation, anxiety, an eating disorder" - even though she experienced them as a part of herself and her experience. He was arguing, I think, that a focus like that on symptoms to be fixed can be dehumanizing and doesn't really address the problem - the things a depressed person actually has to be sad about, for instance. 


I'm not quite sure how I feel about his argument, but it was an interesting way of looking at it, particularly in the particular instance of this school district. I definitely recommend it.

Some Tangental Thoughts on "Bromance"

I meant to write this yesterday and got distracted by my gaping open suitcase with its zippered maw of overstuffed doom.

So, the new Sherlock Holmes movie. I saw it with two good friends a few days ago, and really enjoyed it. It's not a particularly smart mystery or anything, but it's a good action movie, and the relationship between Holmes and Watson is pretty great to watch.

Last night I was at a party, and we were talking about the film, and someone quoted an interview in which Jude Law had been asked if the film was a "bromance". He responded by saying it wasn't a bromance - it was a romance. (I couldn't find the exact quote - the closest I found was a clip on Tumblr in which he calls the expression bromance belittling.)

So now I'm wondering about this. Bromance strikes me as kind of the equivalent of when guys follow up an expression of affection for one another by saying "no homo" - a way of acknowledging close platonic male relationships while also distancing from or making fun of sexual relationships between men. It's close but not too close. So when Jude Law says it's belittling, he's saying that it's okay for men to have close, intimate platonic relationships, and so what if they look a bit like gay relationships? Or at least, that's how I read it.

But there's no equivalent for women, as far as I know. I wrote a paper about "romantic friendships" earlier this semester, which seem to be about the same idea, but that concept doesn't seem to exist anymore. Female relationships now seem less intimate to me than what I read about for "romantic friendships" - ladies usually don't routinely kick their husbands out of bed to cuddle with their best friends anymore, as far as I know - but some degree of intimacy, maybe physically but definitely emotionally, is still expected in relationships between women, so there isn't any need for a term to specifically explain it.

Obama Sings Lady Gaga

Can't sleep? Me either. Have some YouTube!

Out of the Closet in Uganda

Mother Jones has an article about the gay community in Uganda, and this one passage at the end was so striking that I couldn't not share it.

When I return to our table, Dennis hollers at me. "Where were you?" He's got a bag full of lube packets in front of him, waiting for the friend who needed it to arrive. "I thought you were kidnapped for corrective rape."

My face turns horrified.

"Just kidding!" he says, grabbing my arm. Ha ha!

"Do you know a lot of women that has happened to?" I ask.

"Nooooo, not a lot. Like five." He laughs again: "It's not like South Africa."

Alright then. Let's party.

The entire piece is incredible for the resilience of the activists it describes. Under their conditions, I think I would just stay in the closet; it's pretty mind-blowing that they can go through so much shit and keep going anyway.

Gideon Bibles

The Bilerico Project had a pretty shocking headline recently: "Anti-Gay Book Placed in Las Vegas Hotel," with a picture of a book titled How to Kill Gay, Lesbian, Bi and Trans Americans. The big reveal was that, of course, the book the author had found was a Gideon Bible, which is in basically every hotel room ever, and that he was no longer willing to stay in rooms that have a book calling for the execution of gay people, so he threw the book away.

I'd never really thought about the fact that hotel rooms usually have Bibles. I figured it was for the same reason airports have chapels - because travel is stressful, and if religion helps people cope with that, then why not make it available?

But of course, that argument might not fly if a hotel decided to allow an organization to put a Koran in every room, or a copy of the Gita. The discussion on the post seems to generally agree that he's overdoing it; whether you like the Bible or not, it's kind of rude to throw it away. A lot of religious people pointed out that the verses he finds offensive are often either ignored or can be interpreted to have nothing to do with modern queer people.

But that sort of reminded me of a book I'm reading right now, about a man who tried to follow the Bible literally for a year, without much guidance from religious communities and existing traditions of interpretation. The Gideon Bibles are placed there for the explicit purpose of conversion, but if you read a Bible without any context in Christian interpretation, it won't look anything like Christianity as it's regularly practiced. It'll look kind of like a lot of contradictions and, in the Hebrew Bible, a lot of commandments to put pretty much everyone to death for something or another. So having a Bible just chillin' in the hotel room, with its message taken for granted as self-evident, maybe is pretty problematic, both for people who have something against the Bible (or the Gideon's choice of translation) and for people looking to interpret the Bible a particular way.

(For the record, I end up agreeing with the commenters who say that it's legitimate to question why Bibles get placed in every hotel room, even if the Bible isn't necessarily just an evil source of anti-gay doom like the author portrays it to be.)

In Which I Want to Hug Secretary Clinton

Obama issued a memorandum about GLBT rights today, announcing that fair treatment for queer people is to be a major part of the US's foreign policy and human rights policy. Clinton gave an address on the topic to the United Nations, and while I haven't seen the whole thing yet, just the excerpts made me almost teary.

“Well, in reality, gay people are born into and belong to every society in the world. They are all ages, all races, all faiths; they are doctors and teachers, farmers and bankers, soldiers and athletes, and whether we know it or whether we acknowledge it, they are our family, our friends and our neighbors.”

“To LGBT men and women worldwide: Wherever you live and whatever your circumstances… please know that you are not alone.”

What a thing to hear, coming from a world stage! Secretary Clinton pointed out that our country's own record is "far from perfect," but it still made me so happy to hear something like this being said for the whole world to hear, from us.

The Universalist Dilemma

I just returned from our campus's queer group's discussion on religion and gender/sexual minorities and allies, and now I'm all full of religion thoughts.

I went as a representative of our Unitarian Universalist club, in addition to being queer myself. We Universalists have problems with ideas like "evil," so when someone said, referring (as I understood) to whether or not churches decide to affirm and accept LGBT individuals, that this was "a question of good and evil, acceptance and non-acceptance," I got thoughtful.

As a Universalist, I believe that everyone gets to heaven, or enlightenment, or whatever - I'm still unclear on exactly what that means. I like to think that everyone has an inherent and eternal capacity to both change the world for the better and be changed in turn.

And as a UU, I think that a central goal of our congregations - a religious duty, springing from our shared principles - should be to create spaces of radical acceptance, communities where everyone can come as they are and be welcomed and appreciated for who they are.

But that's tricky, isn't it? Because as a queer in a religious community, I go into my desire to accept everyone acutely aware of the danger therein. There are people who would like to see me stoned to death, because that's what the Bible says. How do I accept them and maintain my own safety?

So when I was thinking about queers in places of worship as a question of good and evil, that's what I was thinking about. A bit ironically, being a community of radical acceptance means setting some pretty clear lines about what sort of behaviors, and even what sort of beliefs, aren't permissible. How do we practice openness, forgiveness and love while maintaining our commitment to protect those of us who are marginalized for who we are? How does one call out evil where one sees it while still being a place where everyone gets to heaven?

Obviously, I'm not the first person to grapple with this. In fact, I'm late to the game, and should probably just go grab some books from the library. But that's the sort of thing I was thinking about tonight, and if anyone has any opinions, I'd love to hear them.

Listing the Names

Transgender Day of Remembrance is coming up, and my club is working with our campus's Gender Neutral Housing to organize a vigil.

Obviously, hate crimes are tragic whenever they occur. But now, as the day I'm going to be holding a candle and helping read the list of the names of the dead from the past year gets closer, every headline I see about violence against hits me that much harder. Shelley Hillard, a transgender teen who went missing in October and whose body was just found burned on the side of the road, is the name I found today.

I'm sorry, Shelley. I'll think of you at the vigil, and I'll try to make it an event that educates and inspires so that someday horrible things like this don't happen. You shouldn't be just a name on a list.

Milk

I just watched the movie Milk at our school's queer film fest. And I was thinking, wow. I am really grateful that I live in an age when I can go to school in the south, be openly gay, and not fear getting beat up for it. In fact, that's pretty awesome. Of course, it's not enough. I want gay kids to not get bullied or denied access to proms or scout troops or whatever. I want to not have to worry about not getting a job or housing due to my sexuality. I might even want to marry or adopt kids someday. And none of those things can happen in my home state. I want no one to ever be the victim of hate crimes. But I can walk down the street and know that I'm safe and I can be open about who I am and pretty much all of my school, students and staff, will be behind me and want all those things, too. Sometimes it's nice to remember that that's really a good, important thing.

Loose Lips...

I just finished reading A Queer History of the United States by Michael Bronski. It was an interesting book, if a bit over my head - he tried to cover a lot of broad social, political, and cultural movement in a small space, and sometimes I felt like he was just dropping in a quote from some book or journal, saying "yup, there were gay people at this time," and moving on without really tying all his ideas together. He said in the introduction that he was trying to avoid the "add one gay and stir" method of history, just elaborating on historical queer's biographies, which, while generally a cool idea, meant that he would drop names of famous historical figures as queer and not elaborate any further, leaving me wishing for all the scandalous details!

But overall, it was a good read, and there was one bit in particular I wanted to share with you...

During World War I, conservative British politician Noel Pemberton-Billings wrote an article called "The Cult of the Clitoris," claiming that "a legion of lesbian spies" led by actress Maud Allen were hurting the war effort. Quote: "In lesbian ecstasy the most sacred secrets of the state were betrayed." Because nothing quite turns the ladies on like state secrets, you know.

While it seems unlikely, I do think that his idea would make the best spy movie ever, and suggest that Hollywood get right on that.

Can't Imagine

One of the things I got to do in my internship at Human Rights Campaign was go through all of the documents posted to the HRC website (close to a thousand of them) and organize them. What? That doesn't sound exciting? Okay, well, while I never want to see a spreadsheet again in my life, it kind of was, because I got to read about twenty years of documents and get a peak at a history of GLBT activism that I'd never seen before. And one thing that I kept coming up against was the HIV crisis.

The HIV crisis is one of those things that I sort of understood in theory. "In the 80s, lots of gay men died of AIDS and they made a quilt." I liked the movie version of Rent and got appropriately teary-eyed at that song during the support group, but it seemed a bit over-the-top to me that most of the characters were HIV-positive.

Then I came across a document that HRC published 10 years ago, called "Two Decades of Fighting for Life." It's a 22 page timeline, starting with the first known deaths in 1980, and ending in 2001. I read through the entire thing, watching the italicized numbers at the beginning of each year climb - 5,000 people diagnosed, 10,000 the next year, 23,000 the next year.

Can you imagine? I certainly can't.

There was an article published this week called Life After Death, about the impact of HIV/AIDS on the gay community now that the crisis is over, in that the life of the gay community doesn't revolve around AIDS as it once did. It was an interesting read - even growing up near DC, where HIV/AIDS remains a massive public health problem, I found myself relating to the author and the people he spoke to who weren't quite sure how they understand the disease. I mean, for me it's never been something to be particularly worried about - it was mentioned briefly in health class in a bullet list with other STIs, and that's that.

But there was this guy I met at General Assembly one year, with a tattoo around his leg - a pattern of black triangles in several rings, with a center one colored rainbow. I complemented him on it, and he told me that each triangle represented a friend he'd lost to AIDS. There were dozens of them.

So I feel like this is important, like it's a part of history that I should try to understand. But I just can't get my head around it.

Let's talk about sex!

But first, let's take a moment to appreciate the shocked looks I imagine on the faces of my family and neighbors who read this blog after seeing that post title.

Ah, that was fun.

Do you remember getting "the talk"? In my memory, it went like this:

A good friend, who had been teasing me for my lack of sexual vocabulary basically since elementary school, informed my mom that I needed "the talk" when I couldn't understand yet another bit of gossip. (This was probably seventh grade or so, and I couldn't tell you the difference between french kissing or making out, and all I knew about the bases was that I didn't particularly want to go to any of them.) So, on the car ride home, my mom informed me that there were two kinds of sex: The regular kind, which was embarrassing but okay maybe when you were much older, and the oral kind, which was gross and kids sometimes did it on the back of the bus. (My mom tells me that there had been news stories about something like that happening, and that was the bit of gossip I failed to understand, but I really didn't know the context at the time.)

So that, and an equally mortifying presentation about STDs in a wild, overcrowded 8th grade health class, was pretty much the sum of my sex education.

What made me think about this was kind of unusual: At work the last week we shared our coming out stories. I couldn't come up with a nice clean narrative, but the one thing I always remember is that I though was just never into boys, but I didn't know there was any alternative. I don't think I knew what a lesbian was until high school, and all my experience about what relationships looked like came from middle school: all of my friends had a new crush every week, or boyfriends who they kissed and went on dates with. I asked a boy to the 8th grade dance because we talked about fantasy novels and all my friends called him my "friend with benefits" and didn't believe that I didn't like him, so I figured that must be what a crush was. When he wanted to go on a real date after that, I stopped returning his calls and never saw him again.

And then in high school, I dated a boy because he asked me out, (note that "dated" in my high school meant "we're a couple, but don't necessarily do anything together or talk or anything.") I spent a lot of time avoiding him, too, but discovered something odd when we saw each other: Kissing was kind of nice.

Now, that thought had never crossed my mind before. I remember figuring out the mechanics of sex in sixth grade and deciding right then and there that I was never doing that shit, and I had assumed that all the rest of that icky boy-girl stuff was ruled out as well. After my "boyfriend" and I broke up, I started wondering about this whole kissing thing more seriously. When I imagined kissing boys, even boys I really liked, I got the same vaguely uneasy feeling I'd had kissing my "boyfriend" who I'd otherwise avoided. But when I let my mind slip over to the thought of kissing girls, well...

So I decided I was probably bi. Obviously.

Most people's coming out stories had to do with telling their parents, or friends, or whatever, about something they'd always known. But for me, I just remember being so confused about sex and romantic relationships and "crushes" - what it entailed, why anyone would want to do such nonsense, who could have a crush on who and what it was supposed to feel like - that I could hardly begin to sort out who I might be interested in.

The first time I heard the word "gay," in elementary school, my friend smugly told me that I shouldn't use that word if I didn't know what it meant, making it clear that she for sure wasn't going to tell me. How was I supposed to begin to apply that to how I thought about relationships? All I had for an example was my friends and Disney princesses, and it all felt so forbidden and wrong that I couldn't begin to imagine what or who to ask.

And it certainly wasn't a bad coming out, all things considered. After I figured out that kissing girls seemed nice everything kind of clicked together. But hearing my coworker's stories, I wonder if coming out to oneself - figuring out and accepting that you're gay - is always quite that fraught with questions about what romance should look like. I guess heterosexual kids can see themselves in Cinderella or some stupid show on Nick, and in the information given in a standard "talk" or sex-ed class. But for me, it all just felt so confusing and forbidden, that the hardest part was wrapping my own head around the fact that I even had a sexuality, not telling anyone else about it.

Squeeing over Marriage in New York

Ok, I never posted about gay marriage in New York - in fact, I have to admit, I slept through the announcement and bailed on the HRC victory party - but I read an article today that made me smile a lot.

"Gay Marriage Gets Cold Feet" was the headline, and it was an article about how now that gays in New York can get married, they're feeling the pressure to do it, with everyone suddenly wondering when their gay friend/child/whatever will set a date. It's full of cute quotes from various gay folk about "oh my god we've never had to deal with this before!" (which sort of covered up the only serious points the article made, but whatever.)

“It used to be that when you came out, your parents would say things like, ‘Now I’m never going to see you in a wedding dress, never going to get to have grandchildren,’” says Cathy Renna, a local activist who runs an LGBT-focused communications firm. “Now it’s the opposite: ‘When do I get to see you in a wedding dress?!’ The more options you get, the more challenges arise.”

Isn't it awesome? We (speaking broadly, because as a Virginian I'm still not included in that technically) get to fret about whether or not to get married! About how long one should date before popping the question, public or private proposals, big wedding or running to the courthouse in jeans. I mean, it's weird that it's news that gays would feel the same conflicted way about marriage that straight people do, but yay that some of them get to!

(PS: This image is a cake topper from Offbeat Bride. Ten points to anyone who catches the reference.)

Accessibility and Disability Ponderings

I can't remember if I mentioned this, but I'm working with the Human Rights Campaign on their web team this summer as an intern. It's only my second day, and I've already learned a lot!

One of the things it has me thinking about is accessibility, and the needs for accessibility within the LGBTQ etc. community. A lot of my training on how to code HTML has included making sure content is accessible, particularly for blind users or users otherwise unable to see the content.

Which has me wondering...

How else can websites be made accessible? (The other thing that springs right to mind is transcripts/subtitles on any content with audio and maybe taking steps to insure readability, like how on the HRC website you can make the font bigger easily on each page. But I feel like there are things I'm leaving out.)

So then I was wondering about how disability affects LGBT people in general and particularly their ability to reach resources. The HRC website talks a lot about protecting yourself from discrimination in health care, finding accepting health care providers, hospital visitation, things like that. It also talks extensively about HIV, which is obviously a big medical issue for LGBT people.

But then I was wondering... aren't LGBT people disproportionately affected by mental illness? (Or at least, they're at a higher-than-average risk of suicide, and maybe substance abuse? I would have to look up statistics, I don't have them off hand, but both of those seem familiar to me.) Do they have unique mental health needs, and are there organizations and resources to address those? I know that some therapists will list a specialty in, or at least openness to, helping LGBT clients, on webpages and provider search engines. But are community orgs doing anything to address mental health things? What would information, services, or resources specifically for mentally ill LGBT people look like, other than projects like It Gets Better?

And then going back to... How could that go on a website, in a way that's accessible to viewers coming from a wide variety of potentially difficult situations?

So that's what I'm thinking about. I'm curious about what resources for LGBTs with physical disabilities would look like, too, because I can't recall ever seeing anything of the kind, though of course it probably exists somewhere and I just haven't looked.

But think of the children!

This comes up every time a same-sex marriage law is being considered somewhere, and every time I just don't understand it: The idea that we need to protect school children from Teh Gay.

For example, these fliers from New York, by the National Organization for Marriage:





Here's what I don't understand, and perhaps someone can explain it to me... Why does it hurt a child's innocence to read a cute picture book where two people of the same gender live happily ever after? Or why is teaching "gay history" (whatever the hell that means - all I could think of was the Stonewall riots, which we learned in high school) a horrible thing? And same-sex sex ed - well, shouldn't LGBTQ students be included in sex ed? Otherwise, they're on their own to learn about safe sex.

So nothing there sounds like a threat to me. It sounds more like acknowledging that LGBTQ students exist and making an effort to include them and help other students understand them.

Maybe that's the problem? NOM thinks that if we continue ignoring them, allowing false information to spread, and mocking them they'll go away?

I remember when the Prop 8 trial was going on I was so frustrated, because the pro-gay marriage side had put together such a good argument, and the anti-gay marriage side just didn't even seem to be trying. If they were going to duke it out like that, I wanted both sides to do their best, so we could see the merits of both sides. I really want to give them the credit of having maybe some inkling of a legitimate argument, but all it seems to boil down every time to is hating gay people.