Thanksgiving Reflections - 2017

It has been ten years since my first Thanksgiving post.  I want to say "Thank you" to my readers who have been along with me for all those years. Much has changed in the last decade.  I met my husband, I reconciled with my children, I lost my parents (actually, my dad passed away eleven years ago), and I gained five grandchildren. I also have become fully comfortable with who I am.  It seems with each passing Thanksgiving, however, that even as I remember all the good in my life I think more and more about those who are no longer with me: grandparents, parents, my sister, and many others - I learned this past week that a friend from my magical teen years at Brantingham Lake left us.   The top image in a photo of a pencil drawing of my parents home of 30 years in Virginia Beach where we had so many Thanksgiving.  It was a Christmas gift to them and was done by a local artist based on a photo that we gave her.  When my mother passed away, the framed drawing came back to me.  It now hangs adjacent to photos of my parents on their wedding day. 

On a happier note and looking forward, the husband and I are hosting one of his nieces and her husband (they have hosted us in the past) and four friends )the table is set as shown above.   We will be joined by our niece's daughter and her husband and new baby for dessert along with another couple.  I've already baked three pies - my grandmother's pumpkin pie recipe, pecan and an apple/raspberry pie.  The husband has been busy as well.  It should be a fun afternoon.  On Saturday we will get together with my two daughter and the five grandchildren - it will be another fun time that we are looking forward to.

I wish a Happy Thanksgiving to all my Facebook friends and my readers who celebrate the holiday -  thanks for visiting the blog.  May all enjoy this special day of family and friends.

Thanksgiving Eve Reflections

The dining area set for dinner with the husband and six friends tomorrow

Fourteen years ago I had my first Thanksgiving after I had come out and moved to an apartment from the family home.  While I had dinner on Thanksgiving with my late parents in their home in Virginia Beach along with some of my siblings, my children were not present and, truth be told, it was perhaps the worse Thanksgiving of my lifetime.  I knew very few people after having been abandoned by most of friends from the straight phase of my life and depression was my near constant companion.  Fast forward to today and I have the life I wanted back then but never expected to have: a loving husband, great relationships with my children and grandchildren, and an involved and active social life.

In contrast to that bleak and depressed Thanksgiving in 2002, tomorrow the husband I will host dinner for six friends and then afterward we will all go down the street to the home of neighbors for a "pie contest " - I baked a pie to take - with even more friends.  On Saturday, the daughters and grandchildren will come to the house.  I never could have envisioned the happiness and stability that I now have even though my therapist always lectured me that it would if only I would be patient and let go of the self-pity.

I don't mean to sound like I am bragging or self-satisfied.  Rather, my message to those coming out later in life as I did who may be experiencing the sadness and heartache I did, hang in there.  Time is on your side and in almost all cases your children, if you have them, will come around and support you and love you.  Let them know that you are there for them and always will be.  With time, they will figure it all out in time.  As far as rebuilding a social circle, that too can happen with time and effort.  Get involved in LGBT organizations, the arts, politics, or all of the foregoing and you will make new friends.  Some may even turn out to be some of the best friends you will ever have, It seems like an eternity at the time, but you too can move on and live a happy and authentic life.  Find some happiness this Thanksgiving.

As always, feel free to call or e-mail me if you feel the need.  I feel blessed to be able to help others on their journey.

What Would You Do If Your Child Was Gay?

In follow up on a theme from yesterday, we have arrived in perhaps the most difficult time of the year for many in the LGBT community as they face either family acceptance or rejection.  Many of our friends who have experienced the latter or have no family close by, have gone on to create their own "family" and have moved on emotionally - one group of friends is having a large Thanksgiving dinner today (see image at left) at a friend's home that we affectionately call "the country club."  A new video from YouTube channel Culture Beats asks people from around the world, "what would you do if your child was gay?"  Some responses are encouraging, others are not.  As is always the case, religion is seemingly the evil that fuels anti-gay animus.  Towleroad looks at the video findings:

The people interviewed are both young and old and come from all different corners of the world.

Many indicated they would support their children if they were gay while others shared more disturbing reactions. A woman from Austria remarked, “You can’t do anything about it because it is not a decision he makes. He was born with this kind of orientation.” Meanwhile, a woman from the United Arab Emirates had almost the exact opposite reaction. “I will kill him,” she said.

An Irish couple touted their country’s recent nationwide referendum on same-sex marriage, saying they were very proud to be the first nation to pass marriage equality by a popular vote. Of having a gay son, the man from Ireland said, “I’d like to understand how he feels…I would wish that he could find happiness.”

A woman from the former Soviet republic of Georgia seemed to get it: “You cannot change him. He’ll live his life so let him live his life.” And, perhaps most surprisingly, a woman from Russia urged tolerance, saying, “God say that we can’t judge.”

One Iranian man, however, lamented the possibility of having a gay child, saying, “I would probably be sad…But maybe I would accept it in the end. You cannot get rid of your children. But I would not be happy, no.” And for a woman from Azerbaijan, she would “be very upset” and would consult a doctor to “see why he’s gay”–if it’s “his hormones, then it’s from God. If it’s because of society, then I will help him,” she said.

 My take away?  A world without religion would be a far, far better place.

"We Won't Have a Faggot in Our House" - Child Abuse in the Name of God

Thanksgiving is supposed to be about giving thanks and spending time with family and friends.  Yet for a large number of LGBT youth, today is a day of loneliness and fending to survive on the streets.  LGBT youth make up up to 40% of homeless youths.  What drives them to the streets?  Their "godly Christian" parents - conservative Jews and Muslims also throw away their children - who prefer to cling to the myths authored by ignorant herders from two millennia ago rather than accept and love their own children.  In my view, such parents should be prosecuted for criminal child abuse.  They certainly deserve no respect or even civil treatment.  Carl Siciliano who runs the Ali Forney Center in New York City has a guest post at Joe Jervis' blog that is worth a read on the dire predicament of so many of these discarded youths. Here are highlights:

"We won't have a faggot in our house."

Those are the words M heard after his mother died of cancer. He was 16. His mom had loved and accepted him. But not his aunt and uncle. They took in his little brother, but left M to fend for himself in the streets.

M lived in a town in Florida that had no youth shelter. He and about 20 other homeless kids slept on the floor of an unlocked building in the town park. He used his knapsack with his school books and his toothbrush and deodorant inside as his pillow. Those were the good nights. The bad nights were when the police chased them out. On those nights he tried to sleep in an abandoned lot, hidden in the weeds. Those nights his allergies tormented him; his eyes and throat swelled, and he struggled to breath.

No matter what kind of night he had, M went to school every day. He did it to honor the memory of his mom, who said she would kick his butt in the afterlife if he didn't get an education. Despite the soul-shattering hardships he endured, he graduated at 18.

"As soon as I get the chance, I'm going to kill you, you fucking faggot."

Those are the words one of M's friends heard when he walked through the courtyard into the youth shelter where most of the beds for New York City's homeless youths are located. Despite local and federal regulations that mandate that youth shelters be in homelike environments with no more than 20 beds, NYC has crowded hundreds of kids into that shelter. Many LGBT kids report being bashed and harassed by the numerous gang members who stay there. M came to New York City after he graduated from high school, and tried to stay at there. But after being attacked too many times he ended up sleeping in the subways.

I met M the day he moved into one of the Ali Forney Center's homelike shelters after sleeping in the subways for six months. That was a really good day for M. He has had some wonderful days since; like the day he was accepted into college, and the day he got hired for his job counseling other teens. Those were good days for the Ali Forney Center as well, as have the been the joyful days in recent months when over 40 of our youths in our new job training program have been hired.

But we have had some really bad days. Since the federal sequestration and it's vast cuts we have lost about $1 Million in government funding. I have been struggling to pay our rents and our food bills, and keep our programs going. I don't sleep in a vacant lot, but I have had more than my share of sleepless nights worrying about the future of the Ali Forney Center.

But in the end I trust we will go forward. Our work of housing and protecting homeless LGBT youths must survive and grow. Too many of the LGBT kids we care for have endured cruelty, violence and contempt in their homes and in other shelters. Over 1,300 kids a year from across our country rely on the Ali Forney Center to provide a home where they are protected and accepted for who they are. I trust that our work will go on, because I trust in the goodness of our community.

If you want to give donations to charities this time of year, think about making a donation to the Ali Forney Center.   You can do that here. You can also make donations on PayPal by using this email: mramos@aliforneycenter.org.  Another charity dear to my heart is the George D. and Marion Phelps Hamar HRBOR Scholarship that I started to help LGBT students needing assistance for a college education.  You can make a donation here.  Please do NOT give you donations to "charities" or churches that promote discrimination and bigotry. 

click image to enlarge

Native Americans - The Other Side of Thanksgiving

Putting aside the fact that the first Thanksgiving took place at Berkeley Plantation here in Virginia on December 4, 1619, rather than in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, there is another whole side of Thanksgiving that most will not reflect on today: that of Native Americans.  While popular culture and school room drawings this time of year reflect on the assistance that Native Americans gave to the Massachusetts colonists, nothing is said about the fact that those same colonists would soon launch a campaign of genocide and land theft against the same Native Americans that helped them survive.  Worse yet, that genocide would eventually become national policy for the new American nation.  Along with this agenda was the campaign against the two spirited Native Americans whom the godly Christians viewed as an abomination.  A piece in Gay Star News looks at this other side of what Thanksgiving means.  Here are highlights:

[F]or many Native Americans, Thanksgiving is not a cause of celebration, but rather a national day of mourning, remembering the real significance of the first Thanksgiving in 1621 as a symbol of persecution and genocide of Native Americans and the long history of bloodshed with European settlers.

And in a supposedly more enlightened, if not ‘post-racial’, you would think that television images of whites doing ‘war whoops’ and ‘tomahawk chops’, coming across your screen were buried and long gone with its troubled era of Native American relations in this country.

I am also reminded of my Two-Spirit Native American brothers and sisters who struggle with their families and tribes not approving of their sexual identities and gender expressions as many of us do with our families and faith communities.

Homophobia is not indigenous to Native American culture. Rather, it is one of the many devastating effects of colonization and Christian missionaries that today Two-Spirits may be respected within one tribe yet ostracized in another.

‘Homophobia was taught to us as a component of Western education and religion,’ Navajo anthropologist Wesley Thomas has written.

‘We were presented with an entirely new set of taboos, which did not correspond to our own models and which focused on sexual behavior rather than the intricate roles Two-Spirit people played. As a result of this misrepresentation, our nations no longer accepted us as they once had.’

Traditionally, Two-Spirits symbolized Native Americans’ acceptance and celebration of diverse gender expressions and sexual identities.

They were revered as inherently sacred because they possessed and manifested both feminine and masculine spiritual qualities that were believed to bestow upon them a ‘universal knowledge’ and special spiritual connectedness with the Great Spirit.

The term Two-Spirits was coined in the early 1990s. Prior to this, Different indigenous peoples had specific words for Two-Spirits. In Lakota they were wíŋkte and nádleehé in Navajo. Today, the term has come to include all lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex Native Americans.

The Pilgrims, who sought refuge here in America from religious persecution in their homeland, were right in their dogged pursuit of religious liberty. But their actual practice of religious liberty came at the expense of the civil and sexual rights of Native Americans.

And the Pilgrims’ animus toward homosexuals not only impacted Native American culture, but it also shaped Puritan law and theology.

Because the Pilgrims’ fervor for religious liberty was devoid of an ethic of accountability, they acted without moral liability and legal justice. They brought about the genocide of a people, a historical amnesia of the event, and an annual national celebration of Thanksgiving for their arrival.

As we get into the holiday spirit, let us remember the whole story of the arrival of the Pilgrims and other European settlers to the New World.

It is in the spirit of our connected struggles against discrimination that we can all stand on a solid rock that rests on a multicultural foundation for a true and honest Thanksgiving.

And in so doing, it helps us to remember, respect, mourn and give thanks to the struggles not only our LGBTI foremothers and forefathers endured, but also the ongoing struggle our Native American Two-Spirit brothers and sisters face everyday – and particularly on Thanksgiving Day.

Sadly, wherever they went be it the Americas, China, Japan or Africa, the Christian missionaries took their hatred and bigotry against LGBT individuals with them and caused the elimination  of long cultural acceptance of same sex love.  Just as is the case today, for the "godly folk," religious freedom has always meant depriving others of their rights and freedoms.  Selfishness and hypocrisy are two words that spring to mind. 

Holiday Weekend Images

UPDATED:  The dinner party was a great success.  It was the two of us, two other gay couples and four country club women.  Would that all Virginians were as progressive and accepting as our friends.

This weekend has been a social whirlwind, starting with Thanksgiving Day through today when the boyfriend and I are hosting a dinner party for a dear friend before she heads south to the Florida Keys for the winter.  We enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner at the Paradise Ocean Club at Ft. Monroe.  Since then we've been to events/dinner at the Hampton Yacht Club, the James  River Country Club, friends' homes and tonight dinner at home with 8 guests.  Here are a few photos:

View from out table at the Paradise Ocean Club

My youngest daughter and her family and yours truly

My granddaughter waiting for Thanksgiving Dinner to start

The table set and decorated for dinner tonight

I hope readers have had a wonderful weekend as well.

Wing Nuts Go Berserk Over Inclusion of "Kinky Boots" in Macy's Parade

As the boyfriend and I watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade yesterday while starting to decorate the house for the holidays, when the cast from Kinky Boots began to perform, I couldn't help but wonder how quickly the Christofascists would erupt in spittle and convulsions.  Apparently, not long at all.  World Net Daily, a/k/a Wing Nut Daily, carried the expected spittle flecked screeds lamenting the end of "family values" and attacking New York City and NBC as near demonic.   The self-centeredness of these people who seek to force conformity with their fear and hate based views never ceases to amaze me.  The New Civil Rights Movement looks at the eruption of batshitery that the Kinky Boots performance unleashed amongst the Bible thumpers.  Here are excerpts:

Conservatives just couldn’t enjoy our national day of thanks without going berserk over some event that doesn’t fit their tightly-wound vision of what America is “supposed” to be. At yesterday’s 87th annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, the cast of the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical “Kinky Boots” performed, ruining the entire day for the nation’s right wing nuts.

Despite being created by Cyndi Lauper and Harvey Fierstein, despite winning six Tony Awards, conservatives screamed about “family values!” and “the children!,” whose lives, apparently now will be devastated.

WorldNetDaily, that bastion of birtherism that thinks Obama is gay, wrote that “Kinky Boots” “left a lot of viewers scratching their heads, shaking their heads, and wondering what happened to the family friendly tradition.”

One commenter there complained, “Just when I thought NYC and NBC couldn’t get any lower. Next year they will have LGBT Poll dancers. This is despicable and disgusting beyond belief. NBC, you should be ashamed. But when you have people like Ed Shultz and Andrea Mitchell you have no shame.”

Another, “Our country is morally bankrupt! To allow such a mockery of everything sacred is despicable! If Macy’s allowed this, there should not be one person show up for the parade next year. Those are sick people who need help… not to be paraded in front of children and the whole world. It’s an embarrassment for America of which I am very ashamed.”

Click the link above to see more of the batshitery.  Meanwhile, what is truly despicable and disgusting beyond belief is the venomous hatred the "godly folk" have for so much of humanity.  WWJD?

Happy Thanksgiving - Please Be Mindful of the Less Fortunate

The boyfriend (we plan to marry in the Spring) and I will have dinner today with his dad, one of his brothers, my youngest daughter, her husband, and my granddaughter and step-granddaughter at a restaurant located at the former officers' club at Fort Monroe, now a National Monument.  It's a cold but beautiful day and the view across Chesapeake Bay to the Atlantic Ocean should be spectacular.  We decided to foregoing dinner at home after last years extravaganza with over 25 guests.  We have much to be thankful for and plan to enjoy the day.

Sadly, many in the LGBT community are not as lucky and I recall depression filled Thanksgiving in the first years after coming out.  My message to those in the dark place I was once in, please stay positive and know that time is on your side and that things will get better.  That said, there are some who are truly in need: homeless LGBT youth who have been discarded by the selfish, self-centered families which cannot deal with the "embarrassment" of having a gay child or family members.  Many of these toxic parents and families cloak themselves in feigned piety and "godliness" as justification for their despicable actions.  A guest post at Joe My God reminds of the needs of these homeless LGBT youth.  Here's the post:

We deal with a twofold tragedy every day at the Ali Forney Center. The first part is that hundreds of thousands of parents drive their children from their homes because they cannot accept having an LGBT child. The second part is that fewer than one tenth of homeless kids in this country can access a youth shelter bed. Hundreds of thousands of terrified, devastated kids are out on the streets tonight with nowhere safe to lay their heads.

Recently I met a girl in Minneapolis who told me about being out on the streets at 16 in the frozen Minnesota winter. She found a bus driver who would allow her to ride the city bus all night. But one night when he was off duty and she didn't have the bus fare, she shivered in the snow, fearing she would die in the cold. Another boy told me of being thrown out of his home in a suburb of Atlanta by a homophobic aunt. Having nowhere to go, he spent three days and nights in the woods near his house, with no food or water, crying and terrified and wanting to die. Finally he staggered out onto a sidewalk and collapsed of dehydration and was hospitalized.

Many kids turn to prostitution, having no other way to support themselves. Deon became homeless in Houston when he was 15. He also rode the buses all night, and would shower in the morning at a friend's house before heading to school. One night he was propositioned while waiting for the bus, and was offered money for sex. Deeply exhausted from his long nights on the bus, he reluctantly accepted. He told me that he felt so ashamed and humiliated by the experience, that he spent over an hour in the shower at his friends house that morning. He was weeping uncontrollably and didn't want anyone to see him like that. Deon lives with us now. Yesterday he told me that at his job at H&M clothing store, he has a portion of his income taken out of each paycheck. He uses this money to sponsor an orphan in Zimbabwe. He was beaming with pride when he told me this. I am more proud of him than I know how to say.

At the Ali Forney Center we respond to LGBT kids in the most horrifying situations imaginable. We respond with food and shelter, with job training and medical care. We work with kids from all over the country. Last year we cared for over 1,000 kids. As important as it is to house and feed these kids, it is just as important to affirm their basic human worth as LGBT people. It is important to show that they belong to our community, that they are valued and loved.

This Thanksgiving I am thankful for the kids who live with us, that they can have the opportunity to be healed of their terrible wounds. And I am thankful for the community of support that allows us to do this beautiful work. I am especially thankful to Joe and the JoeMyGod community for standing by us year after year. I am especially thankful for the amazing support we received last year when Hurricane Sandy destroyed our drop-in center.

I ask you to consider supporting our kids at this time. We have 200 kids on the waiting list for our shelters tonight, and have to rely on the support of the community in this time of sequestration and government cutbacks. Donations can be sent to us by mail at: Ali Forney Center, 224 West 35th Street, 15th Floor, New York, NY 10001. Donations can be made online here.

Facilities at Ali Forney Center

A Guide To Stores That Won’t Ruin Their Workers’ Thanksgivings

Greed - both at the corporate level and individual level - is destroying Thanksgiving.   I personally plan to boycott retailers that are open today and depriving their employees of a family holiday and day off from work.  Instead, I will focus my purchase this holiday season at retailers who respect their employees and that are closed today.  Think Progress has a compilation of stores to avoid and stores that deserve your patronage.  

Here are retailers to boycott as well as those deserving of your support:

Click image to enlarge

Here is more from Think Progress:

Radio Shack told ThinkProgress that it will be closed “In honor of Thanksgiving and the time-honored tradition of gathering with family and friends.” Apple’s CEO Tim Cook reportedly reversed some stores’ decisions to open because he felt that it’s important for workers to be with their families.

Other stores say their workers are excited to work on the holiday. But at Kmart, which will open the earliest starting at 6 a.m. on Thursday, workers have reported being denied their requests to take the day off. Other workers may be volunteering to work because they get so few hours normally and need the extra money. Some may not have the vacation days to take the holiday, as the United States is the only advanced country that doesn’t guarantee all workers get paid vacation time.

But the stores that open early may not even see a benefit. They risk a big consumer backlash, with half of consumers saying they disapprove of the early hours. Two different polls have found that the vast majority don’t plan to shop on the holiday anyway. Shoppers and workers have also been petitioning stores to stay closed and give their employees a day off.

A Father's Beautiful Letter to His Gay Son

Thanksgiving is only three days away and for many in the LGBT community it's a time of pain and hurt arising from parental and family rejection.  Rejection fueled most often by the parents and family members who cling to the ignorant writing of Bronze Age herders rather than exercise thought and analysis to discern that the Bible is fraught with inconsistencies and much that is ugly and down right horrible.  As longer term readers know, I was lucky and when I came out in mid-life, my parents accepted me without reservation (in honor of my late parents, I endowed a scholarship in their name for LGBT graduating high school students).  But others have been lucky too.  A piece in The New Civil Rights Movement reflects on one such happy story:

A father overheard his son making plans to come out to him. The son apparently was talking with his boyfriend.

The dad, who deserves a “Father of the Year” award, wrote him a letter to save him the trouble of coming out.

“Nate,” the dad writes, “I overheard your phone conversation with Mike last night about your plans to come out to me. The only thing I need you to plan is to bring home orange juice and bread after class. We are out, like you now.”
“I’ve known you were gay since you were six, I’ve loved you since you were born.”
“P.S. Your mom and I think you and Mike make a cute couple.”

We thought this was pretty cool, and tried to find the letter’s origins. Turns out, this was published back in March, but since we hadn’t seen it, we thought perhaps you might not have either.

The letter was published most recently here, but also earlier on Buzzfeed and The Huffington Post, and on FCKH8.com.

Kudos to this father.  He exemplifies good parenting unlike the "godly folk" who reject their own children because they are gay.   For those not as lucky as Nate in the letter discussed, please keep them in your thoughts and help them keep hope alive that someday their parents/families will have the scales peeled off their eyes and see the real truth: we are all equally human and all deserving of love.