Heather Gold

What it’s like going to schools a kid with two lesbian mums

I found this piece by Kalia Douglas-Micallef in Toronto pretty interesting.

Even though she lives in a place with complete legal equality for lesbians and gay men (I’m not sure what the story is legally for trans* people) and even though she had activist parents and a supportive community she faced a lot of difficulties.

Canada can seem like an imagined utopia to Americans on social issues. It’s not. It’s a place full of people, like anywhere. I grew up there and I was given my own hard time as a kid, in part of being Jewish. In the 70s.

I don’t think you can stop everyone from being mean or hurtful. But you can set priorities as a community and consequences for behaviour and you can educate people. A kid is better off with a supportive family and a school where being gay is though, than being in school where being gay is ok but their family is not. 40% of homeless youth in the US are queer. Legal changes won’t be the thing that stops that or the kind of thing Kalia writes about.

Day Without a Gay

This grotesque juxtaposition of robustly funded propaganda vs. cash-strapped social services is the perverse, inexcusable legacy of Proposition Hate and the so-called “Defense of Marriage Act” and every related money-wasting act of gay-hostile social, political and emotional terrorism wrought by the American Taliban.

If you have ever used words like “sacred institution” or “redefine marriage” or “threat to family values” without irony or—worse yet—harbored thoughts or cast votes against marriage equality, you are not my friend. You are not welcome in my life. I honestly see you as intellectually compromised. And I don’t care what you think your god tells you to believe. Your mythology does not trump my reality. And if you try to defend your indefensible thoughts or words or actions to me, be prepared to have your vile, repellant opinions reduced to the vile, repellant garbage that they are.

And when I’m done with you, the domestic partner and I will calmly go back to caring for Thomas and working to repair the decades of damage caused by the celebrated heterosexuals who are apparently free to marry and divorce and have affairs and abuse and ignore their own children without generating interest a single constitutional amendment, television ad, campaign platform or even a godfuckingdamned T-shirt by the godfuckingdamned American Taliban.

 

Read all of Jake’s brilliant post to know the story of he, his partner and Thomas on his blog NoFo. 

Then do something on the streets or online. And if you’re gay, tell your story. Spell out your relationship and the indignities and legal vulnerabilities you’ve faced. In detail. Mine soon.

 

Jews are about to be governed by Mormons

Number of Mormons in California: 761, 763  (2006 #s)

Number of Jews in California : 999,000 (2001 #s)

The Mormon Church is about to change the California Constitution on November 4th to make my Jewish wedding unConstitutional because I married a woman.

The Mormon Church is going to make its religious doctrine our secular law because people who aren’t gay aren’t that involved right now. But you will be affected. The main argument for Prop 8 is that civil legal inclusion of marriages like mine oppose fundamentalist Christianity.

If you are not Mormon, you’re about to live in a country in which that religion’s current doctrine is about to become a good reason to amend a State’s Constitution, unless you do something about it.

Jews are used to feeling like a minority but there are *more of us* than there are Mormons in California. And, like many Mormons have shown, you don’t have to live in California to donate or spread the word.

Nov. 5th you will probably have President Obama and a Democratic Congress and -while you weren’t thinking it wasn’t your issue- a changed Constitution in CA that excludes a minority from legal protection because our lives don’t sit well with their fundamentalist Christian doctrine.

It was conflict over the afterlife when the Mormon Church was found to be baptizing Holocaust victims.Prop 8 is a spiritual presumption over our civic laws that govern us now.And I’ve always been taught that how well we lives our lives now is what Judaism is about. That, and a lean corned beef on rye with a half sour pickle.

We can still *easily* defeat prop 8. The Mormon Church has organized for a long time for this fight. Their donation and online numbers reflect their maxed out participation. We are neck and neck.

You will be affected. Will you be involved?

Vote no on 8. Donate. Join on faceBook to be counted. Spread the word. Forward this on.

heather + stacey (my wife who’s busy studying for med school exams)

San Francisco, CA – 10/19/08