Pictures of my ceramic art

Good evening. I am ready to show you some of my ceramic art from this semester. First I present my raku glazed vessel. It's approximately 12 inches in diameter and 11 inches high. It was glazed and fired with the raku method. It looks shiny. And a bit ugly, but in a pretty way

It looks better in person. And the time stamp on these two pictures is correct. The following pictures were taken a week after these, but the time stamp says New Years Day 1007.
Yeah, so ignore the time stamp. This is 3/4th of a set of tableware. The assignment was to make a large plate, a small plate, a tumbler, and a small cup of some kind. I made the 4th piece, but I didn't get it finished in time to get it into the kiln for the bisque fire. The 4th piece is a goblet that I'm particularly pleased with. It won't get cooked until January. Until then, enjoy the other pieces.
I've been meaning to try out that tumbler to see how well it works as a drinking vessel. The thing is sitting on my desk now, stacked up with all the other ceramic work I brought home.

Next is the narrative piece that goes with the personal story I posted a month ago. I worked on this sucker for a good three weeks, maybe more.

top view

"The Church" on the left, my house on the right, a gay couple walking together toward my house. A crumbling archway between the church and my house.

church side view

And a bit of the crumbling archway.

detail of my house side view, with me as the crazy lady in the window

angled view with church on the right, archway behind, and "man of the cloth" being all judgmental and shit

That's supposed to be an altar there on the front right corner along the wall of the church. Behind the preacher-guy you can see a wonky pew, and if you look carefully you can see the gay couple heading down the road.

angled view showing gay couple walking toward my house, with mini-me in an apron welcoming them to my home

The bit on the left is supposed to portray a homey scene of the hearth. Maybe you can see it better if you embiggen it.

Detail of the front of my house with me welcoming the gay couple

That shadow in front is the back of the pew. I made the pew with distorted angles and such, symbolizing the distortions of the church and the altered perspective of the scene.

And that's about all I'm going to say now. I should be posting more often for the next three weeks until school starts again. I have some other pictures of artwork to share, too. Stay tuned.

The story of my transformation from homophobe to homophile

I had this assignment for my ceramic sculpture class:

Students will write a 2-4 page (typed, double spaced) true narrative and then design a ceramic environment to illustrate the narrative. The narrative should be about an event or experience you witnessed.

So yeah, I have to depict the story in clay. Artistically. The most significant experience I've had in recent years is learning to embrace The Gay. Here is the story I submitted to my art professor this morning.

Until about five years ago I had my life mostly figured out. I was in my early 40s with four children, the youngest having recently started elementary school. After being a stay-at-home mom most of my adult life, I decided to pursue my dream of driving a truck and became a school bus driver. I finally had a job, was making a little bit of money, and my work schedule coincided with the children’s days off from school.

The other important element of my life aside from my family was the church. We were members of a conservative protestant denomination, and my husband and I were actively involved in various ministries within the church. Our church taught a strong Bible based theology, and there were very few points with which I disagreed. Being curious and intelligent, I had given a lot of thought to many social issues from the perspective of what I learned in church.

In the winter of 2006 I met a young man whose existence challenged my beliefs. C was a 17 year old high school senior who had lived with an inner conflict since early adolescence. He also was a faithful Christian but he was romantically attracted to guys, which the church says is wrong. He kept his same sex attraction a secret until age 17 when he realized that the conflict was not going to solve itself. As he began to accept his homosexuality he slowly shared his secret with close friends. My daughter Light was one of those friends.

Light introduced me to C in December. Although I had strong suspicions, I did not know for sure that he was gay until later in January. By then most everybody at school knew of his homosexuality, and many of those classmates also attended the church where he and his mother worshiped. He had not come out to his mother and was afraid she would find out through the grapevine. The child was full of angst typical of a high-strung teenager under stress. He needed to talk and I was willing to listen. I found him to be a charming, intelligent, sensitive young man who in no way fit the image of a homosexual that I’d learned from the church. I had a conundrum.

Not long after I started talking to C he found an opportunity to tell his mother that he is gay. She did not take it well. She and C’s step-father gave him 30 days to move out of their house. I was livid! I understand her attitude about homosexuality since I held a similar view, but I do not understand how she could banish her son from her home. Because it is in my nature and typical of what I do, I invited him to move in with us. I had grown to love C.

As I got to know and love him, I began to seriously question the church’s teaching about homosexuality. The church taught me that gays were cursed and homosexuality was a lifestyle choice. C’s story didn’t reflect that, and I did not believe that God could curse someone as wonderful as C. I had a lot of questions. It was time to research the issues.

I visited a lot of websites and read some dense books. Initially my curiosity focused on the cause of homosexuality and how and why the church condemned it. What does the Bible really say about homosexuality? Who interpreted it into what my church taught? How has the church’s position changed through history? My attitudes and beliefs changed fast. Within two weeks of beginning my research I realized that homosexuality is a normal, natural variation of sexual orientation, not a choice and not inherently wrong.

My research led to more questions about the nature of gay people. The only gay people I knew were C and his boyfriend, and I was well aware that these two crazy gay boys from Greenwood, South Carolina were not typical of gays everywhere. I went online to meet other gay men who were older and more mature than these two kids. There are a lot of gay men who have their own blogs and that’s where I met some wonderful, interesting people. Many of them have since become my good friends.

This is a good place to end this narrative, but there is more of the story that I want to tell, at least in this essay if not with a clay sculpture.

I questioned the teaching of my church. After careful consideration I determined that the church was wrong. If the church was wrong about that, what else is it wrong about? It’s a domino effect. One of the pillars on the foundation of my belief crumbled, causing the walls to crack. Other clichés happened, which are easy to sculpt but not particularly creative. I radically changed my beliefs over a period of approximately six months. Not only did the walls of my faith crack, but my nerves cracked. I ended up having a nervous breakdown in late April or early May, about two and a half months after Cory moved in with us. The search for meaningful expression of my spirituality continues to this day. I know a lot more than I did five years ago, but I am less sure of where I’m going or what I should do with my life.

So there you have it. And I have no idea how to put any of that into a sculpture.

A guest post by Superman in which he discusses homophobia, The Gay, and educating the unwashed masses

After a bit of conversation last night with Java, she has asked me to set down for perusal the events I described. This I gladly do, somewhat encapsulated in a small essay on the general topic of being a gay-friendly straight guy who is stuck working with a bunch of homophobes in the Deep South.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sometimes I wonder whether the world

is being run by smart people who are putting us on

or by imbeciles who really mean it.

---Mark Twain

First, some context. As most of you know, the state of Maine held a referendum on same-sex marriage, and the vote was (very narrowly) lost to the haters on Tuesday. There has been much gloating over this outcome on the various conservative-and/or-religious-right web outlets that I follow. And why do I follow them, you may ask? Because I used to be one. For much of my life – having been raised by devout Southern Baptists, and having attended a very conservative Reform-doctrine church for twenty years – I held the view that homosexuality was nothing more than a choice, and a bad one at that. A college friend of mine (“Steven”) Came Out shortly after graduation, and to compress a long and painful story rather a lot, I treated him shabbily. He wanted to come by for a visit, and I said he could come by for an hour, as long as he didn’t bring his partner.

Yeah, I know. I was a real monument to Christian love. Gag.

About ten years ago events started to come together that made me think that perhaps I wasn’t quite as perfectly 100% correct in all my ways as I thought I was. I ran into Steven and his partner in a local store, we re-connected, and I started trying to do a little bit (a very little bit) to educate myself about what it really meant to be gay. I didn’t spend a whole lot of time on it because I knew, waaay down deep, below the radar, that if I took an honest, unbiased look at this issue, and found my worldview wanting, that it would be the first of many dominoes. As it turned out, I was right.

In 2006 we took in a young friend of my daughter’s whose ogre – er, that is, stepfather – had kicked him to the curb when he found out he was gay. The kid was 17 and seriously bad off. He had been doing everything he could, for as long as he could remember, to “be straight”. It hadn’t worked, and he finally gave in and admitted to himself that he was gay. Java had never been as draconian in her views on homosexuality as I had, and she got the bug to find out as much as she could about the issue. Let me tell you, when that girl gets a goal, she goes for it. I got to tag along for the ride. Over the next year or so we learned just about all there was to learn* about the issue of sexual orientation. (“So tell me, when did you decide to become heterosexual?”) I realized, and internalized, the fact that my previous position on the topic was wrong, that what I’d been taught in church was wrong, and it led me to a state of extreme dissatisfaction with my religious practice. From all I was able to discern, the church missed it by a mile. That, inevitably, led me to wonder what else they got wrong. That’s where I am now. I don’t know as I’d call it a crisis of faith, but it certainly is a re-examination of everything I believe.

Anyhow, I consider myself a realist, and when presented with facts and evidence that does not fit my theories and paradigms, I change the theories rather than ignoring the evidence. So here I am.

------------------------------------------------------------

True ignorance is not the absence of knowledge,

but the refusal to acquire it.

---Karl Popper

On the prevalence of homophobes: they are everywhere. They are in the workforce. They are in the supermarket. They are driving next to you on the freeway. They are very sure of themselves. They are loud. And most of all, they are unaware (by and large) that they ARE homophobes. The “wrongness” of The Gay is taken so much for granted, is ingrained so deeply into the culture, that even when one explains what one means when using the term “homophobe”, one probably won’t be understood, let alone believed. I know this because I was IN that mindset for a lot of years. I didn’t “hate gays”. I didn’t even wish them ill. I just didn’t want them around me … or my kids … or my extended family … or anywhere I could see them or hear them or realize, even subconsciously, that they existed. So if someone of a more enlightened viewpoint had pointed out to me that I was, in fact, a homophobe, I would have vigorously denied it.

That’s what we are up against. And it can be exhausting. I had a conversation with a coworker a few months ago wherein I maintained that homosexuals typically do not “choose” to “become” gay, but rather are born with that orientation. I presented evidence from several compelling studies on the subject, all of which pointed rather dramatically to the salient fact that one’s sexual preference is present very, very early in the game. He simply refused to believe it. He said the studies must have been done by “gay people with an agenda”. As if gays are the only ones who have an agenda. Call me nuts, but I don’t think Karl Rove is gay, and if there was ever a man with an agenda, he’s it. But I digress. When I said that homosexuals deserved the same rights and privileges as anyone else, he got mad. He said homosexuals couldn’t be born that way, because that would mean that God made a mistake. When I tried to explain that being gay isn’t a “mistake”, he simply shut me off.

This scenario has been repeated several times, in different venues.

---------------------------------------------------------

He who does not bellow out the truth

when he knows the truth

makes himself the accomplice of liars and forgers.

---Charles Peguy

Which brings us to today … or rather, to Wednesday. A fellow came into my office, a vendor of ours (I’ll call him “Tom”) that I’ve known for years. He is generally “good folks”, honest, a hard worker, and a crackerjack machinist who has helped us out more times than I can count. We usually visit for a while when he comes in, which is about once every week or two, and this day was no different. He had given me a flash drive with over a hundred old radio programs from the 50’s and 60’s and wanted to know if I’d listened to any of them. (We are contemporaries, and are both Golden Age science-fiction buffs.) I hadn’t. In fact, the flash drive hadn’t been touched since he dropped it off. I’ve been kinda busy, as any of you who follow this blog will understand. The conversation turned to broadcast programming in general and the dearth of anything worth watching, then to the FCC and their latest assault on the First Amendment, then Our Dear Leader in Washington, who has been a monumental disappointment to me in a lot of respects, and then, oddly, to the referendum in Maine.

Tom: “I can’t stand that these people want to force their lifestyle down my throat.”

Me (seeing a golden opportunity when it smacks me on the snout): “That’s not what they want to do at all.”

Tom: “Huh?”

Me: “Your average gay guy just wants to be left alone to make his way in the world without a bunch of people getting all over his case if they find out he isn’t straight.”

Tom: “But they want all these special rights and shit.”

Me: “Like what?”

Tom: “Like in Maine, where they want to get married …”

Me: “You mean like everyone else? How’s that special?”

Tom: “……… uh ………”

Me: “Basically they’re being punished because of who they love.”

Tom: “Why don’t they just marry a girl then?”

Me: “They aren’t into girls.”

Tom: “So they do want special rights, see, because of their perver …” At this point he gets a glimmer that maybe, just possibly I don’t consider homosexuality to be a perversion. “… because of their lifestyle choice. I mean, come on. Is that fair?”

Me: “But it’s not a choice.”

Tom: “Sure it is.”

Me: “Think about it. Who in his right mind would consciously choose to participate in a lifestyle that would guarantee discrimination in most workplaces, bias in most courts, and threat to his person in a lot of areas of the country?”

Tom: “……………………Huh.”

He was very thoughtful after that and soon left. But I think the seed might have been planted.

*HA! That's far from all there is to learn. Way far. I will never know all there is to learn about sexual orientation if I studied it continuously from now until the end of my life. As with most things I find that the more I learn, the more I realize there is to learn.

His bias is showing: Now what do I do?

I heard a couple of disturbing things in my sociology class this week. I must tell you about them. 

These are things the prof said in his lectures. He was explaining some concept or another and to give an example he mentioned a game he used to play with the other boys when he was younger. I think this was a middle or high school age group, but I'm not entirely sure. It was an informal very physical game called "Smear the Queer." As he said the name of the game he looked a little bit embarrassed and glanced over at me. He knows my position on the GLBT. He made some comment about the name being politically incorrect, then went on to describe a game in which a ball is thrown up into the air and comes down amid a cluster of guys. The guy who catches the ball becomes the "queer" and the object of the game is to tackle this fellow and get the ball from him. Or something like that. Have you ever heard of that game? Have you ever played that game? One of the other students in the class said he had played it before. 

I was disturbed. I don't remember if I said anything, though I think I made a comment to the effect that the game endorses and gives first hand experience in homophobic violence. I was not amused. I hadn't considered how our society indoctrinates its youths in gay bashing. The more I think about it the angrier I get. 

But that's not all. On Thursday he was discussing scientific advancement and the human genome project. Again I forget exactly what point he was trying to make. It's in my notes somewhere. But I remember what he said. He suggested that it would be wonderful if genetic scientists find the specific genes responsible for birth defects, or learning disabilities, or homosexuality! Then the scientists could remove the faulty gene and ... something. As soon as he said "homosexuality" in that context, my mind went into defensive overdrive. I was appalled. 

He and I have had a few discussions about homosexuality. He lent me a video about the gay youth center in Washington DC called SMYAL. He sounded all supportive and encouraging, etc. I suspect he thinks he is. I also suspect he hasn't really thought about it very deeply. His bias is showing. 

I want to talk to him about this, but I'm not sure how to proceed. I don't want to sound accusational. I'd like to point out his inconsistencies and show him his bias. I want to make him understand that gay is OK. But I need to not offend him. It's a tricky relationship. He is my professor, he has a doctorate degree (for what it's worth) and I only have a bachelors. But he's younger than I am. I seem to have more information about homosexuality than he does. It appears that I understand it better, anyway. 

What would you do? Discuss.

NCOD

It's a little late in the day, I suppose, but when is it too late to make a statement about coming out?

As I mentioned to someone this week, I'm a huge proponent of coming out. Recently there have been some high profile coming out events. My most recent favorite is Father Geoffrey Farrow of Fresno, CA, the Catholic priest who basically came out to his congregation during the worship service last Sunday. That took some serious testicular fortitude.

When there are high profile instances of coming out, does that make it easier for the average Joe Blow or Jane Doe to come out to his or her family, friends, coworkers? I guess it depends on all sorts of situational variables. 

Anyway, on this National Coming Out Day 2008, this is my statement:

I am not gay. However, I support those who are homosexual or transgender. I encourage the acceptance of homosexuality as a normal and natural variation of the human condition. I support actions, events, legislation, institutions that lead to equal civil rights to homosexuals and the transgendered. 

And I think I've mentioned here before that my goal in life is to end homophobia in the western world. I intend to get as close as I can to that goal.

Monday mish-mash

As I sit in my nest I look out the window at the sunlight shining on the tree outside, just the top leaves are in the sunbeams now. There's a lovely gentle breeze, not too warm, not too cool, coming through the open window fluttering the edges of today's newspaper. It is early evening, 5:30 as I begin this post. This is just about my least favorite time of day, even on a gorgeous day like today. As the sun sinks lower in the western sky my heart seems to go with it, down, down, almost extinguished now. Once the night takes over and there is nothing left of sunlight except the faint traces of color on the western horizon, then I get a second wind and can work on into the night. But right now I am all sadness. It isn't a specific sadness, I can't tell you what I'm upset about, but I feel as though I'm about to cry. 

I had another interesting conversation with Twitch on the way home from school this afternoon. Almost every conversation with Twitch is at least interesting, quite often surreal. Nevertheless,we saw the school bus that comes through this neighborhood, the one he would ride if I wasn't such a softy to take him to and from school. He rode that bus once or twice when we first moved to this neighborhood. It was a negative experience. I waved to the driver as she went by (an acquaintance of mine, of course) and Twitch said "That's an awful bus." I asked if he refered to the bus itself or the students who ride the bus. As I suspected, it's the students. He said he didn't like them because they all thought he was gay.  HUH? I need more information about what you just said there, boy. He says there's nothing wrong with being gay (good, glad you agree). Is there something wrong with other people thinking you are gay? No, not if that's all there is to it. What he objects to is the way he is treated if they think he is gay. Ah, I begin to see the light. And he begins to feel the sting of homophobic bullying. Just a small taste, but I think it will help him to be more sympathetic to the plight of the repressed.  And it increases my general sadness.

On a somewhat lighter note, I thought I'd share with you the costume idea Superman has for this Halloween season. He did this to me Friday night. It was painful. Frightening. Shocking, as he rounded the corner and I was assaulted with THIS.

It's Dr. Plaid!

He defeats the evil foes (and everyone else within sight range) by blinding them with his offensive fashion sense.

His suspenders are red with little images of Christmas ornaments on them. He has a pair of rainbow suspenders that I think would be more (in)appropriate. We shall see. Though it is hard to tell from this picture, he is wearing argyle socks. He says he wants to find a plaid cap, something like these tam o'shanters. 

(when I was taking these pictures and groaning about how terrible he looks, Diva asked if I would delete the pictures, since he looks so bad. I told her "No, honey, I'm going to post them on the internet for the whole wide world to see.")

And while we are on the subject of frightening images, this is a picture Sproing took of me.

He wanted me to take off my glasses, so when I did I also shook my hair around. When I looked like this he exclaimed "Mom! You look just like a rock star!" and took my picture. Oh dear.

You may rest at ease now. I come to inform you that Sproing has new shoes. His wonderful daddy took him to get new shoes late last week, shortly after I told you the story of the poor boy being without shoes that fit. He is very proud of his new shoes.

When Sproing and I were goofing around with the camera the other day Superman was lying down like a tired man in the bed.

 

I took this picture because I like his feet. Doesn't he have nice feet? (To those of you who aren't averse to feet) I like the way there's a bit of hair on the top of his arch, and the feet are attenuated, alluding to a grace he does not possess. I like the way his legs flop when he's lying in bed like this. I like that it's cool enough for him to wear sweat pants. :-)

There is more news on the laundry/washing machine saga, but I think I'll wait until tomorrow to post that. This post has gotten long and has too many elements to keep track of anyway.

Homophobic nightmare

I had a nightmare of homophobic spiritual abuse. I woke up tense, gasping, like I had been running.

It involved the step-brother I grew up with. I say it this way because our parents are no longer married. He now lives in Vancouver. He came out about a dozen years ago, and is married to his partner (husband, duh) there in Canada. They've been married for a while now. I can't remember exactly when the wedding was. It was not too long after he came out to the family, but they had been together for a while by then, I think. No matter…

The dream setting was a large old church building, specifically the classroom areas. It was a weekday, but there was a lot of activity in the building. People of all ages were very busy doing stuff. I was there with some friends (I have no idea who these people were) and I was waiting for my step-mother to show up. She and her girlfriend were driving in from Vancouver. To the southeast US. Non-stop. My (former) step-mother is not a lesbian, and is in her early 70s now. But in my dream she was in her mid 50s and had a lesbian partner who was 30 something.

It was a surprise to me that her son Charlie (that's her gay son's name) was coming with her. The three of them finally arrived in town in two separate cars. I was with Superman and we were all busy with something, a project that was going on. Vague. So the gays show up at the church looking for me. I wanted to drive back to Vancouver with them, and was trying to figure out how to convince Superman that this was a good idea. There was some sewing involved, too. Like I needed to go with them so I could help sew something in Vancouver. They don't have any seamstresses in Vancouver? Dreams are strange.

Well, surprisingly Superman thought it was a good idea for me to help them drive back to Canada. In either a huge camper-van or a tiny boxy yellow car. Both were available. Very strange. No matter. I was trying to find everything I needed to pack for the trip. It was all stored in various classrooms in the church building. Very disorganized, very cluttered. A lot like my life. And the lesbians got into a nasty catfight.

This being a church, there were some preachers there. One was the minister of the congregation, and one was another preacher who was working to build another church. The other guy had a lot of church stuff stored in the building, and we kept coming across all their stuff while looking for mine. A lot of it was children's craft and art projects. Cute, sentimental, but basically trash. Charlie wanted to throw it all away and I was trying to get him to leave it alone and help me look for my stuff. The lesbians were no help at all. (Sorry ladies. This is a dream, remember, and no reflection on you personally. Trust me!)

My step-mother and her girlfriend finally took off toward home in the big van. That left me and Charlie in the small yellow car. We were about to get in the car when the preachers called Charlie over. Not wanting to be rude or make waves, he went to see what they wanted. Well, they "captured" him and took him into the worship area. They made him kneel down and began to pray loudly over him and preach fire and brimstone at him. There were the two preachers and at least two other men, maybe three, who were prominent members of the church. They surrounded Charlie and were all breathing "holy" fire down on him. I could see them. I was sitting in the little yellow car (don't know what the significance of the color is, but it seemed important at the time) wondering what I could do. These guys were whipped up into a religious fervor and I was afraid to get close to them. I felt horrible for Charlie! One of the reasons he had come with his mother was to get away from home for a while because he had some emotional crap he was trying to deal with. So the poor guy was already emotionally fragile.

I was afraid if I tried to physically intervene I would be restrained and make matters worse. I was also afraid of getting the same treatment. These men knew me as a solid Christian, meaning of course that I believed as they do. Under that guise I had some "stealth" advantages. I could have possibly gone into the group, pretended to join them, and take Charlie away. But that would be rough, because they knew I was Charlie's friend. I began to try to move out of the car, and all of a sudden another one of the men of the church was right there with me, to prevent me from intervening. He started talking to me as if I were "in sin" because of my association with Charlie. He'd been put there to watch me, make sure I didn't try to interrupt. Just that part pissed me off, but then he started to molest me! He was running his hands over my arms, then my sides and hips, then trying to rub my breasts. The hypocritical asshole!!! I was livid, but too weak to make any physical attempt to escape.

At some point I made it into the room where they had Charlie. The poor guy was an emotional basket case! I felt so helpless, and guilty that I hadn't done more to protect him.

This room was not the worship sanctuary, but very large and empty of furnishings. Maybe a social hall? Whatever. I got to Charlie, took his hand, and we began to run away. There were a lot of people in the room, milling around, many with no sense of purpose. Some were for us, some were ag'in' us. Some tried to block our progress and some were chasing after us. And we were moving v-e-r-y—s-l-o-w-l-y, the way dreams are sometimes. I could see the exit but couldn't run fast enough. Charlie was right with me, also not running fast enough. Except his tears. They were running down his cheeks just fine.

Do dreams ever do this to you? You get to this point in the dream and never progress until finally you just wake up? It seemed like this attempted escape took as long as the entire rest of the dream. When I woke up I still had that negative emotional energy in my head. It felt very wrong. I felt such guilt, such remorse for not intervening to protect him.

The dangerous dynamic that is friendship

My dear friends: Pay no attention to the subject of the article below except as it pertains to the story I am about to tell.

The story I am about to tell is true. Some names may be altered to protect the clueless.

I know a woman named Shelly. We've known each other for 11 years, maybe longer. She's funny, full of energy, has a sarcastic sense of humor, and quite intelligent. Shelly and her husband and five children live in an old farmhouse in a very small community a few miles outside of our city. They are practicing Catholics, Shelly particularly faithful. She has a meaningful spirituality that does more than pay lip service to the Catholic traditions.

Shelly has homeschooled her children since the oldest one was in 3rd grade. (I think.) Two of the five kids have graduated high school now and are gainfully employed. Every Halloween she puts on a big party for the kids and their friends and parents. It is wonderfully fun. This year's theme will be super heroes and villains. Yes, it is April and she's planning the party. It's that good.

Our family is large and very busy with lots of random stuff. Her family is large and busy with lots of random stuff. We don't get together very often, though when we do we always say "We need to get together more often! We have so much fun together!" The Halloween party is our annual social contact with them. Shelly is an accountant and manages the local H&R Block office. She does our taxes, charging us a reduced "family and friends" rate. So we see her a couple of times between February and April, depending on when we get our tax info together and over to her.

The tax event occurred this week. I went in to sign the forms on Monday. We sat and chatted for a while. I took about 3 or 4 dozen pens that her son had dug out of the dumpster behind the store. (Pens disappear from this household at an alarming and mysterious rate.) We discussed my change in employment status, and my plans for the future. I mentioned I want to do something with the GLBT community, possibly more of what I'm doing now with C and S but in a more in-depth way. That is one of my thoughts, anyway. There are a lot of directions this could go. Anyway, we were talking about me taking in young gays (and lesbians, too, if the gals need a place) who have been kicked out of their homes, or for whatever reason need a place to stay.

Then she asked me a question that took me by surprise. I should have expected it, but I wasn't thinking. She said "What will you do to fix them?"

......ah.....well...... Nothing. They aren't broken.

I said they are born that way. There isn't anything wrong with it.
"Yes there is, but whatever... they can't live that lifestyle!"
Why not? It isn't a choice.
"Well, they can chose not to act on those urges."
Would you deny someone the right to be in a loving committed relationship?
Duh, of course she would. That is the clusterfuck* this conversation is careening toward.
I'll save you the gory details. I'm sure you've heard them all WAY too often anyway.
We remained civil. Friendly, even. We eventually changed the subject. (I noticed the big box filled to the brim with hundreds of ink pens. That distracted me right there. ADD isn't always a bad thing :) )

This afternoon I received an email from her, a forwarded thing that has half a dozen "fwd: fw:FW:"s in front of it. I post a small portion of it here for demonstration purposes only.

McDonald's Comes Out of the Closet
Donald E. Wildmon
Founder and Chairman

McDonald's CEO: Company will put full resources behind gay agenda

McDonald's has signed on to a nationwide effort to promote "gay" and "lesbian" business ventures. According to McDonald’s CEO Jim Skinner, McDonald’s will aggressively promote the homosexual agenda. In remarks on McDonald's Web site concerning the company becoming a member of the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC), Skinner wrote: "Being a socially responsible organization is a fundamental part of who we are. We have an obligation to use our size and resources to make a difference in the world … and we do."

It goes on for many more paragraphs, getting uglier all the while.

I've been shielding myself from stuff like that. I've been getting my news from Joe.My.God or Michael-in-Norfolk. There are other, more thorough gay news sources; you probably know the biggies. I'm not a big news hound, and these guys are my faves. My point is that I'm not on the mailing lists of American Family Association, Focus on the Family or any of those. Not anymore. I was shocked all over again at seeing reference to the gay agenda, gay and lesbian put in quotes. For the last year or so I've immersed myself in information and connections with homosexuality and the glbt community. I forgot how different it is out there.

This is an example of one reason I don't have local friends. Just about everyone I knew, everyone I considered a friend, holds these homophobic opinions. They have severed the relationship. I think Shelly and I can remain friends. I want to. She's pretty good about not letting differences ruin a friendship. But we won't be as close as we were, not as long as she remains homophobic. The ironic thing about this is that Shelly's sister is a lesbian. "Aunt B" lives in a small mobile home at the other end of their driveway. I also have my suspicions, as does Light, about Shelly's oldest daughter and daughter #3.

*clusterfuck is my new favorite cuss word for the week. I'm trying to raise my score on the cuss-o-meter.

Successful end to an otherwise "less effective" weekend

First of all, I want to let you know that I have been working on book six. Life interfered tonight. You'll see what I mean in a minute.

This afternoon Superman and S took over the cleaning detail and got the rest of the family involved. Superman said that getting the young'uns to clean the living room was more difficult than herding cats. He would rather do it himself, but he put the kids to work on it.

S and Superman worked in the kitchen. They are doing a good bit of deep detailed work. To translate: it still looks bad in a lot of places, but a couple of parts are looking better than ever.

C did the hall bathroom. He wins the prize for succeeding against the grossest foe. It was truly nasty in there. It is still ugly, but it's clean. That bathroom needs a major re-do. At least it is clean now. I'm so pleased and proud.

And S made supper. He baked two chickens and fixed some veggies. It was quite good. He's been a busy boy today.

Here is where the day, and my attitude, shifted direction radically
The young kids had been working most of the afternoon, and wanted to go outside for a walk. That's what Sproing asked to do, anyway. He left out a few details, including that they were going to hang out with a few other kids from the neighborhood. These other kids are a few years older than Sproing and Diva, and not very nice. I didn't know anything about it.

About 7:00 the kids showed up and I told them they needed to stay home now, it was getting too late to be out. We didn't communicate well; I meant for them to come inside, they assumed they could play with the other kids in our yard. Somehow things turned ugly. One of the other boys started throwing rocks at C and S's window. S went outside to address the situation, and this one nasty hateful boy, probably 13 years old or so, got very ugly and said some insulting things referring to S and C's sexual orientation. S told him off, said to go away and never come back. By this time my young'uns were back inside and I made it clear they were to stay inside now.

Meanwhile, outside S was still trying to disperse the crowd. The other 3 children were standing with this outspoken homophobe, 2 of the three agreeing with him and adding their opinions. One little girl, much younger than the rest, didn't say anything. S came inside to tell me all about it. While he was talking to me we heard something else outside. He started toward the door and I got up and told him I needed to take care of it.

I went outside and called the children over to me in the driveway. At first they didn't move, so I made my statement again with a bit more emphasis. (Can't you see this playing out? I make it sound so sanitary the way I write it. It was kinda' ugly; not nice.) They began to approach the driveway as I continued toward them. We had a little discussion. I told them they were too old, except the little girl, to be hanging around with my children. Then I said "The people who live in my house are my family. All of them. And I love all of them as family. Yes, the boys are gay. There is nothing wrong with being gay. It is wrong, however, to treat people the way you did. It is wrong to say such ugly things to anyone. Ever. You will not be playing with my children anymore, and you are to stay away from this house." I said this firmly, with conviction, but I did not scream.

They stood there, looking at me with contemptuous looks on their faces. (except the youngest. She just stared at me as she had the whole time.) I said "Go on, get out of here; shoo." The mouthpiece of the group said something snarky about not being a fly, then they turned slowly around and very gradually made their way down the street. I stood in the driveway and watched as they slowly retreated.

I went back inside and we had a family pow-wow. Superman had to go into work this evening, but the rest of us were in the living room for a really good family discussion. I told Diva and Sproing that they are not to play with those kids anymore. We talked about persecution, being nice, respecting others, not allowing people to get away with saying such stuff, etc. I told them they could, if they felt comfortable about it, try to educate their friends about how homosexuality is normal and not an evil thing. Or they could not associate with people who persecuted others on any account, be it gay or racist or whatever.

We discussed our basic three rules. 1) Respect yourself, 2) Respect others, 3) Do the right thing. The young'uns get teased a lot because they are black and we are white. They get taunted because they live with "faggots." We talked about how that stuff is wrong, and we aren't to do it ourselves. I told them to have enough respect for themselves to not hang out with kids who do that sort of thing. Many times they, especially Diva, will hang around with kids who pay attention to them, but treat them badly. She seems so desperate to be liked, she's willing to sacrifice her self respect. (This came up in the psychological testing she had last year, too.)

The kids don't get along with each other. Any of them. (Well, except for C and S. They bicker some, but they get along with each other very well. But that's another thing entirely.) Sproing and Diva fight with each other, and are disrespectful and nasty to the older kids. Case in point, when Superman and I went out last night they called us repeatedly to tattle on each other. Oy. Twitch frequently treats the young ones badly. He cusses at them and gets physical when they don't do what he screamingly demands they do. And he doesn't understand why they don't respect him. Yes, I addressed that issue in front of the whole family. He "yes ma'am" 'd me. We shall see. Everyone needs to show A LOT more respect for everyone else!!!! Get a clue, y'all! I focused especially on Sproing and Diva taking direction from the older ones when mommy and daddy aren't available. They seem to think they can do whatever they want, say whatever they want to the others when we aren't here. It makes for a tense environment.

It was a good discussion. I didn't scream, no one argued, they asked a lot of questions which I addressed with respect. It was a very positive experience, all in all. I hope they feel that way, too. Everyone seemed to be in a good mood, very cooperative, when we were finished. I told the young'uns to get ready for bed, and they got right to it without complaint.

I'm feeling good about this. I hope this sweetness and light attitude lasts a while. At least for a week. That'd be good.