Pride

queerty.com

p.s the above picture is from Tokyo pride, B and I are neither of those women.

Picture this, my dear wife B. a femme lesbian who doesn’t stick out as gay, unless she’s with me, sitting on a bus on the way home from the gym. She passes through downtown where alot of people from Pride are starting to disperse.

A woman who has come from our pride parade, which happened hear yesterday gets on the bus.

On an empty bus, she walks up to my wife and sits down next to her. The following paraphrashed conversation ensues:

woman.: I was at pride, did you go to pride?
B: no.
woman: why not?
B (who is practising being on the bus alone without panicking replies): I’m sorry I’m not able to talk right now.
woman: what? You don’t want to talk about pride?
B.: I don’t want to talk to you.
woman: So you hate gays?
B: (in her head and not said to this lady) If my wife was here, she’d punch you in the mouth.

Funny this woman thinks unless you’re festooned in rainbows, you must be straight.

If you don’t “look gay”, you must be straight.

An interesting example of, you can’t actually tell who is a lesbian and who isn’t.

Here are some fun gay quotes:

The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals and 362 admonishments to heterosexuals. That doesn’t mean that God doesn’t love heterosexuals. It’s just that they need more supervision. ~Lynn Lavner

My lesbianism is an act of Christian charity. All those women out there praying for a man, and I’m giving them my share. ~Rita Mae Brown

You don’t have to be straight to be in the military; you just have to be able to shoot straight. ~Barry Goldwater

Why is it that, as a culture, we are more comfortable seeing two men holding guns than holding hands? ~Ernest Gaines

It doesn’t matter what you do in the bedroom as long as you don’t do it in the street and frighten the horses. ~Daphne Fielding, The Duchess of Jermyn Street

Homosexuality is god’s way of insuring that the truly gifted aren’t burdened with children. ~Sam Austin

Who would give a law to lovers? Love is unto itself a higher law. ~Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, A.D. 524

If homosexuality is a disease, let’s all call in queer to work: “Hello. Can’t work today, still queer.” ~Robin Tyler

You could move. ~Abigail Van Buren, “Dear Abby,” in response to a reader who complained that a gay couple was moving in across the street and wanted to know what he could do to improve the quality of the neighborhood

That word “lesbian” sounds like a disease. And straight men know because they’re sure that they’re the cure. ~Denise McCanles

Happy Pride In Your Neck of the Woods 🙂

My Private Remembrance Day

“Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.”-Buddha

I am coming up on a time that is bitter sweet for me and it influences my life so profoundly to this very day.

The time I speak of is that pivotal moment in every person’s life who has ever been in the closet.

When you’re hoarse from running, exhausted and scared at every shadow, every whisper and every look feels like the weight of the elephant in the room. It is time. When you are paranoid that the world knows your secret and judges you for it. It is time.

But the only one tormented into the early morning, day in and day out, is you.

One day, as if by accident, while looking over your shoulder, you run smack into that thing you’ve been running from and it hits you in the face in a sometimes very real and painful way.

For me, it was being proposed marriage to, by a guy I had been in a relationship with for a long time and being caught up in the moment enough to say yes, only to have the yes tie itself around my throat like a noose.

Was I walking down the aisle or to the gallows?

I knew marrying this man was a death sentence for my inner self. It would kill my true self, my feelings, my struggles, my creativity and my plans for the life I wanted and was too cowardly at that point to reach out and grab.

When I finally took that great leap, it was painful and ugly.

I laboured to give birth to myself under lonely conditions. But I was proud when it was over. Not that it ever ends.

You come out every day in casual conversation, when someone says, ‘what does your husband do?’ or even things like division of household chores or workplace emergency contact lists or hospital waiting rooms.

When Pride events begin in my neck of the woods in about a week from now, I allow myself that time to ruminate on 7 years ago, and how very different life was for me in my twenties…and that I wouldn’t change a moment of truth for all those years of lies and omissions.

Truth is the only safe ground to stand on.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815 – 1902)

How To Handle Racists

Here’s a story I just found from one of Canada’s national newspapers about an anti-racist rally that chased some ‘white pride’ demonstrators into the subway.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/in-edmonton-anti-racist-demonstrators-send-white-pride-rally-packing/article2380422/

The craziest thing is that all these people who were so proud to be white, wore masks to the rally.

Huh, weird.