On My Birthday.

Tomorrow is my birthday.  I was doing some school work and popped onto Facebook and saw this from a friend.

With this comment:

I would have added more decorations...but I ran out of room! Thanks for being such a good FB friend! I hope you enjoy your birthday, Erica!

This is from an online friend of mine and it made me smile.
I also got a FB birthday card from another friend. 

This is especially sweet because one of them is going through an especially difficult time right now and it's touching that this person would take time to do something for me considering the issues at hand, (no, I am not going to give further details, they know who they are and that’s what matters) 

Now, I can’t say what I want for my birthday because for the most part I’ve already gotten them.  In material gifts I have gotten a very nice set of real wood shelves and a new Samsung device for listening to my text books and other less productive things.

There is something far more precious that I’ve already gotten from not just my mom and dad, but also the countless friends online and in person.  It is the time, patience, respect, and love I receive every day.  When I was a young girl my mom figured out I couldn’t read.  My first grade teacher thought I wasn’t very smart, but my mom wouldn’t accept that.  She got me tested and I was diagnosed as dyslexic.  This led me to some very difficult times in my childhood, but I know what can happen to children who have learning disabilities and aren’t diagnosed.  I owe the chances I have had in my life to the time and respect they have given to my education. 

There were many times when I wanted to just give up.  I tried on a number of occasions, but they wouldn’t let me.  I can’t say I was all that thankful then, but now I know the work ethic I have, and the drive I have to do well comes from the fact that they never let me learn how to give up.  The time and energy both my mom and dad, but especially my mom have put into helping me do my school work is difficult to put into perspective. 

There is no way to overstate what that help has meant to me.  Weather it is reading an article that wasn’t available in a text format as my mom most recently did; writing up definitions for vocabulary so I can study off of it like she did during the summer; typing up Spanish vocabulary as my dad did the year before; or reading my homework off the computer because the publisher for the online homework didn't use readable text, they have been there for me every step of the way.  The school work may have been done by me, but the amount of work making the material usable for me has in many cases been equal to my own effort.  It isn’t an exaggeration to say going back to school wouldn’t be an option without it. 

But then there is that other detail to my life.  At this time there is a viral video of a young man’s coming out.  I haven’t watched the video because I know what it is.  I share it here because the family has tried to get the young man to remove it.  They made the choice to not only disown their own child for being gay, but they assaulted him in the process of disowning him.  They made a choice in how they would receive his coming out to them, and they should have to pay some consequence for their action.  The best I can do at this time is help expose the shame of their actions, so they can’t hide from it. 

Thank you BlackTsunami 

When I came out of the closet my parents accepted me without condition.  My sister accepted me without condition.  Her children accepted me without condition.  The idea of doing otherwise was unthinkable.  I have thought that on one hand they had some experience with dealing with differences in me.  After all they dealt with my learning disability as a child.   

They may not be the same, but in regards to how some families respond to them there are parallels.  To them, accepting a child who is coming out of the closet is just how things should be.  It is what all children deserve and need.  To do otherwise is unacceptable.  The contrast in my experience and that of DanielAshley Pierce are so dramatic that it points out exactly how wrong what he went through is.  I’m glad he has had the friend’s support he has, but it makes me angry to know his family has treated him as they have. 

I am grateful for the gifts I have been given of love, support, respect, and help.  They have meant far more than their actual doing.  The fact of the help has meant I can live, in many ways like anyone else.  I can enjoy the things others can in my own way, and I can enjoy knowing that the people who should be on my side are.  If there are any friends out there who have thought of giving a gift to me I would like them to consider making a donation to Daniel’s future at (http://www.gofundme.com/dnoqgg) or to donate at http://teacherally.learningally.org/ a resource that provides read books for people with disabilities that effect reading.  Because so many people in both accounts don’t have what I do.  I’d like to help them have as close to that as possible. 

Thank you to all of my family both related by blood and related by love. 

Short Story: A Special Place In...

This is something I wrote in 2010 shortly after a record number of LGBT youth had committed suicide.  It was my response to the pain they had felt, and what I feel is deserved for those who caused it. 

Milton Knox opened his eyes to see nothing but the clear blue sky and the sun shining down on him.  He didn’t know at first why it wasn’t raining any more, but it seemed clear something had happened.  As the car had crashed into the side of a ravine and skidded off the road, flipping on itself, his first thought was how he was going to hurt.  It didn’t quite turn out that way, though.  He didn’t hurt at all.  In fact, his small aches and pains of arthritis were gone, along with the gnawing headache that had distracted him so much it had caused the accident in the first place.

The 48-year-old man stood up from the unusually soft surface he had been lying on and simply stared in wonder.  He was there…he had made it there.  For a moment the full meaning of his view was lost in the simple sense of self-righteous pride.  He had been right to fight for so many years to condemn the evil ways of those who would defy God’s word.

As the husky southern man moved towards the line of men and women milling around in night clothes, business shirts, and other less fortunate choices for one’s last outfit he thought about his many years of sacrifice.  And he had sacrificed a lot more than anyone who knew him had ever known.  The disappearance of Milton’s son hadn’t been so much a disappearance as it was a mishap in one of his attempts to cure the young man of the perversion he was afflicted with.  But it was God’s will to keep the facility running and he accepted it.  He never mentioned the relief he felt in no longer having to be burdened with him.  He had lost his wife and years of time to the cause. All that was over now.  Now he would reap the rewards for doing God’s work.

“Excuse me, Milton?” A man’s soft and distant-sounding voice said.  Milton turned to see what could only be called an angel.  He was a tall slender man with white fluffy wings on his back.  The white robe had a gold cord at the waist hanging in a somewhat off center way.  The look of him seemed so perfect.

“Yes,” the word came out so softly.  He was in awe of the being that stood in front of him.

“Where are you going?”  The angelic man asked looking down on the newest arrival.

“I need to get in line,” Milton looked at the angel and wondered why it wasn’t obvious to him.

“No, no,” the creature shook his head, smiling down on the man.  “You don’t need to go there.”

Milton stared at the angel as if he didn’t make sense. “But I have to meet St. Peter.”

The man smiled and began to walk past the crowd of men and women waiting in line. “There are some people whose deeds on earth are so obvious they don’t need to be judged first.”

Milton walked behind and worked to catch up with the stunning man.  He couldn’t help but gloat a little.  He had done such good work in his life that he could actually pass the whole process of being judged.  “What’s your name?”

“Well,” the angel smiled, looking down at the man as they passed golden bars that seemed to tower higher and higher, “it’s not really easy for people like you to say. I go by Ron to those like you.”

There was something strange in his words.  Though still said in that mesmerizing distant voice, they seemed condescending…but Milton wasn’t about to argue with an angel.  As they walked, the newly-dead man looked past the gold bars to a truly idealized world.  The grass couldn’t be greener.  The sky shone with such beauty Milton just stared in wonder.  Men and women of all ages and races seemed to be moving from one joy to the next.  It was so wondrous Milton missed the most obvious things.

They walked for what felt like hours, tracing around what seemed like a huge enclosure.  As he looked on he saw different scenes.  One even had dogs running up and down with men, women, girls, and boys playing with them with love and affection.

“Yes, the dogs who’ve been abused and tortured wind up here, especially those who were never shown love in their life.”  Ron smiled, looking in on the people laughing with the animals. “The people who gave such tireless care in life spend their time here showing them how love is supposed to work.  Of course the people can come and go as they wish and even invite others to visit.”

“Their time here?”  Milton wasn’t a believer in reincarnation.

Ron smiled again. It seemed to be his general response to things. “Well, some people and animals aren’t done living. They’ll be reborn.  Until then they can live out their greatest fantasies.”

It wasn’t something Milton had thought worthy of its own special Heaven, but perhaps it was more to keep the dogs away from those who hated them.  That did make sense.

After passing huge areas that didn’t seem to have any conventional barrier between one and another, the two travelers found what looked like a gold brick shed in the fencing.  Ron opened a wooden door with a set of gold keys and walked through, his wings giving a small flutter.  “Come on.”

It seemed he was coming in the back way, but again, Milton didn’t question. He had never questioned the divine in his life and wasn’t about to in death.  He passed in and the small room suddenly seemed huge.

Ron seemed to float up high in the now unbelievably tall building, as though searching for something.  As he did, Milton looked around and noted the door suddenly seemed huge.  How could it have gotten so tall?

The angel came down with a set of chains and a pair of large scissor-like trimmers. “Now, let’s get you fitted out.”

The statement brought the man to a panic.  He wanted to cry out but suddenly found he had no mouth.  He saw Ron wasn’t still flying. The angelic man stood tall above him. Ron was at least four feet taller than Milton now. He had shrunk and now couldn’t even speak.

Ron worked to put on the chains which held the right arm to the left leg and the left arm to the right leg. “There’s no point in panicking.  Everything will make sense if you just calm down.”

Again the conditioning that said not to question kicked in and he followed the angel out another door.  This time he was in a vast verdant field.  Tall trees, ripe with fruits of all types, stood in small clumps.  The lush green grass was covered in flowers of every variety, and each bush was filled to the brim with either ripe berries or more flowers.

The angel looked on the space with obvious pride. “It’s our newest addition, and I think it’s just perfect.”

Then Milton noticed the people, and with horror he recognized some of them.  He had protested their funerals.  One young man was in a passionate embrace with another man, kissing while lying on a bed of grass near a tree.  It was his son.

“Yes,” Ron laughed at the man. “You finally figured it out.  I told you it’d make perfect sense.”  Ron looked down at Milton, his face just as angelic, but with a sense of retribution in him.  “You know the saying, ‘there’s a special place in Heaven’?  It’s used to mean that some people who’ve survived certain things, or have done incredible good, deserve something extra special when they die.”  He had a wistful smile as if he were remembering something sad but was now happy with the outcome.  Staring at a rainbow arc in the sky, he said, “This is that special place in heaven for those who died for being gay, fought for the welfare of gays, or were driven to kill themselves for being gay.”  With a cold and now unyielding glare the angel continued. “It’s also the special place in Hell for those who sent them here, and those who made the fight even necessary.”

Milton had been so lost in disgust and anger he hadn’t noticed the effect, but when he tried to back up he did.  His chains had shortened as he grew angrier at the sight.

“It never ceases to amaze me how you can be walked over here under guard and never question why or how.  Perhaps if you had actually done a bit more questioning in your life you could have been able to enjoy a loving and devoted son instead of watching him in his afterlife.  You would have seen the utter stupidity in what you did.”  Ron smiled, walking Milton to a set of shrubs near where his son was beginning to make love to the young man in the grass.  “As long as the words you say are those of hate, you’ll have no voice.  As long as your hands are used to harm, you’ll be unable to affect anything more than the grooming of the garden.  And as long as your heart is filled with hate, your chains will grow shorter to keep your movement hampered.  Welcome to eternity.”

Ron walked off, giving his last word. “They will never see you.  Even if he saw you he wouldn’t recognize you. His memory has been washed of all pain.”

Ron roamed the grounds after introducing his newest member.  During the burning times gays lived with those who had been persecuted for witchcraft since their fates had been the same.  They hadn’t wanted anything special then, just peace and freedom.  In the Holocaust, the gays went with those who had been killed in the concentration camps.  Their deaths had brought unity and no one cared.  Ron enjoyed going to see the people enjoying plenty of good food and good wine, and having the chance to practice, as they saw fit, all the things the Torah required.

Ron liked visiting the special places in Heaven.  He smiled at the human word.  It wasn’t what they called this place, but humans thought of it that way and it was a nice idea.  He smirked at the miniature Nazis in their uniforms forced to help maintain the things needed to practice Judaism.  The little KKK members in their stupid white cloaks kept the grounds for those who died during slavery and up into the civil rights movement.  There were still some of both trickling in.  The lovely music playing there with such rich diversity made it a true paradise.

The sheer arrogance of each person who had gone out of his or her way to cause so much harm never failed to astound Ron.  All of the men and women who kept the grounds were convinced that, of all the faiths in the world, they and they alone had gotten it right.  The utter lack of concern for their fellow man was more than he could stand, and he had stood a lot in his six thousand years.

Ron walked up a path leading to a hill where the newest members of this space lounged talking and laughing.  They had only been there a year, and no matter how great this corner of Heaven was it brought the fury out in the angel.  The youngest was only thirteen.  When he reached the spot he smiled at the boys and girls making small talk.  He unfurled his wings and flew into the sky past the rainbow.

The youngest of them stared off at the angel in awe and wonder.  The pain of his life was over.  He didn’t remember that part.  Only that in the end he found himself here.  He missed his parents though, and thought about the day when he could show them this wonderful place.  He felt the regret of not living a full and happy life even in this paradise.  They all did. The children filled their time with ventures out into the rest of Heaven, inviting people in to see the new place they called home.

What Scott Lively's Trial Means to Me.

For most this is likely old news, but I’ve been dealing with pre-semester glitches that had taken over my weekend so I missed the latest update on the Scott Lively trial.  It’s difficult for me to write about this issue without letting my emotions get the better of me.  The reasons stem from a deep and fundamental part of what it can mean to be a minority, but also a double or triple minority (depending on how you look at things). 

Growing up with a learning disability meant that I was bullied my entire childhood.  I don’t remember a part of my youth where I didn’t fear going out to play, or try to avoid other children when I did go out.  I was lucky enough to not go to a school within my district so at least when I got home they were a different set of kids.  I was socially awkward to begin with, and being a clumsy kid who missed important social cues didn’t help much. 

At home my fiercely protective sister would stand up for me whenever she could, but there were times when I had to consider her.  The same kids who picked on me in the neighborhood were often the same kids she played with, and it didn’t seem fare for her to lose her friends because I couldn’t have any. 

When I got to school it was worse.  I’ve mentioned some of the encounters I’ve had with teachers taking the side of the bullies.  A reasonable question would be why didn’t I tell my parents?  The answer is painfully simple.  There’s only so many times you can see your parents confront the issue with it getting worse before you decide the only thing you’re doing is making them feel helpless.  So for most of my adolescence I knew my parents would be on my side, but didn’t say anything because as hard as it is to admit, they couldn’t stop it. 

In many cases the teacher didn’t want me in their class, and I do believe they wanted me to give up so they wouldn’t have to deal with me.  As time went on this went from bullying to real attacks, and eventually worse.  The one thing I knew was it didn’t matter if I said anything, because I was LD I deserved it.  When the issues became about my perceived sexuality I knew the only way I could have any kind of argument was if I hid.  Otherwise, I would again deserve it. 

The upshot of this is my first lessons in how the world dealt with assaults, attacks, and mistreatment of people like me was that I didn’t count.  They could do what they wanted because I didn’t matter, at least not to the people who could really stop it.  I learned this lesson too well.  It’s been almost 20 years and I still find it hard to believe that when something happens the powers that be will actually do something about it. 

When someone tried to steal my identity I found myself surprised when the police took a report.  The woman was arrested, not for what she did to me because she didn’t quite succeed, I had nothing to steal.  The report did lead them to other successful acts of fraud and some of what she was convicted of had to do with her attempted theft on me.  What struck me in that moment was that I counted.  Wrong done to me mattered enough to try and stop it.  It felt surreal, like maybe they mistook me for someone else.  Like maybe they didn’t get the memo. 

Now, add to that the history of the holocaust.  Growing up the granddaughter of a Jewish woman gave me a bit of a unique perspective.  My family has always shown an interest in history.  My parents never hid the truth about World War 2 or the death camps.  I remember hearing about the Jews and the Star of David they had to wear, and made the connections between that, and my New York family.  I knew my grandpa and Grate Uncles served in WW2 and that one had liberated a concentration camp.  I think I was about 8 when they were explained to me.  I remember asking my mom once if I would have been gathered up because of my deformed hand.  She said no, but likely they would have because of my dyslexia. 

I knew about the trials and the charge of crimes against humanity.  I knew what that meant, and I knew it was likely the people charged had killed family of mine.  I don’t know how old I was when I saw my first pink triangle, but I made another connection.  Or maybe it was that a connection hadn’t been made by anyone else.  None of the people charged with crimes against humanity had been charged because of things they did to gays. 

I didn’t really think so deeply on it, but I automatically understood why such charges weren’t made.  What they had done to the gays wasn’t considered all that wrong.  In fact many of the men who had been held for charges of sodomy went from concentration camp to prison without seeing another free day for decades to come.  Not only had the Nazis not been wrong, but they had gotten that one right in the eyes of the masses. 

Flash forward to the beginning of the 21^st century and we have Scott Lively saying that the SS were gay.  He’s continued on with this theme by saying that anti-gay violence in Russia is actually gay men attacking gay men.  (Thank you Right Wing Watch.)  Now, over the years I’ve accepted that overall what is done to the LGBT community will be whitewashed.  Multiple US presidents have squarely ignored any wrong doing towards gays.  It isn’t unreasonable for a person to just grow to accept that some people just don’t count for as much as others. 

So, the first time I saw the charge against Scott lively accusing him of crimes against humanity I couldn’t help but shed a few tears.  I admit it, I cried like a blubbering baby.  Not because he had admitted to any wrong doing, he hasn’t.  Not because his conviction is a sure thing, it isn’t.  But we counted.  The wrong done to us mattered.  The lives of LGBT persons had the same worth as anyone else.  Our worth, our existence on this planet was no less than another’s worth.  Because or life, our existence, our expression, our way of moving through the world had the same value as those who had been violated before. 

As the last year has gone by Scott Lively has tried to down play his part in the Kill the Gays now Jail the Gays bill.  The reason in one way simply reinforces the point.  He has to say he didn’t do what he did.  He can’t say it was deserved because the people who will try him don’t believe that.  And no matter what happens in this trial that can’t be taken away.  Whether he’s found guilty or innocent the fact will still remain that when asked if it is okay to make one’s sexuality illegal the answer was a resounding NO. 

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I hope he is found guilty, and whatever the maximum punishment is I hope he gets it.  I hope he is silenced and no one ever takes his place, but no matter what happens from here on out the lies he’s told, the harm he’s caused, and the lives he’s helped end will be deemed equal to the wrong done in the past.  We counted.