Congratulations D.C.

I am totally geaked about DC allowing marriage for two consenting adults regardless of sex. That is progress. All the metro area people now have the burden of paying that $45 dollar filing fee and tying the knot. Congratulations. Here are some great pictures!

In wedding preparations I found a great website:  so you're enGAYged

There is an Etsy shop that makes custome cake toppers: The Enchanted Cupboard

All you need to know about DC Marriages is here.

LGBT Blogger Conference Day 3

The last day of the conference was really good. I didn't get to stay for the whole thing because my flight left early. I got to speak with Cathy Renna of Renna Communications (really really nice and great information). I kind of bounced from session to session trying to get a feel for everything before I left. This day was really about how to brand your blog, brand yourself, being appropriate for the media and making money from your blog. That's right making money from your blog. That was the session I missed altogether. But there is a book: BlogWild! A Guide for Small Business Blogging by Andy Wibbels.

Here are the other bloggers that were at the conference. I have most of them on my blogroll, but there are a few that I missed.

•BlogActive - Michael Rogers - http://www.pageoneq.com/ , http://www.blogactive.com/
•Boi From Troy - Scott Schmidt - http://www.boifromtroy.com
•Blabbeando - Andrés Duque - http://blabbeando.blogspot.com
•Burnt Orange Report - Karl-Thomas Muselman - http://www.burntorangereport.com
•Calitics - Brian Leubitz - http://calitics.com
•Dykes + Fags: Music by queers for queers - http://ninjatronics.blogspot.com
•(en)gender - Helen Boyd - http://www.myhusbandbetty.com/
•Existential Punk - Musings, Thoughts, Rants of Existential Punk - Adele Sakler - http://www.existentialpunk.com/
•GayAgenda - James Hipps - http://www.GayAgenda.com
•Gay Persons of Color - James Viloria - http://gay-persons-of-color.blogspot.com/
•Get Busy. Get Equal. - Sam Ritchie (ACLU LGBT Project) -http://gbge.aclu.org/content/blogsection/1/76/
•GoodAsYou - Jeremy Hooper - http://www.goodasyou.org
•Greta Christina's Blog - Greta Christina - http://gretachristina.typepad.com/
•hunter of justice - Nan Hunter - http://hunterforjustice.typepad.com/hunter_of_justice/
•InterstateQ.com - Matt Comer - http://www.interstateq.com/
•JoeMyGod - Joe Jervis - http://www.JoeMyGod.com/
•KnuckleCrack - Eric Leven - http://www.knucklecrack.blogspot.com
•Michael-in-Norfolk-Coming Out in Mid-Life - Michael Hamar - http://michael-in-norfolk.blogspot.com/
•Mombian - Dana Rudolph - http://www.mombian.com/
•Nathan Strang - Buffawhat - http://buffawhat.com
•Pam's House Blend - Pam Spaulding - http://www.pamshouseblend.com
•Pittsburgh Lesbian Correspondents - Sue Kerr - http://www.pghlesbian.com
•Project Q Atlanta - Matt Hennie - http://www.projectqatlanta.com/
•Rod 2.0 - Rod McCullom - http://www.rod20.com
•The Bilerico Project - http://www.bilerico.com
•The Mad Professah Lectures - Ron Buckmire - http://buckmire.blogspot.com/
•The New Gay - Michael Eichler - http://www.thenewgay.net
•The New Gay - Zack Rosen - http://www.thenewgay.net
•UK Gay News - Andy Harley - http://www.ukgaynews.org.uk
•Working Films - Lynn Casper - http://workingfilms.org

Check em out!

Friends don't let friends attack innocent people...

I was talking to one of my best friends who recently returned from a year long teaching gig in South Korea. She had a really great time and we were discussing how common it was for girls to walk arm in arm with girls and guys to walk arm in arm with guys and they weren't gay. It was just something they did, it was apart of their culture and very normal.

She now works with students here in the states and when they come over they are met with culture shock so to speak, that people look at them weird for doing this. She said it isn't uncommon for her students to ask her why Americans act like that. It's weird how even though they didn't grow up here, they know that it is unacceptable behavior to simply hold hands or walk arm in arm with someone of the same gender.

This is what occurred to me when I read an article about two Ecuadoran brothers who were attacked in an apparent hate crime. On their way home from a church party, they stopped off at a local bar and then went on their way. But they couldn't even make it home without being accosted.

Three men came out of the car shouting at the brothers, Jose and Romel Sucuzhanay — something ugly, anti-gay and anti-Latino. Vulgarisms against Hispanics and gay men were heard by witnesses, the police said. One man approached Jose Sucuzhanay, 31, the owner of a real estate agency who has been in New York a decade, and broke a beer bottle over the back of his head. He went down hard.

Romel Sucuzhanay, 38, who is visiting from Ecuador on a two-month visa, bounded over a parked car and ran as the man with the broken bottle came at him. A distance away, he looked back and saw a second assailant beating his prone brother with an aluminum baseball bat, striking him repeatedly on the head and body. The man with the broken bottle turned back and joined the beating and kicking.

In general, I am not a violent person. You know that whole "Thou shall not kill" thing I take pretty seriously. But with groups talking about their not being a need for hate crime legislation, it really infuriates me. This is unacceptable. A man lost his life. How much longer can people go along with this anti-gay movement?

LGBT Blogger Conference Day 2

Day 2 of the blogger conference started out talking about blogger activism, how the Prop 8 and Amendment 2 (Florida) campaigns were managed online, and then I participated in a diversity on the web workshop and how to become a citizen journalist. This was great for me since I do want to make writing a career and I learned a lot about how people think, motivating factors, and really just how much religion and diversity dominate the discussion around homosexuality.

What I learned:

People want to be heard.
It is time to stop operating in fear.
Black folk don't have a monopoly on diversity.
There are many different viewpoints in the LGBT community.
Attacking religion is not a good defense when discussing LGBT issues.
Language is key in communication. (In school they called it word choice)
There is room at the table for different voices. It's time for us to sit down.
It is important to take responsibility for your own actions. Stop the blame game.
There are many ways to do something, some lead to more positive results than others.

It was a great day. I saw so many people needing and wanting to express their love, it's just built up inside ready to burst open on humanity.

LGBT Blogger Conference Day 1

I am in DC at the National LGBT Blogger & Citizen Journalist Initiative. It is an orgy of sorts. All of these LGBT people descending on the nations capital is a pure site...I have met a lot of great people and hopefully, we will keep in touch. I must preface this by saying, I didn't go in with any expectations. I just wanted to see what it was about, how I could become apart of something bigger, learn best practices etc.

What I Learned (so far):

As one of 3 black lesbians in the room; race is an issue. Someone here said, "You have to brand yourself. If you don't do the branding, other people will do the branding for you." I know this a very diverse audience and I just have to let you know, what you aren't saying about yourself, others are willing to make up and push it along.

The stereotypes that float throughout the country do not fall on deaf ears. At one of the sessions, a young woman brought up that she believed the black vote is what put prop 8 over and that the LGBT community needed to "educate" african-americans about the issues. I will just let that resonate with you. And know that comment did not go un-checked. It is time for us to get in the game....for real.

MILK
So last night I got to see the movie that is sweeping the nation. The acting was phenomenal. Sean Penn was to Harvey Milk as Denzel Washington was to Malcolm X. I will be honest and say, I didn't want to see the movie. I thought, let me go find out more about Harvey Milk. All I really knew was that he was gay, an activist, and a politician. I didn't know anything else about him. The movie was 2 hours long. For a better part of the movie, I was unaffected. I didn't see me or people like me, basically, I couldn't relate. Grant it, he was gay, but the similarities pretty much ended there. Even being an out lesbian, I have not had to endure all that Harvey Milk or the other men have to endure. Really, being gay, in my mind is a male thing--that's even how it was portrayed in the movie. You saw a few women and people of color, but it was not the regular.

I'm gay, but I'm not gay. Does this make sense? The discourse surrounding homosexuality, the gay lifestyle, and gay marriage is overwhelmingly male and white. The black discourse around homosexuality is male and "downlow". Am I missing something? Sometimes I have felt like I don't fit into the broader gay community. This is totally off topic from where the post was supposed to go, but I gotta go where the writing takes me. I think part of this comes from the stereotypes about the community, that make some of us say, "no, that's not me". Say what you will on the topic, I would love to hear your thoughts.

Anyway, Harvey Milk was the first and only lgbt elected official to be assassinated *knock on wood. Now this heartwrenching experience did resonate with me. Harvey Milk was resilient, tenacious, and for the people. Much like some other activists he knew he was doing what he had to do, and it was for the people, by any means necessary. I admire him for that. His work literally helped California be the mecca that it is today. I wanted to move there for the scenery, but when I found out about the protections LGBT people had in the workplace, it definitely made it more appealing.

But that is how I came out of yesterday's session feeling...I will post the rest tomorrow or later this week. ciao.