Articles From Our September, 2005 Newsletter
Our September 11 program will again feature our good friend Dr. Bob Minor. In preparation for the Fairness Project's National Fairness Summit in Kansas City, MO October 21-23, 2005, Bob will discuss what it means to "come out" as progressives on LGBT issues to take over the long-term agenda from the anti-gay, regressive, right-wing.
It is always great to have Bob in our midst, sharing with us all the Minor Details. He is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Kansas where he has taught for more than twenty-seven years. He was the chair of the Religious Studies Department for six of those years.He is the author of seven books, the most recent of which is Gay and Healthy in a Sick Society: The Minor Details published by HumanityWorks! in November, 2003, which was a Finalist for the Independent Publisher Book Award in 2004, and was named in national reviews as one of the best gay books of 2003. His previous book, Scared Straight: Why It's So Hard to Accept Gay People and Why It's So Hard to Be Human, also published by HumanityWorks! in St. Louis, in 2002 was named a Finalist for both a Lambda Literary Award and the Independent Publisher Book Award. In little more than a month from their publication, Menstuff.org, the premier men's issues website, named each of them "Book of the Week. "Don’t miss this meeting. You’ll be very glad you were here. Our meetings start at 3pm at Village Presbyterian Church, 6641 Mission Rd., Room 307, Prairie Village, KS
HEAR YE!! HEAR YE!!! ALL PFLAGERS LISTEN UP!!!
September is board election month, so come and cast your vote for our new upcoming board which will start a new year in October.
My stepdaughter, Laura, and her two children came for a visit recently and I was intrigued by the books she brought with her. One was entitled The Invitation by Oriah Mountain Dreamer. You’ve got to admit that’s a catchy name. I was so moved by a particular passage that I am partially reprinting it here:
“It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing. It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive. It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitation of being human. It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after a night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children. It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back. It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.”
Reading this made me stop and examine what I truly wanted in my own relationships….would these things be less desirable if someone I loved had just “come out” to me? hmmmmmm
Jamie
First came tears, fears; then resolve, activism On Valentine's Day 1991, Fran Kirschner was making dinner for her family in their Center City home when her husband, Allen, pulled an envelope from the stack of mail.
"You've got a letter from Kerry," he said. Kerry Moser, their oldest daughter, was living away from home as a sophomore at Moore College of Art, also in Center City. After dinner, Fran Kirschner sat down to read the letter, already intuiting what it did, in fact, reveal: Her daughter Kerry was a lesbian.
"I cried and cried and cried and cried and cried. I couldn't get through the next day at work. I went home early." Her first concern was for her child.
"The discrimination, the bigotry, the hate they will face. I think that's the majority of the tears. You're frightened, you don't want your child to lose her job. You worry, is she really going to have a future?" For the next decade, Kirschner, a former elementary school teacher, told almost no one, not even her own parents. She learned to nimbly talk her way around questions about Kerry's social life, and often, she says, she'd suffer silently, overhearing homophobic slurs dropped casually into conversations. The experience is common among parents of gays and lesbians. "When your child comes out of the closet," Kirschner says, "you go into the closet." Kirschner, a regular churchgoer raised in a religious Italian Catholic family, found herself in a spiritual quandary. Her faith in church teachings was slamming up against her love for her daughter. The first step, which didn't take long, was to decide where her allegiances lay.
"There's nothing wrong with my daughter," Kirschner says. "She's a beautiful young woman. To be told there's something 'intrinsically evil' about her, well, there's something wrong with that and I won't accept it." Kirschner eventually joined and then became president of the local chapter of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays. Kerry Moser is proud of her mother. When she first came out, she was "scared to death" of hurting her mother and couldn't bear to tell her face-to-face.
"I wanted to tell her in a letter because I needed to get it out and off my chest, but I knew it would cause her pain, and I didn't want to see the expression on her face." Moser, 33, who now lives in Boston, says that although she knows her mother struggled with her religious beliefs, Kirschner always made it clear that her love never wavered. And over the years, Moser said, it's her mother who has become the civil-rights activist in the family. "I learn from her," Moser says. "I always underestimated her strength and her wisdom and her compassion. That's just something you don't see as a kid." On Valentine's Day 2002, Fran Kirschner sat down to write a letter. She had just come back from a family event that had disturbed her deeply. In a conversation about home schooling, one of her relatives had said, "When public schools start to teach that homosexuality, bestiality and everything else are acceptable, then they've gone too far." By tossing homosexuality into the same moral basket with bestiality, it was her relative, Kirschner believed, who had gone too far.
"I did a double take. You can't believe that someone you've grown to know and care for would say such a thing." Despite her outrage, Kirschner did not confront her relative. When she got home that night, she regretted her passivity.
"My silence kept me up all night," she recalls. "As bad as what she said was, and that was bad, what bothered me was that I didn't say anything. That I couldn't find the words." The next day, she resolved to finally break the news.
"Dear Family (Aunts, Uncles, Cousins)," she wrote. "You may be asking: Why do I need to tell you this? Well, first, I no longer want to fear attending family functions that either cause me to be silent about my daughter or make my heart hurt when comments are made or jokes are told. Second and most important, to continue to remain silent may give the impression that I am embarrassed by my daughter. Nothing could be further from the truth." Kirschner told her family they need not respond. She just wanted to clear the air.
"I have always heard that secrets breed despair. Conversely, the truth sets one free. And now 11 years later, I choose freedom."
SPECIAL SNEAK PEAK--TRANSGENERATION
Produced for the Sundance Channel, this spellbinding, intimate documentary follows four transgender college students on different campuses across the country. With testimony from their friends, classmates and families, the film boldly illustrates the growing movement toward new definitions of sexuality and gender identity.
Screening in Kansas City - Tuesday, Sept. 6th at 6:30 p.m. at the Downtown Library, 14 W. 10th Street in the 5th floor Auditorium
Kansas City Anti-Violence Project
Rick Truman Managing Director Quality Hill Playhouse
From Kansas City Anti-Violence Project:
What can you do about anti-LGBT hate crimes like the one on 39th street? The LGBT community should not tolerate hate crimes or violence of any sort. What can be done?
You, along with other community members, must come together against violence and help the Kansas City Anti-Violence Project and other LGBT organizations determine a community response so that all LGBT victims of violence are treated with respect and dignity by law enforcement.
Please join the Kansas City Anti-Violence Project Upcoming Events
October 13, KCAVP Happy Hour
Bar Natasha 1911 Main Street, Kansas City, MO Come out and support KCAVP and listen to awesome guitarist Kristie Stremel. Drink and appetizer specials, entertainment, and fun to be had! Visit Kristie’s Web site at http://www.kristiestremel.com/.
Help KCAVP Today
***The Kansas City Anti-Violence Project was created to ensure the community is educated (not only aware) of these crimes and to provide assistance and advocacy for the victims of them. We need your financial support to continue to do this work. If you feel what we do is important, then make a donation today.
**By credit card: Visit http://www.kcavp.org/donate.htm to use PayPal or call the KCAVP office at 816-561-0550 to make a donation by Visa, MasterCard, or American Express.
***By check: Send to Kansas City Anti-Violence Project, PO Box 411211, Kansas City, MO 64141-1211
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