Donation 2012

Last year I knit my brother a pair of warm house socks for Christmas.  I had some yarn leftover, so I decided to knit a hat.  And since I didn't have anyone in particular who needed a hat, I decided to donate it somewhere.  And then, because this is me we're talking about, it kind of snowballed.

Here's that first hat:

And here's a picture of my 2012 knitted donation:

Final count was 3 scarves, 2 cowls, 2 pair of fingerless mitts, and 33 hats.  40 items all together.  Woot!  Ten items went to Trinity Place, a ten bed shelter in New York City for homeless LGBTQ youth.  The rest went to Ruth Ellis Center, an organization in Detroit that has both a drop-in center and residential programs for LGBTQ youth.  Ruth Ellis estimates that there are 800 homeless teens in Detroit on any given day.  The situation in NYC is even worse.  According to this article, as of 2008 there were approximately 3,800 homeless youth in NYC, but the city had only 250 shelter beds reserved for teens.  Some knitting doesn't mean much in the face of those kinds of numbers, but hopefully these things will mean something to the 40 people who get them.

I'm already plotting my donation for next year.  I give cash when I can, which isn't as often as I'd like.  But in the meantime I have a cabinet full of yarn and all the time in the world.  For 2013 I hope to be able to donate 100 hats.

Bridegroom- It's Important, Y'all

Linda Bloodworth-Thomason (you might recognize her name as the producer of the TV show Designing Women) has turned to Kickstarter to try to finance a documentary on a pretty damn important subject.

Tom Bridegroom died in an accident last year.  His family, who greeted his coming out with guns and violence, took his body and his things from his home in California and disappeared with them, back to Indiana.  His partner, Shane, who he shared a mortgage and a business with, had no legal right to any information about what happened after the accident or the disposition of his property.  He flew to Indiana for the funeral and was told that Tom's father and uncle planned to attack him if he showed up.

This is what can happen when the law prevents consenting adults in committed relationships from legally marrying each other.  It's devastating.  It's wrong.  And it needs to stop.  If you've got a couple extra bucks to donate toward getting this documentary made about Tom and Shane and the harm that these homophobic laws do, please consider it.  Right now they have another $150,000 to raise, and 14 days to do it in.  And please spread the word.  This is a story that needs to be told.

It Breaks My Heart

Another gay teen has committed suicide, at least in part due to bullying.  Jamey Rodemeyer was subjected to online harassment such as: " JAMIE IS STUPID, GAY, FAT ANND UGLY. HE MUST DIE!" and "I wouldn't care if you died. No one would. So just do it :) It would make everyone WAY more happier!"

How is this happening?  Bullying isn't exactly a new problem.  I went through some fairly significant harassment as a kid, although it had nothing to do with my sexuality.  But this is so vicious.  I can't imagine any reason, any justification for telling someone to go kill themselves.  Where is the human decency?  It takes purpose and energy to be this horrible.  These aren't careless statements.  It's not dragging someone else down to make yourself feel better.  This is just evil.

What can be done about this?  How do you stop the evil?  I suspect it's going to take updating laws to hold people responsible for their online behavior.  That takes time and probably won't help the next Jamey Rodemeyer, who is being harassed right this minute.  The only thing I can think of that can make a difference right now is to support, with your money and your time, the various anti-bullying and gay-support groups out there.  The Trevor Project is a national organization specifically working on the problem of gay teen suicide.  GLAAD and PFLAG are working on all kinds of issues in the gay community.  There are also lots of local organizations.  ALSO Out Youth is a group in Sarasota, FL that is doing good work with teens and could really use your support.  And the Gay & Lesbian Youth Services of Western New York is the group in Jamey Rodemeyer's hometown.

If you've got other ideas about how to fix this problem, please share them.  Because something must be done.  And if there's a group in your area doing good work with at risk teens, please spread the word.  These groups need all the support they can get.

Here's an article with more info about Jamey: teenager struggled with bullying before taking his life.

Closed and Self-Righteous

Dinner was more than 7 hours ago, and I'm still pissed off.

One of my parents' friends from Massachusetts spent the night here last night on her way to a temporary assignment in the Midwest.  (This was not the problem.  I met Beth in the short period where I was in Massachusetts last fall, and I really liked her.)  But Beth went to the same church as Mom and Dad.  After she left it kicked out a whole Open and Affirming rant from my mom that still makes me want to vomit.  (It may have been the bologna sandwich I had for dinner, but I'm pretty sure it was the exclusionary, anti-LGBT crap that she was spewing.)

A little primer on the situation.  The first church they attended in MA adopted an "Open and Affirming" policy within the church.  Here's the language I found for this:

“Open and Affirming” means that it has publicly and specifically declared that those of all “sexual orientations, gender identities, and gender expressions” (or “lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender” people) are welcome in its full life and ministry (e.g. membership, leadership, employment, etc.) It bespeaks a spirit of hospitality and a willingness to live out that welcome in meaningful ways.

Sounds reasonable, right?  Everyone who chooses to belong to a church should have the right to be a member and to feel welcome in their church home.  Well some people, like my parents, don't see this as reasonable at all.  "It's against the teachings of the Bible!"  "It's against the teaching of God!"  "The Bible says what the Bible says!  You don't get to pick and choose!"  (She says as she eats ham for dinner.)  I hate to be the one to break it to you, sister, but modern Christians pretty thoroughly pick through the Bible, only following the rules that work for them.  I haven't given Leviticus a read lately, nor do I plan to.  But if memory serves, the anti-homo stuff is just about the only bit that people like my parents choose to follow.  They don't bother with the animal sacrificing, or the "women are unclean after child birth" hoey, so why this?

Bigotry.  That's the only answer I can come up with.  It's infuriating.  It's bad enough to know that they feel this way and still be forced to live with them.  If she fixates on this, and I start getting regular anti-gay rants, I don't know how I'm going to be able to keep from giving her a piece of my mind.  And I won't be able to be any more polite about it than she's been.

Get me out of here.