Blog for LGBT Families

I got this banner from the Mombian Website to blog for LGBT families. Ok, I've been a longtime, although quiet, supporter of LGBT rights and write occasional essays on gender. And to those who may wonder, or not or don't care, I'm not gay. I write because it's about human rights and equality. Nothing more, just the basic value that all of us are guaranteed the same rights under our Constitution.

So, what can I say? Well, besides the obvious for or against the stuff that pervades the media and all the news and opinion blogs, I can write about my personal view about people, and being one myself, I have my own experience and the right to express that. I have met and known, as all of us have whether we know it or not, a number of LGBT people. They're as ordinary as everyone else, and also extraordinary as everyone else in our own individuality. But sadly, LGBT people are also one of the most maligned groups of people in our history.

But this, for the Mombian blog request, is about families. What we often forget in all the political rhetoric is that mothers and Moms are just that, women who bring us into the world and devote a good measure of years to help us grow and growup. And, in the end, a woman's sexuality is irrelevant when it comes to being a Mom. Is that so hard to understand? Not for me. And you?

If you can't or don't want to understand it, I suggest you take a look at your own life, and ask yourself the question for all the years your were growing up, did it matter in any way if your Mom was straight or a lesbian? Only maybe that her partner in life was either a man, a woman or a transperson? So what? You still grew up and still feel normal. And you're still loved by your Mom and her partner in life.

I've always been curious where those who talk about the morality of marriage and family get their idea to defend what's called the importance of family for America. They're implicitly eliminating at least half the marriages and families in this country, where one or both of the couple are divorced at least once, where parents are absent especially fathers because of divorce, work or just having left altogether, or where children are simply ignored or neglected, or worse, victims of physical, emotional or sexual abuse.

They talk about the ideal against the reality of the world. Others have shown in general children of LGBT families have at least equal and often better parents, have better childhoods in the family, and are better adults who are more accepting of the diversity. The problems the "moral people" cite against LGBT children aren't from the home or the family but from world outside the home, in school, in their community and in their travels, much it from the intolerance of these same people.

So, who's the problem? Not the LGBT families. They're as loving parents and devoted partners you'll find anywhere, as they've shown LGB families are generally better and have a lower separation and/or divorce rate. Unfortunately families with a transperson aren't as lucky, but it's not for the reasons of the children or the whole family. But the families with a transperson which survive divorce are on par with LGB families and even divorced couples with a tranperson will usually re-establish family ties.

Why are they better families? I can't hazard a guess without it being just an opinion from my knowledge and observation. But I have to say that for one LGBT families want families, not for the sake of just being a family, but for the family itself. It's about the values LGBT parents have toward their children. They don't follow the rules that straight couples follow for a family, namely for the sake of everything else around the family, such as society, their own parents, their friends, etc.

LGBT families believe in the fundamental idea of the family as family not as others think they should be or are as family and they understand the realities of families to better resolves issues and problems. They are what the critics call a family with loving partners, loving parents, and children who are valued for themselves. The only difference? They're Lesbian or Gay parents. The rest is the same.

So, maybe we should be looking at LGBT families as the standard? For one they couldn't be worse that what's happened so far, but mostly, to me, they're better than many families with straight parents. In the end it's when the child is an adult, they have the one thing every child wants, the love of their parents. And that only takes being a good parent.

Gender Revisited

We all have read the recent wealth of news stories about transpeople and the transcommunity. Or you may have just passed over it, scanned the article, half-listened to the tv or radio story, or simply turned to something else. Many people find the issue of individual gender difficult to understand, so they use some belief or dogma, often called religion or faith, to decide our sex and gender are fixed at birth and it's our lot in life to accept it, right or wrong.

I saw this image for a story in the Denver Magazine. it is probably one of the best articles about a transperson. It's only in recent years we're being informed that gender is a few people isn't what it seems at birth and at a young age, but then expresses its true self about age 5-6. It's always been there, because it's about being human and human diversity, but it's only now being in the public spotlight.

And it's only in recent times the professionals are coming our of the professional cloud and standing up to say it's not only there but normal, and not abnormal as has been taught in schools and portrayed in the media. It is lived by the ~1% of people in this country. Yes, one in a hundred, not the one in thousands or more as described before. And why has it been hidden and misportrayed?

Morality. Pure and simple professional morality. Those very same professional who have taken an oath to help and heal were excercising their personal morality which disagreed with the reality of transpeople. They haven't even tried to understand, let alone help and heal. It's never been a mental problem. It's been about finding affirmation in being oneself as you know and want to be. The mind isn't the problem, the body is.

It is that simple. Children haven't learned to know anything but themselves. But finding themselves at odds, and the rest of the world telling them they're diviant or abnorma. But they do learn to hide and disguise themselves. And they begin the long journey of self-hate. They're not the cause, the rest are the cause. They simply want the freedom to be. Is that so hard to understand? Is that so hard to accept? Is it so hard to see it in the child? Or the adults?

And that's the whole issue. It is what it is, not much else to say about it. So, please, read the story. And thank you Lucia and your parents.

Peas and Carrots

We've all eaten the traditional meal of meat, potatoes, and a vegetable, usually some vegetable we wouldn't eat otherwise. The meal sits on a plate, often white or some off-white color with a pattern to look pretty. The meat usually takes up about half the plate, potatoes a third and the lowly, often disliked vegetable the last third if not less space, sometimes spilling into the space for the meat and/or potatoes or being pushed to the outer edge of the plate.

And one common vegetable dish served is peas and carrots, usually more peas than carrots, but still a mixture of small round balls green and small squared sections of orange. Complimenting each other in color and taste, and occasionally with a little butter and/or salt, usually some type of cheese or cream sauce to disguise them. Why I don't know, but some recipes do that, and the lowly peas and carrots sit hated and neglected in their corner of the plate and often hidden under a carpet of sauce.

My point here? Well, we're not much different in some respects than that meal. We have three basic identities of our being. Our physical identity, our birth sex. The plate in the meal of ourselves. Our whole physical body and being is the plate which holds us together and makes us a person. We're composed of other parts and pieces which makes up or body and mind, the stuff of the meal on the plate.

The other two identities are our sexual identity or orientation, and our gender identity or our sense of being a man, women or some combination thereof. These are the peas and carrots in our mind of our identity. And while many people like to consider them distinct and separate, they aren't. They're a part of your whole being, interconnected and intermixing with your whole body and being, and with each other.

Our own sense of sexual identity involves our physical and mental sense of ourselves and what is sexually attractive to us both in and with ourselves and in and with other people. We feel alive sexually as a person, our body, and as our being, our gender, and we use the same to know who we find sexually attractive and what of their body and being we are attracted to. And the same for them with us.

This is why our sexual identity and gender identity aren't that distinct or separate, and they're only used to distinguish different aspect of our being. We feel alive and sexual as men and/or women and we find other men and/or women sexually alive and attractive. We can't tell the difference between our identities, and only use it when we want to make a distinction or distinguish it in or with others.

They've yet, and most likely never really will, find our sexual identity and gender identity centers in our brain, because while it's generally controlled by some distinct parts, it's so incorporated in all our senses and our whole sense of being that it's not something unique in our mind, but part of it all. We use all our senses in our sexual identity and gender identity, because it's who we are as a being.

And so while there are those who argue for the separateness of our sexual and gender identity, it's still just the peas and carrots in our mind.