Cheese Store of Silverlake

We left the Silverlake neighborhood of Los Angeles in the afternoon, in the last hour of pink-sienna-magenta sky before twilight. I’d sampled amazing Italian olive oil at The Cheese Store of Silver Lake, taken a delightful turn through the ReForm School, and eaten the best gelato of my life (Market plum! Chocolate covered raisin! Salty chocolate!) at Pazzo Gelato.

We were sad to leave L.A., but I was even sadder that we were leaving for Fresno.

Fresno: n., The place that you struggled to leave physically many years ago, but still struggle to leave mentally. A place you don’t like to visit, because as soon as you’re back it seems like nothing ever got better at all.

You know what, though? I’m married in Fresno. And I have my family with me. So maybe there’s only one coffee shop (Thanks for the WiFi, guys!) downtown, only one or two gay bars (Glad to see you still bustling, Veni Vidi Vici.). Maybe it freezes at night and you can’t stand to be in the sun after 11 a.m. So what if the public transportation consists of your cousin’s tattered 10-speed and FART, the Fresno Area Rapid Transit?

Fresno has a PFLAG chapter, a Lesbian and Gay Film Festival in its 20th year, and a Gay Fresno website.

After a less-than-perfect morning with my mother, who is an active Mormon, Ruby reached out to the local PFLAG chapter. They were empathetic, and invited Mom to a meeting, even offering to meet with her beforehand to talk. But ultimately it would be up to her to contact them, and only then would she be able to access the literature she desperately needs to begin to understand us. The likelihood that she would do so seemed, well, slim. So the search continued.

I can’t believe I’m writing this, but we found a group of Mormons for Marriage.  As in our marriage.

I cried. At first, when Ruby said, “There must be Mormons out there that support their gay family members,” I didn’t even respond. I thought, Ya, like there must be a Protestant Pope. I’m sure he has a website, too. But lo and behold: “Mormons for Marriage supports marriage equality for all, and stands in respectful opposition to California Proposition 8.” There’s even The Feminist Mormon Housewives, and the Family Fellowship–a volunteer service organization, “a diverse collection of Mormon families engaged in the cause of strengthening families with homosexual members.”

Ruby wrote an e-mail to Mormons for Marriage, and a woman named Laura immediately wrote back. She attached four documents written by Mormons who are LGBT or support LGBT people. She copied another woman who she thought may know some people in Fresno. They even mentioned a book: No More Goodbyes: Circling the Wagons Around Our Gay Loved Ones.

Maybe Mom won’t read the book when we buy it for her. Maybe she will and even then still say things like, “I’m sad in my heart [about the fact that your aunts outed you to your grandmother], but your grandma and your aunts love you, no matter what choices you make.” Maybe my wife will still cry in the living room once Mom has left for work, feeling like she was that ill-advised “choice.”

But today, in sunny, oppressive Fresno where I once learned internalized homophobia, I found just a little hope for our family. Our whole family.

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Love!!

I’ve never really liked D.C. Sure, the first time I went was a little marred by adolescent angst, and the next time was for work. The highlights of my two previous trips were Archie Bunker’s chair at the Smithsonian and the Holocaust Museum–if you can call that a highlight.

Mostly D.C. seemed fraudulent. I can’t help but wonder how much of our money is spent keeping it as clean and manicured as it is. I can’t help but think about the rest of D.C. and the contrast to the National Mall.

But today I love D.C.

We got off to another late start, this time not because of our usual morning, West-Coast-time inertia, but because we boarded the dogs. We knew we would spend long days in the city while we were participating in National Equality March events. We didn’t want to leave them in the car, and couldn’t leave them alone in the trailer some thirty miles out of the city. So we found a kennel online who would take them last minute, called our vet for shot records, and deposited the dogs in Woodbridge for the next couple of days.

What was supposed to be a second or third stop for the day became our first stop: the Milk and Cookies welcome for LGBT parents and kids. Frances is not exactly of cookie-eating age, but it was a good way to meet other parents at the march. I was a little worried that it would be ill attended–after all, we’d heard that nobody would be able to make the march because it was so hastily planned.

As soon as we entered the hotel where the event was held, I knew I had worried for nothing. We followed the sound of children laughing, playing, screaming until it led us to the second floor ballroom. The place was packed. Every table seemed to be full. Set out were art supplies, and kids were making signs, hats, banners, bracelets, you name it.

Before we found a seat, we were approached by a couple of women with a video camera. We told them about our trip. The woman holding the camera put it down. “Let’s go outside,” she said to the other woman. We were asked if we’d like to do a longer interview, out in the hall where it was quieter. They were making a documentary called March On. We followed them out and sat in a couple of chairs wedged together in front of a tripod. We threaded mics under our shirts and told them all about ourselves, our trip, our hopes for what the march might accomplish.

Later I told Ami I hope they edit us to make us sound smart. I regretted not having our elevator speeches memorized. And I worried that my bra was showing. But all in all, the documentarians were sweet and warm, and the experience was a positive one.

After we live tweeted some pictures of the kids at the event in all their face-painted glory, ate some cookies, and talked to a number of parents, the party ended. We decided to go to a happy hour sign-making event next, and pushed a napping Frances in her stroller through the streets of D.C.

At the restuarant, people were everywhere with their markers, their posterboard, their happy gay gayness (sorry folks, but LGBTness just doesn’t have the same ring). I circled the room–rooms–and found a table that was emptying just as another group approached. Amy, a college student at Indiana, and her hometown friends, a couple from Atlanta, became our table mates. They shared their markers. We spent hours there, staying long past when the event was scheduled to end, through the President’s address at the HRC dinner.

I know that Obama was only trying to make peace with the queers–and some of the most mainstream queers, at that. Don’t confuse my emotion watching the speech, which could be judged by the tears that ran down my face, with approval of the incremental approach to equality. Don’t think just because I detoured from a diaper change to wave at the motorcade as it made its way back to the White House I endorse separate-but-equal civil unions.

But while Obama spoke, everyone in that room was gripped with a simultaneous emotion, one we were urged to believe in again through the presidential campaign last year. Together we held hands with our partners and looked up at the screens overhead. Some of us clapped. Some of us cried (me). Some of us crossed our arms and waited for something new to be said.

All of us. All of us. All of us, together, hoped.

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Twitter Trending Topics 9/4/09

Oh, Twitter. How I love you.

Today there was a homophobic Twitter topic, #uknowhowiknowugay, or something like that. I paid no attention except to grimace a little. I guess it says something about how ubiquitous homophobia is (or how jaded I can be) that I can see it and just avert my eyes.

Well, luckily not everyone feels that way. I’ve been collecting queermos to follow on Twitter, and quickly my Twitter page filled with tweets with the hashtag #yaygay. I guess @dorothysnarker publicized it, but @thelinster started it as a counter-trend.

And the trend took off. I contributed my share, too, and it overtook not only the homophobic trending topic, but reached #1, beating out even Follow Friday.

My screen was blurry from tears. If you know me, you won’t be surprised by that. Nothing pumps my tear ducts like people coming together to do something good for the world.

Maybe it’s a small thing. Doesn’t take much to jump on a trend and contribute 140 characters. Only the tweeters of the world see it. Soon some dead celebrity or “Goodnight” (which really should be two words, tweeps, unless it’s an adjective) will replace it at the top spot. But it’s momentum. It’s energy. It’s love.

And love is what this fight is all about. Thank you, Twitterverse, for the boost.

Oh, and yay gay!

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