Straight Parent, Gay Kid
John Oliver’s Marlon Bundo Is More Than A Parody
Jill Twiss’s parody of Vice President’s rabbit Marlon Bundo hippity-hopped to No. 1 on Amazon a day before the release of Pence’s daughter Charlotte’s children’s book about their real family pet entitled Day in the Life of Vice-President. So popular, Twiss’s book sold out in a day and 400,000 copies have been ordered for the…
Who’s In Charge When A Child Comes Out?
When a child comes out, the family dynamic changes. It’s a role reversal. The child is perceived as being “in charge.” But you play a vital role. Don’t “roll over and play dead.” Your response has real impact. A parent may feel any one or all of these reactions such as denial, shock, anger, confusion….
What To Expect From PFLAG
Parents feel better when they realize that they are not alone and that there are parents like them who are experiencing similar thoughts, feelings and reactions to having an LGBTQ child. That’s the premise of a nationwide organization called PFLAG ( Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians & Gays, and now Transgender and Questioning)….
Slouching Toward Equality In The Workplace
Gay workers in Connecticut, New York, and Vermont will sleep better tonight knowing that yesterday a federal appeals court in Manhattan ruled that gay employees are allowed to sue their employers over sexual orientation. The ruling does not apply nationwide and could be headed to the Supreme Court where possibly it could be reversed because…
Mike Pence Is On Thin Ice with Rippon
Of the fifteen LGBTQ athletes competing in the Winter Olympics, Gus Kenworthy the American freestyle skier and Adam Rippon, the American figure skater have attracted the most attention for their stances against Vice -President Mike Pence’s past voting records on LGBT rights. Pence led the U.S. delegation at the opening of The Winter Olympics at…
Who Is Kristin Beck? Why We Should Care
Just last week, I watched a documentary entitled “Lady Valor: The Kristin Beck Story,” released in 2014, at our local theatre. The movie was preceded by Beck’s memoire Warrior Princess: A US. Navy Seal’s Journey to Coming Out Transgender, co-written with psychologist Anne Spechard, Ph.D. in 2013. Apparently, the movie was filmed a few…
The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (In LGBT issues, that is.)
First the Good News: · Captain Franchino married Captain Hall on January 13, 2018 at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York. The two Apache helicopter pilots stationed at Fort Bliss, El Paso, Texas are the first active-duty, same-sex couple to exchange vows at West Point. · Gallup poll reports that 64% of…
Suicide: It’s All Too Common
Did you know that suicide is the second leading cause of death among young people, ages ten to twenty-four? Compared to heterosexuals, LGB youth seriously contemplate suicide at almost three times the rate. And the numbers climb when a teen is transgender. Thirty percent of transgender youth report a history of at least one suicide…
All Straight Parents Should Be So Understanding
I recently saw the excellent stays-with-you movie “Call Me By Your Name.” In this film, Elio, a seventeen year-old Italian Jew, falls hard for his father’s research assistant, twenty-four year-old confident doctoral student, Oliver, from the United States. Elio lives with his family during the languid summer at a villa in Crema ( Northern Italy)….
What’s Cooking in those Red Kettles?
Do well-meaning people know that by heeding the call of the uniformed bell ringers and dropping money into those red kettles, that they may be supporting homophobia and transphobia? Although the Salvation Army is the largest provider of drug and alcohol recovery services in the United States, and is no “fly-by-night” organization (it was founded…