A Lesbian's View

Not so inclusive, are we?

2018-02-07T17:11:00.002-05:00

The gay community professes itself to be very inclusive of others. I mean, why wouldn't it be? When you have a group of people who are for the most part seen as "different" by the majority of Americans, and who have had to fight for equality in their relationships, they tend to be more open to others who are seen to exist in the margins of the mainstream. But there is one instance where the gay community is not very inclusive, and can be outright militant against those who don't fit in to their view of acceptable opinions. That instance would be a LGBT person, who is not a democrat.

I'm a republican. Not a conservative mind you, but a republican none the less. I voted for Trump, and to this day defend that decision. I'm also a Lesbian, a married lesbian who enjoys fully the right to marry. Yes, I realize that liberal democrats brought that particular right to me far sooner than it would have occurred without a Democratic president who made it a point to get it for me.

What I'm not, is a single issue voter anymore. I don't vote based on gay issues only. When I was younger, I did. But now, after working as a Nurse for 27 years, and watching my tax dollars be taken out of my paychecks and handed away to others, I vote for responsibility. Personal responsibility. I am tired of seeing how other people are allowed to live off my paycheck without being made to make any effort at all to better themselves or become independent of social programs. I want strong borders, and I expect my country to protect my children and grandchildren first. Certainly, allow immigration into this country, but do so in a manner that at least ATTEMPTS to prevent criminal and terrorist entry.

For me the reality is this. I have the legal right to marry. That fight was won, and I supported it financially and through my vote for years. I will not turn a blind eye to every other problem that we have in our country in gratitude for that accomplishment. The right to vote our conscience, every time, without being made to feel obliged to remain loyal to a particular party should not be the cost for politician's and judges doing their job. Achieving one goal, should not mean you have to give up on any others. It's okay to be vote democrat one year and republican the next, if your choices take you there.

I think it's sad that we don't have a stronger third party alternative in this country. I would love to be able to vote for a party candidate who wants to reduce my taxes, reduce government size and control, reduce abuse of our welfare system and demand personal responsibility of people, AND realize that LGBT people are just human beings like everyone else and who we love is of no concern whatsoever to our government. But, that party doesn't exist. What we have is a two party system, one which allows those at the farthest ends of the spectrum to control our lives and our government. Most of us live in the middle somewhere, trying to make ends meet and provide for our families.

Those of us in the middle are marginalized by the extremes. Including those of us who are gay. We are marginalized and admonished by our own community for being too centered. It's a bit of an irony. This whole "you are either with us, or against us" attitude in the gay community, as well as in Washington is what's wrong with our country. Who the hell is "us"?

Those of us in the middle are very tired of those on the extremes getting in the way of any progress that could be made in our laws. Conservatives and Liberals alike, seem more interested in degrading each other and obstructing any possible outcome that could be seen as a "win" for the other party. It's terrible that they both would rather see absolutely nothing get done, than compromise for those of us who have to live in the middle.

So if your a LGBT person too, and you live in the middle somewhere, I feel your pain. It can be hard to stand up and face your friends wrath and accusations for not falling in line with liberal ideals, but standing up is what we do. It's what we've always done. Only now instead of it being against those who would deny us our rights, it's against those who would shame us into extremism as well.

Traveling Together

2017-10-27T18:00:00.000-04:00

When Nicki and I got married, more than a few of our friends voiced concerns about the fact that we would be working together, living together, basically together all of the time. We were a little worried about that as well. When you work in a high stress environment like the Emergency Department, as we do, there are bound to be days when you get irritated with even the closest of friends, not to mention your spouse.

But, after over two years of marriage, and working together almost every night that we worked, we've become professionals at "leaving it at work". We've become closer, and learned that we can relay on each other in a pinch. I love working with my wife, because she is an amazing Nurse, and when the chips are down at work and I'm feeling stressed, she's the first one there to help. I know I can trust her, and she knows I have her back as well. It's working out, believe it or not.

We recently started travel Nursing. IF you aren't familiar with that, it's basically taking a 13 week assignment at another hospital somewhere away from home. You live and work away from home 13 weeks at a time. Right now, we're in South Dakota working on an Indian Reservation. Soon, we'll be packing it up here, and heading to southern Arizona for our next 13 weeks. It's a nomadic, wandering kind of life, and we love it.

Getting to experience new places, and to see this country one assignment at a time, is a great experience for someone who loves to travel. Seeing it with someone you love is even better. It's the best. Turns out, that when I thought we would be searching for ways to do things separately, we've become the best of friends as well as a married couple. There's nothing I love more than spending a day off exploring with her, and I have yet to feel the need to hide in order to get some solitude. It helps that we're comfortable just sitting quietly together some times. She reads her books, I dabble on the computer or play golf clash on my phone (not very well I might add). We can be together, without feeling the need to entertain each other in those quiet times between shifts.

We've learned how to be together. Where once we thought it was going to be our biggest weakness, now it's one of our greatest strengths.

Life truly is a journey, and we're making it about the trip now, not the destination. So to all those doubters out there, the ones who said "I could never be with my husband all the time" or "I could never be with my wife all the time." , I say this. You can, if you really love being with that person more than anything else, you most certainly can. It takes a little patience, and you have to know when they need a little quiet space. But if you are sensitive to them, and you celebrate your time together instead of seeing it as an obstacle, you might just find out that it makes your life even better.

What a Wonderful Journey this Life Is

2017-01-10T09:33:00.002-05:00

Looking inward, sometimes you see things you don't really like. Anger, jealousy, a lack of understanding or willingness to even try and understand. That's pretty much what I was faced with recently when I took a good long look at myself. I didn't like it very much. It made me feel somehow smaller, less evolved really. I mean, I was spending this amazing amount of time being angry at other people for my own predicament. I was letting jealousy turn me into someone I hardly recognized. I spent so much time demanding that my love understand me and my feelings, that I had no time left to try and understand hers. I didn't really want to understand, I just wanted her to conform to my idea of what a marriage, of what love was. In the midst of all of that, I almost lost the thing that meant the most to me in the world. Her.

You see, our relationship is complicated by the fact that neither of us is perfect. My wife is smart, sexy, caring, and full of life. But she's not perfect. I'm a decent human being myself, but by no means am I perfect. I had this ridiculous notion that we had to be perfect, and by making that demand on us both - a demand neither of us could live up to, I almost destroyed something amazing and beautiful.

I think I understand now, finally, what it means to love someone. To truly love someone. It's to recognize that the person you fell in love with is a collage of thoughts, emotions, fears, notions, and a past you can never really fully understand, because it wasn't yours to walk through. I look at my wife now, and realize that her smile, and her laugh, and her intelligence, and her fiery temper, and her mood swings, and her compassion for people and animals, and her deep thoughts and insane sense of humor are all things that drew me to her, made me fall in love with her, made me ask her to marry me, and have filled my life with meaning since that time. I also realize that her anxiety, and insecurities, her needs and wants and weakness'....those were always there as well. When I met her, when I fell in love, and when we married. All a part of the whole.

If you truly love someone, you have to learn to not only love a persons strengths and qualities that you show off in the light. You have to also accept and love their weakness' and imperfections, their darkness. Because one without the other, is not the person you met, fell in love with, and wanted to build a life with. It's not about settling, it's about celebrating the person you love as a whole.

I'm learning to celebrate myself as a whole, and in doing so, I've found new beauty in my wife, and in my life. We may not be perfect, as a matter of fact I can promise you we are not. But that's just it, we don't have to be. I just have to love her the best I can. That's what I have control over. My thoughts, my actions, how I treat her, and how I support and encourage her.

I give up control of those things that are not mine to control, and find peace and feel love in a whole new way. What a wonderful journey this life is.

Working on Me

2017-01-08T18:26:00.002-05:00

I've spent most of my life looking at people who meditated, or did anything else I considered to be new age "crazy" like they were just that, a bit crazy. It never really occurred to me that most of these practices had been going on for centuries, and that the people practicing them certainly seemed happier and less stressed than I was. I didn't have time, and actually considered myself kind of immune to enlightenment to some extent. I am an ER Nurse. Unfortunately, that means I am a bit skeptical of everything in existence and more than a little jaded when it comes to the human condition. I've learned from 25 years of being an ER nurse that if you don't let something touch or soften your heart, you live to work another day. Twenty five years, that's a lot of wasted time.

If you were to ask the people that are closest to me, the people I work with, none of them would tell you that I am a particularly nervous or stressed person. I've always managed to stay pretty low key, let things roll off my back, and never get too worked up about anything. But over the past few years, that's changed for me. I don't know why, but life's stress' started getting to me. I found myself suddenly inundated with feelings and emotions, and often I really had no idea what I was even reacting to. I was just stressed, or angry, or sad, or even scared. I had no idea what of or what about. I just was. It was affecting my personal relationships, and affecting my attitude at work. I wanted to push people further away because it seemed like the more I insulated myself from other people, the less I had this emotional dance with myself.

Then, quite accidentally, I ran across some reading on meditation and living in the "now". Ah oh. New age Crazy. But the first few sentences caught my attention and so I kept reading. After just two attempts at meditation, I realized that it somehow calmed me and made it easier to focus. Maybe I'm not getting Alzheimer's after all? (Fingers Crossed) So, I'm doing more reading. I'm going to continue learning to meditate and I'm opening myself up to a lot of other things I use to call crazy. It's going to be a journey, but I can't wait to see what's over the next rise.

It's kind of exciting to look in the mirror and realize that I had so limited myself in the past, that my future may not be at all what I expected.

Sometimes I Ask Myself

2017-01-08T17:47:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I ask myself why

Why do I wait in silence for something that may never come?

Why do I believe in something that may not be true?

Why do I yearn for something when that longing leads to pain?

Why do I trust in something when it hasn't earned trust?

Then I remember that waiting helps your learn patience.

That believing in something sometimes takes faith.

That yearning for something makes obtaining it that much sweeter.

And I remember that demanding proof of what can't be proven, kills your soul.

S.G.M.

Love Addiction

2016-12-26T22:25:00.003-05:00

Looking back over my blogging life, it occurs to me that I tend to write more when I'm in a low place in my life. It seems that when I'm happy, I just don't have the stimulus to write anymore. I hate that, because once upon a time, I wrote when I was crazy happy. Poetry, short stories, blogging. I used writing to talk to myself, and I miss it. I miss talking to me. You see, it never really mattered to me if someone else even read it. Sure, it was great to get a comment on a blog post or poem. I appreciate every one of them and always responded. But for me, it was self expression and it didn't require comment to be meaningful to me. (Unless it was an article written for another site of course.)

Then I noticed that I apparently equated being happy, to being in a relationship. Writing during a break up or when I was alone and then dropping it all when I was happily paired up, for a time. The pairing never lasted. Yep, there's a pattern here.

During a recent very difficult time in my current relationship, I remembered something I had read while researching an article on lesbian bed death. I have to confess that when I was reading the information, I was basically skimming through it. I was looking for specific information as it related to decreased sexual intimacy between lesbian couples over time. I wasn't reading it well enough to realize how it applied to my own life. Probably because of denial. I mean, who really wants to admit that they have a problem with relationships and an addiction all at the same time. One that you've gone your entire life without even recognizing.

So on this one very difficult day, when I was facing the end of my marriage of only a little over a year, I remembered something I had read. I might never have gone back looking for the information, except for one thing. This time, I felt different about the relationship ending. I didn't want to run away to reduce the anxiety I was feeling. I wanted to figure out why two people who loved each other, could not find a way to communicate what we were feeling and get through the problem we were having. So the hunt was on.

It wasn't easy to find the subject again. I couldn't remember exactly what it was called, except that it was about addiction and love. Google that and you get a lot of returns on drug and alcohol addiction recover and tough love. Not was I was looking for. Then I put love addiction in the search box, and bingo. There it was. I even narrowed it down and put "lesbian love addiction" in the search box and much to my surprise, there was a specific book advertised on the subject. I waited a couple of days before I actually went back and purchased one of the books. I had a feeling, deep in my gut, that I was going to have to face some demons if I read it. I was right.

It really is a shattering experience to open the pages of a book, and read about yourself. To see yourself so clearly laid out on the pages that there is no denying it. That was the experience I had on that day. I felt exposed, and for the first time in my life I understood why I could never stay attached and engaged to another person. Why I always found some way to push them away by pulling back so much that their leaving was less anxiety producing than their presence. How can you be addicted to love? But you can, and I am. Apparently, I always have been.

So here's to those people in my past who I hurt through no fault of their own. I am so sorry. I will say this though, for the most part, I have chosen other people with the same addiction. We hurt each other, and I am sorry for those people too. I hope you find the help you need to heal, as I am trying to do.

So, I'm reading, a lot. Everything I can get my hands on. Facing the fact that I do not have, nor do I want to have, control over other people and their actions or decisions. Facing the fact that I am vulnerable, but so is everyone else who lets love in. Accepting the reality that this is going to be work, but in the end I'm looking forward to meeting the person that is inside me when she learns how to attach and love in a healthy way that allows love to be a long slow burn and not a fire that keeps getting gas thrown on it, then burns out again and again.

Experiencing Something New - Just when you thought you knew it all!

2015-03-02T20:43:00.000-05:00

Very soon, and I mean VERY SOON, I'm going to be having my 50th birthday. It's so hard for me to believe, because I certainly don't feel fifty years old. Although, I guess I can't really say that I know what fifty feels like. I'm guessing it's not unlike forty nine, or forty eight for that matter. I have, in my life thus far, experienced a lot. A lot of good things, a lot of bad things, and a lot of days that were just......days. It's funny how when you get a little older, the "just" days start to feel a bit like a waste of time. Nothing good to make a memory of, nothing bad to mark the significance of another day passing. Just a day, that didn't amount to much but time slipping away. Pretty soon, you start to wish you'd taken better advantage of those days. I mean, I'd rather be able to look back and say I did SOMETHING, right or wrong. Made a memory, or a mistake, either one. Having had a day so mediocre that I don't even remember it at all seems like such a waste.

I tend to look back a lot lately, and I think it's because I have so much in my life right now that I want to learn how to keep so many "just" days from cluttering it up. I'm experiencing something new, something that has changed the way I feel about those days, and the ones ahead of me. I've said "I love you" thousands of times over the last 49 years. Sometimes I thought I meant it, thought I knew what it meant. Other times, I knew I didn't, but felt obligated to say it. I took the word for granted, because it's meaning was lost to me.

It's a tough thing to admit that you've been emotionally screwed up almost all your life. But without a doubt, I have been. I grew up in a community where "gay" wasn't discussed, in a home where "gay" was most assuredly not acceptable, and in a time where there really wasn't any support available for a kid growing up gay in a straight world. That's how I looked at myself growing up. I was an outsider, different, somehow less than everyone else. My experience at home told me that being gay was dangerous, and would change my relationship with my family forever. My experience at school told me that being gay would get you bullied, shunned, and tormented. My experience in the world at that time told me that being gay was some kind of illness that made you immoral and in some way wicked in the eyes of the world.

So I learned early on, to hide my real feelings. Growing up like that taught me to bury my feelings, and just follow my friends as they began to explore their heterosexual puberty and adolescence. I married my high school best guy friend. Learned how to hide my thoughts and my feelings from him as well. I learned fast too. I got very, very good at it. Later in life, when I was exposed to more gay people and began to realize that I wasn't unique, it was too late. I had already formed a behavior that just became a part of me. I assumed that every relationship, even the gay ones, needed restraint and careful manipulation of the seriousness that I allowed to develop. It was safe to stay casual, and to keep things on a sexual basis, then end it abruptly if someone began to demand entry into other parts of my life. I never let anyone in, ever. Not my husband. Not the women that followed. It became my primary coping mechanism. Never let anyone in. I honestly didn't even know how. Panic would set in at the first sign of emotion, and I was gone!

Now I find myself facing something I simply never expected. Someone who makes me want to bring that wall that my emotions have always hidden behind down. But, learned behaviors are hard, especially when they were what you used to protect yourself. I didn't realize that letting this wall down was going let loose all the pain and fears that were attached to all those repressed wants, needs, feelings, and desires. That sharing the memories that tormented me when I was young, would be so painful even now. I guess I really did believe that if I didn't acknowledge them, I would never have to deal with them.

How amazing it is to me, that someone is willing to look past the fact that I am so damaged, so afraid to share. Someone who looks at me with eyes that tell me that it's okay, that who I am now doesn't forever have to be a cold emotionless little girl who doesn't understand the difference between sex and love. She brings to the surface a feeling in me that I am so unfamiliar with that it takes my breath away sometimes. I find myself nervous, and shaking when she touches me. Every fiber in my body is telling me that I'm not safe, I'm exposed, vulnerable. My heart and my soul, they just keep screaming "More!"

I used to think I had it all figured out, that I knew it all. I believed that skating through life with many casual relationships was the safest I could ever hope to be. That even a long term relationship had to have limits to trust and sharing. I may have been right, it might be safer, but it's not living and it certainly isn't loving. This feeling is more than I ever imagined it could be. It makes me think that while I may have thought I knew it all, I really didn't understand anything. Certainly not myself. I have found someone who makes me want to look inside and drag everything out into the open, because I know she will look at me the same way even then. Where do people like her hide all your life? How is it even possible for someone to look into your soul and see beauty where even you can't?

I'm not a fool, I know a million things can go wrong, and that letting my guard down means that someone can hurt me. But what I've learned through experiencing this person, this beautiful person, is that sometimes pain is the price you pay for a chance at something incredible. I'd rather risk it all for a chance at that, something incredible, than live behind these walls and have "just" days from now on.

Never the Whole

2015-02-05T03:21:00.000-05:00

There are parts of me that have known love

Pieces that were held with a selfish sort of need by someone who

saw some value in them. But never the whole.

My willingness to provide, a favorite piece, has known much love.

My desire to see a smile, and to give comfort, often cared for.

Even my desire for desire itself, has been favored for a time.

But never once has the whole of me known love.

How sad it is, to look at the pieces left over, and realize that

they are what is left. The unloved bits.

Fearing Your Own Mind

2015-02-03T23:35:00.000-05:00

Fear of your own Mind

I've spent years trying to keep from facing some memories. From time to time, something will drag them toward the surface, and a few times I've even thought to myself "Hey, maybe I can do it this time.". Thus far, that hasn't been the case.

It's amazing how you build walls to protect yourself. How you engineer a life that allows you to keep yourself behind them. How desperately you will fight to protect them, even when you want nothing more than to bring them down.

I know that there are hundreds of thousands of people out there who are victims of violence or abuse. I know I'm not the only one, and that my memories are no more traumatic or terror provoking to me than theirs are to them. I know that I'm not the only person who wakes up feeling the same fear that I felt at that moment in my life when everything changed. Fear is such an inadequate word. I "fear" snakes. I "fear" stinging insects, or bugs that cling to you. I "fear" so many little things in life. It seems such a small word, until it grasps you by the heart while you're still unsure if you are awake or asleep, and starts squeezing. It seems like such a minuscule word until it creeps into your mind with you fully awake and lets itself run free there. There it is wanting you not just to remember the way you felt at that moment, but to see it, to hear it, and to taste it. How is that years later, the taste of blood in your mouth can seem so real? The feeling of suffocating so palpable? Why is that none of the wonderful memories of my life are so tangible? What I wouldn't give to experience my child's birth that way again. But those memories fade. Some do not.

Intimacy is such a trigger. The incredible desire to let someone in. Wanting to be able to give yourself to them. Giving affection, love, intimacy, sexual pleasure is not the problem. Being in control wasn't the issue. But opening up, letting someone else have control, letting them love you and experience you is dangerous. You're not in control. Your mind is waiting for you to let go of just enough control, and it will throw out the visions at you with a vengeance. It knows that you're trying to bring someone in, and that they may try to bring down the walls that it spends so much of it's energy maintaining. Your mind tries so hard, to keep you alone.

I've been working on trying to get past some of this lately, and what I discovered is that my mind really seems to be my biggest enemy. It's almost as if it knows that I'm trying to kill something inside of it. Something it holds dear. The closer I look at it, the more it stares back at me and says "Go ahead, look in here. Are you so sure that it couldn't be real? I can make it real." What's so terrible, is I know that it's true. For an instant, my mind can make it real. How do you survive fearing your own mind?

Walls. Lots and lots of walls.

One Apology

2015-01-07T16:52:00.002-05:00

I don’t feel like I need to apologize to anyone for being gay. That would be like apologizing for having brown hair, or green eyes. I wish I would have figured that out a long time ago. For years, I wanted to believe that my being a lesbian didn't hurt anyone, hadn't hurt anyone, and I guess in a real sense it didn't. It was never the fact that I was gay, it was my refusing to accept it. Not being able to accept that I was a lesbian when I was very young, not even really understanding what the was, led me to make some very bad decisions.

It’s kind of ironic, that trying to be straight, is how I hurt someone. I married my best friend when I was 18 years old. He was handsome enough, loved to fish and hunt, didn't mind that I was a “tomboy”. At the time, he was my closest friend, the person I could talk to about anything and everything, except that one very important thing that I couldn't talk to anyone about.

I had a great relationship with my parents growing up. They were amazing, and to this day I am so grateful for the family I was born into. It wasn't them that kept me from facing my sexuality, it was my own fear of how it would effect my relationship with them. I never gave my Father the chance to accept me, he died before I ever found the courage to tell him that his only daughter was a lesbian. I hate that, because looking back I know that my happiness was the most important thing in the world to my Dad. He may not have loved the idea of my being gay, but he would have accepted me, because he loved me. I suspect he did know. Looking back a few conversations, a few questions he asked, I missed several opportunities to have that conversation with him. I so wish I hadn't.

But Rickey, my friend and later my husband and the father of my son, that’s one person that without a doubt my failure to step up and be honest with hurt. I wasted his time, 10 years to be exact. I wasted his love, because I could never return it the way he deserved. I damaged his self esteem because inevitably a man wonders if they somehow are responsible for you “becoming gay”. To this day, I carry a lot of guilt for hurting this man, someone who I know loved me.

I blame myself, to a great extent. But I also blame the society that I grew up in. One that didn't expose me to what being gay was. I had no idea in the beginning what I was, why I felt different from my friends. I was taught in school that love and sec were between a man and a woman, and that it led to procreation. Not one adult in my life ever helped me to understand what was going on with me, and you know that some of them had to notice. Surely they noticed that I was more masculine than my girlfriends, had no desire to even discuss wearing feminine clothing, and was more apt to spend recess playing football with the guys than gathering in a huddle with the girls giggling over some silly guy. I wish just one of them would have taken the time to tell me that not every person is heterosexual, that there are people who are attracted to the same sex, and that it’s OK.

But can you imagine what would have happened to a teacher, in the 70’s or early 80‘s, who said that to a young girl or a young boy who was just beginning to realize their own sexuality. My wonderful Dad, as much as I love him, at the time would have had their job or worse. It was just a different world then.

I wish that I could have really understood myself so much younger than I did. It would have saved me, and others in my life, so much time and pain. When you get older, and start looking back, and a wasted decade of life starts to have even more meaning to you. It certainly does to me. What I wouldn't give to have those ten years back, or the 5 that followed afterwards as I struggled to come to terms with who I was.

The fact is, that all kids should be exposed to the truth about sexuality. They need to know that it’s not black and white and that not everyone is going to fit into the cooker cutter outline of heterosexuality. They need to know that it’s OK to talk about it, and to have a safe place to do that with people who can give them meaningful advice and guidance. It’s easy to see that it’s getting better. Every generation seems to be a little less intolerant and afraid. I hope so. I hope that soon, not a single child will sit confused in their room alone, trying to understand why they are a little different and afraid to ask anyone for fear of losing a friend, or a family member’s love. I love that some of the younger gay and lesbian people that I meet now, have never experienced that and say they have felt completely accepted by the people who are close to them throughout their short lives.
I believe that Rickey found love and happiness after we divorced. He was never angry, or said anything mean or hurtful to me when I told him the truth. Always my friend, and I hurt him so much. No apology will ever take that away. So when the anti-gay movement tells you that you can choose not to be gay, and live a heterosexual life, I want to tell them that they are the ones who are hurting people. You can pretend for a time, a short time, but the truth comes out eventually. Either by words, or actions, the fact that you aren't sexually attracted to someone can’t be hidden forever. Endless arguments about the lack of sex, or the excuses to avoid it, will put an end to the lies, and there you will be, looking at wasted years for both of you and having hurt someone you never intended

Who doesn't like sex? Seriously?

2014-12-26T09:52:00.003-05:00

Who doesn’t like sex? Seriously

So it’s no secret that every lesbian who hasn’t lived with their head buried in the dirt has heard of the dreaded “Lesbian Bed Death”. It’s as much a part of Lesbian lore as the U-haul, and the “urge to merge”. Statistically, all three of these things have a basis in reality to some degree, but I have to admit that a lack of sexual desire boggles my mind. It has also been the bane of my existence to a large degree for the past 12 years.

I’m a Nurse, and I admit that I do fancy myself as being fairly well versed in the chemistry of sexual attraction and sexual desire. I understand the cascade of hormones and neurotransmitters that assault the human brain when we first meet someone, and that spark occurs that makes you want to spend the next several months hidden away together and only come up for air when absolutely necessary. Oxytocin, dopamine, and a myriad of other chemicals play havoc with our common sense, and our better judgment at times, turning us into love making machines and making us experience “pleasure” just by being close to someone.

I even understand how that intense need to be intimate diminishes over time, as our bodies slowly decrease their chemical onslaught and we begin rely more on our own baseline of desire to fuel our passion. What I do NOT understand, is why some peoples “baseline” is so damn low! Even non-existent! I mean what the HELL! Are you kidding me?

I know that not everyone can have “exactly” the same sex drive, and that some of us may indeed be just a bit over the top when it comes to physical desire. But, here’s my question, and it’s one that I’ve never been able to get a straight answer from someone with a “lesser” sex drive. Why? What is it that you don’t like about having sex every chance you get? Hell, what is that you don’t LOVE about it? I mean I’m almost 50 years old, in the thralls of menopause, and I still can’t get enough. My “baseline” hasn’t changed at all, and I hope it never does.

Physical love is an intimate and fulfilling experience between two people. It can be fun and playful, emotional and heartwarming, or profoundly meaningful. I’ve had great sex, and I mean GREAT, with people I wasn’t in love with. I’ve had really bad sex, and I mean BAD, with people I thought I WAS in love with. The common denominator being the sex, and I have to tell you, even the bad sex was better than no sex at all.

If you read studies about how often couples have sex, you’ll almost always read that lesbian couples in long term relationships have the least sex. Gay men are number one, followed by heterosexual couples, and then lesbian couples in long term relationships. It’s enough to make you want to avoid any long term commitments entirely, at least in my book it is. Having been in a relationship of 12 years with someone who “suffered” from a lack of desire (although she hid that fact pretty damn well until we were well committed to each other), I can tell you that there is NOTHING more miserable than being the person with a high level of desire, being at the mercy of someone with little or none.

It’s frustrating to go without something that could be given so easily but is withheld from you because your partner has a lack of desire. You hear “I’m tired”, or “I have a headache”, or “It’s been a terrible day” so often in the beginning, and you try to believe that it’s a temporary thing. Eventually, however, the truth comes out and usually it does so in the form of an argument about the fact that you’re not having any damn sex! Your partner finally fesses up that they just don’t have the sexual desire, or the need, that you have. At that point, you start hitting the Internet looking for an answer, and “Lesbian Bed Death” rears it’s ugly head.

Most of the articles that you read will tell you that it doesn’t really exist. They’ll explain that everyone has periods in their lives when stress and circumstance decrease their sexual desire but that with loving understanding and patience they can find their desire again. Well, if they say so. That hasn’t been my experience in my life as a lesbian. In my personal experience it’s been very simple. Some people like sex, some people love it, and some people tolerate it. This last group, I guess I just don’t understand.

To me it’s simple. Flirting is fun. Sexual tension is exciting. Sexual intimacy is rewarding. Orgasm is awesome. Why would anyone NOT love it? My ex liked to say that she just didn’t “need” sex the way I did. Need? You “need” to eat. You “need” to breathe. You “need” shelter. I fucking WANT sex. I don’t need it. It’s not about need. It’s about desire, tension, and release.

I used to think that people who weren’t compatible in their desires, could still have a successful relationship. I have to tell you, I’ve changed my mind to a great extent on that issue. I think that the desire for sexual intimacy needs be thoroughly discussed and honestly conveyed at the beginning of any serious relationship because in truth, at least to me, it appears that the “baseline” that someone brings to the table is the one you have to be able to live with. No doubt, many people do learn to temper their desires in order to maintain a relationship. The question is do you want to? If you knew at the beginning that you were going to have to live with night after night of feeling rejected, frustrated, deprived……would you choose to love?

Pat Robertson - what an idiot!

2014-12-18T12:31:00.002-05:00

So Pat Robertson is at it again. Giving advice to a caller he tells her that Homosexuals will die out because they can't reproduce. Correct me if I'm wrong, but in order for homosexuals to "die out" wouldn't heterosexuals be the ones that had to stop reproducing? I mean as great as lesbian sex is, it doesn't lead to pregnancy and I'm pretty sure that every gay person I know is the product of a heterosexual sexual encounter. Wow! Aren't you glad Pat Robertson is a television evangelist, and not your brain surgeon?

Reflecting a bit

2014-12-15T14:12:00.003-05:00

So I’ve been reflecting a lot lately. Taking these long leisurely strolls through my life, trying to find those moments where I really screwed the pooch and made the massive mistakes that I surely had to have made to end up where I am. It’s been a little bit of a struggle because these really big, stupid, mistakes that I expected to find weren’t there. Instead, what I found was a total lack of decision making on my part. When I look back at the times in my life that led to change, I see me just standing there letting things just “happen”, with little to no actual decision on my own part to either let it happen, or stop it cold in it’s tracks. Kind of hard to blame other people for that, huh? Because that’s what I was really hoping to find, a long line of other people to blame for my being 49 years old, and unhappy as hell.

This little discovery actually blew me away, because I have always thought of myself as a pretty self directed person. Just goes to show you, sometimes the person we know the least, is ourselves. In my case, I ended up being a complete fucking stranger to myself. Not at all the person I thought I was, and most assuredly not the person I wanted to be.

I’m getting to the point where I really hate the entire idea of being “laid back”. That laid back, let it happen and see where it takes you attitude hasn’t served me very well. I wish I had taken a militant, in your face, not a chance in hell am I letting this happen stance now. It turns out, if you don’t make the decisions about what your life is going to be like, someone else will. The only problem with that is that they make those decisions based on what’s good for them, not for you.

The biggest mistake I ever made in my life, was being afraid to make a decision that might be a mistake. It’s better to command your own life and be wrong, than sail smoothly through someone else’s life as the dinghy. That’s pretty much what I’ve been, other peoples life boats. You know, that extra little insurance that you keep around in case the ship you’re sailing won’t float? That’s me! Just tie a rope on me and drag me along behind you as you navigate your own life with purpose, I’ll just wait right here for you to cut me loose when you reach your destination.

Needless to say I’m getting a late start on directing my own life with purpose. Still, better late than never. Perhaps all the inspirational quotes you see about needing all the bad experiences in your life to be able to recognize and appreciate the good ones are true. I don’t know. I think I can better spot a bad decision coming down the pipeline now, no doubt about that. I’m just hoping that somewhere along the way I’ve also developed the ability to stand up and just say “Hell No”, then walk in the other direction.

Lessons Learned

2014-12-12T22:04:00.000-05:00

I quit blogging for a long time. A LONG TIME. It's funny how your creativity, your desire to have a voice, can just dwindle away to nothing when your personal life is stagnant. Mine was. My personal life had become nothing but an attempt to get from day to day without looking at it. I didn't want to admit that MY life was so without joy, and my relationship of 12 years was nothing but a lie that I kept telling myself over and over, as if repetition made it a more believable lie. I look back at it now, and wish I could have been more honest with myself. I wish she, my partner, would have found the strength to end the lies so long before she did. We wasted so much time, so much life.

I always knew that I loved her more. I've always said that no relationship is completely equal. Someone loves and gives more, someone loves and gives less. That's when the lies started, right from the beginning. I told myself that if I loved her enough, if I gave enough, if I waited, she would love me the same way. But that's not what happened. Instead of her changing, I did. Slowly, over years, a huge part of who you are dies when you wait for something, yearn for it, and it never comes. It's a character flaw of mine that I just couldn't give up and walk away. I come from parents who were married from their teens until death separated them. You don't quit. You don't walk away. You stay. No matter what, you don't give up on someone.

The end came with a whimper. No fireworks. I leaned over the couch to kiss her neck, and she leaned into my kiss, something she never did. How comical that something I once would have been so thankful for, a return of affection, told me at once that it was over. She hesitated there for a moment, and I knew. I asked her what was wrong, knowing before she answered, that it was over. Finally. It was painful, incredibly painful, to actually hear those words. Like having something deep inside of your chest grasped and squeezed without mercy until you just can't breathe. Even though the love I had once felt had become something so much less, it was still love. I cared. Hearing her tell me that she had never loved me the way I loved her, never, was devastating. I knew it, had known it all along, but hearing it was almost more than I could bear.

I'm still stuggling with the realization that I wasted so much time. So many years. I wish I had them back, but that's a wish falling of deaf ears. There are no do over's in life. You have to play out the cards you hold in your hand, and if you choose not to fold a losing hand you can't whine about losing the game.

So I've learned some hard lessons, dealing with this ending in my life. I've learned that if you know that you love someone more than they love you, you are going to pay for your willingness to accept that. You'll pay dearly for it. I've learned that all the romantic notions about age not making a difference in love, are not completely true. There are stages of your life during which you change, and grow, and mature. You won't be the same person in decades that you are right now. What you can live with, accept, and what you want for yourself will change. It's not impossible that those changes will separate you and your partner/lover/spouse. Through no fault of your own, you may wake up one day laying next to a stranger.

I've learned that sexual incompatibility can destroy a relationship. Call it what you want (I hate the term Lesbian Bed Death), but if one person has a strong sexual desire, and the other has little or none, you are going to have problems. Something, somewhere, will have to give. Often, it will be trust and fidelity.

I've learned that no matter how strong you think you are and no matter how much you think you can take, having the lie that you tell yourself shattered and the truth thrown into your face will make you tremble. It shakes you to your very core, and makes you question everything else in your life. What's worse, is you begin to tumble. You spiral out of control and emotions take over. Any mixed signal from anyone, any unclear message of any kind sends ripples of fear and anger through you reminding you of what you've just been through. For me, a person who valued being in control and believing I was so well grounded, realizing I was out of control was confusing and scary as hell. I wanted to stop the feelings, and the thoughts that kept attacking me, but I had no control over them. I still don't. They still reach out and grab me by the throat to remind me i'm not out of the woods yet. But i'm working on it.

I learned that when you are an emotional mess, do NOT let yourself even contemplate ANY kind of a relationship with ANYONE. You're as toxic as you'll ever be, and you can ruin what might be something wonderful had you waited. If it's someone you care about, and they care about you, then they will understand you needing to wait until you have some control of yourself again. You really can end up hurting someone deeply, and you can hurt yourself in the process as well. I discovered that I was suddenly unable to interpret subtle sarcasm and even some humor without having warning sirens go off in my head that I was being lied to AGAIN. I would over react, and very nearly ruined a beautiful friendship by lashing out when I felt confused. Just don't do it. If you can't look at what you've been through without pain, you're not ready yet.

I learned that alcohol quiets some demons, and creates others. Still working on this one, because drinking does help me quiet my head and let me sleep. But, it also magnifies depression and sometimes leads your thoughts to darker places than they need to go. It lets you say things without a filter. You need the filter, trust me. I also learned that there are certain people in your life who simply won't tolerate you self medicating yourself with alcohol, and they can be relentless.

Most of all, I learned that Lesbians are no different from straight couples when it comes to a break up. Things get ugly. We live in Texas, and so we're not married. No divorce to go through, but still a LOT of entanglements. If you don't have legal recognition of your relationship, go get a lawyer. Get your relationship on paper somehow. I hope you never need it, but if you do you'll be so sorry you didn't. The joke straight people tell about thinking gay people should be allowed to get married because everyone should have to deal with divorce, isn't funny. It's an ugly truth that can devastate you if you're not prepared.

My ex partner and I have an adopted son together, so there's a lot at stake in my struggle to get through this emotionally intact. My son loves his other Mother, and I want to encourage and nurture that love. It's not easy, especially with the "new" woman in her life. Still, i'm working on it. In the end, we'll get there. The one thing we can agree on is that he is the most important thing in all this.

I'm trying to take stock of what I've been through, what I've learned. I want to look at where I made mistakes, because I never want to repeat this same mistake again. I'm not sure love will ever be in the cards for me again. At the moment, trusting someone that much again seem's risky, unwise. I'm hoping that will change and I can let go of those feelings. Still, at 49 years of age and having a 2 year old, the likelihood of finding someone who isnt terrified of that is pretty slim. So, I'm trying to learn to be ok with being alone. That's a scary thought! Alone. Forever.

Here's the most important thing I learned in all this. Don't wait forever. Don't just give up and live in a loveless relationship endlessly. Time is marching along. Demand love. Have sex - mad passionate kinky fun sex, every chance you get. Have greater expectations of the people in your life. If they aren't going out of their way to love you, to make you happy, then don't be afraid to walk away. Don't settle for being the one who does all the loving and giving, because some people will let you until ending things benefits them, irregardless of what it does to you. Walk away, and believe that somehow what your life will become will be better, because nothing - NOTHING - is worse is living a lie.

We need a new party!

2012-09-27T01:06:00.000-04:00

I've been trying very hard to stay out of the political discussions between my friends on facebook. Mostly because I live in East Texas, and the majority (but not all) of my friends are conservative republicans, at least that's how they vote. Most will tell you that they are "open minded" or that they are "socially liberal" to some degree and that they wish that I could get the same financial and social protections with my partner that a married person gets. The one's that are honest will add, "But I don't think it should be called marriage" to the end of their statements as if somehow that shouldn't offend me.

Well, whether it offends me or not, really isn't important. It's their personal view on a issue that involves their personal belief systems, and so how their belief effects me or my sensitivities really has no bearing on the matter. It's how the actions that they take in order to inflict their beliefs on me that matter. To me, it matters a lot.

When I was younger, I really hated single issue voters. It made me crazy to hear someone say that they were voting Democrat or Republican, instead of saying they were voting FOR a candidate him or herself because that candidate represented the best hope for improving the world we live in in some way that the other candidate didn't.

Then, I grew up. I am, unequivocally, a single issue voter. I am the person who steps into the voting booth and votes Democrat straight down the line. For the most part, I don't even look at the names of candidates anymore because for me, they don't matter. You see, I don't really vote "For" anyone, I vote "Against" something.

I have to admit that I disagree with a lot of the ideas in the Democratic platform. You see I'm a product of my raising and my environment just like everyone else. If you don't live in an area where illegal aliens impact your life on a daily basis, then chances are you don't have the same strong feelings about immigration enforcement that many of the people who live where I live have. If you don't work in an environment where you see the incredible abuse that goes on daily to the medicaid and welfare systems, then you may not have the same feeling of urgency that I do to see that these programs get completely overhauled to demand able bodied Americans who are capable of working do so, and that they take responsibility for their own actions and decisions. If you are selling your food stamps to buy meth, I hate it for you but you deserve to be hungry. If you have decided to make having babies your career path and to live off the welfare system, then I hate it for you (and your children), but you deserve to have your benefits limited and your children deserve the opportunity to grow up in an environment that teaches them to reach higher and to expect more of themselves.

Sounds a lot like what a Republican would say doesn't it? Well, that's probably because for most of my life, that's what I was. Then I met someone that I loved, and being able to protect and provide for them became THE most important thing in my life. So, it isn't Democratic ideas that I vote for, it's Republican insistence on marrying their idea of religion to government and law that I vote against.

I wish there was a viable third party. One that would represent those of us who are fiscally conservative and want social reform, but also want conservative religious organizations to understand that while they have a right to their views, they do not have the right to inflict them on others. I wish that the Republican party would back away from this dance they are doing with the religious right, which more and more is becoming like some kind of hot Latin salsa where you can't tell where one entity stops and the other starts.

There have been some Independents that I really liked, and would have voted for eagerly against both of the dominate party candidates. Unfortunately, in a election that is likely to impact my personal life in so many ways as a gay person in the United States of America, it would be a wasted vote with little impact except to take away my vote AGAINST the Republican party.

I am gay. The Republican party, as a part of it's platform, discriminates against me and seeks to exclude me from equal protection under the law. So, until the Republican party decides to stop courting the Religious Right, and to recognize that not every American is Christian or even religious, but still deserves the same basic human rights that they enjoy, I will continue to vote a straight ticket. I just wish the box said "Not the Republicans", because that's what I'm really voting for every time.

Mitt Romney says Judicial Review is "Required"

2012-04-13T16:16:00.000-04:00

According to Mitt Romney, speaking today at a National Rifle Association function, Judicial Review of Laws by the Supreme Court is "Required" to protect us all from laws that restrict our constitutional rights. He is of course talking about the Supreme Courts review of President Obama's Health care reform law. But, I wonder what his opinion is of the California Supreme Courts review of proposition 8, or of The Federal Supreme Courts review of Proposition 8 or DOMA, which will undoubtedly come.

I actually completely agree with him on the point that Courts must be able to review laws made by popular votes or by legislative votes. Looking back through our history, it has been the Supreme Court that protected the rights of minority groups from laws passed by popular votes that discriminated against them. Civil rights for people of Color, Interracial Marriage, both of these issues were not popular in the public view. Left to popular votes alone, how many years would have passed before these discriminatory laws were toppled?

So, let the Supreme Court review health care reform. If they find that some part of it is unconstitutional, I can live with that. We need health care reform, no doubt, and even if the current law is found to be unconstitutional I believe it will come because it has to. There is no way to support the current system financially. But I hope that when other issues, like Same Sex Marriage are there in "Judicial Review", that Romney and the Republican Party will remember his comments today.

Somehow, I doubt it.

Rick Santorum say's marriage is a privilege, not a right.

2011-09-01T08:13:00.001-04:00

Rick Santorum is angry because a national TV host asked him if his belief that Same Sex couples have no RIGHT to marriage made him a bigot. He is offended by that. Well, one of the downsides of living in a country where you have a right to your personal beliefs, is that you have to live with the consequences of trying to apply those personal beliefs to other people lives.

I firmly support Rick Santorum's right to his personal belief system. I don't agree with it, and I find people who use their religious beliefs to harm the lives of others sad and hypocritical, but I support his right to believe it.

A bigot is defined as someone who is utterly intolerant of a different creed, belief, or opinion. So yes, Rick Santorum is a bigot. He is intolerant of gay people, and their lifestyles. He has chosen to base his bigoted statements on his religious beliefs, which I suspect we will see more and more of as the elections draw nearer. The far right-tea party to which he must ingratiate himself eats that stuff up!

Well, here's the thing. By definition, I'm a bigot as well. I am utterly intolerant of people who insist on legislating their personal religious beliefs. I respect their right to believe what they want, and to worship in the way they please. But when they start trying to place restrictions on my own life, and to limit the expression of love between me and my partner based on those beliefs through LEGISLATION then I become as intolerant a person as anyone walking the earth.

Government should protect the weak and the minority from the demands of a religious majority who seeks to keep a privilege unto themselves by making laws that recognize them as a "special" group, deserving of something while others are not.

I regret that they make this a religious issue over and over. As a person of faith, I recognize that each of us has the right to choose how we worship and what we believe. Until, that is, you cross the line and start targeting those who believe differently and trying to harm them either physically, emotionally, or financially. This religious right is trying to do all three of these things to us, and they do it pridefully, as if it were something to brag about.

I am a fiscal conservative, but I vote exclusively democratic because of the hard right turn that the republican party has taken. I want a smaller government, one that respects EVERY individuals rights, not just the lucky ones that were born 'privileged'. I want aggressive changes to social entitlement programs that encourage people not to work, to be irresponsible, and to live like parasites on those of us who work so hard to take care of our families.

I'm a nurse. My partner is a police officer. We both work hard in careers that involve taking care of the people in our communities. We've been together for almost 10 years, share a mortgage and make car payments just like everyone else. I love her, and want the right to protect her financially in the future just like any heterosexual couple out there. So when Rick Santorum says that we have no 'right' to marriage because we don't deserve the same 'privilege' that he enjoys, I have to say you call a spade a spade. He's a bigot. Just like me.

I know what I WISH I could give her

2009-11-17T23:51:00.002-05:00

I haven't been updating here as much as I'd like to lately. To tell you the truth, the whole proposition 8 thing really disheartened me for a while. It made me angry that so many Americans would go so far out of their way just to hurt me and those like me. I like to think that I'm fair minded, and that I understand why some people disapprove of my sexual preference. But in reality, I don't. Not really. I mean, it doesn't bother me that they are heterosexual and even though I find that lifestyle distasteful, I wouldn't walk across the street to keep them from being able to be happy. I certainly wouldn't carry hateful posters, yell ugly remarks at them, and spend my hard earned money to make sure that they can't be together in same meaningful way that I could.

Maybe that's the problem for us. We aren't willing to attack their rights, as a means of asserting our own. Perhaps begging for table scraps off of their buffet isn't the answer. If equal protection under the law is the basis for our argument for equality, then maybe the strategy we need to employ is attacking those rights that they enjoy that we don't, instead of begging for them.

We can't marry and have the benefits of that union, then instead of this endless fight to marry why not just start demanding that the rights that they enjoy that we are denied be removed from the union of marriage? If you MUST be married to have survivor benefits of social security, then that benefit should no longer be given on the basis of marriage. If every American can't have it, then none should.

Perhaps by trying to take away those things that make marriage such a valuable and desirable institution, we can make them understand just how important marriage really is to every American. Not just to heterosexuals.

If they are going to use religion to continue this campaign of hate and prejudice, then I don't want to make spreading those views to another generation any easier for them. I don't want their religious views to be taught or respected in any venue or institution that my tax dollars support (especially since I have to pay more of those taxes than they do, as a "single" person). I've never voted to keep prayer out of schools, or to limit religious organizations tax free status' before. But my thinking on that issue is changing. The freedom to exercise one's faith is important, I believe that. But if your faith demands that you persecute and hurt others, then there must be limits.

I think I'm just getting tired of waiting. Tired of trying to be patient and hope that as time passes people will change. We keep pointing at the inequality that exists between us, and trying to change minds without being as brutal and hateful as those who oppose us. I doubt we ever could be. I don't think that my circle of gay friends even have it in them to mirror the mindset of the people who apparently hate and fear us more than anything else.

Christmas is right around the corner, and my partner of 7 years and I are still here. Still together. Still loving each other and trying to build a life and future together. I don't know what I'll get her this year, but I know what it won't be. It won't be that one thing that I've always wanted to give her, a wedding ring.

Gay Rights Are Civil Rights

2009-09-30T03:30:00.001-04:00

Gay Rights Are Civil Rights
by: Dr. Maura J. Cullen

(This article is from ArticleCity.com and is written by Dr. Maura J. Cullen)

Our biggest tragedy as a country was the enslavement of Black people who were stolen from their native lands and forced into slavery. In order to end this tyranny, courageous people risked their own lives in what has become known as the Civil Rights Movement. This movement was forged on the backs of People of Color and has become a force that has changed the face of America. Because of its success it now serves as a powerful model for every civil rights movement that followed.

There is a saying that history repeats itself and without a doubt that is what is currently taking place in this country with the gay rights movement. People who supported slavery, denied white women and people of color the right to vote, were all on the wrong side of history by denying people’s basic human and civil rights. And today, there are many who are still on the wrong side of history by denying gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans basic civil rights.

We are governed, in theory, by a document that allows all citizens the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and where all people are treated equal. Yet it is very apparent that gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans are exempt from these equal rights. That is how it is now, but not as it always will be, because as history demonstrates, justice will eventually prevail, but unfortunately it always takes a fight.

This country was founded on the premise of protecting the minority view, of allowing all voices to be heard and to provide equal rights for ALL Americans. Democracy has never been a majority rules proposition and nor should it be. Many fled to this country to escape religious persecution. Now, many of those very people’s ancestors are the same people persecuting gay Americans today.

Same-Sex Marriage

The religious-right has taken it upon themselves to be the torchbearers for denying equal rights to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Americans. They assert that permitting same-sex marriage would jeopardize the institution of marriage. It is challenging to take this claim seriously given that heterosexuals have a divorce rate of close to 50%. You can’t blame that failure on gay people. In fact, it is hard to believe that same-sex couples could do any worse than their heterosexual counterparts in the marriage department.

As a lesbian couple, my wife Dawn and I were legally married in the great state of Massachusetts, which was the first state to permit same-sex marriage with all of the rights and benefits that go along with it. We have since moved to Maryland, a state that does not recognize nor permit same-sex marriage. As a result, we no longer have the rights that we had once experienced in Massachusetts including health care. We are now once again relegated to second-class status.

Yet history is repeating itself. Just as same-sex couples are now denied the right to marry in most states, there was another group of people in our history as a nation who were also denied the right to marry.

It was not until 1967 that inter-racial marriage was legalized. As a result of the case of Loving v Virginia, all race-based legal restriction on marriage were prohibited. Opponents believed inter-racial marriages to be repugnant, abhorrent and an attack on morality. Sound familiar?

In 2006, South Africa became the 5th country to legalize same-sex marriage. This is impressive given apartheid was legal until 1994 and where the impact of unequal treatment is still apparent today. South Africa has done what the United States has yet to fully grasp; they have taken a lesson from their own history and are determined not to repeat that painful chapter by imposing injustice on a different group of people.

Military—Don’t Ask Don’t Tell

Until the 1954 decision of Brown v The Board of Education, legal segregation existed in the U.S. Military. Black soldiers have participated and died in every war this country has fought and has done so with distinction.

The 1994 passage of the Clinton’s administration of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy prohibits anyone who "demonstrate(s) a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts" from serving in the armed forces of the United States, because it "would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability."

To date, over 12,500 gay and lesbian soldiers have been forced out of the military as a result of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell”. These soldiers have served with distinction. They are willing to lay down their lives to bring democracy to other countries, yet they are denied equal treatment in their own. Military men and women have been trained to handle all situations and yet we have dismissed 12,500 well-trained soldiers because some of the heterosexual soldiers are afraid they may make a pass at them? The United States military is over-taxed with our involvement in so many regions of the world and we cannot afford to lose so many qualified and talented people.

It is time that we as a country learn from our past mistakes. These mistakes have taken a huge toll on all of us. Some history does not bear repeating.

About The Author

Dr. Maura Cullen is the author of the bestselling book "35 Dumb Things Well-Intended People Say: Surprising Things We Say That Widen the Diversity Gap". She is a highly-acclaimed diversity trainer who has educated and inspired people worldwide in over 400 universities and organizations on how to be more inclusive and authentic when communicating with others. With over 25 years of experience as a keynote speaker and her doctorate in Social Justice & Diversity Education from the University of Massachusetts , she is widely considered one of the nation's foremost authorities of diversity issues today. Visit http://www.TheDiversitySpeaker.com

Proposition 8 Upheld In California

2009-05-26T18:22:00.003-04:00

I'm dissappointed to say the least that the California Supreme Court upheld proposition 8 in California today. But it isn't quite the victory that the Conservative and Religious right think it is. Reading through the decision comments it becomes apparent that the Justices were not repealing a gay couples rights as a married couple in California, but simply the ability to call their union a marriage.

I have to tell you, that if that were the case federally, I wouldn't care what they called my union with my partner. Give me the same rights and protections under the law (including the tax laws), and you can have your claim to the term marriage. I'll take Civil Union, Domestic Partnership, whatever. It's the rights that are conveyed by the union, not what it's called. That clearly was protected by the Justices comments.

Tired Old Arguments

2009-05-11T08:42:00.003-04:00

I was cruising around the internet today, reading my favorite blogs, and then heading over to facebook to catch up with friends. I clicked on the twitter application link there and was browsing through topics on their page, and found this one below. I was in a pretty good mood today. I had spent a great weekend at home with my partner, celebrated Mother's day with my Mom, gone fishing and actually caught fish! Then, I read this thread on twitter. Not is such a good mood anymore. Disgusted actually. You'll just have to read it for yourself, and you'll see what I mean. Post after post after post of hatefull, prejudiced, angry statements back and forth between "Christians", and "Homosexuals". The same usual arguments, that start out sounding caring and disintegrate into inflamed and agitated statements when no one agrees with anyone else. Christians and Homosexuals.......Man, you're really screwed if you happen to be both.

Here's the link to the twitter discussion on facebook.

New friends at home

2008-10-13T06:27:00.000-04:00

I got to spend a little time at home this past summer, and had a great time watching two little birds working feverishly to build this nest, and then raise their family. It was built on the front porch, and when we would come in late at night, the parents would dive bomb us as we walked up onto the porch. The little ones stuck around for a while, and then were gone. I'm hoping they'll choose the same spot for a new home next year.

McCain throws in the towel on the Financial Crisis

2008-10-06T21:57:00.005-04:00

Senator McCain apparently realizes that he has nothing of any substance to add to the conversation in America about the financial crisis. He’s decided to just avoid the issue completely and try to distract the American voter with misleading adds that are just more of the same mud slinging he’s becoming known for.

The problem is, it’s hard to distract someone from the heat, when their hair is on fire. We’ve watched our retirement savings disappear, and been saddled with debt that it will take us years to pay off. Many of us are losing our jobs, or live in fear of it. The cost of living is going up, and the amount of money we’re bringing home is going down. People are losing their homes, and watching their single largest investments lose value as the housing market is flooded with foreclosed properties that no one can get a loan to purchase.

I’m sorry, but refusing to talk to me about this doesn’t make me feel any better about what you’re going to do to fix my problems. I have to admit though, that when Senator McCain was actually talking about the crisis, he wasn’t making me feel much better either. It was so apparent that he didn’t even realize that there was a crisis until late in the game, and then his response to it was to go to Washington and accomplish nothing.

If the best that you have to offer in the conversation about how to help this country crawl out of the pit we’ve been thrown into over the last eight years, is to point out to me that your opponent has a middle name that you don’t like, then perhaps just keeping your mouth shut and letting the people out there who actually understand the trouble that we’re in discuss the issues might not be such a bad idea. On that note, Senator McCain, I applaud your decision to just stop talking about the crisis. Since that is all that I really care about today as I watch my retirement savings go down every time the market opens, it keeps me from having to waste my time trying to listen to your ideas. After all, I can just look back at the past eight years and get a pretty good idea.

Vote Republican? Not a chance.

2008-03-03T05:14:00.002-05:00

Driving through town, I noticed a political poster for John McCain in the yard of someone that I know personally to be gay. Not just gay, but OUT gay. At first I thought it was probably put there by someone without my friend knowing it, so I gave him a call and was shocked to discover that he had put the sign up and was planning to vote for the republican candidate in the general election.

I just couldn’t believe it. I asked him why? Why would you even consider voting for ANYONE in the republican party if you are a gay American with any concerns for not just furthering equality, but maintaining the gains we have achieved? He told me that he was voting against the democratic party, more than voting for the republican party candidate and admitted that in truth, he knew very little about McCain’s views on equal rights for gays and lesbians, or gay marriage (although he assumed that he was no different from any of the other republicans and opposed it). His major voting concern was the economy, and he felt that the democrats gave too much of his money away to people who sat at home and didn’t work, or were here illegally. He wanted less social program spending and a hard lined approach to immigration reform.

When we hung up, it took me a long while to get past my disbelief and to focus on what he was saying. He wasn’t voting for the people that he knew would help him achieve personal freedoms, his main concerns lay lower in the list of essential human needs.

It’s my belief that people vote according to their perception of needs. If you’re hungry, poor, have no roof over your head, then you vote for the person who is going to help elevate you to a point where you get these basic needs met. Once those needs are met, you start focusing on your future needs, and who will help you meet those needs. When you think you have those needs met, you begin to focus on your personal freedoms and the things that you’d LIKE to have, but don’t need to survive.

For my friend, who had been impacted greatly by the economy, and by workers in our area who are here illegally taking jobs for much less pay, the questions of immigration and taxation were at the base of his needs list, overpowering his desire to have his relationship protected. But there is a problem with that thinking. What benefit do we as gays and lesbians get from tax reform that doesn’t recognize our relationships or our families? None.

We will still be taxed as singles even though we have been in relationships for years and have bought homes and have mortgages and bills just like the heterosexual neighbors do. We still won’t be able to claim the children of our partners, or to write off the medical expenses that we pay for these children, because our relationship with them isn’t recognized. We can’t write off the mortgage interest that we pay on the mortgage if the mortgage is in our partners name. Bottom line, the republican tax cuts aren’t helping us, because they don’t even recognize that we exist. If you’re an adult in a committed relationship with a home to maintain, working hard and making a decent living, then you’re still just a single person making too much money as far as the tax code is concerned so you get to pay more taxes so that the neighbors don’t have to. Why, because they have the benefit of marriage. You don’t.

The republicans want to keep it that way. At least the more progressive republicans want to keep it that way. The really conservative ones want to take away our rights to even have legal contracts that protect our finances and our health care decisions and take care of our need to protect our partners both financially and medically. They want to push us back into the closet, and out of their lives. They like the idea that we pay a disproportionate amount of money in taxes, because it means they don’t have to. It helps them, hurts us, and they love that idea.

I wish I had an answer for him on the immigration issue. He believes that deporting millions of illegal aliens is an option. Realistically, I just don’t. I don’t see that even being physically possible, so we need to work on a solution that is feasible. One that addresses the impact that these workers have on working Americans, and has a realistic chance of success. I don’t see that either party has a real answer yet, but can’t argue that my friends experience certainly justify his frustration and willingness to vote to relieve it.

For me, even the idea of voting for a candidate that courts the religious right is out of the question. Not just because I am gay, but because I hate the idea of any president sitting in the oval office, and giving one ounce of weight to the demands of someone like Dr. James Dobson, or Pat Robertson, or any other ultra conservative who thinks they have the right to define the values of an entire nation based on their own personal beliefs. If the republican party wants to align itself with these kinds of far right extremists, and will do anything to try to make them happy, then they are leaving ME out in the cold and certainly will never get my vote.

Both democratic candidates are right. It is time for change in this country. It’s time for people to be seen as individuals who have the right to live their lives according to their own values and beliefs within the constraints of the law. It’s time for religion to take it’s place in peoples personal lives, and to get out of political policy decisions where it has no place. It’s time that a persons actions be allowed to define them, and not their sexual orientation.

I can’t change my friends mind, he’s still going to vote for McCain. I’m just glad my vote will be there to cancel his out. But that’s what it’s all about. Two people standing on opposite sides of a fence, talking about how each of us thinks change needs to occur. In the end, we’ll still be friends, and one of us will have to buy the other dinner. Hope he can afford the seafood feast he’s going to be buying me when the democrats win in November!

Jane Rule - Dead at 76

2007-12-02T07:12:00.000-05:00

Jane Rule, the acclaimed author and lesbian, has died at the age of 76. There are news bites on the internet that far surpass anything that I could say about her, but I didn't want her passing to bo by without at least saying that I felt the loss. One of my favorite quotes is hers:

"If men really are turned on by all that awful underwear, leg and footwear, all that paint and headachy perfume, then maybe they should have been wearing it all along."

Here are links to some of the news bytes:
The London Free Press
Regional Leader-Post, Canada
Vancouver Sun
Now Toronto