Regarding the fear on behalf of the children meme, which has been widely attributed to be among the arguments that (yet again) reversed another state’s same-sex marriage gain: when “gay marriage” is taught in the schools — which of course it won’t be, not “taught” per se; marriage of any sort isn’t “taught,” but the fact that two men or two women could marry, if they wanted, sure; that’s what would or could be conveyed when or if the topic arose in the states in which such unions are no longer illegal  – kids like these would be the primary beneficiaries.

This is what would happen in the classroom in which “gay marriage” was “taught.”  Kids like these would, for the short duration of the reference, see a key aspect of their family reflected in their most important public sphere community. They would benefit, and so too would the two children (at least two per class of twenty) who will grow up to fall in love and make a life together, maybe even a family together, with a person of their same sex.

These children are already who they are, right now, in classrooms all across America, in nearly every county of the nation, in same-sex marriage permissive and same-sex marriage hostile states alike. Go ahead and ask the last US Census.

So, what about the children?

So, fellow progressives, stop thinking about suicide or moving abroad. Want to feel better? Eat a sour grape, then do something immediately, now, today. Figure out what you can do to help rescue the country — join something, send a little money to some group, call somewhere and offer to volunteer.

• – Molly Ivins, in a nationally syndicated column
• published two days after George W. Bush was re-elected in 2004

Thanks to Julia Rosen, tireless organizer and Online Political Director for Courage Campaign, for getting these words into my inbox today before I went to the nearest lobster emporium, blasted that B-52’s song, and did things I would later regret.

And for additional moral support, there’s this trenchant post from Kate Kendell at NCLR on her blog this morning: “The Day After a Hard Night.” She closes with these words:

We have the privilege of living in the midst of our own civil rights movement. The cost of that privilege is the same cost it has been in every movement–our humanity and dignity is attacked and undermined and we stand tall, never give up, and never lose faith.  Today is a test, and we must be the measure of it.

Philip Spooner’s testimony on behalf of LGBT marriage equality before the Maine legislature has become a YouTube phenomenon. I ran it in the sidebar here some time ago, but (like Pam Spaulding), I’m inspired to run it again today. (More Spoonerism yesterday at the LA Times.)

A full transcription of what he said is over at this post at Box Turtle Bulletin. Here’s some of it:

I am 86 years old, a lifetime Republican, and an active VFW Chaplan. I still serve three hospitals and two nursing homes, and I also serve Meals on Wheels for nine years. My wife of 54 years, Jenny, died in 1997. Together we had four children including one gay son. All four of our boys were in service.

I was born on a potato farm north of Caribou and Perham, where I was raised to believe that all men are created equal, and I never forgot that. I served in the U.S. Army in 1942 to 1945, in the First Army as a medic and as an ambulance driver. I worked with every outfit over there including Patton’s Third Army. I saw action in all five major battles in Europe including the Battle of the Bulge. My unit was awarded a Presidential Citation for transporting more patients with fewer actions than any other ambulance unit in Europe. And I was in the liberation of Paris. After the war, I carried POWs back from Poland, Hungary and Yugoslavia, and also hauled hundreds of injured Germans back to Germany.

I’m here today because of a conversation I had last June when I was voting. A woman at my polling place asked me, “Do you believe in equality of gay and lesbian people?”

I was pretty surprised to be asked a question like that. It made no sense to me. Finally I asked her, “What do you think our boys fought for on Omaha Beach?”

For the first time in U.S. electoral history, Maine could turn the tide today and defend LGBT rights (wrongly, as yet incessantly) up for popular vote. I am ready for that tide to turn. Über number-cruncher Nate Silver seems to think it will.

Me, I’ll be holding my breath all day.  And saying the obvious: if any of you know anyone (who might know anyone who might know anyone) who lives in Maine, please call to help get out the vote.

Our eyes are on you and our hearts are with you in Maine, in Kalamazoo, MI, and in Washington State. (Louise, Pam’s House Blend is a fierce Maine ally, has been all over this the whole time. Here’s her post on the last day of the campaign there. [Update: and a few more here, "Maine News Updates, Tidbits, and Rumors," and here, "Final Newspaper Clippings/Maine Blog Stories."] Don Davis at Bilerico has a comprehensive day-of analysis of Washington’s Ref. 71 polling here.)

I wasn’t going to come to you to ask for money again. We’ve asked so much, and you’ve dug deep and really come through.

Honestly, I wouldn’t take my time away from managing our Get Out The Vote operation to send this email if it wasn’treally important.

But we just heard that Yes on 1 is increasing their TV ad buy by $25,000 today.

$25,000 buys a lot of TV ads in Maine.

With the money we have now, we simply can’t counter their arguments on TV.

You and I have both invested a lot in this campaign. I won’t– I can’t– let them win this because we couldn’t come up with the last $25,000 in the final 36 hours.

We can’t let Yes on 1 win the airtime war with their misleading, and factually inaccurate ads.

We can’t let Yes on 1 lie to Maine voters about schools and teachers and children and same-sex couples in Maine.

We need to stand up and match every one of their lies with an ad of our own, that explains that marriage equality won’t do anything to families but protect all of them.

And I need you to help. Can you come through one last time and give $50 to help us finish this campaign with a win?

https://secure.actblue.com/contribute/page/noon1redalert

Jesse Connolly
Campaign Manager
NO on 1/Protect Maine Equality

For folks in Washington State and Kalamazoo, MI (the other LGBT civil rights hotspots this election), The Task Force has links to the organizations coordinating Get Out The Vote efforts there and in Maine: “Still time to secure victory on Election Day!”

I had a Banned Books Week / LGBT families in children’s lit post all queued up and ready for its final powdering, but have to set it aside after reading on Tuesday evening that the Langbehn v. Jackson Memorial Hospital case was dismissed yesterday by its Florida judge.

Janice Langbehn, for those who can’t place where you heard her name (if not from here, in February and August of last year), is the woman whose partner of 18 years, Lisa Pond, suffered an aneurism just as they were about to embark on an R Family vacation cruise with their three children. They were in Miami. The hospital barred all of Lisa’s family from seeing her, because, in the words of the hospital social worker, they were in “an anti-gay state.” (Family? What family?)  Janice tells the whole story here, on the blog she started for their family.

The more you read about their life together — the 25 children they fostered over the years, the four they adopted, Lisa’s Girl Scout troop — and the more you read about the lengths Janice went to to try to gain access to Lisa for herself and their children — the more vivid and the more unthinkable their inhumane treatment becomes.  Lambda Legal argued her case against the hospital; their page on the case is here.  Janice posted the judge’s motion to dismiss the case here. I — and any other LD readers as ignorant in the minutia of the law as I — welcome anyone’s armchair analysis / translation of its import.  Lambda and the family have until October 16 to take the next step, whatever that may be.

Two more things:

(1) Look at Lambda Legal’s Tools for Protecting Your Health Care Wishes, but with this caveat: Janice and Lisa had medical power of attorney for one another, and Janice had them faxed to the hospital in one of her many attempts to do everything possible to have their family status recognized by the hospital staff.  It was the bigotry and inhumanity of the hospital staff that kept them apart, when other family members, including small children, were welcomed to visit other patients in same critical care area there. (Nolo Press explains more about Powers of Attorney for Health Care here.) And,

(2) the Langbehn-Pond family lives in Washington state. Right now people in Washington are fighting tooth and nail to preserve their strong domestic partnership law. Referendum 71 needs to pass for it to stay on the books, and for all Washington families to be treated fairly, especially in times of crisis, and  for all families to be provided the same protections under the law. So if you haven’t done what you can to support their battle there, please do. For the Langbehn-Pond family, if for no one else.

A visual to leave you with: NGLTF keeps and regularly updates a map of all the states with laws on the books that, in one way or another, throw barriers between us and safe, proper, ethical, full legal recognition.  And sometimes throw barriers between us and our very own families. A sobering note: only the clear white states have no prohibitions on same-sex partnerships.

Click on the image to see it at its full-page resolution:

If you’ve been watching the news, you know that Maine needs our help.

The same campaign of fear-mongering and misinformation that helped remove marriage equality in California is being waged in Maine. All the way down to the exact same ads promoting the exact same lies (see the Box Turtle Bulletin posts: Maine “Yes On 1″ Ad Recycles California Ads, Casts Activist As “Teacher,” and That “Maine Teacher” Is No Stranger to Anti-Gay Lies). Bedfellows of the misinformation-mongerers? Holocaust deniers (check out the second BTB piece “No Stranger”). There’s a little something to ruminate on during these holy days ‘twixt Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

In another parallel to the 2008 California battle, the fear-mongering and misinformation is working. The more passionate, motivated contingent is the anti-marriage one, and the most recent polling by DailyKos shows that, were the election to be held today, we’d lose another state’s extant marriage equality. (Advocate coverage of Kos poll here.)

This Sunday is being organized as a National Day of Action to support Maine’s battle to retain its marriage equality. All we need is a two-hour chunk on Sunday, time to participate in one of the training conference calls, phone, and a computer screen (I presume, wired to the internet).

Sign up here to help PROTECT MAINE EQUALITY this Sunday.

Addendum: if you’re far from Maine, time on the phone is probably the most valuable thing you can give. But if you can’t give that, or if you can and you want to give more, then please throw something into the coffers for No on 1 / Protect Maine Equality. To help them keep countering the steady stream of misinformation, to help turn back the tide of hate and bigotry once and for all.

Here are all the organizations using ActBlue pages to fundraise for No on 1/ Protect Maine Equality. You can also contribute directly to No on 1. Or if you want to donate via this site (and thereby inspire other LD readers to join you in your commitment), click the contribute image below. LD readers were tremendously supportive in the battle against Prop 8 in California, and  I would be very grateful and proud if we pulled in some healthy fraction of that in the battle on the other side of the country. Over $16,000 was raised here on behalf of California marriage equality. Let’s start with $1,000, OK?

For Maine, for Maine’s kids, raised in LGBT families or no. And for No on 1 / Preserve Maine Equality.  Because, bless ‘em, the Maine marriage equality battle began including visibility of LGBT families (see the selected video over there on the sidebar). This is something the California battle never did do (feature the actual kids who stood to lose with the loss of their family’s legal/financial protections).  I join many others who believe this to be one of the No on 8 campaign’s chief, most unforgivable fatal flaws. It didn’t keep me from trying to defeat the proposition. And obviously it didn’t keep me from trying to use this space to fundraise for it. While I am phenomenally grateful for the generosity of the hundreds of LD readers who joined in that fundraising, I would be very wary of soliciting financial support for a campaign that closeted us again.  Which is why I’m hauling my sorry bruised butt up on the horse again and stumping for No on 1 / Protect Maine Equality.

Ultimately, no matter where it’s being waged or how, this is very much a “protect the kids” battle.  All our kids. So please help, in whatever way you can.

I just got this statement in the mail from Our Family Coalition, of which I am a very supportive and proud member.  In the note accompanying the statement, Judy Appel of Our Family also said:

We have also expressed our solidarity with a strong coalition of organizations representing LGBTQ people of color, youth, and families who have called on our community to prepare past 2010 by issuing a statement entitled “Prepare to Prevail.”

There are other groups and leaders who are beginning to the lay the groundwork to get a repeal of Prop 8 on the ballot for 2010. While we disagree with their current strategy decisions, we applaud their dedication and passion for equality.

No matter when we go to the ballot, one thing can be sure, we will be right there fighting for and supporting LGBTQ-headed families.

Also agreed.

Our Family is sponsoring two different LGBTQ Family Equality forums for their members to discuss the impact of this whole battle on us: one in the East Bay tonight, and another in San Francisco next week. I am aggrieved to say that I am unable to attend either, so I (a) won’t be able to report on them, and (b) am hoping someone else who goes will able to share. I’ve asked whether they’ll videotape them and/or whether some of what is shared there might be shared further.

I have gobs of thoughts about the whole 2010 vs. 2012 shebang, but will expound on them more at a later point. Short version for now is, I respect the people who are in and who are providing leadership for the organizations behind this statement. They are human beings, and the several I know personally work their ASSES off for our well-being, are not living bloated, cocktail-party ridden lives at a distance from the issues. They are parents, they are people who gave blood over the last go ’round with this battle.  They are working for their own well-being as well as that of other families whose interests they represent.  Most important, perhaps, they are working on behalf of their own kids.

As queer parents of kids in queer families, directly in the campaign cross-hairs, they do not take any of these matters lightly, and the call to go back to the ballot box more carefully is not a call to sit down and be passive, a sophistry I’m growing tired of reading.  A marathon takes more dedication than a sprint. As one who never has and never will run a marathon road race — and as one who’s my third decade of active LGBT civil rights work — I think I can say this with a certain amount of confidence.

Now here’s their statement:

At What Cost? Protecting Our Youth In Our Fight for Marriage Equality 

We represent grassroots and advocacy organizations dedicated to promoting the wellbeing and safety of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and/or questioning (LGBTQ) youth, youth with LGBTQ parents, and LGBTQ parents in California.  Over the last several decades, we have worked hard to create safer schools for LGBTQ youth and families, and California today is one of the most welcoming states for our youth and families, with some of the most protective laws in the nation.  It is our position that the price of a ballot initiative campaign in 2010 to the health and wellbeing of our youth and families would be too high. 

Following the passage of Proposition 8, our organizations have seen a significant increase in discrimination and harassment of LGBTQ youth and children of LGBTQ parents in California schools, requiring legal or other administrative intervention.  This harassment has been damaging to youth, impacting their psychosocial and academic success.  Moreover, its ongoing negative impact hurts not only LGBTQ youth and children of LGBTQ parents, but overall school safety.  Our organizations have also experienced first hand a chilling effect on the safe schools work we do in local communities throughout California: starting even before the election, administrators, school board members, and teachers have been increasingly reluctant to embrace our efforts to provide anti-bias education in schools to make schools more inclusive of LGBTQ youth and families and safer places for them to focus on learning. 

Given the Yes on 8 Campaign’s focus on the inclusion of LGBTQ issues in schools-as well as the newly heightened awareness and politicization around the state of LGBTQ issues due to the Proposition 8 campaign more generally-it is perhaps unsurprising that our schools have become battlegrounds on these issues.  Nonetheless, the Yes on 8 campaign has unquestionably made our work harder, and put many already vulnerable LGBTQ youth and families at even greater risk. 

As organizations that work every day to achieve equal rights and equal opportunities for LGBTQ people and families, we are intimately familiar with the harms imposed each day that we live without full marriage equality.  And we are acutely aware that the passage of Proposition 8 affected a generation of LGBTQ youth and their peers, who were told that they are not equal.  We also believe, however, that another failed campaign will multiply this impact. 

As much as we want to repeal Proposition 8, we are deeply concerned about bringing a repeal initiative to the voters before we believe that we can win.  And we do not think that such a victory is likely as early as 2010.  Any campaign on marriage equality will include the same schools-related rhetoric that we heard from the Yes on 8 Campaign, and we expect that we will see a similar result: increased harassment and bullying of LGBTQ youth and families in our schools, and an even further chilling effect on critical anti-bias safe schools work.  

When we do bring a repeal initiative to the voters, we need to make sure we can win.  Winning must include effective messaging that defuses our opposition’s scare tactics about LGBTQ issues in schools, and that doesn’t do any long-term damage to efforts to create safe, inclusive schools for all youth and families.  While many groups are working on such messaging, its successful implementation will take time.  This is especially true in our current economic climate, where the budget cuts to our schools will inevitably limit their ability to help address discrimination and harassment and where our community’s capacity to do safe schools work is also reduced. 

We, and the youth we care so dearly about, hold precious the value of winning marriage equality. We feel that the best course of action to achieve this end is not to pursue a ballot initiative campaign to repeal Proposition 8 in 2010, and whenever a campaign is pursued it is not done at the expense of our youth and families. 
 

Submitted by: 

Our Family Coalition
Gay-Straight Alliance Network (GSA Network)
Family Equality Council
COLAGE
Pacific Center for Human Growth
Ventura County Rainbow Alliance
Transgender Law Center
GroundSpark / Respect for All Project
San Francisco Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Community Center
National Youth Advocacy Coalition (NYAC)
Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) National 

Emily Dickinson said “Tell all the Truth but tell it slant,” and she’s right.  ”Too bright for our infirm Delight/The Truth’s superb surprise,” says she, and I’m telling you I still need sunglasses to make out my morning eggs and toast.   ‘Til I can even get to the point of telling that truth slant — “The Truth must dazzle gradually/Or every man be blind–” — best I can do is gather up a breezy narrative of my beloved and me celebrating many happy years together.  Because there it is, sitting there alongside the eggs and toast, irony and all. 

We secured an unprecedented twelve hours of childcare and were shocked — shocked! — at the number of distinct conversations that could be initiated and completed during this time, when no toddlers or children under five were present. (Note to other parents of young: DO IT! Quarterly at least! It’s so worth it! And I’m not talking date, I’m talking extendo-date, several hours past the length of your ordinary night out.)

After a delightful conversation-filled subway ride, we strolled on impulse to… tea at the Palace Hotel! Preceded by champagne! Sure, it cost an arm and a leg. Sure, we’re living on borrowed time. Whatever. It was grand, and I’d do it again in another week if given half the chance. Fortunately for our family budget, the beloved doesn’t even give me a quarter the chance.  Or an eighth. How do you think we made it fifteen years without being impounded?

The pianist at the Garden Court — where they serve tea at the Palace — may as well have been a potted palm or a ficus benjaminus.  One or two folks posed by him for photos, but rarely was he directly addressed.  He was part of the pretty, pretty scenery.  I wanted to applaud after each song (”S’wonderful,” “You Are So Beautiful,” and a respectful rendition of “Never Can Say Goodbye”) but the beloved told me It’s Just Not Done.  Since she’s a theater professional/musician and a vet of the food service industry, I believe her. (The two terms are nearly redundant, don’t you think?  Theater professional, food service industry worker.)

Incidentally, I am so not kidding about her vet status in the food service industry. Nary a block would pass by, as we toodled around her native Minneapolis in our courtship those many years ago, during which she wouldn’t find a restaurant and causually intone, “Worked there.  And there. Got fired  from there for being a spy.  Totally not true. Worked there. Quit there.” And so on.  The life of an actor. 

At the table to our right were two debutantes in matching peach-colored mini skirts and matching white three-quarter length coats, whom the beloved and I both felt sure signed their checks (separate!) with their parents’ money. We, on the other hand, signed our check (together!) with what should have been our kids‘ money. We both felt okay with that.

Further on past the spendthrift debutantes was what the beloved dubbed the “Ladies Who Lunch” table (for the musically inclined, here, from the 2006 revival). Who are we to judge. Some of them might have thought the same of us, except we were a party of two, only one of whom could reasonably be accused of being a lady. The other of whom, if you accused her of being a lady, would remove her pocket square from her jacket and slap you with it.  In as gentlemanly-like a fashion as could be mustered.

The ceiling of the Garden Court is gorgeous, but not the kind of thing you want to be under in an earthquake. Just a guess. While we nibbled our tea sandwiches, I told the typical exaggerations about Enrico Caruso’s experience here at the Palace during the 1906 earthquake — that he exited the hotel in nothing but a towel, vowing never to sing in the city again, and so on.  He did stay at the Palace, and had sung in Carmen at the opera house the night before the earthquake.  And he did skedaddle as soon as he could — took a ferry to Oakland and hopped the nearest train to New York and thence off to la bella Italia (his account here).  But the towel part was a bit of an exaggeration.  By now, the beloved is fairly used to them, and rolled with this one with characteristic aplomb.
 
Full-bellied from the tea, we were off to a side alley pedicure! For her, not for me.  I had never been into a nail emporium, and it was an education.  Slash kinda creepy. Several of the gals there asked me more than once whether I’d like one too, and I kept having to find gracious ways to say NO WAY ARE  YOU KIDDING ALLOW A PERFECT STRANGER TO HAVE AT MY CUTICLES WITH SHARP OBJECTS?!!

(A gal quoted in this ditty on la vie butch opines that the Butch of Today submits to mani/pedis with a casualness with which our kind once approached auto repair and hating men. I have clearly not received the email, neither about the mani/pedis nor the mani/haties.)

My discomfort over the notion of a pedicure was difficult to convey gracefully, but I tried. I might have slipped a bit and mentioned something about the sharp objects and cuticles in earshot of a woman whose every extremity was being ministered to by the nail emporium staff, and thus was unable to move.  I might have attempted to apologize to her.  It might or might not have worked.  Still, the beloved left very, very happy, with shiny red toenails.  I mean burnt sienna toenails.  I mean burnt cabernet toenails. Whatever. They shined.

From pedi to the SF Museum of Modern Art! And the Avedon exhibit! Scrumtious. I adjusted my pocket square in the reflection of his über-famous  photo of Davinia with elephants (above), thoroughly appreciating how apropos such a gesture was, in the room of the exhibit dedicated to his fashion photography.

En route to our dinner (below): doesn’t she look like a movie star? I trotted next to her for half a block taking paparazzi-like pictures, just because. Ah, young love.

We dined at a swank, much-Yelped & -Chowhounded restaurant!  Whose matire d’ had the good sense to consult his notes about our reservation and wish us “Happy Anniversary” upon our entry!  A card bearing the same wishes greeted us at our nifty corner table.  Nice touches, and befitting a restaurant in a city that prides itself on being the nation’s gay mecca.  I noted when I made the online reservation that it was our 15 year relationship anniversary and our one-year legal gay-married anniversary.

One day, people, one day, this kind of gracious and courteous support of our seasoned love will not be notable, even in other towns. One day. Just who knows when.  Meanwhile, I appreciated it. When our love began to sprout, back in the mid-1990s, this sort of graciousness would have been even more notable.  Fifteen years before that, I wouldn’t have even been comfortable being evidently lovey-dovey with my partner in a restaurant.  Alright I was still a coupla years shy of coming out thirty years ago. But still.
  
At first, I wanted to spank our waitron for being too perky and brash (”ladies”!! she kept traipsing up to the table and addressing us as “ladies”!!), but after enough of the perky and brash Pinot Noir I was willing simply to talk about spanking it instead of the waitron.  But over time I got used to her.
  
Not more than a few minutes into the meal, the hetero couple nearby us had complaints about their wine.  I stifled the impulse to offer ours up for a spanking, since it deserved one probably more than theirs did. Then another hetero couple sat down between us and the wine-complaining hetero couple, and the two couples traded stories about various vacation spots and fancy restaurants and such-like.  The beloved noted a perfect criss-cross man-to-man convo, with the gals offering demure, occasional, decidedly minor side chit-chat. I thought stuff like that only happened in movies. Of the 1930s.

If we weren’t so busy having fun, we would have listened in some more and learned a bit about how the other 9/10ths live. Geezum peezum, though. I mean, we were digging into our kids’ lunch money for this dinner, and the folks next to us just thought, on a lark, they’d pop into the city and stay the night.  You know, at a hotel.  Which notion had occurred to us as a way to celebrate our 15th anniversary, but, you know, it would have cost us our kids’ breakfast, lunch, and dinner money, so nope.  

As I say, though, no neighboring snootery could squelch the enjoyment of two harried parents out to dinner at a place that served food accompanied by sauces. On the food. That took time and skill to cook.  O lordy lord do I look forward to the time either or both of the kids’ palates can bear anything close to a sauce, since I rather like cooking them. Meanwhile, we slog through the culinary wilderness, hacking away at the underbrush of kid-friendly fish sticks and pasta-with-parmensan and peas-with-butter.  

Incidentally: one of the many things I love about my beloved is that,  in full view of the snooty couples, she ran her finger down the side of her steak knife to pick up the dripping juices.  And popped the finger into her mouth to suck ‘em off with a satisfying smack.  I’m just saying.

Another thing I love about her is how very different she is than me in oh so many ways. We had been recollecting memorable moments of the past fifteen years, and had seguéd into quizzing one another on the random, rare factoids we either of us might not know about one another. You know, old couple hi-jinx. I had just won a string of three quiz questions, and she eagerly pressed me to quiz her.

So I did: What activity filled my summers, my 5th grade through my 7th grade years? It took a heavy hint or two, before she recalled that I used to play “Star Trek” with my childhood chum Darla (yes: her real name), in the vast fields behind my house. I wore a blue velour shirt, Darla wore an orange one; we taped on our home-made Starfleet insignias and brandished plastic phasers and communicators we’d made from kits. Hours and hours of buddy-bonding enjoyment.  My beloved, unfortunately, was blurry on some of the details, and not because of the perky and brash Pinot Noir.

“Okay,” I say. “But who played who?”

“She was the Captain!” the beloved blurted out.

“Whose name was….?”

“Piccolo! Cuinard! Something like that!”

“Wrong Star Trek!”

“Dang! Okay, okay, but you were #1!”

“Wrong Star Trek again!”  We’ve got a cultural divide here, plus the May-December thing going on. 

“You were– you were– you were Scotty!”  It was so sad, the look of triumph on her face. I told her I knew she loved me anyhow.  (Darla: Kirk. Me: Spock.  But many of you knew that already.)

On the other side of us was a pair of women who were clearly not a couple.  I suggested to the beloved that they were sisters. One had blond hair, the other brown, but otherwise their features were quite similar. I launched into the gazillionth re-tread of an old joke of mine (singing the first five words of the Donny & Marie song, “I’m a Little Bit Country (I’m a Little Bit Rock n’ Roll)”, and the beloved commenced to guffawing. Why? Fifteen years. You only need the joke cues; no longer the whole joke.  In another fifteen, I’ll be able to shave it down to even fewer notes.

We had neither the belly space nor the money for desert, but it came anyway, thanks to the graciousness of the fine upstanding establishment.  All manner of confections, all featuring chocolate. I went to say something to the beloved just after she had sunk her teeth into the first of them, but she waved her hand in front of my face.  ”Don’t interrupt me,” she said, as soon as she could catch her breath.  Thereafter I didn’t.

When the waitron came with the tab, she proved her queer-cultural ignorance by placing the tray down next to me. The mannish one.  ”Close, but no cigar, my sweet naïf,” I think to myself, as I push the tray over to the be-lipsticked beloved, our Family’s CFO and primary breadwinner. We lesbians do things differently.  We’re kind of like Canada.  Only the day before the beloved had demonstrated to some of the gals in her summer theater production how you can lead in a dance, even while you hold the arm position of the follower. “Polly and I have danced this way for years,” she said, to muffled chuckles.

With any luck, we’ll continue to.

Those of us who were unable to be in Fresno this weekend, by dint of geographical or logistic or financial or other entanglements, will be very inspired by this montage of speakers at the rally.   You can see how the spirits of César Chávez (¡sí se puede!) and Harvey Milk (you gotta give ‘em hope!) were hugely present there that day, shining through so many people, including his direct descendants, in the persons of his granddaughter Christine Chavez and Milk’s protegé Cleve Jones.

I truly feel better about what’s to come, based on what Robin McGeHee brought together that day. Not simply because of the numbers of people, or their spirit.  But because of what people were saying (as citizens to citizens; activists to activists): Listen to one another. Learn about the issues that matter to the people whose support we are soliciting.  Understand oppressions as interlocking. Be allies to one another. Let the young people lead, because damn are they ready to. 

I deeply, sincerely thank everyone who went there to show your commitment to this next step in this long journey.  Finally, I want to nominate Robin McGeHee Mom of the Year, Activist of the Year, Lesbian of the Year, and pretty much everything else of the year. Year of the year, fer crying out loud. Just watch:

Unite the Fight is running a live video feed of events in Fresno today (I embeded this stuff above from their Qik Channel), and on their web page they also have a slideshow of still photos running.  As of 1pm, at the start of the rally, the embeded video should be transmitting the rally itself? Just click refresh and you’ll get their most recent feed? Or go over to their page and watch it there? For me, the video is choppy but the audio is smooth. Runs like a kind of a near-realtime slideshow.  All very inspirational.

[Update: You can read a live Twitter feed here, on which you can read stuff folks are seeing/hearing/feeling.]

As the cavalcade of media links here imply, I am supporting today’s Meet in the Middle 4 Equality rally in spirit but not in body today. Ah, there was a time, back in my salad days, when you couldn’t keep me from a multi-state social justice caravan, actions dotting the upper midwest, culminating in a big huge march of thousands upon thousands of lesbians down 5th Avenue with no permit and an abundance of fierce righteous pride. There also was a time when I wasn’t Julie, Your Cruise Director for two little people who have a short wick for long car rides and large crowds and a demonstrable need for a midday nap.

The time will come when we’ll all be able to meet in wherever for whatever.  And the broad, long human march for social justice being the way it is, even when LGBT folk have full civil rights, there’ll be many a cause awaiting our bodily contribution. There’ll be a time, too, when my own young will be the ones telling me about where the action is, and inviting me to come along for the ride.  Meanwhile, I’m grateful for the internet, and for the thousands of people who are out putting their bodies where their beliefs are.