Mormonsandgays.org

In high school, I had several Mormon friends.  In high school, no one was out as a gay person. At least not in my small social circle. Now, of course, almost everyone I was truly friends with in high school, including the male friend I went to prom with, has come out as gay, including myself.  Funny how that works out.

One of my Mormon high school friends was a "best friend." We talked every day, had lunch together, and ultimately, I attended the non-religious portion of her wedding celebration, as non-Mormons weren't allowed to witness the actual ceremony.  I say this just to highlight that we were close.

At this point, I haven't seen this friend in...probably 8 years? Maybe more.   All of our interaction now is via facebook, and from this, I know that she has 4 children, lives on the west coast, and fervently supported Mitt Romney.  I have not come out to her, but if you look at my facebook page these days, it's very, very obvious that I am gay.

Today, I posted a link on facebook to this picture of an older, interracial gay couple looking overjoyed together at the prospect of being able to get married in Washington state, after over 40 years together.

 This friend commented on the picture, saying something fairly off-color, I think, but I won't quote her here on the off chance that she somehow comes across this very gay blog. The point is that she clearly saw that I posted that picture, and that I was in support of what the picture represents--marriage equality. I commented back in a light-hearted way, in an attempt to not let her weird comment sour the post. Keepin' it light, and all that.

An hour later, she posts a link to this website: Mormonsandgays.org. With no comment. Just a link.

She has NEVER posted anything about gay-ness on her page, and has never before commented on any of the many gay things I post regularly.  But she posts this today. And of course I clicked through.

And it made me sad, what I read. Here's a sample:

Attraction to those of the same sex, however, should not be viewed as a disease or illness. We must not judge anyone for the feelings they experience. Members of the Church who have same-sex attractions, but don’t act on them, can continue to enjoy full fellowship in the church, which includes holding the priesthood, carrying out callings, and attending the temple. Unlike in times past, the Church does not necessarily advise those with same-sex attraction to
marry those of the opposite sex. Same-sex attraction itself is not a sin, but yielding to it is. However, through repentance Jesus Christ will offer forgiveness.

And it goes on, and on, from there.

My reaction to this is confusion and sadness and anger and indignation.  Does this religious organization actually think that having a pastel-hued website for gay people, in which they calmly and lovingly say that it's okay if you're gay, as long as you live your entire life without ever having a sexual relationship, because you can't have sex unless your married, and oh, by the way, marriage is only for a man and a woman, but you can do it, we know you can, because this is your mortal test, and marrying someone of the same sex is morally wrong, and we know it's hard, but don't you worry, we love you!--do they really think that this is supposed to be a comfort??

Really!?? <<insert "Really!!???!! with Seth and Amy" gif here>>

I am baffled, and incensed, and very curious if gay Mormons read that website and are left with a sense of relief and support. I don't see how, unless they somehow fail to notice that between the pretty, well-written lines is an upsetting, depressing message of rejection and support of inequality.

I wonder what my high school friend thinks of this message. I assume that she supports it. I hope that I am wrong.

I would be very curious to hear others' reactions to this--feel free to comment.

Breakdown

It's 1 am on Saturday night. I'm alone in my apartment. And I just had a bit of an emotional breakdown. Just for a few minutes. But it happened. And I think I needed it.

There's a lot going on right now.  Most pressing is that in the next 14 days I have to either let my current landlord know I'll be leaving here for at least another year, or that I'm peace-ing out by October 31. Most stressful is that I have the biggest paper of my life due in less than 3 months.  Most sad is that as I write this my mother is in Connecticut, sitting at the bedside of her older sister, who is dying.

I went and looked at an apartment today, seeing what my options are in my quest to move out of my current neighborhood, which is....loud. Too loud for me, at least.  I unexpectedly have a chance to move, which I thought I wouldn't have until at least a year from now, and so I set out to see if maybe I actually can.  The apartment that I saw today was...okay.  I think it's maybe a little bigger than my current place. Maybe. But it's definitely not as nice.  It would be quieter (probably) than my current place. But it's not as nice of an apartment.  This didn't really hit me until I was back here and realized---I have a NICE apartment. It's small, and this building is kind of dirty, and I really do hate this street, but.... My actual apartment? These 4 walls and huge bathroom that I get to call my own? Really. Fucking. Nice.  This was never so clear to me as it was after seeing that other apartment today.

Huh.

So I'm sitting here, dazedly realizing that I probably am going to stay here for another year, as much as I bemoan my neighbors, and this street, and this neighborhood, and even though I just sold my car today so that I would have the money to move (also so that I would no longer have the headache of paying to have a car in New York)...and I start wandering around my little space, thinking about the things that I can do that I've been putting off, that I should really just DO if I'm gonna be here awhile. I looked at empty shelf space that could be filled with clutter-turned-thing-in-its-proper-place, and absent-mindedly went through one such pile.  I found a photo envelope with pictures in it that I'd forgotten I'd had printed before I moved in.  Pictures of my parents and my brother.  I had never taken them out of the envelope, had let them get buried in a pile of office supplies.  I looked at each of them for a long time, and felt...suddenly, and strongly, and all at once, sad, lost, alone, regretful.

I realized that I miss them. That I would like to see them, as much as I often feel that I don’t, really.  I marveled at how happy my parents look in that picture from their trip to New York a few years ago. How much my brother and I look alike--how that is still true, despite the years and years of pain and misunderstanding between us.  I cried for how far away from them I feel, how far away from them I am, how that’s exactly what I intended, and how it turns out it actually hurts a bit, to get what you want.  I felt a deep and sharp loss that startled me, and made me think of my mother, spending the weekend with her older sister, her sister who is slowly, yet quickly, dying of cancer.  How this is the…fifth (?) loss like this that she has endured. And how I can only guess at the pain she is in, and how I might never really know what she is going through, and how sad I am for her.  And I cried for my mother, and the fact that it took this long for me to realize how sad I am for her, losing another person she loves.  And I cried that she won’t let me in to her real life, her emotional life...and how I learned from her.

And then my tears were about all of my own fears and doubts and worries, that I apparently don’t let myself really feel as often as I think I do. Because it all came slamming through tonight.  And it hurts.  Life hurts.

I imagine you know what I mean.

What the fuck, world?

I've been feeling diffusely angry and discontent lately. There are many reasons for these feelings, not the least of which is that I'm on a deadline to finish my dissertation by December 6th. 

But today? Today these feelings of  utter despondence with this world were compounded by getting cat-called and harassed twice by male strangers in 3 minutes as I walked home from work today.  As I make the slow trudge home in 90 degree heat-- hungry, needing to pee, and feeling the early pangs of what apparently is some sort of pinched nerve in my lower back-- on two separate occasions, WITHIN THE SPAN OF THREE MINUTES, two different black men think that, likely because I am a black woman, they can express to me their opinion that I am attractive to them in some way. 

The first one walked right up next to me to inform me that I looked "very nice" and then kept calling things after me after I sped up and walked away from him.  The second man is a guy that seems to think we're friends because I walk past him often on my way to and from the subway.  I think this man has often informed me that he "likes my hairstyle" whenever I'm walking to the subway on a Friday night with my hair in it's nice, lesbian-y faux-hawk.  His comments without fail make me annoyed that I can't try to look nice without annoying assholes providing unsolicited commentary.  Today, however, as I walk by, he interrupts his conversation with his fellow loiterers to yell out at me "Hey! Lookin' good girl!" And then, as I refuse to acknowledge that I'm hearing him, "Black girl! Black girl! White girl! White girl! Black girl!" and so on.  I mean, first of all, what?? Second of all, ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? 

Why is this the kind of bullshit that I have to put up with, most notably on days when I wear a dress or skirt.  I am left significantly more alone if I'm wearing pants.  It didn't matter that I was clearly tired and hot and minding my own business and DO NOT KNOW THESE PEOPLE. I was wearing a skirt and am female and one of few black people in this neighborhood. So of COURSE any other black man in the vicinity has every right to yell at me on the street.

I HATE IT.

And even before this bullshit happened, I was thinking what I've been thinking a lot lately: Not a single soul on this planet was popped into this world with their consent.  We are all here completely without our own choosing.  None of us had any choice to be born or not. And yet here we all are, plopped out into this crowded, hot mess of humanity, and having to find a way to make it through.  And as we try and try to survive, and do the right thing, and contribute to the world in some way, we are bombarded by idiots and victimized and stolen from and discriminated against.

It fucking sucks guys. And we all deserve better.

So much to say

Hi folks.

I know it's been awhile.  There's just....been...so...much.  A lot of it really good. Elle and I are going strong.  But she started a new job, and I started trying to actually finish my dissertation,and there's been drama and stress and heartache in both of lives and we are both, to put it simply...

SO FUCKING TIRED.

But there's a lot I want to write about, like the shock and pain and sadness of realizing what it's really like to be both out of and in the closet, how interesting it is for me to notice how very different (hopefully in a good way) I am in a relationship now, at 30, then I was in my twenties, and what it's like, and how hard it is-- for me at least-- to really let someone love me.  Apparently that's a hard one for me, folks, though I do feel lucky that that's my issue. In that I now have someone in my life who is challenging me to actually do that, to actually LET LOVE IN.

So, hopefully I'll get some of that written soon.  But I am here, and I'll be back.

In the meantime, I've been curious for awhile now to know who you, my lovely readers, are.  A few of you have commented already (hi Harper, Megan, MakingSpace!), but I know there are more of you out there, quietly reading (which I get, that tends to be my blog presence too).  I'd love to know who more of you are, and what led you to my little corner of the gay blogosphere. Say hi, won't you?

<3

A month of texts with my mother

The following is approximately a months worth of texts from my mother. I'm clearing out my phone and need to get rid of this loooooooong conversation chain, but as I went to delete them, I couldn't bear to not record the absurdity of the way we communicate for posterity. [Feel free to skip this one, dear readers!]

On Cynthia Nixon's "choice to be gay"

This post is a few weeks late, but oh well. Let's just go with it.

On January 19, the Times posted a profile of Cynthia Nixon.  Here's an excerpt from the article:

“I totally reject [the idea that her change in sexual orientation is somehow a lie],” she said heatedly. “I gave a speech recently, an empowerment speech to a gay audience, and it included the line ‘I’ve been straight and I’ve been gay, and gay is better.’ And they tried to get me to change it, because they said it implies that homosexuality can be a choice. And for me, it is a choice. I understand that for many people it’s not, but for me it’s a choice, and you don’t get to define my gayness for me. A certain section of our community is very concerned that it not be seen as a choice, because if it’s a choice, then we could opt out. I say it doesn’t matter if we flew here or we swam here, it matters that we are here and we are one group and let us stop trying to make a litmus test for who is considered gay and who is not.” Her face was red and her arms were waving. “As you can tell,” she said, “I am very annoyed about this issue. Why can’t it be a choice? Why is that any less legitimate? It seems we’re just ceding this point to bigots who are demanding it, and I don’t think that they should define the terms of the debate. I also feel like people think I was walking around in a cloud and didn’t realize I was gay, which I find really offensive. I find it offensive to me, but I also find it offensive to all the men I’ve been out with.”

A few weeks later, a friend of mine directed my attention to Nixon's comments, and I said to her, "Wow, I've actually said that exact thing before. 'Gay is better.' It really is! I totally understand where she's coming from."

Then, not a day later, another friend directed me to an article by Lindsay Miller, written in response to all of the criticism Nixon received after the Times piece ran.  I literally got chills reading her words.  So much of what she wrote has either literally passed through my lips in this past year as I have worked to explain my change in sexuality to my friends, old and new, or so closely parallels my own thoughts about sexuality and where I fit in to it all that I was...stunned. And moved.  I really understand where Lindsay Miller is coming from.  To wit:

So what difference does it make whether or not I call myself bisexual? My story and my life are too complicated to be summed up and dismissed in that one little word. What is crucial to me is that I chose the relationship I’m in today, and I chose to align myself, personally and politically, with the lesbian community. If I’m a bisexual, I’m a bisexual who is only interested in dating or sleeping with women. I’m a bisexual who thinks John Barrowman is insanely beautiful, but has zero interest in putting any part of my body on any part of his body. I’m a bisexual who would rather lick a clitoris than literally any other activity in the world. I’m a bisexual who is practically indistinguishable from a great big lesbian. 

I’m not saying that homosexuality is a choice for everyone. Obviously, it isn’t. But for those of us whose sexual attraction is fluid, or shifting, or somewhere in the middle, or directed towards people who are not unambiguously men or women, devoting ourselves exclusively to same-sex partners can be a choice—a choice many of us make joyfully and with our eyes wide open. What’s so scary and infuriating about that?

Preach, Lindsay. Preach.

Here's a link to the article again: My Love, My Choice: On Cynthia Nixon and Why Gay is (Sometimes) Better. That's how much I really hope you read it. It's long. And it's really good. And it's kind of....well... me.

Pink is for girls.

In the early 1900s, pink was considered a color for boys.  Wikipedia quotes an article from a 1918 trade publication as saying; “The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink.

This is the first paragraph of a really great post on a really great blog I've discovered, Undercover in the Suburbs.

I added the bold lettering myself, just to further highlight the absurdity of the way our society constructs and makes shit up, specifically around gender identity and roles. Pink was seen as a stronger, "more decided" color than blue, and was therefore assigned to boys, since, of course, they were assumed to be stronger than girls. (Of course we call bullshit there.) But, the thing that really gets my goat is that, somewhere along the line, however things got flipped around--making pink the "girly" color--with the switch, the perception of pink being "stronger" vanished, likely because it was now associated with being a girl, and therefore, by definition, signified inferiority and daintiness.

True story: when I was younger, I actively rejected my affinity for pink because of its association in our society with "girliness" which I, as a teenager, equated with being overlooked and invalidated.  I often felt invalidated and overlooked due to my gender as it was, and didn't want to make it even harder to be taken seriously by having PINK STUFF--oh, the horror.  Sad, right? Yeah.  A part of me still feels that way, and now, at 30, I carefully choose how much pink to allow myself. Le sigh.

I'll stop here, and direct you to go read the original post, both because it is well written, and because my brain is still fuzzy from flu-ness.

Go forth and be feminists, my friends.

June 2011--Baby's first Pride

NYC Pride.

I personally think of Pride as an opportunity for all queer people, regardless of how they identify, to take to the streets of NYC, or whatever city they're in, and declare their pride at being whoever they fucking are, regardless of who they prefer to fuck. It's a beautiful thing. It was a beautiful weekend.

I was fortunate enough, at the end of June 2011, to participate in my first Pride, just as I began to fully come into my own as a queer person, and just as NY State passed marriage equality for all people, regardless of sexual orientation, on June 24, 2011.  It was an exciting, thrilling time.

I celebrated at and around The Stonewall Inn on the night of June 24, feeling overjoyed that the state that I newly called home had finally done the right thing.  I saw so many beautiful, shining, happy faces that night on the streets of New York City, and it was surprisingly very affirming for me (though I didn't know I was missing, and needing, the affirmation) to know that, in this new chapter of my life that I was just beginning, I would still have the option to marry another person--a woman--if I choose to, sometime down the line.

That night is one of my favorite memories, and probably always will be.

I was also lucky enough to have found, by the time Pride rolled around, some amazing queer friends to experience the weekend with.  I participated in the Dyke March, I (almost) made it to the Pride March (there was too much margarita drinking to be done that day), and experienced the Stiletto Pride Party as a VIP pass holder.

I cannot overstate what a good decision it is, my lovelies, to purchase a VIP pass to the Stiletto Pride Party.

Purchase a VIP pass to the Stiletto Pride Party.

That party was off. the. fucking. hook.

Now, Maggie C's Stiletto party in general really deserves a post of its own, but for now I'll just say that the most gorgeous lesbians you will see in NYC are usually at Stiletto, even on a slow night, so just imagine, if you will, the kinds of women that were found in the VIP room of the Stiletto Pride Party.

Omg. O.M.G.

It was amazing. It was perfect. It was an open bar.

Of course, seeing as this party was THE place to BE SEEN, 10.0 was there, along with her cadre of beautiful power lesbians.  Meh. This part was not so fun.

But once she left? Good times.

Near the end of Stiletto Pride, I met one of the sexiest women I have ever met.  We'll call her "Hot Cop" because, well...she's super hot. And she's a cop. (My creative juices are really flowing today. Be jealous.)

We actually started talking because I was trying to find someone for my friend, but then I realized that, well, she was amazingly hot and I wanted a piece of that, please and thank you. Besides, my friend wasn't interested so.....

Cut to: HC and I dancing and making out furiously for at least an hour. I get her number, tell her I will be calling her, and she leaves because she has to go do her super bad-ass cop job the next morning. I left that party with swollen lips and in complete awe.

It was a great first Pride.