A Gay Dad Sounds Off: Dear Mr. Putin, No Nobel Prize for Child Abuse

Posted on March 15, 2014 by robw77

Image Vladimir Putin is used to winning.  He is undisputedly a winner from the recent LGBT confrontation-free Olympic Games.  He now has his eyes set on the Ukraine and he has taken control of the internet in Russia.   The biggest snowjob was not the white wet stuff on the ground in Sochi, it was the year of neigh saying by the Olympic and Russian authorities about treatment of gay people in the former Soviet Union.

Last week came news that Mr. Putin has been nominated in another contest—for a Nobel Prize due to his influence on the conflict in Syria. 

As a dad, more than as a gay man, the idea of Putin getting any kind of an award is unfathomable.  His treatment of LGBT people is horrific, with gay men being hunted, humiliated and abused, as seen in the film Hunted. 

Then there are the million children.  Putin and his policies are one of the single greatest forces of child destruction in the world.

It is estimated that across Russia there are about one million un-parented children living in poorly managed foster care homes, and many living is overcrowded orphanages.  The abuse of these kids is legendary.  According to a Human Rights report, the children are force to stay still and not move, be tied to furniture, lie in urine soaked sheets, stand en masse in wooden pens even in winter, be beaten, starved and ignored.   When the children reach 15 or 16, they leave the system. A UNICEF report estimates that a third of them then live on the streets, twenty percent become criminals, and ten percent commit suicide.

The children who have been rescued from this squalor are among the most damaged of the world’s orphans.  Parents worldwide have reported how the children they receive into their open arms are ones with all hope and vigor drained from their beings.  Saving them is a long process.

Journalist Mary Gold described her own experience when she got her daughter who had been in a Russian foster care home, ““We have since heard horror stories of dreadful conditions in some homes, of babies with dummies taped into their mouths for hours on end; of children who are still being bottle-fed at the age of eight and haven’t been taught to walk or talk. We discovered that our baby had left her cot only to be washed. She had never breathed fresh air — the room in which she was confined was stiflingly hot — and neither had she seen her own reflection.  When we collected her four months after we first met her (the time it took for the adoption process to be completed), she was 17 months old but still weighed a pitiful 17lb.”

Russian doctor Vera Drobinskaya told the BBC last year that she discovered conditions in the one orphanage were so bad that “at least 41 children had died over 10 years, apparently of neglect.”

A group in Russia is charted with a desperate band-aid mission.  The group called Russia Without Orphans has targeted Moscow where they estimate there are 18,000 orphans.  Their goal is to create a solution for the 4000 of those kids who are not placed in foster care homes.  The perk of the program is that the people who sign up for it get a state funded apartment in which to raise the kids.  The requirements are that the participants must take a minimum of 5 children “of which at least three teenagers over 12 years or children with disabilities”. 

This is a situation that calls for a massive international relief effort.  Putin’s government is not the least bit interested.  Rather than establishing means to better care for parentless kids, they seem fixated on minimizing the potential international parent candidates by propping up homophobia.  The parents from the United States have been banned for over a year.  CNN also reported, “Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has signed a decree banning foreign same-sex couples — as well as single people from countries where same-sex marriages are legal — from adopting Russian children…The portion affecting singles appears to stem from concerns Russian lawmakers have publicly expressed that single prospective adoptive parents could turn out to be gay and enter a same-sex marriage in their home countries.”  This action closed down prospective adoptions from over a dozen countries.  Whether blinding bigotry drives this policy or whether LGBT abuse is a smokescreen to distract the world from Russia’s social failures is open for conjecture.

As a dad, I need to speak up.  Will I be listened to?  Probably not, but if I don’t sound out on this, I can’t expect others to either.  If no one does, then a million children will stay trapped, abandoned, and facing a horrific present with a destructive dysfunctional future.

 Dear President Putin,

I am the dad of two kids.  You are essentially the father of a country and one of the most powerful men on earth.  There are days that I am not sure I have the power to make my kids clean their room.  Yet, I have the audacity to write to you and offer you advice to your horrifically failed systems regarding the Russian children.  I also represent the one community who could be your greatest resource for help, the world’s LGBT families.

I write because I can.  I write because we come from two different worlds.  My sons enjoy the Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass stories.  To them, they are pure fiction.  For you and I, they seem to be an allegorical reality.  I come from this side of the looking glass, from atop the rabbit hole.  You rule the other side—the one where the leaders wear the picture of a big heart while screeching for their subjects to lose their heads.

Here is why I am writing to you. You are a child abuser.  You are nominated for a Nobel prize, but you abuse the children of Russia. 

Your children services infrastructure has failed and the children it tortures are among the world’s most traumatized when they emerge from it.  That is, if they are lucky enough to emerge from it at all.

Meanwhile, in your through-the-looking-glass logic, you attack gay families and call us child molesters.  A University of Cambridge study showed that gay dad lead families are the most likely to come to the rescue of kids like the ones you have trapped in a hopeless and bureaucratic system.  An Australian study, the most comprehensive and accurate of its kind, shows that kids raised in LGBT families fair BETTER than they do in heterosexual ones.   

It is inconceivable therefore that you shut the door to countries who allow such families to adopt.  Even in the United States a few decades ago where LGBT couples were not allowed to marry anywhere, they were still allowed to be foster care parents in most of the states of the union.  While the anti-gay forces towed their party line that marriage was for only for heterosexuals with children, they were pragmatic enough to know that they needed our families to take kids who would otherwise suffer with neglect.

Down the rabbit hole, such logic does not seem to exist.  Instead, you insist that children either suffer in groups, or are put in your “best case” scenario, that in our country would itself be considered substandard.  I know what these kids really need because my two sons are special needs kids. They would not be OK in Russia.

Both my sons were adopted as babies from drug addicted heterosexual parents.  They are now eleven years old, born four months apart from each other.  My oldest has had therapy to help him process language, to understand sequences and conceptual ideas.  It was only a year ago for example, that he could understand what the words “yesterday” and “tomorrow” meant since the actual days they represent change…daily.  He had to be taught things that most kids will learn by osmosis.

My other son has severe issues with the ability to focus and used to write everything as a complete mirror image of itself.  He too had to be taught…everything.  We had to teach him how to turn things around, and make them right.

This is just what I am pleading for you to do in your own country.  Turn things around and make them right.  I am hoping that the dad in me can reach the dad of a country in you.  To that point, one of the things I have learned as a dad is that you cannot do it all alone.  At times, it is OK to ask for help.  That has been true for me.  It is obviously true for you.

You cannot solve your orphaned children situation alone.  Forcing even three special needs kids into a home with two other kids and an adult paid to parent them, is not the answer.  While it is better than children chained to a bed, it is still far from the minimum those children require for healthy lives.

My sons just returned from a three-day science camp.  As I cuddled with my son Jesse in a pile of stuffed animals, he told me about his adventures.  He rested his head against my chest and I could feel his world in this teddy bear pile, get as safe and warm as is humanly possible.  I gently kissed his head, as my mind wandered to the idea of a Russian Jesse, alone, shut down, with no daddy in sight.  My heart breaks knowing there are a million Jesses in your country.

You need help.  Rather than restricting your adoption policies, you need to open them wide.  Rather than rejecting families who do not biologically procreate, you need to embrace them.

Magic can happen on this side of the looking glass—if you reach out for help, you will get it.  If you confront the situation as it really is, and let the world know you need one million families who are willing to love the most needy kids on earth, those families will step up.

They will forgive you, and they will be there for those kids.  They will love them, nurture them and heal them.  People will call them heroes, but they will consider themselves to be the lucky ones, because they will have the privilege of loving.  I am not speaking in theory.  This is characteristic of hundreds of LGBT foster families I know.

If you reversed your policies, and emerged from the “Wonderland” world, making things right-sized and no longer backwards, then these families could do what they were meant to do.  Others would look at them and tell them how they all deserved Nobel Prizes for their work.

They would not accept those accolades, however; they would want the prizes to go instead to someone who made it all possible. 

They would want to give the prize to you.

 

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Why this question, MoveOn?

Posted on March 3, 2014 by Ono Kono

MoveOnPetitionToday was the first time I’ve been asked by MoveOn.org for my thoughts on whether they should send this petition to its members. I thought it was a strange one to ask and with no explanation about why, it made me wonder that maybe even progressives have a problem with the sexual orientation of others.

Here’s what they wrote:

“A MoveOn member named Aaron Ostrom recently created a petition on our public petition website entitled “Ban “gay conversion therapy” in Washington!”-and we’d like to know what you think of it.

The petition is addressed to The Washington State Senate, and reads:

The idea that being gay can be “cured” is universally discredited by every major professional psychological, psychiatric and counseling association. Please support HB 2451 to restrict sexual orientation efforts for minors by licensed medical or mental health providers in Washington state.

Here’s what Aaron wrote about it:

The state house voted 94-4 to ban controversial “pray away the gay” practices for minors in Washington. The Senate must pass the bill by Friday to become law this year but the conservative committee chair is refusing to allow a vote.

We’ll decide whether to send this petition out to additional MoveOn members in your area based on your feedback.

In case you haven’t heard about it, MoveOn’s petition site allows anyone to start an online petition and share it with friends and neighbors to build support for their cause.

Thanks for all you do.”

I am not even sure the why of this question?

For me as a straight ally to LGBTs, this therapy only adds to the prejudice against a group of human beings, suggesting that their orientation is a choice. Those professional groups named in the petition discredit any so-called cures and enough reason for this petition to go through.

In June of 2013, the religious group Exodus shut down their long-term operation and apologized to the gay community. There has been much harm caused to people who have gone through reparative therapy, which is not sanctioned by any professional medical group.

With so much evidence that sexual orientation is not a choice, but an orientation that you are born with, I see no reason for this question, and every reason for the petition being allowed to go out to members. It is an issue of human rights and dignity. The sooner we can distance ourselves and protect individuals from practices that harm any targeted group the better.

I need to ask Moveon.org, why this question?

Web sites:

Princeton University: Conversion therapy

“Mainstream American medical and scientific organizations have expressed concern over conversion therapy and consider it potentially harmful. The advancement of conversion therapy may cause social harm by disseminating inaccurate views about sexual orientation. The ethics guidelines of major mental health organizations in the United States vary from cautionary statements about the safety, effectiveness, and dangers of prejudice associated with conversion therapy (American Psychological Association), to recommendations that ethical practitioners refrain from practicing conversion therapy (American Psychiatric Association) or from referring patients to those who do (American Counseling Association).”

Southern Poverty Law Center: Conversion Therapy

“Conversion therapy – sometimes known as reparative or “sexual reorientation” therapy – is a dangerous practice based on the premise that people can change their sexual orientation, literally “converting” from gay to straight. Conversion therapy has been discredited or highly criticized by virtually all major American medical, psychiatric, psychological and professional counseling organizations.”

Live Science: Gay Conversion Therapy: What You Should Know

“A 2009 APA task force found that conversion therapies, despite being touted by religious organizations, have little evidence to back them up. A review of studies from 1960 to 2007 found only 83 on the topic, the vast majority of which did not have the experimental muscle to show whether the therapies achieved their stated goals. (Many of the people studied in the early years were court-mandated to take the therapies, adding a coercive element to those outcomes.)”

Further reading:

Five Myths About Gay People Debunked

Sign the Petition

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A Gay Dad Takes on the Frozen-Hating Mormon Grandmother

Posted on February 27, 2014 by robw77

ImageLast week a self defined Mormon grandmother named Kathryn Skaggs wrote a blog in an effort to alert the world that the movie Frozen was targeting children with a “gay agenda”.  In a sense, she was not alone in seeing “something gay”.  Many gay bloggers reviewed it with the thrill that it captured the air of gay persecution and some went so far as to dub it “the gayest Disney movie ever.”

They, of course, did not mean it in the same way Ms. Skaggs did.    There seems to be some common ground that there is a relevant LGBT message, even if we can’t all agree on exactly what it is, and whether it is “bad”.

Ms. Skaggs is a California pro-proposition 8 activist who feels her religious beliefs should trump the right of other families to enjoy the love and commitment she does.  Her writing expresses the fear that same sex marriage is the single most daunting threat to society.   Her obsession on this topic consumed her long before a certain animated movie hit the multi-plex.

It is not a mystery, therefore, why this icy blockbuster riled her sensibilities and got her all frosted.  She saw that it made some gay people happy, and that translated to mean it was not only bad for her, but that it also threatened life as she knows it.

Logically, her points in her anti-Frozen blog are absurd and as paranoid as she worries they might be.  In her follow up blog, she claims that she wants no boycott (Phew… it would be tough for her to call for one given she has taken three car loads of children to see it.), no ill will towards the film and a rejoice that others got something out of it.  It certainly begs the question as to the purpose of her fussing.  

For me, I found her reaction disturbing and worthy of discussion.  She is a grandmother, I am a dad.  She took her kids to see Frozen, I took mine.  Let’s rumble.

Dear Ms. Skaggs,

I know you are smarting a bit due to the public thumping you have taken over your “Not Going to Let it Go” piece.  On Twitter you gave it the old “at least it raised awareness” sound bite.  News flash:  we were already aware.

You weren’t totally wrong.  Don’t misunderstand me, you were MOSTLY wrong.  You are also wrong about religious rights, the mob actions of a majority who wants a minority to disappear, and about many of the other real ills of the world.  Those are discussions for another day. 

The discussion this week has been the movie Frozen.  You have raised the alarm, mostly unsuccessfully, to declare that this movie is a propaganda film targeting kids with the hidden goal of indoctrinating them with the “gay agenda”.  You feel it would “normalize” gay people and allow them (us) to participate in same sex marriages.  As a gay dad with two beautiful sons adopted through foster care from drug addicted parents, I am mystified why it is important to you that my family be marginalized and treated as abnormal.  I am not arguing whether the idea to accept people who are different is presented. It certainly is.  I don’t understand why you have a meanness in rejecting that concept as a good one.

There was something “gay” about Frozen.  It was in there.  Why else would thousands of gay people get deep gut emotional reaction from the song “Let it Go”?  Why else would it be heralded as a terrific “coming out” anthem?

The thing that is in the plot of the movie is a thing called “hope”.  It is the hope that people would be accepted for who they are.  It is the hope that people who are different will no longer be treated as “bad”, and as something to hide.  It is the hope that the bullied will no longer be bullied, and the wonderfully human will be allowed to be proud.  That is the “gay” that is in Frozen.

The other things that worried you so much are just not in this movie.  Sorry, they aren’t.  You worry that Elsa is celebrating disobedience.  She isn’t.  Ariel took care of that in Little Mermaid.  You worry that opposite sex marriage is mocked by Anna’s willingness to marry the first guy that pays attention to her.  The movie does not dwell on that point, it works through it.  Anna ends up with a guy who treats her as an equal person.  For mockable opposite sex pairings due to a single meeting please see Cinderella, wed after one dance;  Snow White, wed after a coma and a kiss; and Aurora who only needed a deep sleep and a kiss.   The only place heterosexual pairings could earn more derision is on shows like The Bachelor.

Mostly, however, you worry that the movie targeted kids, converting them over.  I can assure you that your fears are misguided.  (My blogger friend Aaron has suspicions they are not, but I think he was just kidding.) If anyone is susceptible for the indoctrination you worry about, I assume that it would be my kids, raised by a Dad and a Papa. 

Fret no more.  Here is a conversation I had with my son Jesse,  not long after seeing the movie Frozen:   

Jesse:  “Dad, I have decided that life is about the three Ws”.  

Me: “Oh?  And what are the three Ws Pal?”  

Jesse:  “Who are you?  Where are you going?  And –What are you going to do?”  

Me:  “Wow.  OK.  So, what are the answers to those questions for you?” 

Jesse:  “Well, I am a kid who loves his family.  When I grow up, I am going to move to Maui.  And… I am going to get married and have a kid someday.”  

Taking advantage of a natural moment of opportunity, I then heard myself asking a question I had never posed to him before: 

Me: “And who do you see yourself marrying?  A man or a woman?”  Jesse paused.  I was impressed how he did not regard the question as strange.  He did not react to it as if there was any preconception as to what his answer should be or was likely to be.  He answered without pressure or coercion and with a brief moment of self-reflection. 

Jesse:“I’m thinking… a girl.” 

Me:  “Cool Pal!  Sounds like you have things well planned out.”  With that, my son had come out to me, as “likely straight”. 

Frozen, if it was to mesmerize kids into being gay, had not sunk into a young man who according to “theory” would be a prime candidate.

It leads me to the big question Ms. Skaggs.  Of all your grandkids who dragged you to see the Disney movie that you seem to regard with a degree of suspicion, what will happen when one of them comes out to you in the future as gay?  There is a chance, statistically, that one of them might be, after all.

What will you do?  Will you tell them to cover up and hide, and feel the shame of being different—as Elsa’s parents did?  Will you lead them to suicidal feelings, or throw them to the street, as many parents do to their kids in that situation?

Or will you learn the lesson that Anna did, that acceptance and love of your family is the biggest “true love” of all?

Yes, Ms. Skaggs.  The movie had a hidden message.  It had a message of love, and hope.  It had the desire to melt the closed heart and inspire it to let go, and love other people.  It wants the target of its message to warm from within and to accept others as they are, and give them the freedom to live their best and fullest lives. What you got wrong is this:  that message was not targeted at your grand kids. 

It was meant for you.

 

 

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Giving Our Ego a New Perspective

Posted on February 24, 2014 by Ono Kono

Imageby Ono Kono

Recently it occurred to me that when our ego gets in the way, we could help put it back in line with a new perspective. A little saying that I like to remember is, “Be kind; everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” I don’t know what is going on in your life, but perhaps that frown on your face and your abruptness is just you lost in thought, worrying about your father who has cancer, or the argument you had with your wife this morning. It has nothing to do with me, yet my ego tends to think the opposite. My ego thinks it knows best, yet I can’t know what is the greatest course of action for you, although I can give plenty advice based on my own experience, it may not be the path you need to take. So, I must be compassionate and patient with you, just as I hope you will be compassionate and patient with me.

In addition, here on the internet, you don’t know me personally, who I am, what my experiences are, even how old I am-the same goes for me knowing you. We see through our life—filter, which unfortunately doesn’t always get it right, especially when we try to interpret truth about right or wrong.

There is much wisdom in Jesus words about judging another. I believe he is also pointing out that the speck in our brother’s eye is actually the gigantic log in our life. Only we don’t want to see it. We desperately try to hide it from our awareness, yet there the log lies in front of us mirrored in another. Jesus could very well mean that the judgment may not be just his, but our own judgment of our own failings. Besides, we don’t see the complete picture, our judgment comes from a finite life, with the bias of many filters.

The following paragraph offers yet another perspective, from the book Mystery Girl by David Gordon.

“It is one of the simplest, most difficult truths: the amazing fact that other people are real and thinking all day about their own complex lives, just like we are. In a restaurant, a store, and office, look around: each one of those random brains is a whole world, same as yours, a spinning globe of worries, desires, memories, and fears, with families and friends, enemies and half-forgotten faces, reaching back deep into time, and somehow existing right across the bus. Now multiply that by 6.7 billion. That is our reality: an endless number of universes, each one dancing about the others, changing and evolving, blinking out and shining on, appearing and dying, forever, an infinite darkness alive with brief little stars.”

Discrimination thrives whenever and wherever we park our egos. Take away the ego and the want to be correct, the desire to keep a group of people locked in a box of inequality disappears.

Posted in Civil Rights, Living, Prejudice | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

A Gay Dad’s Valentine to His Sons

Posted on February 13, 2014 by robw77

ImageThe other day, my friend John linked me onto a tweet from a gentleman in Utah.  The man was Paul Mero, president of the Sutherland Institute, a conservative think tank.  Mr. Mero’s organization had just submitted an amicus brief in the pending same sex marriage case in Utah, one of which, he is very proud.  “A brilliant articulation of the state interest in marriage.  Can’t wait for the plantiffs’ non-response,” were his exact words.

Glutton for punishment that I am, I had to search this “brilliant articulation” out.  I found it on their website.  It was a seven point treatise that pulled numerous unrelated facts together, associated them with ideas they had nothing to do with, and laid out arguments often in complete contradiction.  The biggest eye-roller was that the attempt to bring marriage equality to Utah was to turn marriage from a “child-centric” institution to a “consensual-adult” institution.  The argument was so passionate, I had to wonder if the last opposite sex couple for whose wedding I officiated would suddenly annul.  Ron and Rita are both in their late 50s and would find the idea that they were now to be “child centric” a little disruptive to say the least.  I also wondered if the protest that marriage was falling into the pit of “consensualness” was putting a stake in the ground to return to arranged marriages.

In any case, the brief’s later argument contradicted the beginning premise by worrying that if marriage were to be made legal for same sex couples, it would inspire us to have lots of children, and that would be bad.  At least it came around to almost admitting that we too might be “child-centric” in our family formations after all.

The “proof” it cites in claiming that having same sex parents is detrimental was an old and discredited source:  the Regnerus study.    This is the study that surveyed thousands of families (none in person) and included two, only two, lesbian couples, in its data.  It included zero gay father lead same sex households.  None.  It did not stop its exclusion of any true LGBT family research from drawing conclusions about us however, and those fallacious conclusions have made their way into almost every anti-gay legal brief in the US, and into the government state houses of LGBT oppressive nations around the world. 

We are approaching Valentine’s Day.  Rather than submit logic here on why heterosexual couples are as likely to enjoy consensual relationships with each other, and how same sex couples can be as strongly “child centric”,  I decided to go ahead and commemorate the day by BEING child-centric instead.  I hope you consent.  Mr. Mero is submitting an amicus brief, I am submitting a valentine.

Here is my Valentine.  It is not to my partner Jim, whom I adore.  He will get his own valentine this weekend.  It is to my sons for whom I live and for whom I would die.  Jason and Jesse, both eleven years old, were adopted as babies from the foster care system.   They were each born to drug addicted birth parents and put in life threatening circumstances.  I am the only dad either have ever known.

Dear Jesse and Jason,

Hi guys!  It is Valentine’s day and tonight you spent the evening writing out your cards and putting together little gifts for all your school mates.  I thrill over the joy and generosity you exhibit in wanting to make sure each person is touched, and that everyone of them knows you care.   

My sweet boys, this is my valentine back to you.

You have transformed me.  I knew who I really was destined to be the minute I looked into each of your eyes.  I thought I knew before then, but I did not know completely.  In those two instances, I looked deep and heard my soul mutter, “Hi there, I’m your Dad.”  The incredible thing is, that each of you looked back with a gleam that said, “Yes, you are.”

I thought when I was young that I wanted to win an Academy Award someday.  (You know, that’s the show where I take over the TV for the night…) Watching you grow, and become the young men you have, has been the greatest honor of my life.  Lights, camera….no cinematic action, just one heck of a lot of pride.

I also thought, when I was young, that I wanted to be a super hero.  (I know you guys have thought about being ones too!).  Here is a secret for you.  You made me into one.  When you were little, you gave me the power to heal owwies with a single kiss.  You each would fall down and cry, and then run into my arms and with just one of my cuddles and a single kiss (sometimes to the owwie itself), waala!  It was miraculously healed.  The tears dried up and in less than a minute, you were back to your happy self.  You also gave me the power of incredible magnetic force—as soon as I walked into your pre-school room, your little bodies came flying at me at an incredible speed and force that it almost always knocked me down.  You gave me the power to overcome all adversities against all things yucky.  Somehow, someway, I no longer wretched at poopie diapers, vomit covered t-shirts (mine) or spiders, the later of which I was the designated hit man against.

(I will let you know as you enter your teen years that I have developed a keen x-ray vision and ability to hear through walls.  You have been officially warned.)

There are people in this world who believe that people cannot love as deeply as we do unless the kids were made by the Dad.  Jesse, you got this reaction recently when classmates made faces to you after you told them you have two dads.   They were wrong and I hope you never let their mistaken ideas get to you.  They just don’t know us.

What they don’t understand is, I did make you.  And you made me.  None of us would be who we are without the others.  We pro-created each other.  There are people who believe that if we don’t share the same DNA we cannot have the bond that we do.  They are wrong.  I don’t cherish my DNA.  I cherish you.  More than anything, you rock my world.

When people attack families like ours, it does make me angry at times.  I too get hurt over the ignorance they display.  I feel wounded for the people who suffer at the hands of their opinions.  I feel helpless sometimes that I can affect a change.  I need to be reminded myself of what I just told you:  they don’t know us. 

I get reminded when something happens as it did tonight when I came to bed.  On my pillow was an item more powerful than homophobia and self-righteousness put together.  In the creases of the bed linens was something that makes me invincible.  It was a slightly wrinkled, cut out white paper heart with these words scrawled on it:                       

                “I Love You Daddy”

 

With that, you restored my super powers once again.  I am ready to take on the world, and I hope you are too.  You both have all my heart, all my soul.  You are my Heaven and Earth.  Happy Valentine’s Day.

      Daddy

 

 

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A Gay Dad Thanks Coke for Its Super Bowl Commercial But Asks, “Is It the Real Thing?”

Posted on February 3, 2014 by robw77

ImageI have to confess that I have always looked forward to Super Bowl Sundays.  I did so for other reasons than most people do, however.  It was not to watch “the game”, but rather, to go out and enjoy venues that were normally packed on a Sunday afternoon, now under-populated with the vast majority gathered around television sets across the nation.  Last year, those plans changed when my son Jesse announced that he wanted to watch the game.  Oh, where did I go wrong? (Kidding!)

I thought with his attention span, this would be a short-lived exercise, but it was not.  He avidly absorbed the game and got into it for the full duration.  “We were robbed by that black out,” he grumbled as he saw his team fight back, but come up short in the end.  “Next year.”

His team did not get in this year, but as it turns out, his family, or a representation of us, did.  Coca cola knocked out a surprise commercial featuring the diversity of America.  It portrayed a diverse snapshot of the cultures, religions and orientations of our country all while voices sang “America the Beautiful” in different languages.  About halfway through, there is the depiction of a gay family, two dads and their daughter, ice skating.  It was the first time in history that a family such as mine was shown in a Super Bowl ad.  It was a sixty-second rendition, but the waves it created have reached much further. 

Waves of hatred for the commercial hit Twitter immediately, most around the complaint that America the Beautiful should only be sung in English, and most projecting more xenophobia than homophobia.  Immigrants and non-whites were un-American to these offensive and offended voices.

The dissenters might be a bit distressed to know that it is unlikely the author of America the Beautiful herself would not be counted among their number.  Katharine Lee Bates reportedly left the Republican party late in her life due to its growing xenophobia at the time.  Moreover, the inclusion of a gay family would have likely been applauded by Ms. Bates as well.  According to Biography, “Bates wrote a set of sonnets to honor her love Katharine Coman. She and Coman, both been professors at Wellesley, lived together for roughly 25 years. Bates was heartbroken over Coman’s death in 1915.”

I have to confess, that in watching the commercial, I needed to be told that it featured a gay family.  The footage moves fast, and literally, if you blink, you will have missed it.  The inclusion is spelled out much more fully in the excellent video Coke released called “Coca Cola-It’s Beautiful-Behind the Scenes”.  Within this five minute video, one of the gay dads states, “It’s been very hard for my family when it comes to the gay issue, and it’s what caused us so much pain over all these years… Today I see people, you know, asking us to hold hands, people embracing us as a family and respecting us.”  Another participant in the video states, “You should know who you are, you should embrace who you are.”

So.  Here is my note to the Coke advertising executives:

Dear Coca Cola,

Thank you.  I know that you have taken a great deal of flack over your commercial “It’s beautiful”.  The commentary has been anything but beautiful from a certain faction of our country.

By the time I checked the #coke twitter stream last night, the comments had swung out hard in your defense, and I think the viral buzz around your 60 second spot will give you more than your money’s worth of exposure.

In my home, your visibility was well beyond a fleeting glance.  As a gay dad, I wanted my sons to see the promotion you had given to important American principles.  I showed them your commercial and the “behind the scenes” video.  My sons are both now eleven years old, both came from drug addicted parents, and both were adopted by me through foster care.  My sons have two dads.

Last year, my son Jesse was glued to the Super Bowl, and he saw nothing that reflected back the picture of our family.  You changed that this year, so again, thank you.  This year, my kids loved your commercial and embraced all for which it stood.  Jason’s heritage is Mexican and he appreciated his background being acknowledged. 

After the ice skating scene, both heads swiveled towards me and said in unison, “Dad!  When can we go ice skating?!”   I admit, they are not aware that the public depiction of a family with same sex parents as a big deal.  To them, such a family playing on ice is the novelty.  I am glad that is their perception.

It cannot be the perception kids like them in Russia have, however.  Families like ours in the country hosting the Olympics are currently living in fear.  The gay parents there are not dreaming of strangers asking them to hold hands, they are afraid of legislation that is a vote away from taking their kids from them.  Here in America, I can send your “behind the scenes” video out through my social media contacts. For a Russian gay dad to do so, is a criminal act.  My sons have had the love and safety of a home for their entire lives, in Russia, kids such as mine number over 400,000 and are locked away in orphanages with parents like me prevented from adopting them.

You have been deservedly under fire for your sponsorship of the Sochi Olympics.  Now you have shown great courage in the United States on behalf of diversity.  There are those who are cynical that you may be playing both sides and looking for the maximum in financial gain.  To use your own branding catch phrase, they are asking, and I am asking, about your support for freedom and diversity:  is it the real thing?  Will you blindly fund a regime that would deem your current public outreach as a crime or will you still stand for diversity in a country whose population is not yet open to hearing it? 

I am begging for you to do so.  Thank you for remembering my family.  Please do not forget our Russian counterparts.  They need your voice even more than my kids do.  Please make this real and not some marketing ploy.  We’ll be watching.

 

 

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Marriage Equality Foes: You’ are Correct, Fairness to Same Sex Couples Might Harm Your Marriage, But It’s Your Own Fault If It Does

Posted on January 27, 2014 by robw77

ImageFor years, in thousands of same sex marriage debates which I have participated,   those opposing marriage equality have claimed that if it was made legal, harm would be done to opposite sex marriages.  There was nothing about their argument that seemed the least bit logical, so I fought back vehemently with all the rational thought I could muster against, what to me, was a purely irrational concept.

I missed something.  I should have seen it.  It parallels another argument anti-gays have made for years, long before the marriage equality issue was even on the table.  They would argue that “homosexuality was unhealthy.”  They would point to the fact that LGBT people seemed to suffer from higher levels of depression, suicide, and alcoholism.  LGBT people were likely to die younger.  Their observations were not fallacies.  LGBT people were, and are, susceptible to those problems.  It was the premise that homosexuality itself caused those problems that was erroneous.

Clearly, the life threatening issues LGBT people face have everything to do with how they are treated by society, and the people they know.  It is the overt external pressure for people to be what they aren’t, and it is the deep seated pervasive beliefs of inferiority that bombard LGBT people every day.  It is homophobia, that not only erodes the self esteem of LGBT people, it prevents participation in the societal structures that have proven healthy for heteronormative people:  Marriage, families and support by intimates, that have societal acceptance and honor, create mentally and emotionally healthy environments in which modern humans thrive.

It is not the “homosexuality” that kills. It is the homophobia.  It is not a coincidence that the same people who argue against homosexuality are also the source of that homophobia which causes the effect they triumph.  Their argument is true because they make it true.

Now, they are trying to make their perceived harm from marriage equality true as well.  In Oklahoma, state lawmaker Rep. Mike Turner (R-Edmond), is proposing a bill to cease marriage all together in the state.  He maintains that he is staying within the principle of equality and follows the will of the people to prevent same-sex marriages from happening in Oklahoma while living up to principles in the U.S. Constitution.  He’s right.  It would maintain those criteria.

I have come to attempt to understand the impulses of the anti-gay crowd by observing knee-jerk reactions of my young sons.  When Trestin Meacham decided to starve himself in protest of same sex marriages in Utah, I saw a parallel.  I see a similar impetus here.  My son, Jesse, has what can be called “a short fuse”.  It is characteristic of many in his biological family, and it is made even more pronounced in Jesse due to his exposure to methamphetamine in the womb.

When he has a conflict with someone, he often wants to take what he perceives as justice into his own hands.  Of all the calls I have gotten to deal with a problem at school, the vast majority started in a situation where he was potentially the wronged party.  I have conversations with him:

“Ok, Pal, you have to think this out?  What would have happened if you took this to a teacher and a reasonable answer could have been worked out?”

  “I wouldn’t have acted out and gotten in trouble.”

   “Right.  Who would have had the tougher time?”

   “They would have.”

    “Who was the one in trouble by doing it your way?”

    “Me.”

“What do you think of that?”

“It’s warped.”

So I need to ask Mr. Turner:  “Who will be the one in trouble by doing it your way?”

Answer:  You.  You are doing what my grandmother would call “cutting off your nose to spite your face.”

Ignoring the bureaucratic mess that will ensue, it boggles my mind how completely gutting a state’s family law and protections for children will help anyone.  It also calls into question the “traditional marriage” advocates claims to care about the importance of marriage in society.  This action says that its importance is expendable before the need to win.

To all the anti-gays I have argued with over the years, here is my message: “Yes, I was wrong in all those arguments.  I am not sorry for arguing for marriage equality.  I was then, and still am, right about that.  I am still right about its justice and that it holds the highest of ethics and moral principles to support it.

What I am sorry for is missing the obvious.  I am sorry that I did not point out that there is a factor that WOULD cause harm to your marriages should same sex marriage become legal: you.  To my credit, I honestly did not believe that you would take, or consider taking, actions that make your concerns a self-fulfilling prophesy.  I thought better of you than you appear now to be.”

Mr. Turner is saying on your behalf, “If we can’t have it exclusively, then we will see to it that no one has it.”  I did not see that coming.

It won’t be the same sex couples, our families, our loves, our lives or our legal protections that will harm your marriages, it will be your destructive initiatives like this one.   The possible silver lining here would be the possibility that opposite sex couples affected may stop and reflect on what being prevented from marrying feels like.

Be that as it may, it is apparent that you intend to “win”, no matter who actually loses, even if that includes families like your own.

To quote my son Jesse, “That’s warped.”

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Posted in Civil Rights, Family, Marriage equality, Politics, Prejudice, Uncategorized, US Politics | Tagged , , , , , , | 7 Comments

“Love the Sinner”…um….Yeah, Don’t Give Me That Crap

Posted on January 22, 2014 by robw77

Special Guest Blog by Ken Jansen

Image“I love the color red..but I kinda hate the reddish tint.”

Sounds stupid, doesn’t it? Not a lot of sense in that phrase. Same goes for another one, that we hear a lot. “Love the sinner, hate the sin.”

This one’s used by many somewhat fundamentalist religious people to justify their dislike of homosexuality. This was used during a recent discussion on same-sex marriage, with a christian friend of mine. After giving me all the typical arguments against Marriage Equality, it seems that to him it was the perfect ending to the conversation. Now to my friend’s credit, he did not go on about how being gay is a sin, or worse, an abomination. To him, the sin was “living the gay lifestyle.”

When asked how same sex marriage differs greatly from his marriage, he had no clear answer. Only that it was against biblical teaching, and will destroy “traditional” marriage. (We’ve all heard these arguments before.)

There are, in my opinion, a number of things wrong with this platitude. First, while it is heard mostly from Christian fundamentalists, it’s actually a paraphrase of Gandhi’s quote, “Hate the sin but not the sinner.”

Does anyone else find it ironic that Christians are using a famous Hindu’s quote as their own? Second, it’s an instant judgment. YOU have decided someone is wrong…”Love the ‘sinner’…” This flies in the face of biblical teachings. Anyone remember “Judge not…?” At the same time, by fundamentalist standards, everyone fits into the category of “sinner.” Even, or dare I say, especially, the fundamentalists. So…”Let he who is without sin…” Third, how can you “love” a person when you “hate” an integral part of who, and what they are? This goes back to the bible, too. Specifically, one verse, John 13:34. Don’t bother looking it up, here it is. “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another, as I have loved you…” from the King James Bible.

Now, think a moment. How did Jesus love? Totally, unreservedly, unconditionally. Jesus hung out with a bunch of people who, historically, were always considered “less than” if not outright hated. Fishermen, revolutionaries, and come on…a tax collector? Not to mention, a prostitute. Now, we’re not talking a high priced call girl, we’re talking a hooker! And how did he love them?

Totally, unreservedly, unconditionally.

So, if , you “love one another, as I have loved you,” should it not be the same kind of love? Total? Without reservation? Without condition? It is to me. Again, in my opinion, “Love the sinner, hate the sin” is a total cop out. A polite way of saying “I hate what you are, but I’m trying to butter it up, and make myself feel better by pretending to love you. Jesus never once said anything like “I love you, but that hair! Can’t stand it!” He simply stated “I love you.” Totally, unreservedly, unconditionally.

May I humbly suggest you try doing the same.

 

 

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A Gay Dad Sounds Off on the Utah Starvation Guy’s New Childish Rant

Posted on January 17, 2014 by robw77

ImageTrestin Meacham is not a special individual.  For the people who share his mindset, he is actually quite typical.  He finds a singular way of expressing himself, and for that, he gets notoriety.

Because he typifies some of those holding key points of anti-gay frustration, he remains a point of interest for me and others.  He is not alone. With an Oklahoma lawmaker calling gay people “human wrongs” and the government of Nigeria terrorizing its LGBT citizens, and dozens of idiotic ramblings from various lawmakers and clergy, Mr. Meacham’s point of view is more common than many of us are comfortable.

He crawled his way into public notoriety a few weeks ago when he declared that he would fast until the state of Utah declared “nullification” over a federal ruling on same sex marriage.  The Supreme Court declared a temporary stay on additional marriages taking place in stead.  At that point Trestin was hungry and he ate. 

At the time, while I am sure Mr. Meacham saw himself as a latter day Gandhi or Caesar Chavez, I likened his behavior to that of my kids who refused to eat when they did not get their way.  Many agreed.  Like my kids, the first round of a tantrum even after it is pacified, is rarely the last.  It often entails grandiose statements, exaggerated emotion and tears.

Mr. Meacham has followed the pattern.

In the case of my kids, my son Jesse lashes out at the object of the conflict, declares his forever intent and slams his fist down.  “I HATE school!  I am never going back there ever!  And I am NEVER going to talk to <fill in the blank> again!”  he will declare with absolute conviction, red-faced and tears streaming down his face.  The tears always get me, it breaks my heart to see him cry, but I am also conflicted and try not to laugh at the perfectly executed high drama.  So, I hug him and address him in a reasonable voice.

“OK, Pal.  I know you are having hard feelings right now, and it is never OK to hate.  Let’s just take a breath, calm down, and we can think it out a little later.  Just know that I love you, and it is going to be OK.”  With that, he crumples in my arms, and we let it go for a few hours before we can deal with the issue rationally.  Which, we always do.

Like Jesse, Mr. Meacham followed his refusal to eat with a nasty little diatribe this week.  He seemed to stamp his feet and took to his Facebook page with a new rant,   “Let’s be clear about something, my mission, my purpose in life is to stand against the homosexual movement. Not to persecute or hate gay individuals, but to stand against and defeat the homosexual movement.   

“I will never stop, as long as I draw breath. I will stand against them when they attack the churches. I will stand against them when they attack individuals. I will stand against them in my old age. I will stand against them in sickness and health. They can kill my body, but my spirit will never submit to their tyranny. I will expose their hate and rage. I will expose their persecution of religion. And I will expose their hidden plans. This secret combination has made a powerful foe. This is only the beginning!”   I obviously could not observe Mr. Meacham in person, but I suspect there might have been loud pounding and tears as he typed.

In any case, here is my follow up response to Mr. Meacham:

Dear Mr. Meacham,

   I am a bit mystified by your public outburst this week on Facebook.  You are obviously outraged and it would appear , feeling that your recent hunger fast was a failure.  At the time, I suggested that instead of implementing that kind of protest, that you would be better served joining my family, or one like mine, for dinner.  I am going to assume you thought I was kidding.

   I was not.  While you claim to have “friends and relatives” that are gay, you do not seem to have ever sat down with them and their families and tried to understand them.  I really think it would be beneficial for all if you knew exactly with what you were dealing.

You claim you are “standing against the homosexual movement” but not “persecuting or hating” gay individuals.  Could you clarify the difference for me?  As far as I can see, the “homosexual movement” is responsible for saving over a million people from an untimely death from the AIDS epidemic, it allowed gay people to make progress in being forced from their homes, fired from their jobs and be protected from targeted terrorism in the form of hate crimes.  It has allowed gay people to fight for their country and for their loved ones to stand by them in dignity.  It has supported responsible adults in loving, committing and forming strong families, including many that have saved thousands and thousands of children from foster care and isolation.

Are these the things that you are “standing against”?  You seem to loathe the idea of hating individual people, but eager to hate this idea of a “movement”.  Unfortunately, they are one and the same.  By hating the protections that progress has afforded in the past few years, you are hating people, their loved ones and their families.

You are hating me.  You are hating my kids.  I understand you are upset, and I understand that you are afraid, but that does not make your sentiment OK.

You fear they will come after your church.  No one is doing that.  No one is going to do that.  No one is coming after you.  The worst you could say over the reaction to your threatening self-harm was that there were a great many people who were not particularly interested in saving you.  You said you were willing to starve, and they were willing to let you.

No one in the vast, entire “homosexual movement” is looking to interfere with your individual life.  Starve or gorge, the entire LGBT community is willing to leave you alone.  They, we, just want you to do the same for us.  If we step up to the profound responsibility of supporting and caring for our family, we want nothing from you but the respect to allow us to do so.

So, I leave you with the same suggestion that I did in my last note:  if you care about this issue so passionately, you need to let go of your fears and assumptions, and go get to know some real people.  Get to know the lesbian couple and the children they have brought into the world.  Go get to know the gay dads who have rescued four kids from drug addicted abusive birth parents who would have killed them, go talk to the soldier whose partner stayed true and steadfast while the love of his life was across the world in mortal danger, go meet the artist, the athlete, the musician, the teacher, and go meet the couple who are dedicating their lives to each other and important careers who want nothing more than a secure home to return to each evening. 

Those people, and those lives are what you are staring down, your fist held high, threatening to “defeat”.  You like to think that what you are expressing is not “hate”.  Right now, I am having trouble finding another word for it.

Whatever you decide to call it, is that really the thing you want to commit your life to?  I hope not, for you more than anyone.  If it is, yours will be a miserable life. 

Sincerely,

A Dad

 

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“Marriage Isn’t for You” Goes Viral for Straight People but Creates Pain for LGBTs

Posted on January 12, 2014 by robw77

ImageThe English language can be a funny thing.  The same words can be used in different contexts and have very different impact.  I remember receiving a letter from a videocassette manufacturer from England when I was a young professional working for a film production company.  It was an introduction letter to our female vice president.  It read, “I would be so pleased if in the next few weeks I would be permitted to come knock Ms. Juden up.”   I showed her the letter.  Her response was, “He had better be giving us one hell of a deal on wholesale videocassettes for THAT!”

Recently, a blog piece by Seth Adam Smith went viral around the turn of the phrase “Marriage isn’t for you.”  The point of his article was from a discussion after his wedding with his dad. “My dad giving his response to my concerns was such a moment for me. With a knowing smile he said, “Seth, you’re being totally selfish. So I’m going to make this really simple: marriage isn’t for you. You don’t marry to make yourself happy, you marry to make someone else happy. More than that, your marriage isn’t for yourself, you’re marrying for a family. Not just for the in-laws and all of that nonsense, but for your future children. Who do you want to help you raise them? Who do you want to influence them? Marriage isn’t for you. It’s not about you. Marriage is about the person you married.”  Seth’s message was embraced by many for the idea of  selflessness in marriage  and debated by others about how much self sacrifice is too much.

Of course, the sentimental humor of the piece was the double entendre of implying that some heterosexuals might not be fit for marriage.  Unfortunately there is no double entendre being used this past week in Utah for same sex couples.  Those couples are being told “Marriage isn’t for you”.  This time, the implication is not that marriage is actually for one’s mate, one’s family and about the loves of one’s life.  This time, marriage “is not” for them either.  The governor’s office has stated that their position is “not only a prohibition of performing same-sex marriages but also recognizing same-sex marriages”. Meanwhile 12-year-old Riley Hackford-Peer, someone who a marriage should be “for”, for his protection, his dignity and his own self-worth, spoke on the capital steps about his lesbian moms, “Some people do not believe I am from a loving family, they are WRONG… sometimes I felt really scared that my moms weren’t married.  I imagined being taken away from one of my moms.  At school we talked about things we hope to see in our lifetime.  I said I hope to see my moms get married…in Utah.  On December 20th, it happened, I saw my moms get married …IN UTAH.  It felt like fireworks bursting in my heart. It was the second happiest day of my life.  My first happiest day was on the day my little brother was born… but Governor Herbert wants to treat my moms unfairly.  He says he wants to ‘protect families’.  I want to tell him that my family deserves protection too.”

“No,” says the state of Utah to Riley Hackford-Peer, “marriage is not for you.”

Like the young Mr. Hackford-Peer, a state said something similar to my sons once.  It was Valentine’s day 2004, and the mayor of San Francisco had declared that the city would start legally marrying same sex couples.   I proposed to my partner, and the other father of my sons, that we go and marry.  We knew the likelihood of our marriage being invalidated was high, but we went anyway.  Like Seth Adam Smith’s dad said, we knew this marriage was for our kids, and they were worth risking any disappointment we might face.  We hoisted the then two year olds on our shoulders and went.

It was unlike anything we had ever experienced.  The line was around the full city block and we had arrived in the morning.  We were interviewed by the local news crew (our interview opened the 6pm local news that night).  We carried our sons up the steps, into the office for paperwork and then into the rotunda for an official to marry us. 

Days later, injunctions came down, and those who were in line were told, “sorry, marriage is not for you”.  I remember the pictures of anguish of the people who were fully expecting to marry that day.  The woman who had been next in line with her partner, who had been jubilant moments before, was instantly hysterical with grief.  The pictures told the story of new kind of disappointment I had never seen before.  It was a mix of humiliation and helpless anguish.  “You are not OK being who you are.  Marriage is not for you.”

Soon other rulings came down from the court and our precious marriage license that seemed to glow with a tint of a miracle turned back into a worthless piece of paper.  Even though we had every reason to expect it, the hurt was palatable.  My sons, still too young to know what was going on were told…“Marriage is not for you”.

The Utah cases are different even than ours, however.  While we married under the auspices of a renegade mayor playing out his own version of civil disobedience, the couples in Utah were not.  They were married with the full assurances of both the court system and the state. 

They were given the full “green light” to allow all their family hopes, dreams and aspirations to come out and be realized.  That is no small feat.  The Massachusetts Supreme Court observed that marriage is one of the single most important acts of self-definition.  These couples did not take their steps lightly, and these were not rash, impulsive decisions.  They have been in wait, in hope, and probably prayer that someday they would meet fruition.

That day came.  Now the state wants to say, “Never mind.  Put your heart away, pack away your soul.  Uncry your tears of joy, return your smiles to moth balls.  We are rewinding the most important acts of your lives.  Marriage is not for you.”

No.  This is not acceptable.  In the history of unacceptable things, this is at the top.  Our legal system and American ideals are founded on a core ideal that we do what we committed to do.  Utah committed to these couples and they owe the recognition to them.

Marriage IS for them as much, if not more, than anyone.  They were told they could.  They went through the personal life changing process to do it, and they have earned the right to have it.   The recognition of their families cannot be unborn.

If the governor and his administration continue to renege on marriage for these couples, they should be sued for everything they are worth.  They owe over 1300 couples for the pain and disappointment they will have caused them.  I will never forget that profound wash of discouragement on the day we heard about our marriage.  That memory never goes away.  These couples should be compensated for the harm they have endured.

Heterosexuals in the blogsphere swarmed to an idea that marriage means being unselfish.  They embraced the concept that marriage is for the love, honor and cherishing of one’s spouse and the deep commitment to the well being of one’s current and future children.  This is exactly what the married same sex couples in the state of Utah have signed up for, and yes, marriage is and should be for them. They are exactly the ones who deserve it.  They personify all the good values for which marriage stands.

Governor, it should not be, it cannot be, yours to withhold.  Give it back now.

 

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