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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You may notice that we’ve put a donate button on the sidebar to your right. If you choose to donate, you’ll be taken to a secure PayPal site. We wish we didn’t have to ask, but here we are–in Texas, far far from home. It was supposed to all work out–if barely–but things happen, sometimes all at once.

Every bit helps. For example:

• $50 will buy us a tank of gas.
• $30 buys us a night at an RV park.
• $20 buys us food for a day.

Or, to look at it another way, every dollar you donate will sponsor about 2 miles of travel. Every day we’ll post the names of the day’s sponsors. Sponsor us for five miles or a hundred–either way, we’re extremely grateful.

If our trip has given you hope, inspiration, or some other intangible benefit, and you want to donate, choose the gift or other amount you want to donate in the sidebar, click Donate, and you’ll be taken to the PayPal site.

If you are not able, or your donation dollars are spoken for, we still very much appreciate your participation in our journey, and hope that you will continue to join us.

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Welcome to Vermont!

I know it makes people in New England cringe, but there’s a dream popular among New Yorkers of moving to the country and buying a farm in Vermont. I think Vermont is chosen as a setting for that dream because it’s rural, beautiful, and the people have a reputation for being liberal. Even though I am from the Northeast originally, before this trip, Vermont was one of the six states I’d never been to. (I’m down to three: Wisconsin, Nebraska, and Alaska.)

I was sad the weather didn’t accommodate a longer visit to Vermont. I really wanted to get to Burlington. I just knew I’d love it. It wasn’t to be, however. As we mentioned in a previous post, the RV parks in northern Vermont had their water shut off during the time of our visit. It was also threatening to snow. So we headed south to Massachusetts–where it actually did snow.

But here’s what we missed as far as being queer in Vermont goes.

Vermont

• Vermonters of all sexual orientations can marry as of September 1, 2009! The legislature passed the new law, and even overrode a veto by the governor. The state also recognize same-sex marriages from other states. Prior to September 1, Vermont had civil unions that held all the same rights and responsibilities as marriage in Vermont. These will continue to be recognized, but no civil unions will be performed as of Sept. 1.
• Married gay and lesbian people in Vermont and those who have entered a civil union may make medical decisions for an incapacitated spouse or partner, and have visitation rights in the hospital. Those who have not married or civilly unioned (See how awkward that is?) may enact an advance directive authorizing a partner to make medical decisions. The advance directive must be dated and signed by the individual in the presence of two or more witnesses.
• Any adult in Vermont may adopt, including single LGBT people. Those with a civil union or married same-sex partners may adopt jointly, and married and unified (Is that better?) couples may adopt each other’s children.
• Vermont will issue a new birth certificate for transgender individuals with a decree of the probate court of the district where the individual was born. No idea how hard that is to get, or what warrants that decree.
• Vermont hate crimes law covers both sexual orientation and gender identity.
• Discrimination on the basis of both gender identity and sexual orientation are prohibited in Vermont.
• Vermont’s anti-harassment education law protects students from bullying on the basis of their sexual orientation and gender identity. [via GLSEN, otherwise via HRC]

Vermont gets 100% on my (admittedly not comprehensive) LGBT law survey–gold star! Maybe I will buy that farm after all.

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[Aside: Etymologically, boondocks is one of the few English words to derive from Tagalog: bundok, or mountain. (If you're curious, some others are yo-yo and cooties.) American soldiers occupying the Philippines misused it to mean a remote, wild place. If you were in one of those places, I guess you would have to boondock your RV.]

Not us. RV parks seem to these city kids to be remote and wild enough. We don’t have a television in the trailer, but if we did, we could hook up to the park’s cable. We certainly use the WiFi. And most parks have a store with necessities like RV-safe toilet paper and peanut butter. Not exactly roughin’ it.

Guadalupe County Safety Rest Stop

Last night was our first adventure in boondocking. Remote? No, unless you call a major interstate remote. Wild? I would have to say exceedingly cultivated, actually. Texas, it seems, has some very well-developed rest stops. Ours, located just outside of the San Antonio city limits, had a beautiful, air-conditioned building with faux rock benches and a giant-screen TV playing videos detailing the area’s attractions. It had amazing landscaping with desert and forest vegetation–freshly fertilized, I believe, if I can trust my nose. There was a playground and interpretive trails. And supposedly it had free WiFi, but we couldn’t get it to work.

Once the trailer doors were closed, it was hard to tell we were at a rest stop rather than an RV park. Our computers did run out of batteries eventually, but since the WiFi wasn’t working (which is also a common occurrence in RV parks), that was not a huge issue. I woke up a few times because really massive trucks drove by us, but I’m a light sleeper. Ami and Frances didn’t notice. And since we didn’t hook up anything, getting started in the morning was a cinch. In fact, I think we got on the road before 8 a.m.–a personal best. No trouble finding the interstate.

We can’t do it all the time, since our RV batteries only charge when hooked up to electricity, but I think we’ll save some of our RV park dollars by boondocking occasionally as we head back home. Apparently most K-Marts and Wal-Marts also allow you to park your RV for the night in their lots, but compared to the luxuries of the Guadalupe County Westbound Safety Rest Stop, those are some stripped-down digs.

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Somewhere along the way, we’d decided to drive to DC on the day of our meeting with our representative. I think it was partly a comfort concern–we were staying at my cousin Ceil’s apartment near Philly, and it’s got great things like a guest room and a shower. It was also partly a money concern–the park closest to DC is also very expensive–twice the price of some RV parks–so we didn’t want to stay there two nights. It takes about 2 1/2 to 3 hours to get from Philly to DC, and our meeting was at 1 p.m. We left at 7:09 a.m. I looked at the clock on the way out. I remember being proud of us for coming very close to making the 7 a.m. goal we’d set.

We arrived, all of us, dogs included, in the car, minus the trailer, at 12:59 p.m. I got out with Frances while Ami went to look for parking. I blame the Maryland highway system, and in our very roundabout detour I had enough time to call them and make a complaint. They’re sending me a form to make a claim against them. Do you think they’ll send me money for pissing me off?

Attention Maryland Department of Transportation: if you have a special detour for people carrying propane tanks, you must let them know before the exit on the highway that takes you to that detour.

There. I’ve vented that. Now we can move on.

The House Office Building is pretty impressive. Long hallways where women’s shoes click so loud you can hear them at the other end of the corridor. Well, most of the women in the building, anyway. My rubber-soled shoes didn’t even squeak. All of the offices have round metal plaques that invite you to come on in. We arrived at Inslee’s door just as another guy did, and since he was in a wheelchair, I held the door for him. The front room was crowded with men in suits who smiled at me as I pushed Frances in the door. I must have looked pretty out of place. Stroller. Rubber-soled shoes. Jeans. (Black, but still.)

Before we had a chance to worry about where we’d sit, Laura, the woman who’d been so patient with our scheduling needs, popped out of an office in back and introduced herself. She also said that Jay was held up in a meeting and introduced us to his aide, David. I was a little crushed. People more experienced than us in political matters had warned us that we might not get to meet with the Rep himself, only an aide.

It was a huge disappointment. We’d traveled so far. We’d waited in the Northeast so our schedule would match up with Inslee’s. This was, however, no time to quit. We would have our meeting, with whomever was there to listen. And with any luck, we’d get to speak to the man himself at some point.

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