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So, naturally, the warmer months that signify gay pride season is upon us have been known to make me hem and haw a bit. It’s not that I’m ashamed of being gay, it’s just that I see it as a small part of my entire personhood. I’m no more proud of being gay than I am of having brown hair or being a rabid Lakers fan.

And yet …

Squeamish as I may be about what the notion of pride means to me, I still find myself, year after year, driving north and south on the 101 to hit up various gay pride festivals and parades. Heck, last year even found me on the committee to help plan Santa Barbara’s festival. I’ve come to appreciate that, despite my personal issues, gay pride is important because it fosters community and offers an opportunity to celebrate diversity. Even though most gay people are comfortable with their sexuality, many people in the world still hate us simply for being, thus making this yearly conscious effort to promote a sense of togetherness increasingly important.
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Hi, I just joined the site a few days ago and I'm gay and atheist.

Is this a place to vent about the hate that flys my way from religous people who already have my life and afterlife planned for me?
Or is it a place to say HI, I'm HERE?

Welcome!




Definitely the second.

Probably the first, as long as the site rules are followed.

Thank You for the welcome. I see now that the first part came off a little snippy, I'm a Leo with a little bite

Hi, I just joined the site a few days ago and I'm gay and atheist. Is this a place to vent about the hate that flys my way from religous people who already have my life and afterlife planned for me?
Or is it a place to say HI, I'm HERE?

Fake prom staged to trick lesbian kids
Mississippi school that canceled dance to keep female couple away relents -- then throws the real party across town
BY MARY ELIZABETH WILLIAMS

AP
Constance McMillen, an 18-year-old high school student, was told by school officials that she could not wear a tux or bring a same sex date to the prom
Constance McMillen just wanted what teenage girls have dreamed about since time immemorial -- to go to the prom with the person she's dating. In McMillen's case, that person happens to be another girl. But the possibility of some same-sex jamming to "I Gotta Feeling" didn't sit too well with the folks at Mississippi's Itawamba Agricultural High School. Reasoning that no prom was better than a prom with lesbians, they abruptly canceled the whole affair last month. Cue media frenzy, ACLU lawsuit, Facebook uproar.

After an embarrassing glare of attention on Itawamba, it seemed a happy ending was in sight. Last Tuesday, the school agreed to host an off-campus prom and told Constance she could, per her stated intention, bring her date and wear a tux. On Friday night, McMillen and her girlfriend showed up at the Fulton Country Club ready to party. There, she says, she found just seven other revelers, including two learning disabled students.

Worse, she claims that her classmates were off doing the Macarena at an alternate event, arranged with the aid and consent of the parents and staff of her school. Speaking to the Advocate this week, McMillen said, "They had two proms and I was only invited to one of them ... everyone went to the other one I wasn't invited to."

God knows it's no great stretch to give teens and adults credit for being ignorant douchebags, but seriously? They threw a whole other prom? What is this, an episode of "Glee"?

Indeed, Gawker reported yesterday that they had dug up a Facebook page for one of McMillen's classmates, and lo! There were pix galore of a well-attended, corsage-riddled weekend dance event. (Even more have been neatly compiled on BruceKatz23's Flickr stream.) Unlike that legendary slumber party your best friend threw when she told you she was home alone with the mumps, however, the alternate dance wasn't a total top secret. McMillen says that she knew about the other event, but, "If I wasn't wanted there, I wasn't going to go."

The elaborate lengths to which people will apparently go to avoid a girl in a tux are dispiriting at best, and McMillen's victory may seem to have the word "Pyrrhic" stamped all over it. But in the end, she may well have had a better prom than many of us ever did. (Non-discrimination is a right, but having crappy experiences in high school is pretty much an inevitability.) McMillen told the Advocate that the special ed kids "had the time of their lives ... That's the one good thing that came out of this, [these kids] didn't have to worry about people making fun of them."

It may have been far from perfect, but unlike the blowout across town, that little shindig at Fulton Country Club was everything that I hope for for my own daughters, on their prom nights and their wedding days and all their lives. Because none of those other people matter. On Friday night, Connie McMillen got to walk through that door on the arm of the person she wanted to dance with.

I'm bisexual and love chatting.

Meh, to each his own. I am agnostic and I do search, I've searched too many religions to name them all here. There are two principles I find in most of them that can be applied to anyone's life:

1 - Treat others better than you would treat yourself.
2 - Be better today than you were yesterday.

Those are my general tenants and I'm friendly with everyone, religious or not. I try not to be bitter about things. It's hard sometimes but to me it's not worth the heartache. I only get pissed when religion moves into politics.

Former First Lady Laura Bush made a surprising tack away from two of the most definitive social issues of her husband's presidency this week, telling CNN's Larry King that she backs gay marriage and abortion rights.

Speaking on King's show earlier this week, Bush said this about gay marriage:

I think that we ought to definitely look at it and debate it. I think there are a lot of people who have trouble coming to terms with that because they see marriage as traditionally between a man and a woman, but I also know that when couples are committed to each other and love each other that they ought to have the same sort of rights that everyone has.
King then asked her if she thought that the legalization of gay marriage was coming, to which Bush replied, "Yeah, it will come, I think."

From: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/13/laura-bush-gay-marriage-s_n_574731.html