A Tale Of Two Restaurants

Last week, out actor Drew Droege and his date were dining at El Compadre in Los Angeles before heading out to a show and felt the sting of homophobia with their meal:

“I went on a really nice date. With a really sad, disgusting, hateful moment in the middle. We had our arms around each other and kissed a few times. A manager approached our table and said something to the [effect] of, ‘You guys can’t do that here. This is a family restaurant.’”

Droege asked if anyone in the restaurant had complained, but the manager snapped back:

“I don’t care if you’re the president of the United States, we don’t allow your behavior here.”

Droege was stunned by those words, and took it to social media:

“The chilling and pointed tone of ‘we’re a family restaurant.’ ‘We don’t allow your behavior here.’ Ever wonder why gay people often seem nervous? Why do we walk faster? Why do we work so hard to please others and be good little citizens in this world?”

After Droege’s post, which tagged El Compadre, the restaurant posted a statement on Instagram, which they later deleted:

“We have read all of your comments and concerns, and we are looking into what happened Monday night at our Echo Park location. While we work to learn more, we want to make it clear we stand with the LGBTQ community and hold no space for intolerance, hate, or unjust treatment of our beloved guests regardless of race, ethnicity, age, gender, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, disability, or status. We were built off of the core value to do everything with love, and we will do what it takes to continue to warmly welcome any and every guest into a safe community. Please give us time to seek out what happened, gather more information, and take appropriate action. We will update you soon.”

But by Wednesday night, I guess the restaurant had investigated and posted this message:

Droege says he has never been “asked not to show love in public”  though, like all of us, he’s dealt with homophobia all his life; still, he thought that a display of affection in Los Angeles was “a safe thing to do.” And he received all kinds of support since coming forward with the story from actors Matt Bomer, Tuc Watkins, and Leslie Grossman, writer Michael Ausiello, and others who posted messages of support which makes Droege feel a little better:

“Given all this support, I do feel safer and supported. This was one a**hole. This was not the entire restaurant. This is not our city.”

On the other hand … in the middle of America …

In September, award-winning restauranteur Chef Dave Heide closed Liliana’s Restaurant, his popular New Orleans-style restaurant in Madison, Wisconsin. But fear not, the restaurant opened back up this month, after Heidi rebranded the establishment in honor of his recently transitioned son.

Ollie’s Madison is now open for business. In addition to the newly renamed Ollie’s Madison, Heide also owns Saint Charles Station and the non-profit caterer Little John’s, all which are named for his children. Heide says that although COVID changed the restaurant business and inspired the reboot, the primary reason to rebuild was his son Ollie:

“My kiddo doesn’t go by the name that’s on the restaurant anymore. They don’t use that name. They go by a different name. As a dad who loves their kid, to have their deadname on my shirt every day when I come home and their deadname on their restaurant … that’s part of it.”

Heide reopened the restaurant on Ollie’s first birthday, after announcing his son’s transition on social media in December 2020:

“I wanted everyone to meet someone you already know. I introduce you to Ollie Joy Heide. You may have known them as Liliana in the past, but now you may call them Ollie. I am so proud of this human. I have known them as Lily for their whole life, and I look forward to many adventures with this amazing human and having a million new memories with them. I love you Ollie, no matter your name, your gender, or your pronouns. You will always be my kiddo that I am proud of and love.”

And that’s how restaurants are done, and that’s especially how parenting is done.

Welcome out, Ollie.

El Compadre  Ollie's Madison

Bobservations

The other day Carlos was meandering through the house muttering to himself, and I, as a concerned and loving husband asked:

“What the hell is the matter?”

All love. And he replies:

“Nothing. Just doing my chores to earn my keep.”

“Your ‘keep’?”

“Yes, I clean the bathroom and then I am entitled to a meal.”

“Oh, you get a meal, do you? Did you forget I’m going to be gone tonight for work, and you’d be cooking your own dinner?”

And the howler monkey appeared:

“WHAT??!!?? I have to clean the bathroom AND make my own dinner?”

“Yes, and then clean the kitchen when you’re done.”

The muttering continued until I left.

Clearly when a cat gets the idea of Separation of Church and State, people will understand it, too? Oh, who am I kidding.

On January 28, Fifty Bandz, a 21-year-old Black transgender woman, was shot to death in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Her death is at least the fifth violent death of a transgender person in the first month of 2021.

When does this end; when do our trans brothers and sisters feel safe being themselves in America? When?

In the Are There NO New Ideas file comes the story that The Woodsman director Nicole Kassell is set direct a reboot of The Wizard of Oz for New Line cinema.

I guess that film classic that has been around for over eighty years isn’t good enough.

So, y’all know that Armie Hammer has been stripped of the very prestigious Husband-In-My-Head honor for his creepy cannibalism, skin carving, abusive sexual hijinks. But, as luck would have it, I found another Hammer. Matt Hammer.

Matt Hammer and his, well, they say she’s his wife, have a new home improvement show on HGTV called The Hammer Family, and I caught a glimpse of Matt’s smile, his beautiful bald melon, the guns in his tight T-shirt and an ass you could bounce a quarter off.

Yeah, I may be sending a new trophy out.

Congressman John Fillmore (Q-AZ) introduced a bill last week, which seeks to limit gender options on Arizona state identification documents to only male and female. In defending his Hate Bill, Fillmore spewed this nonsense:

“I don’t believe we, as a society, should have all of the different binaries identified. What’s going to happen when someday someone wakes up and they want to go to a far extreme and identify as a chicken or something, for crying out loud. Where do we draw the line?”

Smacks of that whole anti-marriage equality chestnut about  how, if we allow The Gays to marry, people will marry their cars or their children and …whatever. Same idiot nonsense, for a new idiot argument.

In other nonsense news, an ALLEGED literacy program in Utah’s Murry school district helps to bring in inclusive books into the classroom. While most of the books at the elementary level deal with race and ethnicity, a boy asked his teacher to read Call Me Max by trans author Kyle Lukoff, a book about a trans boy who wants to go by a name other than his birth name.

After the teacher read the book, bought from home by the student, parents began to complain and now the entire literacy program has come to a halt so the district can “reevaluate” each book in the program.

Again, the book the teacher read was not part of the program but brought in by a student.

I guess Utah only cares about cis literature.

GOP Senator Mitt Romney, coming off his vote to impeach the former president and being seen as a more moderate Republican, has taken a step back into the party.

This week Romney said he will oppose the Equality Act—which expands the prohibition on anti-LGBTQ discrimination—because he worries about its impact on people of faith.

Basically, he wants to keep the God Hates Fags contingent happy at the cost of equality for LGBTQ+ Americans.

Welcome back to the party of ignorance and hate Mittsy. Now …fuck all the way off.

Rush Limbaugh died yesterday and, well, since I was taught that if I can’t say anything nice about someone say nothing at all I will say this about Rush

 

 

 

But, since I also love a good bitchy quote, I will paraphrase what Bette Davis said about the death of Joan Crawford, to fit Limbaugh:

"You should never say bad things about the dead, only good… Rush Limbaugh is dead. Good.”

Thanks Bette.

I need some man now, and so I’ll stop and gawk at model Milan Petruska.

He is all kinds of dreamy, form the baby blues to the pillow lips to that lithe body.

I feel better now.

These Are the Trans People Killed ... So Far ... in 2016

In the first five months of 2016 there have been 10 transgender people murdered in this country … one about every fifteen days that we hear about.

Almost all of the victims were people of color, and the vast majority were black transgender individuals.

That’s why we continue to call out, to say their names, to remind people of what is an epidemic of transphobic violence. We shouldn’t be waiting until November 20, the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance, to commemorate the trans lives lost due to fear and ignorance and hate.

Last year was the deadliest on record for transgender Americans, with at least 21 trans women killed in this country alone; this number does not include individuals whose deaths were not reported or investigated, or victims who were cisgendered by police and media or simply not recognized as trans women in death. 

Sadly, 2016 seems on track to see more trans women, and trans men, murdered in this country.

Say.Their.Names.

Tyreece “Reecey” Walker ...

... was stabbed to death on May 1.

Police arrested a 16-year-old boy, whose name has not been released, in connection with the crime. He is expected to be charged as a juvenile. 

Keyonna Blakeney ...

... was found murdered in a room at a Red Roof Inn in Rockville, Maryland.

So far there are no suspects.

Shante Isaac ...

... was stabbed to death on April 10 in Houston, Texas.
The murders has not been deemed a hate crime.

Quartney Davia Dawsonn-Yochum ...

... was shot and killed On March 23 in the Skid Row area of downtown Los Angeles.

The alleged gunman, a man in his 20s believed to be Yochum's ex-partner, shot her in the head during an apparent dispute; she was pronounced dead at the scene.

Demarkis Stansberry ...

... a 30-year-old black man of transgender experience, was shot to death on February 27 in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

The suspect told police he shot Stansberry by accident, believing his gun to be empty.
The fatal shot was fired into Stansberry's skull at point-blank range.

Maya Young ...

... was stabbed to death February 20 in Philadelphia.

There are no suspects in her murder.

Veronica Banks Cano ...

... was found dead in a bathtub in a motel on February 19 in San Antonio.
Police have no information about a possible suspect, motive, or cause of death.

Kayden Clarke ...

... was shot to death in his home in Mesa, Arizona by two police officers in February.

Clarke suffered from Asperger syndrome, and from a history of physical and sexual abuse as a child that left him suicidal. 

Heather Allen, the founder of HALO Animal Rescue, where Clarke had volunteered called the police and asked them to perform a wellness check on Clarke. When police arrived at Clarke’s home, despite “carrying stun guns,” officers opened fire on Clarke. 
He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Jasmine Sierra ...

... was found dead in an apartment in Bakersfield, California last January. Her death was not initially included in preliminary tallies of trans people killed this year because local media misidentified her by using her male name and male pronouns, a process trans advocates denounce as disrespectful "deadnaming" and misgendering. 

Monica Loera ...

... was fatally shot January 22. 
Police arrested 29-year-old Jon Casey Rowell, who was subsequently charged with the murder.

This is an epidemic; trans women are being murdered at the rate of one every two weeks in this country, and yet this goes unspoken while we discuss trans women in bathrooms.

#SayTheirNames

The Advocate

I'll Go With You

Janna Barkin is mother to a trans child, and she, like many people, is up in arms about the fear being spread about trans people and which bathroom they should use.

Her solution: 

I’ll Go With You …

How do you know which bathroom to use?

For cisgender people this is a simple question to answer: You use the men's room if you're a man, and you use the women's room if you're a woman. ("Cisgender" refers to people who identify with their birth sex.) But for transgender and other gender non-conforming individuals, just going into a public bathroom can be a challenging and even dangerous experience.

There are many people who want to legislate which bathrooms people get to use. These bathroom police want laws that say a person's gender as recorded on their original birth certificate is the only basis for determining whether a person uses the men's room or the women's room. Such laws are discriminatory against transgender and gender non-conforming people. They also are a violation of privacy -- who's going to be checking?!

I am a mom to a transgender child. He is almost 18. His birth sex was female. (To be clear, I will use male pronouns for Amaya throughout this blog. Our family and community used female pronouns for Amaya until he asked us to switch at age 14.) His transition from female to male was gradual, starting when he was 3. He says his transition is "complete for now."

When he was very young, bathroom trips with our little tomboy were easy. Either my husband or I could go into any bathroom with him. But as he got older, he began to look out of place in the women's room.

In our culture it is acceptable for a parent to take a child of opposite gender into the restroom when they are very young. Tolerances shift around age 5 or 6, and certainly by age 9 children are expected to use the facilities that match their birth gender. Things can get tricky for children whose outward appearance or inner gender identity differs from the gender they were assigned at birth, and for their parents as well.

Very early on, our "girl" looked out of place in the women's room. When I took Amaya to a restroom, it was clear many people were concerned. Some stared and whispered. I often noticed surprise and even shock on people's faces. I know they were thinking: there's a boy in the girls' room. I would even call out to my child, "Hey girl, you can wash your hands over here," to subtly assure these people that everything was okay. I felt uncomfortable, to say the least. My child was well aware of the commotion and would hold my hand very tightly.

My husband and I discussed our problem. Our kid looked like he belonged in the men's room, but it is not okay in our society to take one's daughter into a men's room after a certain age. We were confused and so was our child.

Using the restroom at school caused anxiety that only increased as the years went by. Amaya would frequently have stomachaches. We realized he was not using the bathroom at school. When we spoke to the school about it, he was offered use of the office bathroom as an option. He didn't like doing that, as it made him "different." When he got older, he figured out that going during class made it less likely that there would be others in the bathroom.

I remember the day Amaya took matters into his own hands. He was about 14, just beginning his transition, and we were on a family trip to New York. We were at a Broadway show and the bathroom lines at intermission were incredibly long. While standing in the line for the women's room, I looked over at the men's line and saw my husband -- and to my surprise, Amaya was in line just a few people ahead of him. Gabriel and I looked at each other in acknowledgment of what we were witnessing. This was our child affirming his gender as male. Amaya was looking forward and didn't notice us noticing him.

No one else seemed to notice either.

He had made a conscious decision to stand in that line. It was clear he felt more comfortable in the men's line. It was also clear that everybody else was also comfortable with him being in the men's line. Had my child been waiting in the women's line with me he would have only received confused looks and stares. Not one person in the men's line that day batted an eye.

Most individuals know instinctively which bathroom they feel is right for them, and they will choose the one that most closely corresponds to their gender identity. Denying a trans person the right to use the bathroom that matches their gender identity is an act of discrimination, one that can have devastating consequences. Social movements such Social movements as #wejustneedtopee and #Illgowithyou have brought internet attention to the absurdity of laws that would force trans men into the women's room and vice versa. Everyone goes. Everyone should feel safe when they do.

It is a huge misconception that cisgender people are in danger from transgender, intersex, gender fluid, non-binary or other gender non-conforming people in public bathrooms. There is not one substantiated incidence of a trans person committing any type of crime against anyone in a public bathroom. In contrast, there are many documented incidents of violence against transgender people, especially trans women.

According to the National Center for Transgender Equality, only 17 states have laws that specifically prohibit discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation in public accommodations. Some cities and towns have similar municipal laws. It's a start but it is not enough.

The Equality Act of 2015 is currently in Congress and supported by President Obama. This sweeping act would amend the 1964 Civil Rights Act to ban discrimination nationwide based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Please read about The Equality Act and consider contacting your local Congresspeople to encourage them to vote for it.

Until there is full protection under the law, if you are transgender or gender non-conforming and you feel unsafe using a public restroom I'll go with you.

Huffington Post Gay Voices

#SayHerName ... Zella Ziona ... Another Transwoman Killed Because of Hate

And another one …

Zella Ziona, just twenty-one-years old, was shot multiple times in the head in an alley in Gaithersburg, Maryland last week; another transgender woman murdered in America.

Witnesses say a group of four or five teenagers surrounded Zion and an argument ensued, during which one of the teenagers pulled a gun because, again, America, we love guns, and shot Ziona in the head; she was pronounced dead at the hospital a few hours later.

Authorities have one suspect under arrest; Rico Hector Leblond, twenty, of Germantown, has been charged in connection with the murder.

And this time, unlike other cases of transwomen being surrounded by gangs of men and murdered in the streets of this country, Montgomery county police captain, Paul Starks, says the attack was not “random,” which may mean that they will investigate this as a Hate Crime.  Maryland is one of just 16 states with hate-crime legislation that protects residents on the basis of their actual or perceived gender identity.

For the record, Zella Ziona is the 22nd transgender, or gender non-conforming, person to have been murdered in this country this year, making this year even deadlier of our LGBTQ brothers and especially our sisters. Add to that the fact that trans women of color — like Zella Ziona — are far more likely to be beaten and attacked and murdered than other trans women, and we kind of have an epidemic on our hands.

Say her name, Zella Ziona, and don’t let this story go untold. This has to stop … these crimes have to be investigated and charged and tried as Hate Crimes.

It’s enough.

Gawker