Stories of Pride: Love Calls Back

I’ve told the story before, but it bears repeating because I was one of the lucky ones, and I know it, and I remember it, every single time a person comes out.

When I said those words to my mother and father … I’m gay … I didn’t know how they’d be received. As far as I knew then, and I know differently now, there were no gay men or women in my family before me, so I didn’t know what my mom and dad would say.

Well, I knew what my mom would say, because moms always know, but it was my dad that was the unknown. And when I said those words, he said to me:

I love you very much.

Now, it took him a hot minute to get used to the idea, and we had discussions about LGBTQ rights ever since, but he chose the very best words possible for that moment and I will never forget them.

At this month’s Tony Awards, a new video from PFLAG and Verizon—entitled Love Calls Back—aired that tells the story of four LGBTQ people who came out to their family and were rejected. Only now the  straight [cisgender] family members realize that they handled the situation wrong, and it’s their turn to call their loved ones to tell them they love them:

I love that last message:

“It’s never too late to call back for love.”

LGBTQ Nation

No More Parades! Thanks to The Gays!

Up there in Spencer, North Carolina, and the neighboring town of Salisbury, they hold the Holiday Caravan Parade every Thanksgiving. It was a tradition; but that’s all over now because the organizers have cancelled this year’s parade because of The Gays.

In 2017, parade organizers banned a float sponsored by AVITA Pharmacy because the company invited members of the local PFLAG [Parents and friends of Lesbians and Gays] chapter to ride along with them. Donna Brown Odrosky, the local PFLAG president, said that organizers objected to their rainbow paraphernalia and black PFLAG t-shirts.

The organizers claimed the pharmacy violated the rules by allowing another group to advertise their message with “signage, apparel, fliers” without prior approval, and Odrosky accused them of discrimination, as did many in the community, and thousands from around the world. And so now the parade is off; it will no longer be held, and the organizers are blaming the response they got when they decided to ban the LGBTQ group for the end of the parade.

See, they’d rather shut down a 58-year tradition than allow everyone to march, well, at least The Gays.

The parade organizers website says:

“[S]ince last year’s parade the all-volunteer board members have received hate mail, emails, and threats to protest the 2018 parade to not only their personal email addresses, home addresses, social media but also to their place of employment. These board members have dedicated their entire lives and heart to this event each and every year, some of them for over 30 and 40 years!”

PFLAG had their own statement:

“Since the incident in November 2017, PFLAG has asked for, and welcomed a dialogue with the Holiday Caravan board, to no avail. It has always been our vision at Salisbury Rowan PFLAG to have ‘a world where diversity is celebrated and all people are respected and affirmed inclusive of their sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression.’ …We look forward to working with a future parade committee whose mission and vision more closely aligns with PFLAG, the cities of Salisbury and Spencer, and event sponsors.”

I keep going back to that old folkloric tale of the first Thanksgiving, when Native Americans and Pilgrims came together in peace and harmony, in an attempt to understand one another, to work with one another, to live side-by-side.

I don’t think the organizers of this parade remember that, so maybe, one day, someone with a more open mind and a more accepting heart will decide to revive the parade. It’s sad to see a tradition end because of Hate.

I mean, it’s a parade! What can you possibly hate about a parade?

LGBTQ Nation

Random Musings

Wow, Valentine's Day, AKA Made-up Holiday. 
I hate when the world makes you feel like you must be in love, and you must say 'I love you,' and you must buy the card, the candy, the flowers, the dinner.....
Carlos and i do that every day, so we get to take today off.

Now, let's start with some funny, and by funny I mean that Idiot Known As Donald Trump getting smacked down .......again:

What's the deal with the beautiful Billy Brown?

Last season he became the new cop on Dexter and then he was killed off this season.

Then, I find him on The Following a couple of weeks back and a week or so ago he gets stabbed in the neck and dies.

Can't someone hire him to play a character that lives?

Is that asking too much?

Jeanne Manford, the founder of PFLAG who died last month at the age of 92 [read my post HERE] will be awarded the 2012 Presidential Citizens Medal, the nation’s second-highest civilian honor, in a ceremony on February 15.

President Obama said, via press release: "It is my distinguished honor to award these individuals the 2012 Citizens Medal for their commitment to public service. Their selflessness and courage inspire us all to look for opportunities to better serve our communities and our country."

A quite deserving honor for an amazing woman.

Now, onto anoth'a moth'a ..... Cissy Houston.

She apparently was mighty pissed off that Clive Davis would throw his annual pre-Grammy party this year after her daughter Whitney died last year just before the party.
She called it the epitome of bad taste, and yet ....
She's all over TV the anniversary of Whitney's death hawking the book she 'wrote' about her daughter and her struggles with drugs and their really-not-so-good relationship.
What's good for the goose, Cissy....
Take your own advice and stop talking.

So, we all know I am an awards show whore, and one of the reasons happens to be married to The Good Wife star Julianna Margulies.

Her husband, Keith Lieberthal is one of the most beautiful men ever, and even a brief glimpse of him on the red carpet, or sitting by her side, warrants a DVR playback, stop and pause. He’s the kind of guy who's so gorgeous, that if you saw him in public, you'd stop, look back at him, while pretending to look at something else so your husband doesn't get jealous--and we all know who I mean by that--and the just stare.

Seriously. Even now I can't stop staring.

Plus, he's also a Harvard educated lawyer. Hot, smart and straight.

Two outta three ain't bad.

That FauxNews, they really know how to fact check over there.

In one of their stories about the importance of, um, opposite-sex marriage, they posted a lovely photo of a bride and groom atop the Empire State Building, but had they taken a nanosecond to check out the photo--who's to say it's even a real photo?--they might have learned that the lovely couple is Stephanie Figarelle and Lela McArthur, the first same-sex couple to get married at the Empire State Building.

So in the last  season of Desperate Housewives Max and Charles Carver played the Scavo twins, Preston and Porter. They were 'cute' but, yeah, that was about it.

Now, that's them, back in Teen Wolf and I'm thinking, had they looked like that on the DH those housewives would have had something else to be desperate about.
M'kay.

So, Marco Rubio, rising GOP star. 

You were given the plum assignment of giving to Republican response to President Obama's State of the Union message and yet all anyone remembers is how thirsty you were.

Way to represent.

No, seriously, you totally represented the GOP and their position.

On water.

Vladimir Uruimagov, coach of a London 2012 gold medal-winner, says gay rights activists with a vendetta against masculinity are behind plans to cut wrestling from the Olympic program:

“If they expel wrestling now, that means that gays will soon run the whole world.”

Um, Vlad? If The Gays are gonna run the whole world dontcha think we’d wanna watch sweaty men in tight-fitting onesies wrestle?

Just sayin’.

And now, the Tweet of the Week, in response to the Pope deciding it was 'just too hard':

A Mother Has Passed: RIP Jeanne Manford

I still remember the day my mother asked me that question: "Are you gay?” And, not ready to come out, still fearing what might happen to me if I did, I got angry, very angry. I stopped seeing my parents for a couple of months after that because I really couldn’t look my mother in the eye.

It took me a year or so, but when I finally answered that question, “Yes, I’m gay”, my mother didn’t get angry back; she didn’t remind me of how I’d treated her when she asked. She simply said “I love you.”

And after that we did discuss her question and my response, and I told her that, for me, and lots of gay men and women, we need to come out when we want to come out, not when we’re sort of forced and she said she understood. She said she had just wanted me to know that it didn’t matter to her, that it had never mattered to her, and that's just one of the millions of reasons that, even with her gone, I will always love my mother.

Jeanne Manford was that kind of mother, too.

Way, way back, in April 1972, Jeanne and her husband were sitting at home when they got a phone call saying that their son, Morty had been beaten. Morty was gay, and a gay activist, and he'd been attacked while handing out flyers at a political gathering in New York.

Jeanne was outraged; she wrote a letter of protest to the New York Post in which she identified herself as the mother of a gay protester, complained about the lack of police action, and declared "I have a homosexual son and I love him."

And she didn't stop there. Jeanne gave radio interviews and TV interviews all around the country in the weeks following Morty's attack and then on June 25, she and Morty marched together in the Christopher Street Liberation Day Parade. Jeanne Manford carried a sign that read: "Parents of Gays Unite in Support for Our Children".

In that instant, Jeanne Manford became the mother many of us already had, and the mother many of us wanted, and the mother all of us deserve.

Jeanne Manford, who created POG [Parents of Gays] which morphed into PFLAG [Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays], passed away this week at the age of 92. She had been in declining health for some time, according to her daughter, Suzanne Swan.

PFLAG National Executive Director Jody Huckaby: 

"Jeanne was one of the fiercest fighters in the battle for acceptance and equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. It is truly humbling to imagine in 1972 – just 40 years ago – a simple schoolteacher started this movement of family and ally support, without benefit of any of the technology that today makes a grassroots movement so easy to organize. No Internet. No cellphones. Just a deep love for her son and a sign reading “Parents of Gays: Unite in Support for Our Children .... All of us--people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and straight allies alike – owe Jeanne our gratitude. We are all beneficiaries of her courage. Jeanne Manford proved the power of a single person to transform the world. She paved the way for us to speak out for what is right, uniting the unique parent, family, and ally voice with the voice of LGBT people everywhere."

In addition to her daughter, Manford is survived by her son-in-law, a granddaughter and three great-granddaughters. Jeanne and her late husband, Jules, also had two sons: Charles, who died in 1966, and Morty, who died in 1992.

"She is known to thousands of people as the mother of the straight ally movement, but to me, she was my mother."--Susan Swan

And what a wonderful mother she must have been.

RIP Jeanne.

And thank you. And thank you, too, Mom.

Think Progress

The Advocate

Stand Up Please; One Of Our Straight Allies Has Passed

She was a housewife; she was a mother. She was raising her children like all mothers do. But then, in 1974, back in the days when being gay was considered a mental illness, Adele Starr's son came out, and everything changed.

For the better.

See, even though, back in the 70s, and before that, and, sadly, still today, parents often blame themselves when a son or daughter comes out as gay, or even bisexual or transgender. There's a lot of speculating about what was done 'wrong' to make their child so very different. But Adele Starr wasn't having that.

Instead, Adele Starr founded a new group in Los Angeles, a support group, for parents of gay children, friends of gay people. Her group became known as PFLAG [Parents and Friends of Lesbians And Gays] and she was that group's first national president.

Adele Starr, that mother for all gay men and women whose own mothers pushed them away, died last Friday night in Santa Monica at age ninety.

It was just two years after her son came out to her that Adele Starr founded the group, then known as Parent FLAG, and now as PFLAG, a gay rights and acceptance organization. And Adele worked hard for the group, even speaking on the steps of the US Capitol, way back in 1979, at a march for gay rights. Two years later she became PFLAG's first national president, serving in that position until 1986. After that she continued to work for gay rights, marriage rights, equal rights.

We have our gay heroes, whose names we all remember, but sometimes we forget our straight allies who have marched with us and fought with us, along the way.

So, take just a moment, today, to bid farewell to Adele Starr and thank her for being a mother to those of us who may have lost ours the day we said those three words.

"Mom, I'm gay."

Adele Starr Obituary