Pride Month

 I watched some videos of a young gay man playing beauty shop with his twin toddlers.  It was the cutest thing.  He put bows in the little girl's hair and then the boy's hair.  I follow him now on Instagram.  I figure if I need to see something sweet, I'll look at his page.

I'll admit that I didn't understand men kissing or women kissing each other growing up, it was all so unusual to me back in the 80s but I was used to it.  The big scandal in our school was that the gym teacher and my English teacher lived together.  Our band teacher lived with the theatre teacher.  They were our teachers and they were good teachers.   When I was a junior, my friend Joan and I got switched to a class with all seniors and we were a minority as girls.  It was great.  Cute senior boys.  I think my favorite ones were two guys. I had a crush on one and I kind of suspected his friend was gay.  I was right about his friend but I wasn't right about my crush.  I found out years later he was gay too.  What a bummer.  

In college, I was friends with a dance student who was in my creative writing class who told me he didn't know if he was gay or bisexual. I said sometimes I don't know if I'm in the right major, so I get it.  It became a little more normal for me in college.  It was a whole different world and you know, it was interesting.  I worked with a lesbian at Target.  I'll admit I didn't handle that well when people suspected that she liked me.  I liked Diane.  I thought she was a little rough around the edges but she was funny.  She did admit to me that she was gay and she said, I think you're great, but I think Shannon is super hot.  Really?  Rejected by a lesbian?  Yeah, that seems about right.  Shannon has this MTV video vixen vibe.  I did not.

Lyle and I had a friend that worked with us at Target who dressed so nice.  He wore a lot of pink which made some of the guys snicker about it.  I don't know if I always look in that color but I thought Jeremy was nice and I kind of wished Lyle would dress more like Jeremy and less like MC Hammer.  I still hung out with Jeremy after Lyle and I broke up.  Jeremy seemed to have a lot of problems with depression and when I called, he never really wanted to go out.  We went out one night and he almost seemed angry and upset with life.  I didn't hear from him again and I feel bad about it.  He was a nice guy and I think about him at times when they talk about the suicide rates with LGBTQIA people. I hope he did find someone nice who saw how wonderful he was and I hope he is living a good life.  I feel so awful that it was a time when people really couldn't come out so freely without being scrutinized.

It makes me happy when I see that gay couples have adopted or had babies by a surrogate.  I follow Andy Cohen just to see his kid give him attitude or see his little girl with her face full of chocolate.  There's a lot of people who have kids and ignore them or abuse them.  The gay community has had to jump through hoops to have those children so I know that those kids are going to be showered with love and have the best life possible. I know there will be scrutiny because they have parents of the same gender but those parents are going to move mountains to make their lives the best life possible.  

We had a Pride Month webinar where people talked about their experiences.  There was a beautiful picture of one woman showing a picture of her and her wife being married in Iceland.  I thought the program was awesome. 

John Kerry said something in his second debate with George W. Bush about the gay community.  We're all God's children.  Wouldn't God want us to accept people who they are?  I think of the people who couldn't be the person that they wanted to be and that makes me sad.  I'm so tired of hearing how we have to act a certain way or be a certain way in order to get accepted.

Be yourself.  It's ok to be that person.