today

the water I’m swimming in

feels welcoming

I was on the verge of tears all day. Mostly unexpectedly. There was no way to prepare, emotionally, for the sudden prospect of first class citizenship. We thought this might happen. But when you've worked for so long at guarding against hope...

I made sure to watch Republican leaders responding to the DOMA and PROP8 decisions today with our son. He is almost twelve years old, and he understands the human heart in a way that they cannot, yet.

Looking over at my smart, compassionate, funny, sexy wife, I wonder if I can ever dismantle the airquotes around that word in my own heart.

I am grateful to all those whose work and love have helped bring us this far.

It Got Better

(Photo by Jamee C on Flickr)

I changed my mind.

Those of you who know me well will be unsurprised to learn that my original plan to let our Mr. D and his school friend play together at school while we all tried to ignore the larger picture left a bad taste in my mouth. (If you're coming in late and feeling like you need the backstory, it's over here.)

"Would you like me to try to talk to your friends' parents?" I asked Mr. D, not really thinking it through, just wanting to make sure he felt supported. "I think I would like you to," he said after a pause. Gulp.

"Even if that ends up being like stirring up a hornet's nest?" I asked him.

"I think it would be worth it," he said solemnly. "Just in case it might help. Even if the odds are really bad, like a hundred to one." (Math boy strikes again.)

I had no idea what the odds were, but I could tell that our boy had some kind of faith in my ability to move mountains.

So I took myself over to the mountain... the home of his friend.

I aimed for after dinner, but before bedtime. When Mr. D's young friend came to the door, I told him I'd like to speak to his parents. He told me that his parents were praying. "That's fine," I said, "I can pray, too. I'll just wait right here."

So I prayed on the porch, and eventually the indoor praying was done and the friend's father came to the door.

I quietly explained the reason for my visit and wondered if the father might have any idea as to why Mr. D's friend would think they couldn't be friends any more. The father had a few ideas, but none of them really made any sense to either of us. "Let me talk to him," said the father. "I think this might be a misunderstanding."

"I can tell Mr. D that there's nothing to worry about?"

"Yes, of course," said the father.

So.

I came home and told this story. Mr. D's face shone with happiness. "A misunderstanding!" he exclaimed joyfully, as if it were his new favorite word. "Maybe it was the mom who thought we shouldn't be friends, but she only told my friend, and not the father," he mused.

We don't know. We may never know. But no one is crying themselves to sleep at our house tonight, and that is a very good thing.

(Thank you all
for your continuing kindness and wisdom.)

(PS: Do you know the superstition
that if you happen to glance at a clock
when it's 9:09 or 12:12, it's good luck?
Well, we happened to look at the clock today (10-10-10)
at 10:10am. Seems like a LOT of luck!)

A Hard Day

(photo courtesy of Stuart Seeger, via Flickr)

Yesterday our son came home with terrible news.

A dear friend and fellow third grader had explained that his parents had said the boys couldn't be friends anymore.

Both boys are confused and sad. We don't know what precipitated this declaration, but based on our son's story and some other prior interactions, we suspect that homophobia may be at the root of it.

As a lesbian parent, I'd been warned that this day was coming. But nothing really prepares you for trying to explain the inexplicable to your wounded child.

I'll be reaching out to my Muslim and African-American friends today for their advice and support. There are too many of us who live in fear of the day our children will come home with a broken heart.

And we'll be talking with our boy about civil disobedience again... for as much as we want him to respect the adults in his life, we also want him to understand that he is ultimately in charge of who his friends are.

Mostly, though, we're going to listen with love and empathy as he tries to process this.

If you know our son and you're reading this, please don't mention it to him unless he brings it up. We think there's a chance that the boys will "forget" the nonsensical edict and continue to enjoy each other's company — at school, at least.

This is the kind of private situation I would typically refrain from blogging about. But in honor of the memory of Tyler Clementi, who should have been celebrating his first month as a college freshman today, I am speaking out.

Homophobia and other forms of prejudice are fueled by fear of the unknown. As much as I believe, as a Quaker, in the power of centered and prayerful silence, I also believe that we have a responsibility to speak our truths as we are able.

So this is my truth: we all deserve to feel safe, respected, and loved.

Please join me in taking a stand against racism, homophobia, sexism, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, and other forms of soul-chilling discrimination in your schools and communities. Talk with the people in your life about the challenges you've faced and the steps you've taken to overcome them. And hold a good thought for my son and his friend.

(See the good news update here!)

First Political Memory

"Framing the Shot"

During the 2004 US Presidential race, our Mr. D was regular attender at local political events. He was three years old and being dragged along, so he doesn’t remember that much about it. My teacher friend Sassafras Mama asks her students to think about their earliest political memories, and I wonder now if our trip to the National Equality March (NEM) last month might someday qualify as Mr. D’s first political memory.

"No Justice, No Peace"

As parents, our approach to the social issues of the day – racism, immigration, healthcare, poverty, taxes, equal rights for the LGBT community – has been to try to “get out in front” and provide our Mr. D with some context. We tell our stories as the time seems ripe. He knows that our taxes help pay his teachers’ salaries, and that racism is still something we’re all working on. We have debated about how explicit to be about gay and lesbian issues, since those terms are not much a part of his everyday life, but we’ve heard from other LGBTQ parents that second to fourth grade seem to be prime years for a kind of aggressive monitoring and discussion of difference amongst students, so the National Equality March seemed like a good way to introduce him to the ideas that underlie our current struggle.

We went with a bus full of high school students, so spirits were high from the outset. Once we arrived in our nation's capital, the crowds were enormous, loud, and impressive in both their relative youth and racial diversity. Having previously attended national marches as a young student activist, it was very different to attend as a parent and quasi-chaperone. When the traditional call-and-response chant of “What do we want?” “EQUAL RIGHTS!” When do we want ‘em?” “NOW!” went up, I substituted in “YESTERDAY!” at the end, explaining to the students near me that my t-shirt (from a march in the late 1980’s) was older than they were. We got home around 11pm, and Mr. D asked some good questions without ever complaining.


In the weeks after the March, the race for the NJ governorship tightened, with Corzine (D) and Christie’s (R) stances on gay marriage being one of the starkest differences between them. Suddenly, gay issues were up for discussion at every turn, and for the first time in his life, Mr. D heard an older kid speaking out about the “grossness” of all things gay. Our son was much better prepared to put comments like that in perspective, having had some conversations with us about homophobia and the people who oppose equal rights for lesbians and gays.

I wasn’t sure how taking an eight year old to the March would work out, but I am so glad now that our Mr. D has seen a loud, large crowd of lively supporters of LGBTQ rights. In the weeks before the National Equality March, I’d told him that although his Tama and I aren’t married in a way our government recognizes, we think we are on the right side of history and that in any case, he doesn’t need to worry about us. “How do you know we're on the right side of history?” he asked.

In the quiet dark of the bus ride home, I reminded him of his question and said, “Did you see all those people who came together today? That’s how I know, buddy.”

(It's taken me a long time to process
this momentous event; finally tonight,
awaiting the results of the NJ gubernatorial elections,
it seemed like the right time to pull it all together.)

What Would I Say

Image: Marlith, via Flickr

My friend Jenn (who is going to start blogging SOON, I hope) has been asked to speak at a gay-themed event this weekend, and asked me what I would say if asked to speak on the topic of gay parenting and/or marriage.

Of course my first thought was of our son. Mr. D has been Star of the Week at his school this week, an honor that rotates through the entire class, one student at a time. Mr. D was the final episode. As part of his star turn, he filled out a poster about himself ("I am super because I am funny, energetic, and funny") which he shared with the class in anticipation of their comments and questions. In the "who lives in my house" section of his presentation, Mr. D's two-mom status went virtually unremarked; it was his pet puppet dog "Mr. Flappybobs" who got most of the attention.

But just before bed the other night, he shared with my partner that kids occasionally think of her as some kind of "substitute." (His word, and theirs.) Telling his Tama this story, our boy was simultaneously annoyed and dismissive: "Of course you're not a substitute! You're just... a parent!"

He gets it. Most of his friends get it, too. As the white lesbian mom of a first-grader, I feel sometimes like I'm in a giant game of "Beat the Clock."

Can we teach our boy enough about the primacy of love before someone plays the, "Your moms aren't even married!" card? Can we teach our boy enough about the long shadow of discrimination before he has his first recognized encounter with racism? Has he already fully internalized the fundamental truth that girls can do anything?

~ ~ ~

If you are an American citizen, here's my question for you: When in your life have you felt fully American?

I remember the first time I felt that way. I was watching the US hockey team compete in the 1980 Olympics. Their improbable win pulled me in, and I felt part of something larger than myself. The next time was in 1987, at the second national March on Washington in support of gay rights. I held hands with my then-girlfriend in full view of the White House, and something shifted in me. I began to dream of a different world. In 2003, when the Supreme Court overturned Bowers v. Hardwick with its Lawrence v. Texas decision, there was a news story about businesses in San Francisco's Castro district flying the US flag for the first time, after having previously flown only the rainbow flag. One of my African-American friends waived an American flag for the first time when Barack Obama became the Democratic nominee.

It is hard to count the cost of exclusion. I can't tell you what the economic impact or wider social implications of legalizing gay marriage would be. (Although I'm sure people are studying just that.)

I can tell you that my partner, our son, and I are a family. That neither my partner nor I are a "substitute" in our son's life. And that something changes when we feel acknowledged for who we are. We pay first class taxes. We'd like to feel like first-class citizens.

Whatever the cost of disenfranchisement, it is too high. And I guess that's what I'd say.

Image: Elaron via Flickr

That's Weird

Background: Our son and his friends have just started to cross over into the exciting new social territory of self-determination. They can pick up the phone and call a friend; play date planning can start with them! Recently Mr. D's friend Mr. L did just this, resulting in the following interesting conversations:

Mr. L to Mr. D: Can you come over and play?
Mr. D to Mr. L: Yes, I think so, but you should talk to my mom (hands phone to Tama).

Tama to Mr. L: Hi, sweetie, thanks for calling us. I don't actually know what Mr. D's schedule is on that day, so could you call back and talk to his other mom later tonight.
Mr. L: Okay.

After both parties hung up, Mr. L turned to his mother, confused. "Why do I have to call back and talk to his mother? I just talked to his mother."

His mom responded, "Well sweetie, remember that in Mr. D's family there are two moms, and it sounds like his other mom is the one who knows what his plans for Friday are."

Mr. L: Oh, that's right. Two moms. And no dad at all?

His mom: Mr. D's family is Mr. D and his two moms.

Mr. L: That's weird. (long pause) Who yells at him?

Mr. L's mom of course immediately ran off to tell her husband.

Our other favorite kid response to Mr. D's two-mom status was the kid who said, "Man, you're lucky. You probably get TWO cookies after school."

Two moms = twice as many snowball targets.

Family

How would you describe your family's culture?

Those are the other two members of my family, Tama and Mr. D, right in the middle of a Ticklefest.

I'm not sure they even knew I was there. I don't know when Ticklefests got started, but they're now a mainstay of our post-dinner, pre-bedtime family time. Right up there with bike rides, wrestling matches, and board games.

We are big-time into fun. We like to make each other laugh. The laundry can wait a bit.

And here's a story that will give you some insight into the role music plays in our family life:

A year into owning an iPod (it was birthday present from those Ticklefesters up there... his idea, her money), I finally got the technology that enables me to play iPod music through the speakers in my car.

The day I got it all working I was juiced up, and after showing Mr. D how it works, exclaimed, "I'm so excited about my new toy!"

"Mommy." He looked at me sternly. "That's not a toy. That's a part of life."

Exactly. (If you haven't heard us sing together yet, there's a little audio clip in my full profile.)

So: we like challenges, and asking questions, and science experiments. We like lying on the earth and swimming in the ocean. We prefer our tents to most hotel rooms. We think maps and myths are cool.

Most of our friends live in families that are put together differently from ours. It rarely comes up. But for sure there are now a bunch of kindergartners and parents in this town who "get" two-mom families in an easy, organic way.

Still, we are sometimes frustrated by the larger structures that seek to deny what seems to us a simple and undeniable truth.

We are a family. And we're a part of life.

(Thanks to Mombian for getting the ball rolling;
I'm looking forward to reading about some other families!)

Opting Out

A few days ago I received an email reminder from a group organizer about a presentation at the Quaker center Pendle Hill. (Hope it rocked, Becky!) Yesterday I and the other email list members received an email that read, in part,

"please take my name off the [name of mailing list] list. I'm not connected to that world anymore and don't need or want to be on the mailing list. "

This has been sticking in my craw. It's hard for me to imagine resigning from an email list because I'm no longer connected to the world it represents. Unless it was a list that had to do with the developmental stages of our son, maybe. (I'm sure I did unsubscribe from some toddler-related listservs once Mr. D had made the shift into full-time boy.) But something like this, where a person opts to leave some piece of their identity behind (either queer or Quaker, I'm not sure which in this case), is hard for me to imagine. I think I am less about shedding skins and more about gradual accretion of affiliations. What think you?

(In other news, Mr. D had a great visit
with his MD cousins this past weekend.
Can photos be far behind?)

Rooted

Like many people, I came to Quakerism as a kind of spiritual refugee.

I grew up in the Presbyterian church, and was into the whole thing pretty seriously... Vacation Bible School, singing in the choir, mission trips with the youth group, etc. etc. I can still rattle off all the books of the Old Testament with very little effort.

But right about the time that I started kissing girls it became clear that my church of origin and I were going to have to part ways.

While in college, I bounced around a bit, sometimes attending the University chapel, sometimes the Unitarian church at the edge of campus. Maybe once or twice I made it to Quaker Meeting, and remember both times being somewhat unsettled by the silence. (I am not a naturally quiet person.) (My friends are chuckling at the depth of that understatement.)

When I moved to Philadelphia in the early 1990's, I felt a renewed sense of urgency about my on-again, off-again quest for a new religious community to call home, and since Philly is in many ways the cradle of American Quakerism, it makes sense that I would try Meeting once again.

Quaker Meetings, at least the ones I am familiar with, are communities of spiritual seekers, and because one of the central tenets of the Quaker faith is the belief that we are each in a direct and individual relationship with the Divine, people are wary about expressing an opinion about where anyone "should" be on their spiritual journey.

It is not unusual for someone to be an "attender" at an unprogrammed Monthly Meeting for years before taking the steps necessary to becoming a member, so I was in very good company as a long-term attender at Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting.

Eventually, someone suggested to me that I might want to sit in on a Meeting for Worship with attention to business, where, as the name suggests, the members of the meeting consider the business of the Meeting (requests for space rental, requests for clearness committees, budgets, planning special programs, whatever comes up). And it was my attendance at these Meetings that finally made it clear to me that I needed to move from being an attender to requesting membership in the Society of Friends.

What I saw, in those meetings, was an inspiring combination of individual ability in the form of some incredibly talented clerks, and a deep and rich tradition of corporate discernment. I can't remember now the specific topics at hand that evoked this response in me (although I'm pretty sure one of them was gay marriage), but here's what I do remember:

I remember feeling as if I should probably remain quiet during the meeting; since I wasn't yet a member, it seemed more appropriate for me to just be quiet and listen. I remember finding it difficult to be quiet because the issues at hand were so interesting, and the discussions so full of life. And then I remember feeling incredibly grateful and a little awed when, on several occasions, someone else spoke out of the silence in a way that absolutely resonated with what I had been thinking and feeling and working not to express.

When I hear the traditional Quaker phrase, "That Friend speaks my mind," it is these early moments in my life as a "convinced" Friend that I most often remember.

I felt such a sense of joy and peace, to not only be supported in my own individual spiritual journey, but to know that I would not be alone, that I would not have to be the "ball carrier," even on those things that mattered most to me, that I could trust in the work of the Spirit through people, and that the important work would go forward, no matter what.

I still feel that way. And I depend on my Quaker community – still predominantly that of my Meeting, but widening now to include Quakers to whom I am connected only through cyber space – to help keep me rooted, committed to a life that is increasingly Spirit-led. I feel that I live in a society that is sometimes punishingly secular and, in places, inappropriately religious; I need a faith community to help me work out what my path will look like going forward.

This is something the internet can help with, I think. No matter who you are, no matter what your experience, there IS someone else out there whose experience can speak to yours. Until recently I'd been thinking about this mostly in terms of those rare connections that can be hard to find in the physical world (e.g. hey, I can find all the other grownups who still love Lego now!), but now I'm realizing it doesn't only have to be about the hard-to-find connections. I can work towards having my cyberlife mirror my realworld life in all its dimensions, and so here I am, connecting with writers and Quakers. It's a good time to be alive.

(Thanks to the women of Sunday Scribblings
and the good folks at QuakerQuaker
for their continuing inspiration.
And congrats, Gautami!)

Camp Crush

I could have figured it out at Camp Comstock, I guess, but I didn't. Not having any frame of reference or the necessary language, I had no way to know that what I was feeling for the beautiful leggy counselor whose camp name was Moonbeam was a crush of the first order.

All I knew was that I wanted to follow her around like a puppy dog... and did, as much as I could. I can still feel the annoyance I felt about the existence of other campers; all I wanted was to be alone with Moonbeam and drink her in.

I didn't know yet that I was gay, didn't know that I would be taking on the challenge of winning the affection of an older woman a few more times in the years to come. But I did know that it was thrilling to try to get past her counselor persona and down to something closer to her true self.

I remember walking along the edge of the lake looking for stones with naturally occurring holes – lucky stones, according to camp lore – and trying desperately to match my pace to hers, while simultaneously trying to make it all seem natural and/or coincidental. When I managed to get her talking about her non-camp life, it felt like a break-through, and at one point, in recounting a story about her parents, she let her non-camp name slip. I immediately knew that this was yet another way for me to demonstrate my unusual maturity, and so said nothing about it, either to her or to the other girls. But at night, after lights out, I consoled myself with the knowledge that I was the only one who knew who she really was.

Of course I never saw her again, and it was only years later, in the light of retrospect, that I realized how kind she had been to me. I haven't looked at this picture in over twenty years, but I was pretty sure I still had it. I remember the day we finished the raft, a beautiful, clear day, with me insisting that I needed a picture of not just the raft, but her in front of it. Cracking jokes and getting her to agree.


I was so pleased to have made her smile.

(Thanks to the women of Sunday Scribblings
for their continuing inspiration.
And to she who was called Moonbeam.)

Imagined History 6 - Courage

(This post is nonfiction and part of my participation this month in the Creative Act project. My theme this week is Imagined History.)

Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice
at the end of the day saying "I will try again tomorrow."
~ Anonymous

When I came out at my very first job after college, it was a big deal. Not so much to me, or even to my co-workers, but to the wider world. Or it certainly felt so.

It's hard to explain in words how much the landscape around sexual orientation has changed since the mid-1980's when I was navigating it for the first time.

In those times, there were very few corporations that had extended health benefits to same-sex domestic partners. (I think there were some software companies that were mostly the exception proving the rule.) If you wanted protection, education was pretty much your only other option as industries go. And there was what felt like a one-to-one correspondence between people who were willing to say the word "gay" out loud and people who were gay. The tarring effect of the gay "brush" was so powerful that people wanting to avoid it were afraid to even say the word out loud.

And it was in this climate that I began my first job after college. I had been saying the words "gay" and "I" in the same sentence for about two years when I arrived at the University of Pennsylvania's Undergraduate Admissions Office. I already had the sense that the work of staying closeted was work that I didn't want, but at the same time I didn't know what to expect in my new environment. So I stayed quiet. And watched. And ultimately made my decision.

Years afterward, at my farewell party as I left Penn after working there for almost ten years, several of my colleagues caught me off guard by citing my unusual courage. I was quick to correct them. Because although it did take some courage on my part to come out and keep coming out, my work was made immeasurably easier by the fact that there was someone who had gone before me. What I watched, in those first few months as a waged employee, was how people treated Janine Wright, who had been hired the year before me and who I had quickly identified as gay. She probably came right out and told me. Just as she had other folks in the office. And as I watched, and saw her successfully bring her whole self to her work, I quickly made what felt like an easy decision: I wanted that, too. So I followed her lead.

A year later, Janine had moved onto other things, and although our paths crossed a few times afterwards, we didn't stay in touch. I probably never thanked her properly. And if she happened to stumble across this post, I think the odds are good that she wouldn't think of herself as being unusually courageous, either. She could probably tell the story of how events in her life had conspired to make the steps she took possible.

But maybe that's the nature of courage. It comes to find you, rather than the other way around. And if you're living into your gifts and leadings, it will sometimes "read" as courage to those around you.

I think about these kinds of things much more now that I'm a parent, and a living example – ready or not! – to a young person who is an absolute sponge for life. Guess I'll know I've done something right when someday, someone calls him courageous... while he's doing something just because it feels right.

(Many thanks to the folks at The Creative Act
for their inspiring challenge this month, and to
the women of Mama Says Om for their continuing inspiration.)

World AIDS Day

At my school, we start each day with an all-school assembly. I don't usually make announcements – it's more of a student thing – and when I do, they're usually of the "get your applications in" brand of nagging.

Today several students made announcements about World AIDS Day, and I was moved to speak about the need for our continuing attention to this ongoing humanitarian crisis as well.

I surprised myself by almost crying. Because I was remembering this:

The following press conference is the first public mention of AIDS in the Reagan White House. At that time 200 Americans had died of a new infectious disease. Reagan himself did not mention AIDS for three more years.

THE WHITE HOUSE

Office of the Press Secretary

PRESS BRIEFING BY LARRY SPEAKES

October 15, 1982

The Briefing Room

12:45pm EDT

Q: Larry, does the President have any reaction to the announcement ­ the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, that AIDS is now an epidemic and have over 600 cases?

MR. SPEAKES: What's AIDS?

Q: Over a third of them have died. It's known as "gay plague." (Laughter.) No, it is. I mean it's a pretty serious thing that one in every three people that get this have died. And I wondered if the President is aware of it?

MR. SPEAKES: I don't have it. Do you? (Laughter.)

Q: No, I don't.

MR. SPEAKES: You didn't answer my question.

Q: Well, I just wondered, does the President ­

MR. SPEAKES: How do you know? (Laughter.)

Q: In other words, the White House looks on this as a great joke?

MR. SPEAKES: No, I don't know anything about it, Lester.

Q: Does the President, does anyone in the White House know about this epidemic, Larry?

MR. SPEAKES: I don't think so. I don't think there's been any ­

Q: Nobody knows?

MR. SPEAKES: There has been no personal experience here, Lester.

Q: No, I mean, I thought you were keeping ­

MR. SPEAKES: I checked thoroughly with Dr. Ruge this morning and he's had no ­ (laughter) ­ no patients suffering from AIDS or whatever it is.

Q: The President doesn't have gay plague, is that what you're saying or what?

MR. SPEAKES: No, I didn't say that.

Q: Didn't say that?

MR. SPEAKES: I thought I heard you on the State Department over there. Why didn't you stay there? (Laughter.)

Q: Because I love you Larry, that's why (Laughter.)

MR. SPEAKES: Oh I see. Just don't put it in those terms, Lester. (Laughter.)

Q: Oh, I retract that.

MR. SPEAKES: I hope so.

Q: It's too late.

This transcript was quoted at the beginning of Jon Cohen's book, Shots in the Dark: The Wayward Search for an AIDS Vaccine, 2001.

Sunday Scribblings - Ackerman

"I don't want to be a passenger in my own life." (Diane Ackerman)

The prompt from Sunday Scribblings this week asks us to respond to this quote.

I decided not to be a passenger in my own life a long time ago, so for me to think about this means remembering those days when I was still in the stage of becoming the captain of my own ship.

When I was falling in love with a woman for the first time, I was young enough that I didn't truly understand what was happening. This lack of knowledge was both my saving and my downfall. It saved me because it kept me from fully experiencing the fear of what lay ahead. It doomed me because I didn't know enough to be obsessively secretive, and so was soon exposed to the world's condemnation and abuse.

My parents wanted to protect me, but were largely powerless to do so. And some of their ideas about protection would have "protected" me out of what was to become my life.

So I made a decision. Faced with the possible loss of my family of origin, or with the slow erosion of self that denying my identity would cause, I chose to follow my heart forward. Even if it mean losing the family who had been my safe harbor for my entire life leading up to that point.

As it turned out, I was one of the lucky ones. My family's understanding grew along with my own, and I got to keep both my birth family and the family I now make my life with. I have been truly blessed.

The only sense in which I am a passenger is the sense in which we all are. There is one boat, and we are all in it together.

Which leads me to one of my favorite quotes, by Jane Addams of Hull House fame: "The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain – until it is secure for all of us, and incorporated into the common good."

(Thanks to the women of Sunday Scribblings
for their continuing inspiration.)

The Mouth of My Babe

D and I went to a victory party for Chad Goerner tonight at Conte's. Since D's birth, I have been much more politically involved than I was before he arrived on the scene, and one of the results has been that I am now the mother of an unusually politically aware 4.75 yr. old. (During the last Presidential campaign, during a long string of Dean for America Meetups, D turned to me and said, with apparently mounting exasperation, "Is How'Dean gonna be dere?")

One of the other revelers tonight asked D wasn't it fun to win for a change, and on the car ride home he asked me why we don't usually win. I explained that part of the reason it feels like we don't win that much is that George Bush has been the President for D's whole life (!), and he has one of the most important jobs in our country, so he has a lot of power.

D: Why does he have so much power?
Me: Well, for one thing, everything he does is news. If you or I say something, we're just talking to each other, but if the President says something, there are a bunch of reporters there all the time, and they make a news story out of it and put it in the newspapers or on the television or radio. Yesterday he was saying that he didn't think girls should marry girls or boys marry boys, and even though lots of other people think that's ridiculous, it made the news. So that's some of his power.
D: And he has his own airplane, right?
Me: That's right.
D: Then he should have flown right home when the hurricane came!* He should not have stayed on his vacation. I wish George Bush was a two year old. I wish George Bush was a baby. Then nobody would listen to him, and nobody would vote for him. Or if he didn't have a name, then how could he tell people how to vote for him, that would be good. Or I wish he was on Pluto. Then he would freeze to death. No, that would kill him, that would be too mean. He's pretty bad, though. He's like, only 1 good, and Mr. Chad is infinity good. Maybe send him to the North Pole, or Antarctica. Which one is further away?
Me: Well, we're in the Northern Hemisphere, so Antarctica is further away.
D: Okay, send him to Antarctica, then. I'm going to marry a boy when I grow up if I want to, because George Bush is just wrong."

* Note: D's class at U-League this year had several late-addition children of displaced professors from New Orleans, so he really "gets" Katrina.

Gay Agenda Revealed!

I know, I'm not supposed to go public with these sorts of tribal secrets, but nobody really reads my blog, so I figure it's probably okay.

Here's the short version, courtesy of Beth Quinn:

Be left alone and not get the crap beaten out of us.

Do normal things, like get married and raise kids.

Hold down a good job and have health insurance for the whole family.

Grow old together and develop a bit of a paunch or big butt from a few too many marvelous dinners.

Stop having whom we share our bed with be of any interest whatsoever to anyone.

Urge those lovable homophobic pseudo-Christians to discover Jesus' true message.

Works for me.

Justice Prevails

"This is one of the happiest days of my life," said Lt. Hester from her home in Point Pleasant this morning. "I feel like David conquering Goliath."

In a stunning and thrilling reversal, the Ocean County Freeholders have this morning announced that they are changing their minds and will vote on Wednesday to permit Lt. Hester to extend her benefits to her partner.

Seven down. Thirteen to go.

Paula Vogel

Paula Vogel
Originally uploaded by butwait.

I missed my chance. Paula Vogel is a Pulitzer prize-winning playwright who teaches at Brown University. She was there when I was there. And she's that rare combination... a genius who really grooves on teaching. But despite the fact that I fell in love with theater at Brown, stage-managing more shows than anyone else on campus, I never took a class with Paula Vogel.

Why?

Because I was scared of her. Or, more accurately, scared of what she represented. For in addition to being a great and gifted teacher, Paula Vogel is gay. Back in the mid-80's, walking around campus, she carried herself with the indescribable air of someone who had been through hell and didn't give a damn what anyone thought of her. I wouldn't have been able to articulate any of this then, but the very fact of her different-ness unnerved me to my core. (I don't even think she was "out" as a lesbian when I was there, at least not in any way that made that information available to an undergraduate, but still...) At a time in my life when I was wrestling with who I was and would be, Paula Vogel came to stand for a choice I wasn't ready to make. Not yet. (It wasn't until my junior year that I used the words "we" and "gay" in the same sentence.)

I am making up for lost time today by listening to one of her lectures via Princeton's awesome Webmedia site. And I think that if I could cultivate a habit of running TOWARDS the things that scare me, it might be really good for me. Except for the times when the thing scaring me is an angry grizzly bear, of course. But maybe even then.

We won.

A little over a year ago, in the run-up to the national general election, I was talking with a friend about how frustrating it was to watch politicians cash in on anti-gay rhetoric. "I'm past just wanting my full civil rights," I said. "I want us to get organized; if we had our act together people wouldn't just stop this stuff, they would be afraid of ticking us off!"

Well, today the future looks a little bit brighter. Following reports in the media and from the American Family Association (insert gagging noise here) that Ford Motor Company was responding to anti-gay pressure and pulling back its previous ad buys in publications targeting gay audiences, John Aravosis over at Americablog trained his spotlight on the issue. He and other members of the liberal blogosphere then coordinated a response, and today, we won.

This is what I want. To not even have to fight, because people slowly but surely realize that business models driven by narrow-minded bigotry won't work.

Wondering what to get me for Christmas? Send John Aravosis a little something on my behalf. (John Aravosis, PO Box 21831, Wash, DC 20009. Make checks payable to "John Aravosis.") The guy is doing great work.

NJ AIDS Walk 2005, Part II

Team DFA
Originally uploaded by butwait.

When I arrived at Skelly Field on Rutgers’ campus, I thought of my mom at Douglass and my dad at Ursinus, back in the day. I wondered if they’d be able to imagine the spot from memory if I described it to them. Was the small pond to the left of our route nicknamed “the Passion Puddle” even back then? When I signed up for the walk I thought I might try to walk with Jeff – and Gigi, the third DFA’er – but Terri and Mr. D and I spent the night before the walk at Stacy & [she whose name is no longer spoken] & JT’s house because our air conditioning was on the fritz. I hadn’t taken the time to go online, and so had not connected with Jeff or Gigi. I’d never met either of them in person, only emailed back and forth online, so I didn’t have cell phone numbers or anything, and as I drove down College Farm Road and saw the huge crowd of people milling about in a staging area, any hopes I had of finding them quickly dwindled down to nothing.

I was immediately struck by the celebratory feel of the gathering. Despite the wilting heat and the seriousness of our cause, it felt more like a festival than anything else. There was a huge stage from which the organizers periodically made housekeeping announcements, and in between announcements there was a live band playing upbeat, “you can do it” music. This was very different from the “Silence = Death” ACT UP activism of earlier decades. People were walking in a spirit of support, and the common ground was a given. The walkers seemed generally willing to have the fighting of the disease – and the societal forces that work against those struggling with it – remain an implied and understood backdrop. The other thing that made an immediate impression on me as I tried to figure out where I was supposed to sign in was how predominantly brown and black the assembled walkers were. It made perfect sense, thinking about how communities of color have been disproportionately affected by the AIDS epidemic, but since living in Philadelphia I don’t spend that much time in settings where white people are in the minority. Sometimes I miss it.

As I stood near a merchandise table, reminding myself that the last thing in the world I need is another t-shirt, a voice came from the side. “Hey, you’re Shelley!” It was Gigi, who amidst the hundreds of walkers had somehow spotted and recognized me from the picture I’d posted on my NJ AIDS Walk fundraising website. And with her was Jeff! I was so happy to connect with my fellow teammates, and when the walk kicked off a few minutes later, we stepped off side by side.

Jeff and Gigi and I immediately fell into a comfortable companionship… a little odd, given that we’d never laid eyes on each other before, but nice. We traded book recommendations while scoping out the other teams. We talked about our first political memories and our experiences around AIDS. A Rutgers grad himself, Jeff smoothly shifted into tour guide mode and regaled us with tales of Rutgers traditions and news. We tried not to talk about the heat. (On the drive to the walk site, I heard an ever-so-helpful radio weatherperson breathlessly exclaim “Highs today will be in the mid-90’s, but with the heat index it’ll feel more like the 100’s!” Who pays these people?) Clearly concerned about the safety of the walkers, the walk organizers had arranged for plenty of water to be available along the route; although it was stored in buckets of ice, the intense heat meant that it only got vaguely cool, and that only for a few minutes. When a fellow walker blithely tossed aside an empty water bottle, we reminisced about the “litter bug” commercials of our youth and wondered whether “these kids today” would even recognize the phrase. Much of our walk route led us along sidewalks or pathways; when we walked on roads, it felt a little bit like walking on a cookie sheet. In an oven.

Still, I didn’t see anyone fall by the wayside. The route was clearly marked, there were volunteer marshalls everywhere, and it seemed pretty easy to just get caught up in the tide and swept along. There were a few large teams (ETS and J&J were the ones who seemed to have the most participants), but most seemed to be smaller, more intimate groupings. I saw families walking together, some with small children who were being pushed along in strollers. There were some grandparental-looking folks walking. A few groups of young women who looked like they might be sorority sisters. And while the group did thin out a bit from the initially massed formation at the beginning of the walk, the column of participants remained impressively dense throughout the entire walk; I would love to know how many people there were!

The walk was tiring, but surrounded by all that determination and good will, we just kept on trucking. I poured most of my walk water over my head, and I can still remember the sound of the collective “ahhhhhh” that went up from the walkers when a rare breeze blew down the lines of walkers. Towards the end, conversation died out a bit as we concentrated on the task at hand, and we periodically catalogued our growing list of aches and pains. (Reminded me of the kids’ song, “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes,” except that it went in the opposite order.) Finally, just as we were starting to wonder about our collective sanity, things started to look familiar and we realized we were almost back at the staging area. And then we were done.

The one aspect of pre-walk preparation that didn’t get covered in all the advice I received concerned my rings. About 3K into the walk, I noticed that my hands were swelling up in the heat, and managed to pull two of my three rings off. The last one was clearly on for the duration; my fingers finally got back to normal about eight hours after the walk. The ring I couldn’t remove was the one that Terri and I designed together, a celebration of the relationship whose beginning almost thirteen years ago was marked by a pounding heart and an AIDS test. Aching for all the right reasons, I slipped my ring back on with a silent prayer of thanksgiving.

NJ AIDS Walk 2005

NJ AIDS Walk 2005
Originally uploaded by butwait.

I had my first and last blood test for HIV in 1992. At the beginning of a relationship that felt like it might be going somewhere, I wanted to make sure to start things out right. To my mind, that included both of us committing to taking the test. I had to talk my doctor into it, because to an external observer, there was no reason for me to be taking this test; my identity as a monogomous lesbian put me in one of the lowest known risk groups. At the time, amidst all the talk in fundamentalist circles about AIDS being a punishment from God, the joke in the lesbian community was, “If AIDS is a punishment from God, then lesbians are God’s chosen people!”

But I prevailed, and on a crisp winter morning walked to my doctor’s office in West Philly to have my blood drawn. The results would come back negative. I knew they would. And my doctor’s office was only six blocks from my third-story Cedar Avenue walk up. So why was my heart pounding?

So much has changed since then. A different century, a different world, a different life. Same partner, though. And still the spectre of AIDS, menacing families and communities. The power of AIDS to make my heart pound stayed with me. When Ronald Reagan passed away and the news was full of rosy-tinged remembrances of all he had done for our country, I seethed. I was suddenly flooded with memories of my college years, during which Ronald Reagan remained silent on the subject of AIDS for years while the death toll inexorably rose. The daily undertow of fear and sadness that was the aftermath of the September 11th attacks reminded me of nothing else so much as that time in the mid-80s, when everyone I knew was waiting to find out which of their friends had been sentenced to die. AIDS is now less of a death sentence than it once was, at least for some people – e.g. those fortunate enough to live in America and have healthcare coverage – but its power to disrupt and destroy remains undeniable.

The last time I had truly engaged the AIDS epidemic in a personal way, was when I was living in Philadelphia and singing in the Anna Crusis Women’s Choir. One spring, a small group of us sang at an AIDS Hospice. It wasn’t a very large facility, but every inch of it felt sacred. The residents of the neighborhood had initially fought tooth and nail to prevent the hospice from opening, but it had since become a kind of accepted oasis. The patients, all in the end stages of AIDS-related diseases, were busy with the hard work of making peace and letting go. Not everyone was interested in having a bunch of strangers seranade them. In one room, though, we discovered that the Gershwin song in our repertoire was an old favorite of the man in whose room we were singing it. He struggled to a sitting position and quietly sang along as tears streamed down all our faces. In the intervening years, friends of mine had participated in events designed to raise funds and awareness in the fight against AIDS. Hearing about the upcoming NJ AIDS Walk made me wonder… was it my turn again?

As anyone who knows me could tell you, I am not a particularly fitness-oriented person. In grade school, I was truly talented – at sit-ups. While working at Penn, I played softball on a C-league team, C-league being Penn’s euphemism for “no skill required.” Since then, pretty much nothing.

Although I do come from good walking stock – if you visit my parents, good luck keeping up with them as they embark on their daily constitutional! And I live in an eminently walkable town. I heard about the NJ AIDS Walk at about the same time that DFA (Democracy for America) was calling on its members to give back to their communities in June; the more I thought about it, the more the walk moved into “I should do this” territory. When I heard about fellow NJ DFA’er Jeff Gardner’s commitment to make the walk, and then learned that the graduation ceremonies at Rutgers Preparatory School were later the same day and just minutes away from the walk site, the stars seemed aligned. I logged on to the awnj.org site and signed up.

So it was that I found myself soliciting my more athletic friends and family members for advice about how to prepare for the NJ AIDS Walk. They really came through for me. Stretch your achilles tendons and your hamstrings. Drink lots of fluid in the days leading up to the walk, but don’t over-hydrate on the day itself. Smear Vaseline all over your feet, taking special care not to neglect your toes. Check, check, check.

As the day of the walk approached, I was relatively confident of my ability to do it physically. It’s just a 10K, after all. But my heart was pounding again. I’d only ever seen pictures of events like this. And heard or read my friends’ accounts. As I’d been talking with family and friends and soliciting their donations, the reality of the enormity of the cause started to sink in. Not knowing what to expect, I set a fundraising goal of $200… my friends and family blew through it in just a few days. Every donation added to my sense of responsibility.