Family...

For many of us it's a thorny subject. For myself, having built my family by adoption, we know that family is something more than blood or the people that may have been born to. Family are the people who actually raise you and stand by you no matter  what. Yet, when it comes to political discourse over in this country, we talk a big game about family being the bedrock of our culture and society...and then forget to mention all the gay people that get left out of that definition of family.  There have whole organisations who claim to want to protect and preserve families even though the bulk of them don't give a dam about families and just want to stop gays from being full participants in society (FRC anyone?). We expend an enormous amounts of energy and words talking about families and what they mean to us as a culture.....but what we experience as individuals is often something totally different.

Recently my son had the honor to read the letter he wrote to Supreme Court Justice John Roberts at BAYS....an LGBT youth leadership summit held here in the bay area. Bays is a completely youth run non profit organisation that helps LGBT young people and allies learn how to be leaders involved in their own schools and local communities as leaders and safe schools advocates. It's quite a mouthful to say but what they have put together was something absolutely amazing and we were all honored that Daniel was chosen as one of their keynote speakers.

The event was MC'd by Rupauls Drag Race Winner Raja (who did an awesome job. At one point in the evening she made the observation that about how incredible it was to have such an event in which so many young people were not only "out" but were training others to be LGBT leaders and advocates in their own schools. In the days when Raja (and myself) were in high school you couldn't even wear an ear ring in the wrong ear or you suffered the consequences. But what she said next struck home....in those days she said, we identified each other by saying "oh...they are family" and as she scanned an audience of mostly teens she wondered out loud if that term was passing away.......Was it?

Now, anyone over the age of thirty still knows that term, but I had to wonder...in a generation that can be out and accepted by friends and family in a way that many of us of previous generations never could, is that definition of family being lost because we no longer have to lean on each other as we once did? And it took me back in time to when I first learned who my gay family was and why we needed each other.

How We Think About Coming Out

Gay brothers and sisters,... You must come out. Come out... to your parents... I know that it is hard and will hurt them but think about how they will hurt you in the voting booth! Come out to your relatives... come out to your friends... if indeed they are your friends. Come out to your neighbors... to your fellow workers... to the people who work where you eat and shop... come out only to the people you know, and who know you. Not to anyone else. But once and for all, break down the myths, destroy the lies and distortions. For your sake. For their sake. For the sake of the youngsters who are becoming scared by the votes from Dade to Eugene      --Harvey Milk

Coming out...it is commonly considered a rite of passage for all lgbt people. We regard it as a  singular act of courage and truth telling which is said to set us free. It's sometimes it can be as large as bringing conversation at thanksgiving dinner to a screaching halt or as small as only being able towhisper the truth to yourself in a mirror. But however it's done...it always takes courage and still more to to bring that truth out to others. We know...because many of us have been there with our heart in our hands waiting for parents or friends to respond to our finding the courage to tell them about ourselves...each second of silence feeling like hours.

Many of my readers may have watched my husband Jay's opinion video of Jodie Fosters kinda coming out speech at the Golden Globes. It got so much heated and angry backlash that Jay got called all kinds to things from selfish, to a bully, to a couple of death threats. To me...the response to Jays Criticisms of Jody Foster were way out of proportion to what was actually said about her. Not that Jay was the only one to have some strong opinions about the topic...many notable and well respected voices also had some raised eyebrows including radio host and Huffington Post editor Michelangelo Signorile. Yet,  anyone who had something critical to say about Jodie Fosters speech was vilified and got the full wrath of the internet. Now...while you would expect that her fans would want to defend her...the response was so large and heated that it made me wonder if something else was behind their reactions beyond the effect of celebrity. Perhaps Jay had touched on a nerve that many of us are sensitive to...what we believe coming out is and what we impart to the person doing it?

Many of you may be tired of hearing about the whole Jodie Foster thing...and to be honest, I am too. Even though I may use Jodie as an example at times, would like to take this issue out of the realm of any one persons circumstances and take a look at the act of coming out itself....and then, if being a celebrity alters how we view it. Is coming out something so personal and intimate that no one is allowed to have opinions about it?

The Hardest Question

Answering questions about being gay and being parents is part of our everyday experience on Gay Family Values. We have been open books about nearly every part of our lives. We have covered, coming out, bullying, our pasts(pasts both separately and together), adoption, politics, parenting, relationship issues, sex...you name it and someone has asked us a question about it. And for anything we do get asked, we have done our best to answer within reasonable boundaries  Now... we are not experts in any of these topics but most of the time you don't have to be, you just have to be a good ear and a shoulder to lean for someone who may not have anyone else to talk to about the issue at hand. But needless to say, we get A LOT of questions both from gay and straight people alike.

I think it's funny that the religious right always think that gay men are all about sex 24/7. If that was true, you would think that would be a large percentage of the inquiries we receive, but it is hardly ever asked about. Not never.... but very rarely. Instead, people most often want to know about issues that relate to love and family. And among those, there is always one question for which I have the hardest time answering and...no, it is not, "what is the meaning of life?"...it us actually:

"How do I find someone to love?"

Indeed...how does someone who stumbled into it himself answer a question like that?

Transgender Awareness Week and Living In Stealth

Did you know that this week is Transgender Awareness Week?...It is! From The 12th through the 19th you can expect to see articles and videos geared to help raise awareness about the Transgender community, culminating with the Transgender Day of Remembrance on the 20th. For those not familiar with the day of remembrance, it is a day set aside to talk about and remember our friends and family in the Transgender community who have been lost to transphobia, suicide, and violence.

In my opinion, these holidays are just as important as any rainbow festooned pride event, largely because the transgender community is so misunderstood...not only by the general public...but often also by the LGB community to whom their "T" is a part of. Coming out as a gay and being a member of the LGBT community does not automatically make you an expert on all it's facets and when a friend came out to me as trans I discovered that I had a  lot of learning to do. Unfortunately, it wasn't long after my friend Carina came out to me that I lost her to suicide because the rejection of her family was too much for her to bear. And just like that, transgender issues stopped being abstract issues peripherally attached to a community I consider myself a part of and became a very personal part of my life. My education on trans life began with my friend Carina but it continues to evolve today...

For example...It was in a discussion with a Trans friend about raising awareness that a comment was made that challenged what I believe to be an important,  if not critical feature of gay life....coming out, and then living your life out of the closet....

"40"

1980....In a suburban cul-de-sac in Northern California, The sounds of Devo's "Whip It" echo off the houses as children play in the street. Riding bikes with playing cards taped to the spokes to make a motor sound, we all pretend to be on motorcycles or...if your me...X-wing fighters. As some bigger kids in their Kristy McNichol iron on Tshirsts sit by the radio and heckle us,  Devo encourages us to "whip it good". A painfully skinny stood on a skate board and held on to a rope as a friend riding a bike tows me as fast as he can peddle. Only problem is...Cul-de-sacs aren't that big, especially when you feel like you're going a million miles an hour AND your riding a skateboard for the first time in your life...EVER. The exhilaration of speed quickly gave way to the realization of fast approaching curb, and rather than plow into a mailbox at speed, I elected to hop off the board instead, hitting the ground like a meteor on reentry ..at least, that's how it felt. Now, it was a warm day and I was wearing  a Tshirt and those super high 70's shorts that made miniskirts look prudish. So it was all skin on  asphalt till I came to a complete stop. I discovered the definition of "road rash" on that day as I limped home, pissed at my friends as everyone laughed their heads off. Devo had made cracking the whip seem like so much fun, but as I gimped my way around the block home to complain to my mom, Picking rocks out of my legs, it sure didn't feel that way. Nor, on this average day, did it feel like the world would ever change. It didn't really feel as if the 70's were over. There was no canon blast to mark the end of one world and the begining of another....but it did change all the same. A lot of water has passed under the bridge since that day. Tomorrow will be 40 years of it, in fact.

Today I would like to take a moment to reflect on what this birthday means to me and what my hopes are for the future. So have a slice of birthday cake, pull up a chair, and feel free to talk about being a getting older but not growing up.

LGBT teens Are Speaking...Are You Listening?

As parents, we hope that we engender trust between ourselves and our children such that they feel that they could tell us anything. After all, we have been there, done that and bought the t shirt too boot. Because of what we may have done when we were young...or even just because we know whats out there...we want to be able to steer our kids through those things in perhaps a better way than we navigated them ourselves. Sex, bullying, drugs, hell...even life on the internet are all things we have to talk to our kids about in order for them to have the tools to face them as competent individuals with solid life skills. We give them the best of our experience and set limits and consequences for behavior in the hopes that we are being the best parents that we can be. Being a parent myself, I understand this all too well.

But...Being a part of a family who's lives are all over the internet put us in conversation with all kinds of people from around the world. One of those groups are teens and preteens who are struggling with the knowledge that they are gay. Some have already come out...some are still working that out...but put together, these kids have a voice and a message that I think many parents need to hear. It's not often easy to hear it, but it is vital that we do with an open heart because our kids lives may depend on it.

Finding The Forest For The Weeds

My husband loves to task me...and by "task me" I mean make sure that I have something to do and something to write about at all times. Sometimes this is a good thing, especially when I scan the news and can't find it in myself to emotionally connect with yet another wing nut spouting the same over-the-top garbage that we have all heard before. In those moments, I appreciate his ability to focus me. But some days.....oh well, I'm just gonna say it....it drives me nuts. Today was  one of these days when Jay has emotionally connected with a topic I thought long dead and yelled from across the house for me to come take a look.....Josh Weed, the Gay, married to a woman, councilor, and father of three is back in the news with a recent appearance on Nightline.

"Hey have you seen this video?", Jay says to me with excitment. "What video I ask?", wondering what in the world  could have made him so animated. Did Mitt Romney get caught toe tapping in a mens room?....Did NOM finally and permanently self-destruct?......no?   I came from the breakfast table to Jays computer to see what all the fuss was about and looked at the screen to see Josh Weed and family staring back at me with the headline Gay. Mormon, and Happily Married.  "Oh that story...I saw that weeks ago. why is that back again?"

And that simple comment was the one that opened the door to a debate that suprised me in the intensity of MY emotional reaction to it and incited a debate that still rages on in our home. but first....some background....

Testimony...The San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus

"And when I die....When it's my time to go....I want to come back......as me"

Well The San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus has gone and done it again...they have gone and made something so beautiful it made me cry dammit. Thanks a lot guys. I was wondering this morning what to write about for Easter when I stumbled upon their video for the making of "Testimony". The song is a collaboration project with Broadway producer Stephen Schwartz and can best be described as a musical interpretation of the "It Gets Better Project"....and most especially of the deep feelings behind what made that project necessary. While I have often wondered if the It Gets Better Project was reaching those who most need to hear it, I have never doubted the ability of honestly sharing our stories to make a positive difference in someone else's life. After all, it is one thing to intellectually realize that you are not the only one...it is something else to experience that reality in the shared experience of others. There was a time in my life when I could not imagine saying the words of the song above. That is why hearing 250 beautiful voices singing the way I felt almost twenty years ago reduced me to tears and had me singing along with them. Check out the video and join in the conversation to share your experiences with us.

On Cynthia Nixon and Balancing The Kinsey Scale

We've all heard the same tired, worn-out "Being gay is a choice" arguments before. We have heard it from religion when they want to characterize being gay as sinful, we here it on television when those same religious viewpoints are used to reinforce political ones, and we here it from out parents when they are looking for something...or someone...to blame when we come out to them. After all, if it wasn't for our reckless choices or that person who "recruited" us into being gay we would all be straight. Right?....Right? Um........Anybody? I'm being absurd here but the notion that we woke up one day and decided to be gay...or worse...yielded to some form of temptation has led to the emotional and psychological torture of thousands of LGBT people.

Yet not everyone stands with both feel planted fully in the "gay" or "straight" camp. Each persons individual sexuality is a shade somewhere between those two polarities. Alfred Kinsey defined a scale numbered 1-6 with "1" being exclusively heterosexual and "6" being exclusively homosexual. Now...most of us fall somewhere along the length of this line with few of us being on the extreme ends. For myself, I would place myself at about a 5.5. And...as someone who fought his orientation tooth and nail, I see that as an inborn part of myself I could not change if I wanted too. Yet there are those who disagree...

Cynthia Nixon, who did an incredible job of standing up for marriage equality in New York has recently come under fire for comments made in a New York Times article in which she defines her sexuality as a choice. Nixon is currently engaged to be wed to her longtime girlfriend Christine Marinoni after a previous marriage to English professor Danny Mozes. This change is not so unusual, many of us come out later in life or perhaps we sit a little closer to the center of the Kinsey scale and have attractions to both sexes...as seems to be the case with Cynthia. there issue here is not whether or not Cynthia was being completely honest to her experience of her own sexuality...but in how her account of that experience gives ammo to those who claim that homosexuality is simply a behavior that can and should be changed. Nixon's comments to the NY Times leave a lot of room for debate and heated opinion:

Meeting Randy Roberts Potts...New Friends And Old Scars

We at gay family values have been fortunate enough to meet lots of other fantastic YouTubers. The great thing about meeting these people in person is that we really get to know them as the regular people. Sean Chapin was the first YouTuber we had ever met and we had so many stars in our eyes. Also, this summer we got to meet the infamous Jim Stone and his husband and had a wonderful time hanging out together as well as eating his husbands fantastic cooking. And each "Big Gay Vacation" has brought us to YouTubers that I now count as good friends. As people often tell us that we have impacted their lives in positive ways...I don't know if you all know how much richness all of you add to ours. It's one of the big pluses of being a part of the YouTube community.

Therefor, it was with great excitement that we looked forward to meeting Randy Roberts Potts. Randy is the grandson of the legendary Evangelist Oral Roberts...a father to three awesome children...and a gay man facing his past with courage and using it to make positive change in the world. I, in particular, had a strong desire to meet Randy because of his grandfather's ministry and its ubiquitous place in my own past. I admit that I was not sure what I was hoping to find in talking to him....healing...revelation...both of those being very religiously loaded terms. But what I did find was worth so much more.

Fear and The Power of Coming Out

Yesterday marked National Coming Day and if you listened very carefully, you may heard the sound of thousands of closet doors being ripped off their hinges....no really....it's true. Every moment, that goes by  another lgbt person is summoning the courage to tell someone the truth about themselves. They may tell a parent, a spouse, a friend,.....they may only be able to speak the words to total strangers through YouTube. It may happen through faltering words, through tears, or by courageous proclamation....by phone call or by letter...but its  happening everyday all over the world....right now.

National Coming Out Day is set aside to talk about the process of coming out......Why we do it, what the benefits  are and what the risks are, all in an effort to foster awareness. That awareness is sorely needed by many, both in the LGBT community and also for the world at large. When we have a clearer idea of what coming out is and what it means to people on both sides of the process perhaps we can handle that moment with a little more understanding, confidence, compassion, and grace. It can be scary and awkward to come out to someone....but it can also be one of the most powerful ways that we can change our lives and the world around us into a better place to be. Secrecy breeds fear...and even though the official day has passed,  lets blow some more closet doors off their hings shall we?

Mommy Bloggers Strike Again

Life can give us a million and one reasons to lose hope. The news is full of examples of horrible things happening everyday. Some of this weeks examples include, the gay couple assaulted at a church, one of the assaulters being the father of one of the victims and the pastor of the church....Or the reports of Jurors in the Brandon McInerney trial who believe that Brandon got a raw deal and that Larry King was the "real bully" because he made "unwanted sexual advances toward Brandon McInerny( /facepalm)....Or the ever increasing climate of persecution for Gays in African countries like Uganda....Or the continued prosecution and separation of gay bi-national couples that daily  splits up people who love each other. The list of horrible happenings grows by the day. However, as I have written this blog over time I have come to the conclusion that it's not the terrible happings  that are remarkable....It is those moments of triumph, love, and acceptance that give us hope and  keep us going. And just when you need that hope the most....a mommy blogger steps in to save the day....

When Your Child Comes Out

Last night I had the opportunity to attend a class put on by our adoption agency on building a healthy identity. It's subject matter was to discuss the ways in which we traditionally define masculine and feminine and what do you do when a child you may be fostering...or in the process of adopting...does not fall within those lines. We talked a great deal about coming out as gay or transgendered and the difficulties that come with first admitting to yourself that you may be gay, bi, trans, or unable to apply any label to ourselves that feels right at all. And once that self discovery is made, how incredibly hard it can be to tell a parent. hell...some of us know about ourselves early on and we still can't tell our folks until we are in our twenties, thirties, or older.

The instructor who gave the class offered it from the perspective of a mother with a transgendered child. And yet...even with that knowledge I walked into that room expecting to have to fill in some blanks for people....and it was me that got schooled instead. We watched a short movie about gender issues and when it was over, the time came for questions and discussion. "Here we go", I thought. And then....one by one the other foster and adoptive parents began raising hands to tell their own stories and offer their own remarks. Nearly to a person, the entire room echoed with accounts of acceptance.....and it blew me away. 

why should it surprise me so much? Well...When I came out to my parents it ended up being a mixed bag of acceptance and rejection and everyday I talk with young gay people who's stories are not always happy endings. I had expected a lot more questions and some resistance...it was a little bit of a happy shock to find so much love in the room.

but as these things do....it got my wheels spinning and I thought maybe there are some parents out there who might benifit a little from the things we discussed and who might have questions of their own. Understanding some of what motivates your child to stand before you and say, "I'm gay." with fear and hope in their eyes may...at the very least help help both parent and child navigate these uncharted waters with more grace.....at most it can save a life. So what is going on in our kids heads? Do they understand the full impact of what this decision will mean for them?....and how the hell do I respond to this? I love my kid...but....how do I deal with this?

Georgia Megachurch Pastor Comes Out With Integrity

Religion and Christianity in specific seem to be undergoing an upheaval the likes of which I have never seen before...and much of it seems due to national debate over gay issues. The evolving Eddie Long situation and George Allen Rekkers scandals just being two of recent memory. But in both cases, these men were outed against their will. It has been the pattern of influential politicians and religious leaders to come out only after having been caught with their pants down...literally. After the denials...after the tears, we find the admissions that they had been gay all along.

On the positive flip side and on the heals of the "It Gets Better" testimony of Randy Roberts Potts...grandson to Iconic Evangelical, Oral Roberts...comes a Mega church leader coming out of the closet. Claiming the rash of LGBT teen suicides and prompting by his ex wife, Jim Swilley of "Church In The Now" in Conyers, Georgia has blown the doors off his own closet...and he did so with grace and panache.

Having watched the televised outing nearly in its entirety(nearly two hours worth), I can honestly say that its is in incredible and moving admission on his part that came from a very real part of himself. It is an act of integrity that I could not help admire because the video I post here is his first public acknowledgment to his congregation...in it you see congregants get up and leave the service. He also acknowledges losing the backing of many friends, colleagues, and affiliate ministries....He is giving up a lot to make an admission that he claims was brought about by the news of so many gay teen suicides.

It amazed and inspired me...I hope it will you too. Like many, I had not intended to watch the entire thing, but ended up doing exactly that. His coming out begins at about the 9:30 mark...

Cosmic Ironies

Happy National Coming Out Day! In honor of the day comes a story which makes you wonder at lifes sense of humor. Specifically, why some of the worst homophobes end up having gay children. Case in point...Jonathan Katz, a Washington University physics professor, came under fire in May for writing a paper in defense of homophobia in which he described himself as a "proud homophobe".

Jonathan Katz and his son, Isaac:

 As you can guess, it was a hoot to read. What landed him in the news however, was the fact that he had been appointed  by President Obama to head up the BP oil spill clean up. Public outcry over this appointment ended with his eventual dismissal. Which I'm sure did nothing to curb his pride in his homophobic attitude. But here's something that did...Professor Katz's son, Isaac Katz, just came out of the closet as gay...and not in a private family way...but in an  article in the Saint Louis Post's online edition. stltoday.

In response to Dan Savage's "It Gets Better Project", here are some excerpts from Isaac's story...

All too Easy

This week the blogs are all alight with the coming out of Ken Mehlman, President Bush's former campaign manager and architect of his homophobic 2004 campaign. Melhman has been a vocal opponent to gay rights and strong supporter of George Bush Juniors efforts to write a ban on gay marriage into the U.S. constitution. He was Bush's Political Director during his first term and Head of the Republican National Committee from 2005-07. He has stumped the campagn trial in opposition to gay rights and marriage equality and actively worked against the gay community because he was getting paid very well to do so.

Well, now he is coming out claiming that he knew he was gay...despite public denials...but that he was, "not comfortable with that part of himself" which is his one sentence summation for why he worked for one of the most homophobic administrations in recent history. It's also the defacto excuse for why he went to such lengths to make sure that America stayed focused on the "gay menace" for the Bush administration....because he wasnt "comfortable with himself"....yeah...I'm sure the position of power and fat paycheck didn't hurt either.

But now he's out and its a big deal...well I have a song for Ken...find it after the jump..

Coming Out Late In Life

Coming out is a right of passage for every gay, lesbian, and trangendered person. Its very often a scary and risky experience.  I'm sure that most of us who have been through the process can recall the feelings of hope and fear that mingle together with pure need. After all, your revealing  something about yourself that could potentialy result in losing the love and respect of those closest to us...like out partents, siblings, and friends. Many are the stories of those who have come out only to walk away from the experience with a handfull of accepting friends and an icy relationship with their family. Rare are the stories of complete acceptance but they are becoming more frequent with time. Coming out usually costs us all something for the gains we make in the ability to live honestly....but what happens when we cant find the strength to meet this rite of passage until we are 40? 50?...60? How much harder must the road be when you have the added responsibility of coming out to a spouse and children?

In a wierd synchronicity this topic hit My husband and me square in the face this week. First through a email sent to us through Youtube from a man seeking help...and secondly through the discovery  of an awsome Youtube channel...Coming Out Late (but Great), chronicling the stories of people coming out later in life. More after the fold...

Courage and Sacrifice...LGBT Teens

To be out in high school...that to me at least, seems tantamount to smothering yourself in BBQ sauce and jumping into a tank full of starving Pihranna. The thought of dancing with a boyfriend at the prom is both wonderfull and terrifying at the same time. Having to fight to attend that prom against your school and resentfull classmates is a heroic act, unthinkable when many of us where in highschool. And coming out to my parents at that age....don't even get me started. However...lately the news has been filled with examples of courage and sacrifice on the part of LGBT teens. Some stories you may know...others you may not. but they paint a picture of extraordinary courage and the price we sometimes pay to be who we really are.

Courage...Your Doin It Right..

When we first started making videos of our family on Youtube, it was meant as a means to reach out to heterosexual society. We wanted to reach the people who voted for propositions like prop 8 and hopefully show them that we were what they were voting on, not an abstract concept. We were hoping that showing our lives, in intimate detail, would put the lie to what organizations like NOM put forward in their campaigns. We also had hoped that the other gay families, that we know are out there, would be encouraged to make a similar statement. That was our goal and intent.....well....something else happened too...

We started getting letters and emails from gay people saying, "Thank you for showing us what a gay family looks like....I didn't think it was possible". Sometimes people email us simply because they have no other gay people in their lives to look to or no one that they can admit their feelings to, which is a very subtle type of hell...coming from someone who knows. But why bring all this up now?...because this just came to us this morning:

Acceptance...Never Easy, Always A Choice

We've been talking alot about the faulty belief that being gay is a choice, that it can be caught by association with gay people, and that you can be "convinced" to be gay. All of these faulty assumptions completely negate the soul searching, denial, and overall struggle the average gay/trans person goes through to come to a place of acceptance just for themselves. To find the ability to say "I am gay"...nevermind considerations of acceptance by others.

Self acceptance is not a static event but more a process that happens to us as our lives progress. I can remember back into my grade school years how unhappy I was then. I was skinny and on the outside of the social pack, looking in. Everday I would look in the mirror and wish that my eyes were blue and my hair blond like the cool kid in my class that everyone fawned over. Of course, none of those things ever happened and things continued on this way for years. I hated who I was. Being gay added a whole new dynamic to this. What was once a shame, turned out to be the key to finding some measure of self worth.