On vacation…

… until 12 July.

Right to Bear Arms

A Story by Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Through heavy brown air, the sun is hot enough to stew the tar, bubbling from a terminally neglected street. Mingled with impotent wafts of twice-smoked cigarettes and desiccated human excrement, the sizzling urban exhaust sticks in my throat, leaving me gasping for breath. So I pause, as usual, to yearn for the cool mist that hovers just above the waterfalls in the torn cigarette poster taped to the back of the cash register.

Here, each morning, the besotted buy their 99-proof and I, in my tidy little pumps and ambitious suit, buy my unbranded bottle of water. But the falls are only paper, and the stagnant stench of the city invariably jerks my violated senses back to rank reality and the daily rhythm.

“Hola, chica. Seventy-nine cents. ¿Hace calor, eh?”

“Si, Señor, really hot. Muchas gracias. Bye-bye.”

“De nada, Señorita. Hasta mañana.”

Still, the street offers an odd and occasional respite from the snot-green walls of the snake pit I call work, one of the many private hostelries crafted decades ago by Ronald Reagan’s gubernatorial cost-cutting and civil rights for the tormented gone awry.

Inside, the howls of the chronically terrified and forgotten echo through the veins of sixty-seven clients, ages twenty-two to a shrunken unknown. Their shrieks bounce off the frames of denuded sofas and urine-sopped cushions littering the hallways. Their fears bind them to horrid things others cannot see. And their lucidity, resurrected with decreasing frequency, is inevitably felled by the ferocious thwacks life deals them.

Once a month, they are lined up for their hallucinations to bounce off the chill steel wall of the visiting Medi-Cal shrink. Their torments dribble into puddles of quivering pleas for help on the institutional-linoleum floor, while he preens over his designer prescription pad and coffee.

Today, the good doctor is too busy flirting with his new answering service operator to approve hospitalizing the suicidal Chinese empress for a medication adjustment. The teeth marks with which she has tattooed her arms are not enough to get his attention; neither are the razor blades we’ve indelicately manhandled from her. Not even my suggestion that he stick his Moroccan leather pad someplace scatological elicits anything more than a snickering invitation to join him for an adult beverage after work and help him perform that enticing activity.

So I take an angry hike for the great outdoors to vent my self-righteous rage.

With my tasteful pumps, I stomp over the bodies of addicts, stoned near to death by failed choices. I storm around the cardboard condominiums filled with humans as hungry and parasite-wracked as their dogs. I fling myself away from it all into a futile rant.

Halfway around the decomposing block I’m stopped by a sweaty, unwashed kid with a knife.

“Whaddaya got, lady?” he snarls, oblivious to my good intentions, my hopeful aspirations.

Confronted by this little shit blocking my path and threatening me with a sharp object, I wish for a split second that I have a gun.

Now, it isn’t as though I would propel society’s paranoia into the chest of a beloved security guard at a museum intent on just saying no to hate. It is nowhere near the realm of the playful five year old who crashes her own birthday party with the disregard of her grandfather’s unsecured .22. And it’s a far cry from the family whose domesticity is discharged with abusive daddy’s death by gunshot.

Nonetheless, if I had a gun, I would aim it right at the kid’s pubescent face, the pimple on his nose for a target. I would pump him full of seething rage at a system that rejects the humanity of the recipients of its stingy offerings. In the stormy flush of utter frustration, I’d splatter his youthful flesh across a cityscape that would simply add his shredded carrion to its endless pit of stinking detritus. I would blow away that scrawny sack of symptoms of poverty, inequity and corruption. Yes, I would do to him what the psycho Med-Cal prick does to my clients.

If I had a gun.

But I don’t.

And I am too busy picking at my fiery ire to respond to the boy’s unseemly overture with appropriate fear. Instead, I hiss at him through gnashing teeth to get the hell out of my way or I’ll hurt him — fuck him up, in fact.

“OK, lady, OK, lady,” he backs away, pocketing his weapon.

I watch him retreat.

Distracted by a neglected adolescent with a rusty, broken steak knife, I head back toward the mayhem of a system that has abandoned its victims to hell, and I wonder, “Hmm, who in her right mind would wear pumps on this street?”

Love,
K-B

©2009 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

(Photo by John Anderson via a Creative Commons License.)

Fallbrookisms

On Main Street

Proprietor: I’m going out of business.
Customer: Oh, I’m sorry!
P: Don’t be. It’s on to the next adventure.
C: What are you going to do?
P: Open a house of ill repute.
C: Oh, good. Fallbrook needs a little livening up.

From a recuperating Fallbrookian

At least the pain is manageable now — as long as I don’t talk too much or do anything strenuous. This has been good and bad for my husband. I am quieter, but we are reduced to hallway sex. We pass each other in the hallway, and I say “Screw you.” He says, “Screw you, too.” I say. “Was it good for you?” He says, “Oh baby, oh baby.”

Read more Fallbrookisms…

From Your MAMMA 23 June 2009

Remember kiddos, MAMMA says talk about same-sex marriage every chance you get!

Thanks to MAMMA Kim for this entertaining speech by  …

Patricia Clarkson at the 2009 Human Rights Campaign Dinner

The Violets in the Mountains Have Broken the Rocks

President Barack Obama on Federal Benefits for Same-sex Couples

Wrongs We Intend to Right Today

And, MAMMA Says Yippee!

2010 Census Will Count Same-sex Couples

Wall Street Journal article from 19 June

Huffington Post article from 19 June

There’s Something About Baby Be-Bop

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

What should we do? What should we do with the four self-described elderly claimants from the Milwaukee branch of the Christian Civil Liberties Union (CCLU)? Their complaint filed with the City of West Bend, Wisconsin, seeks to publicly burn, bury, shred or otherwise dramatically destroy Baby Be-Bop, a novel so offensive to them that they require damages of $30,000 a head to compensate for exposure to the book’s mere cover, egregiously displayed at the West Bend Community Memorial Library. CCLU reviewed Baby Be-Bop as “explicitly vulgar, racial and anti-Christian,” a “hate crime” for, among other perceived sins, use of the words “nigger” and “faggot.”

“Obviously, not one of those people even read Baby Be-Bop,” my daughter Kate said, “because if they had, they would know that it promotes love, peace and acceptance, not hate crimes and violence. What the hell are they doing sniffing around the young adult novels anyway? Shady old creepers! It’s people like this who give Christianity a bad rep for being all about violence, hatred and idiocy.”

Spoken with edgy but well-informed passion: Kate devoured Baby Be-Bop and every other book by Francesca Lia Block in print during those excruciating years that most folks manage to forget by the time they’re old enough to read to their own kids. When Kate wouldn’t speak to me, I knew she was safe in the arms of Francesca’s loving words, delivered with the candor, the sensitivity, the magic of a writer who spies the world’s beauty through the painful mire of growing into self-acceptance. “Francesca Lia Block’s stories helped me realize I could love myself for the little freak I was during a time when it seemed impossible to love myself.”

Block, a best-selling author who describes Baby Be-Bop as “a gay coming of age story about the healing power of love,” said of CCLU, “Of course I’m using the racist word to expose and criticize racism. But they’re making it sound [as though I used it] in a different way. Either they didn’t read the book or they’re misrepresenting it intentionally.”

And it is “intent” that makes this all curiouser and curiouser.

The CCLU complaint followed on the heels of the ad hoc West Bend Citizens for Safe Libraries (WBCFSL) campaign for a hit list of supposed “pornographic” books, including Baby Be-Bop. WBCFSL’s goal? To remove, re-label and/or physically sequester away from youthful readers anything that addresses their budding (or broiling) sexuality — hetero, homo, bi, tri or otherwise.

Like any savvy writer, Block saw some advantage in the two groups’ mischief: “My first reaction was, ‘Cool, I’m banned!” But then it sank in. “I felt it a little bit more as a direct threat, with the climate right now.” Nonetheless, Block said she has probably received more media in the last week than in the last twenty years. “That tells you something about where the world is today.”

But WBCFSL — whose acronym is as unfortunate as its attack on a hefty list of books that give the group’s instigators, West Bend grandparents Jim and Ginny Maziarka, the vapors — failed on June 2 when the library board voted 9 to 0 that the books would stay put.

All the Maziarkas and CCLU have achieved to date is eliciting some unhappy publicity for a nice little town and rousing to action West Benders with a fondness for free speech and the Library Bill of Rights (drafted in 1938 in response to “growing intolerance, suppression of free speech and censorship affecting the rights of minorities and individuals”). Of course, there’s also the probable increase in sales of the targeted books, in particular Dangerous Angels, the collection of Block’s Weetzie Bat books that includes Baby Be-Bop.

And Block is in good company: Her book joins such challenged classics as To Kill a Mocking Bird, Catcher In the Rye, Go Ask Alice and the many contemporary books that address coming of age with honesty — particularly for kids who are gay — and, consequently, bring out adults who persist in burning, or at least spurning, what scares them.

West Bent parent Maria Hanrahan saw what was happening in her town of small appliance manufacturers and happy summer reading programs, and she didn’t like it. “[WBCFSL] began by focusing on a category called Out of the Closet — lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender themed materials. They wanted that reading list removed from the library’s website. Then they wanted to move the books out of the young adult section and into the adult section. Then, when they realized that wasn’t going to work, they changed their complaint to the materials being too explicit. I said to myself, ‘Someone has to speak out against what they are trying to do.’ Well, I’m somebody. I’m a resident here. I have a right and a responsibility as a library user to speak out against this.”

So Hanrahan organized West Bend Parents for Free Speech and had a potluck.

“Then the CCLU filed their case,” Hanrahan continued. “We didn’t think it was surprising that it came on the heels of this other complaint. We haven’t been able to find too much about this CCLU. They have no website. We know from the claim there are four [claimants] — only one is local — and they’ve been involved in other similar litigation. It’s not surprising that something like this would happen following the publicity about the [WBCFSL].”

Neither would it have been surprising — and it would surely have been lovely — if WBCFSL and CCLU had simply re-shelved the books they didn’t like. Or if they had wisely counseled their offspring on what they may and may not borrow from the library and trusted in other parents to do the same. Or if they refrained from using the library as a babysitter, setting the stage for their children to gobble up any books, regardless of parental preference.

But they didn’t do the commonsensical thing, and the curious battle isn’t over.

“I’m feeling very good,” Hanrahan said,” because so many people have come together in support of the library and in support of parents being able to make these decisions for themselves. I’m almost gleeful that so many more people are signing up for programs at the library. That’s a clear indication that the community doesn’t agree with this group. But it is worrisome they are not just going to go quietly into the night. … The [Maziarkas] are prolific bloggers, and they have said the issue is not over for them. They plan to promote the library as being an unsafe place for children, although they haven’t said how they’re going to do that. But they’re not going to let it drop. … We never expected West Bend to become such a hotbed of controversy. After all this, it was, ‘Wow, West Bend is not just about slow cookers anymore!’”

And just what is it the CCLUs and WBCFSLs are about? Just what is their intent? Just what should we do with them? They seem so angry, so fearful, so uncomfortable in the world.

But there’s something about Baby Be-Bop they don’t seem to grasp; something about the books that encourage our children to love themselves; there’s something magical. Perhaps the WBCFSL and CCLU folks should settle in with a nice cup of tea and read the books they would ban, in whole, not the miniscule excerpts bandied about by would-be censors. Perhaps then, they would learn to love the world’s children for who they are.

If not, Harry Potter could just wave his wand and make them disappear.

Love,
K-B

©2009 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Fallbrookisms

18 June 2009

At Café des Artistes

Patron 1: We need more love in this town.
Patron 2: Love is for pansies.

On Main Street

Woman eating gelato: I love your bumper sticker.
Woman wishing she was eating gelato: Which one?
First woman: Don’t Be Gaycist — equality for all is patriotic. Don’t see much of that in Fallbrook.

Read more Fallbrookisms

From Your MAMMA 16 June 2009

Radar. Gaydar.

By Joe Howard Crews

Radar. Gaydar. Ten thousand probing charges reading the spirits, searching for synchronicity — for that soul sound that goes … PING! You turn it on again and again, and each time it goes PING!

Do you have gaydar? No? Then you are not gay.

I was born with gaydar. I discovered early the gift was there — by the age of 4. Kids are born with special gifts; they discover their gifts early because their minds are open and innocent — before the grown up world draws a dark and suffocating shroud to suppress them.

My gaydar turned on the first time I met Donnie. He was also four. Our mothers introduced us properly. Mama knelt down, as she often did when she wanted to look straight into my eyes and connect with my young mind.

“Donnie is gonna be your friend. You can play and have fun together. No fighting. You will like Donnie, and he will like you. Be good to him.”

I glanced over at Donnie. He was real pretty. That’s when the gaydar came on. Donnie spent hours and days together with me while his mother was away at work. Everybody had to work. The Big War was on. I had no toys. Neither did my two sisters. Not even a doll. I guess we were poor folks, although I had no concept of “poor.” So we played games making up our own rules and creating our own imaginary kingdoms.

Now suddenly, I had been presented a friend. I remembered my mother’s words: “You will like Donnie and he will like you.” We played. Cautiously at first. Then with more and more energy. We chased each other and tested each other. I just know we were terribly raucous, but we always played in the yard. Fortunately, there were empty lots on the two sides of the house where we played.

Summers were real hot in Mississippi. Mama made us come inside when the sun was hottest, to take a nap. We were always tired by that time from strenuous play, and soon fell asleep.

I remember one day when we were lying in bed, side-by-side, bodies touching. It was hot. We had no fan. I was sweating. I was uncomfortable and sat up to take off my shirt, waking Donnie as I wiggled around. I felt cooler. I looked at Donnie and told him to take his shirt off. I helped him. Then I helped him take his underpants off. That was the first time I saw him naked. …. PING! PING! We touched each other. We both liked the touching. Then we fell back asleep. His body was still warm; nevertheless I scooted over so we could sleep with our bodies touching. Mama was in the next room sewing on her machine. I liked the hum of the purring motor racing and stopping — then racing again. Three hums, and I was back asleep.

One day Uncle Charles came to visit. I liked Uncle Charles because he always picked me up, tossed me in the air, then gave me a big hug while he talked energetically with me. But he always raked his bristly beard stubble against my tender face. I didn’t like that. But I liked Uncle Charles. And I liked his scratchy beard better than that icky gooey kiss from Aunt Zelda Mae.

“I have something for you out in my truck!” Uncle Charles announced, leading me by my hand. It was a huge wooden crate — much bigger than me.

“What’s in it?” I asked.

“Ohh-h-h, it’s a magic box. It’s full of magic. You just have to make a wish and whatever you want will be in the box,” he explained as Donnie and I watched him drag the huge box across the grass into the shade of the big pecan tree. He turned the box upside down, and with his crowbar removed one of the end boards, creating a small secret door just big enough for Donnie and me to squeeze through.

Uncle Charles explained we could make a fort out of it and fight the Germans. Those were the mean people who had germs. I had never seen either one — a German or a germ — but seeing is not necessary for a child to believe. We could make a castle out of the crate, and become a king. Or it could be a clubhouse just for me and Donnie … and nobody else could come in.

As Uncle Charles drove off, we raced to the big box. I quickly scrambled inside, and motioned my skeptical friend to come in. He did so with a bit of trepidation. He was afraid of the magic. I liked that.

Because it was wartime, we had blackouts when everybody in Hattiesburg had to turn the lights out and stay indoors. I didn’t like the dark and I didn’t like being so still and quiet. My big sister explained we had to do this because President Roosevelt had said the Germans might be coming, and we had to turn the lights off so they couldn’t see us.

A few days later Donnie and I entered our fort and put up the board over the secret door. I told Donnie we had to be very still and very quiet so the Germans didn’t find us. Sitting very quiet and very still next to Donnie was a special moment, because I felt I had to protect my friend. He trusted me. I could feel the palpitations of his breath. He reached out to hold my hand. My mother, disturbed by the unusual quiet, came out the front door and called our names. I whispered in Donnie’s ear “I think they’re gone.” We jumped out and started screaming “The Germans are gone! The Germans are gone.” My mother went back to her sewing, satisfied that all was normal.

One day as I was playing the king, Donnie sat beside me and said, “You are a good king.” He rose on his knees before me, kissed me on the cheek, gave me a hug and said, “I like you.”

I was sad when he and his mother had to move away. After Donnie left, the magic disappeared from the big box.

But I will never forgot Donnie — or his kiss inside the castle. And I will never forget that first PING when I discovered gaydar in 1942, during wartime, before the British discovered radar.

©2009 Joe Howard Crews

MAMMA (Middle-Aged Mothers for Marriage Equality) recommends sharing this essay with folks who think homosexuality is a “lifestyle choice,” as a way to start a conversation about same-sex marriage.

Summer of Discontent

By Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Summertime once meant slow, sultry days; the lazy drone of locusts, lulling us into a doze beneath weeping willows; finding faces in the clouds or taking lady bugs for walks from fingertip to fingertip; lolling and waiting … waiting for someone to spur the sweltering group to action.

And then the herd of kids would up and move — to the road’s edge to pop tar bubbles, coating toes and infuriating mothers at bath time. To the garden to make rose petal lipstick, blackberry war paint, and perform vignettes of classic tales. Under the fence to steal neglected rhubarb from the wild patch next door and run from the crotchety old lady who rightly treasured every wilting stalk and weed. To the rubbish heap to see who could pee the farthest, disregarding gender. Down by the train tracks to flatten pennies and marvel at the loss of Lincoln’s features. Over to the abandoned chicken coop to practice burping on demand and talk of things unspoken by parents.

Whatever we did, we did it together; it never occurred to us there was another way. Our parents had varied incomes and faiths, disparate origins and pursuits, but their distinctions were lost on us, the children of our block. We had a community of kindred souls, a cohesive force that wound us inextricably together in those days of one-car families and parents unconcerned about tossing their kids out into the world. We’d fend for each other and show up at one home or another only when hunger forced us. In those days, everyone could come out to play, and summer’s freedom was our endless stage, our indivisible barefoot pursuit, despite our differences. In those days, we could imagine no boundaries.

But today, as summer swiftly approaches, boundaries run rampant — and deadly in word and deed.

Anti-legal abortion fervor erupts in murder, as Scott P. Roeder crosses the threshold of Reformation Lutheran Church — crossing from advocating for life to destroying it — and shoots dead a physician who crossed picket lines to treat patients with disastrous pregnancies. And the cooks who help whip up that fervor, Randall Terry, Operation Rescue founder, and Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly among them, chalk up Dr. Tiller’s murder to his comeuppance for being a “baby killer.”

G. Gordon Liddy, of Watergate fame, whose radio show is not extolled for its level headedness, takes a header from the fringes into the absurdly vulgar, fretting about what might happen when President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor is menstruating. And it is not an ill-conceived joke.

James W. von Braun enters the U.S. Holocaust Museum — an institution dedicated to confronting hatred, preventing genocide, promoting human dignity and strengthening democracy — and draws a bloody line between free speech and murderous demonstration, leaving hateful destruction on both sides of his path, the indignity of a victim sprawled in death. And pundits argue whether blame falls to the left or the right.

The National Organization for Marriage, sponsor of the Gathering Storm ad, steps yet again from advocating against same-sex marriage to divisive propaganda: “Same-sex marriage isn’t just about two people living as they please, but about whether a large majority of Americans are going to be marginalized as bigots by a group of elites determined to force their new vision of marriage on the entire nation.” And the fearful fail to ask what actual harm same-sex marriage will to do their heterosexual marriages, their children, their nation.

Today, it is not the hopping anticipation of barefoot pleasures that makes the days seem so long, but the disingenuous and deadly discourse of social debate gone awry, the replacement of news with uncivil commentary, the marketing of anger and derision as information.

But it seems a futile complaint, when audiences blindly accept the “either or,” the “us or them” as absolute; when people continue to watch and listen and absorb the fear and hate. How many reactionary murderers until they question; how many vulgar and dishonest statements until they refuse to listen?

Just what would it take for them to instead seek the satisfying smell of tar, the joyful tang of rhubarb, the forthright competition of unashamed peeing, the camaraderie of unbiased children, now bigger, but still in full knowledge of how to play well with others — despite their differences?

Love,
K-B

© 2009 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

Fallbrookisms

At JJ Purty’s Pub

Patron: I say torture anyone who blows up people.

From MAMMA

Mother 1: When some people heard about my daughter being gay, they said, “Where’d that come from?”
Mother 2: Oh, like she picked it up at 7-Eleven?

Church Billboard

Man’s opinions are no substitute for God’s words.

Editor’s note: And God is love.

Read more Fallbrookisms.

From Your MAMMA 09 June 2009

On the Anniversary

October 12

By Kate Harding

A Wyoming twilight. Nine years ago.
A cyclist saw a scarecrow tied to a wooden
split rail fence. Not a scarecrow. Matthew Shepard.
Bruised. Beaten. His skull crushed. Left to die.
His blood-caked face washed by tears.

On this anniversary of Matthew Shepard’s death,
I try to read, sip tea, count my valley’s few stars.
No sleep. My son Danny’s would be killers
could be prowling San Francisco streets tonight.

Broad shouldered football players. Thick jackets.
Tourists from the Midwest. Careful to walk
a few feet from each other. They have been drinking.
Later tonight they will have to share a hotel room
in this expensive city. A bump of an elbow,
a brush of a hand, could be misunderstood.
Mist blows in from the bay.
They tell each other it is girls they like. Girls.

They are nothing like my son,
with his pretty face and long hair.
Humming to himself, Danny is coming home
late from teaching, He wears the pink shirt
and tie we bought him. His light footsteps quicken.
Their footsteps echo his. Their beery breaths burn
the back of his neck.

©2007 Kate Harding poetmother@gmail.com

MAMMA (Middle-Aged Women for Marriage Equality) suggests sharing this poem with the people who oppose same-sex marriage, as a way to start a conversation; share it and ask them what they think about it.

And here’s another same-sex marriage conversation starter we just found:

The California Council of Churches’ Congregational Study Guide, Living Lovingly: Talking About Marriage Equality From a Faith Perspective, by Rev. Dr. Linda Pickens-Jones, has very helpful talking points, including discussion of civil rights compared to sacramental rights. MAMMA highly recommends this downloadable guide for those who want to take a loving and rational approach to a faith-based discussion. The introduction is a little dated, but the primary content makes the whole thing well worth downloading.

Middle-Aged Mothers for Marriage Equality Unite!

Welcome to MAMMA’s first post.

We are a group of middle-aged mothers who want our every son and daughter to grow up and be able to marry a nice girl or boy — or boy or girl. Yes, we’re talking same-sex marriage — marriage equality — so gird your loins and join us. You don’t have to be a MAMMA to be part of our family (that’s Middle-Aged Mothers for Marriage Equality).

Some of us have gay children, gay relatives, gay friends, and we all treasure our civil rights enough to fight for them, like a mother for her babes, except we do battle with literature and poetry, images and discussion.

In fact, joining us means talking about same-sex marriage with people who don’t support it. If that’s a scary thought, not to worry, Sweetie. MAMMA’s here to help. You can subscribe to automatically receive our posts and visit our pages for more resources. We have some nice content to help you start conversations with opponents of marriage equality — even those who haven’t yet learned to play well with others.

We might be profound or profane on occasion, pert or pedantic, prissy or pissy (too many ‘p’ words to keep that going), but whatever else we are, we are passionate about equal rights for all.

Even nose pickers. Now just imagine if folks tried to prohibit nose-picker marriage. We wouldn’t have enough mouths left to feed misinformation — no, homosexuality does not equate to pedophilia, it’s not contagious, your kids cannot be converted by their gay teachers and it’s not a chosen lifestyle! Hmm, do you suppose nose picking is genetic, too?

Anyway, yes, we are passionate about equal rights for all — especially in Fallbrook, where California’s anti-same-sex marriage ballot measure, Prop. 8, passed in November 2008 with 67.9 percent of the vote (compared to 52.3 percent statewide). That’s 11,298 voters whose hearts and minds can be changed to extend equal rights to all — as can hearts and minds across the country. Think of our effort as just a little attitude adjustment.

Or we could turn same-sex marriage opponents gay by close association. (Yes, of course that’s a joke! If you take life too seriously, Dear, you won’t have any fun at all.)

We will try anything, though, whatever it takes to jog memories of the poignant U.S. civil rights movement of the 1960s and encourage folks to step beyond their fear, to internalize our nation’s heroic invitation to diversity — and our charming knack for becoming better for it.

To keep this effort vibrant — and heart- and mind-changing — please submit your suggestions for content to your MAMMA. We’ll post new content as often as our motherly duties allow. Original poetry, short fiction or essays; videos and images; anecdotes, articles or links to other folks’ content worth sharing — send it all! The more ways we deliver our civil rights message, the more hearts and minds we will change in support of marriage equality.

We have some treats for you, to kick off MAMMA:

1. For those in Southern California, on Wednesday 10 June at 6:00 p.m., Fallbrook’s Writers Read has a poetry and prose reading in Fallbrook, Come Out of the Closet and Read! Closeted writers, folks already out of the closet; come one and come all.

In recognition of the CA Supreme Court’s recent failure to rule in favor of marriage equality, we encourage sharing work about living gay or having a LGBT family member or friend in your life.

2. If you have not seen former Vice President Dick Cheney’s recent statement at the National Press Club, or if you’re dying to see it again to better analyze his every nuance, here it is for your viewing pleasure — or obsession. Bear in mind, some folks are critical of his parsing support for same-sex marriage by relegating that “freedom” to the states to offer or withhold, rather than supporting federal legislation. But remember the source  — this is Dick Cheney we’re talking about. This is a pretty darn good thing. MAMMA recommends sending the Cheney video to everyone you know who opposes marriage equality and tolerates Cheney. Hmm. …

Then, on the lighter side, we offer up Stephen Colbert’s parody of the National Organization for Marriage “Gathering Storm” ad. MAMMA recommends sending this video only to folks with a sense of humor.

So, enjoy the videos, talk about them with others — and join us in supporting marriage equality.

Comment on this post.

(Editor’s note: This piece is cross-posted at www.ivorytowerz.com.)

The Problem with Hugging

In a valiant effort to join my husband in one of his rituals, I recently girded my loins and settled into the serial viewing of an evening’s news shows. I was set on ignoring the racist and misogynistic slurs against President Obama’s Supreme Court Justice nominee Judge Sonia Sotomayor. I planned to zone out as the strategically matched, aesthetically pleasing male and female co-anchors blathered segues from story to story. I was determined to avoid imagining the thousands of autoworkers’ families poised for despair as industry and political leaders negotiated in the billions. I even committed to withholding my normal rant that the commercials require reducing the television volume three or four bars. And, my fail-safe device, I had an adult beverage in hand, ready to comfort when reports of violence cut through my emotional insulation. But, despite my intent to remain unresponsive, I was wholly unprepared for the revelation that hugging among teens is a phenomenon — and a bad one according to some schools.

Where have I been, lo these many — apparently naïve — years? With my head up the armpit of an inappropriately affectionate hugger? Have the countless embraces I have received and committed been the subtle precursors to sexual harassment or — horror! — the authority-challenging pursuit of “excessive displays of affection”?

I learned that term when I couldn’t stand the news anymore and got up to research this phenomenon of affection that made it from a feature in The New York Times to my coast’s evening drivel. Our local high school’s 2008-2009 Student Handbook says, “Excessive display of affection is inappropriate on school grounds or at school sponsored activities;” the Band Room rules preclude everything but handholding; and violations have consequences:

1^st offense — 2 hrs of Thursday school
2^nd offense — 4 hrs of Saturday school
3^rd offense — 1 to 5 days of home suspension, parent contact Ed. Code 48900 (k)

I don’t know what Thursday school is, but it sounds bad, and Saturday school? That’s definitely bad. Home suspension could actually be OK, but the referenced education code says a California public school student can only be suspended if he or she has been really bad — violent, in possession of a weapon or drugs … disruptive of school activities or defiant toward a “valid authority.” Hmm, hugging on a par with violence?

This means if a California student were to hug someone and if a valid school authority observed the hug and deemed it disruptive and demanded the hug be discontinued and if the student defied the request, he or she could be suspended.

Oh, the idiocy of it!

My daughter attended a charter high school where public displays of affection (PDA) were de rigueur — same and opposite sex. So I called Kate for a reality check. She’s now 20, not much removed from her high school years.

Me: Honey, did you hear about the problem with hugging?

Kate: What?

Me: Hugging.

Kate: What? (Lots of background noise.)

Me: HUGGING! Apparently it’s a problem with teens. It was in the news. Some high schools have prohibited it. One put a time limit on it: Two seconds max or you’re out.

Kate: Whaat! People should be embracing the fact that kids are open and warm with each other instead of being hostile and hateful — like the adults who are persecuting them. This is one step closer to “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

I love my kid’s sense of wordplay. And her literacy.

Kate: This is really offensive to me. My friends and I — everyone I knew in high school, boys and girls — hugged each other to say hello. It’s not like we were trying to get off. We were being friendly. It’s a human thing to do. This isn’t the dark ages. It’s not like we’re whipping out sex toys and going at it. It’s just saying hello. There is a difference!

Kate was with a couple of friends in a coffee shop, probably surrounded by folks hugging unfettered, and her friends were equally passionate about PDAs.

Vartuhi: This is why people hate Americans! I’ve been hugging my friends since junior high, so I really don’t understand why this is an issue. We watched [the video] and we all thought we were back in the 1950s, where these moronic “problems” were an issue to people — it’s puritanical! It’s sad that people think it is an issue when there are actual issues they should be dealing with – teen pregnancy, drugs, violence, all the budget cuts in schools.

Ariel: So much of kids’ socializing is on the computer, texting and Facebook and stuff, parents should be glad their kids can connect in person — hugging is a way to compensate for all that. If kids are hugging, it’s filling a social, emotional and physical need. There are so many things the schools should be focusing on, like sex education. [Hugging] is a way for kids to learn to be comfortable with their own bodies and other people’s bodies, without being sexual.

These gals are smart. They represent three well-populated and distinct ethnic groups for whom teen hugging has long been healthy and normal — and they know a violation of the human right to express affection when it whops them upside the head.

So that’s it. I’m not taking it anymore. It’s time for a revolution! I’m marching over to Fallbrook High and organizing a hug-in. Guess I better start with the WASPy kids.

Love,
K-B

©2009 Kit-Bacon Gressitt

(Photo by antes yo no era ahora soy via a Creative Commons license.)

(Editor’s Note: This piece is cross-posted with www.ivorytowerz.com.)

Fallbrookisms

Heard at Major Market

Shopper 1: Did you hear the court upheld Prop. 8?
Shopper 2: Prop what?
Shopper 3: Did I hear? Oh, yeah, I heard — I got two text messages, half a dozen emails and three phone calls. How can these homophobes not see it’s an equal rights issue? How can they not see that? What is the matter with these people? Are they so insecure, so hateful that they have to trounce other people’s fundamental rights? How can they force the rest of us to take such a damn leap backward? And I can’t even seek comfort at church, because my idiot pastor is one of them! Well he can just suck on his empty collection plate. That’s it for me. I’m not giving one more red cent to bigots. God, I wish I was gay!

Other posts on same-sex marriage:

Sex and the Suspect Class

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Equality

Protecting Marriage and Children? My ass!

Isn’t Love All You Need?

Read more Fallbrookisms…