Say hello to “The Fosters.” TV’s first drama centered around a family helmed by two moms. ABC Family picked up the series today to begin airing this summer. Love the cop uniform. And the subway tiles.
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Four for four. All for love. Congratulations, America. Let’s go get married.
THISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHISTHIS. This.
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis (featuring Mary Lambert)
The reason so many songs get written about love, particularly young love, is simple. It’s wonderful. It’s magical. It’s what we all want. To fall head over heels, to love with abandon. Even the most bitter and cynical among us can’t help but make a subconscious cute cooing sound when confronted with a couple in the full throws of puppy love. It’s hard wired into our DNA. So when that love is ended, not by a broken heart but something far more sinister, it seems as if the natural order of the world is askew.
The horror of what happened to 19-year-old Mollie Judith Olgin and 18-year-old Mary Kristene Chapa in a park in a small Texas town over the weekend is just now setting in. The couple, who friends said had been together for five months, were doing what young couples often do. Hanging out together at a park on a Saturday night. I’ve done that. You’ve done that. Find a romantic spot and snuggle with your girl. When I see a couple, particularly a young couple, doing just that that automatic awww sound can’t help but slip out. Awww, young love.
But for someone last Saturday night the presence of two teen girls in love didn’t bring up those warm, puppy feelings. They brought about sinister, angry, hateful feelings. Just being in love brought about this horrible, horrible fate. Both girls marched out to the tall grass and shot execution style in the head and left to die in the dark. One dead, another clinging to life. Police won’t confirm it was a hate crime or they were targeted for their sexual orientation yet. But it’s hard to imagine another reason. It’s even harder, of course, to imagine why any two people’s happiness might elicit this evil.
In my corner of the world it was Pride over last weekend. I was surrounded by thousands and thousands of people, all happy and proud. Some in love. Others looking for love. All just being themselves. All letting everyone else be themselves. Which is how it should be. But then, we remember, we remember when something horrible happens that some people don’t think we should be allowed to be ourselves. Some people think our love should be destroyed. Some people think our very existence is an aberration. And this, this is why we will never stop fighting. Yesterday vigils took place for the girls across the country and in that very park. Because hate should never defeat love. We should all be able to sit in a park on a Saturday night with the person we love and be happy. It’s the simplest thing. It’s why songs are written. Have a happy and safe weekend, all.
America the Beautiful.
Mary Jamis, a lesbian woman, was ARRESTED yesterday after she and her partner sought a marriage license in North Carolina.
Share this if you think it’s outrageous.
Even more so because, come on, that cop in the background is so a Mo.
Let’s get this out of the way immediately: No one has the right to out you. When you come out is up to you, period.
So then just because Santana can be a raging bitch sometimes, doesn’t mean she deserves to be outed. Just because she’s mean to Finn, doesn’t mean she deserves to be outed. Just because she hasn’t made the decision to be out for herself yet, doesn’t mean she deserves to be outed. Santana did not deserve to be outed.
The last four minutes of “Glee” last night were particularly powerful. And, no, not just because that Adele mash-up is still SOFA KING AMAZING even after 3,876 repeat viewings. But because it showed, through Naya Rivera’s extraordinarily nuanced performance, what it means to be outed. You can see Santana’s whole world crumble in an instant. “I can’t believe this is happening.” “I haven’t even told my parents yet.” It’s all there, on the surface. The panic. The fear. The despair.
And here’s the other thing about being gay. Straight people, even the super allies and the most supportive, they can’t know what it is to come out. They’ll never have to do it. They don’t know what it means. What a big step it is. What a difficult confession it can be to even just to ourselves. That’s not really their fault, but it’s also not their place to judge. So when Finn tells Santana in a crowded school hallway that she should come out of the closet, that’s not just getting revenge – that’s imploding a life. And when he calls her a “coward” for not being out, well, that is almost as bad as outing her. Also the stuff about Brittany maybe not loving her back, that was just fucking mean.
Being in the closet can be a terrible burden. Carrying a secret can crush you slowly. But being ripped out of the closet before you’re ready is even worse. There could be very real consequences from being outed. Being kicked out to losing your job to being bullied to being beaten to even worse. So, then being ready to face that, being prepared – well, that’s everything.
But then, here’s the thing about being out. It’s better when you’re out. Maybe not right away. Maybe not for a long time. But it’s better to be open. It’s better to accept and embrace and love who you are for all the world to see. And once the world sees you, it’ll see you’re not so scary – we’re not so scary. Coming out matters because knowing a gay person makes it hard to hate us unconditionally. It’s easier to hate blindly what you think you don’t know or think you haven’t met. Because, make no mistake, we are everywhere.
What is most frustrating about this, besides the obvious inequality and homophobia, is that every gay person already has an internal monitor that she or he uses to regulate public behavior. It’s mostly subconscious, often just instinctual. But it has been ingrained in us from the moment we realized we were different. I call it the “Is It Worth It?” Meter. It’s that meter tells us how fully we can be ourselves and when it is worth the consequences. For the most part, the answer is always yes. Yes, it’s worth it to be out. Yes, it’s worth it to be public. Yes, it’s worth it to hold your girlfriend’s hand at the movie theater.
But then there are times when it simply is not worth it. No, it’s not worth it to tell the douchey coffee guy who always tries to hit on you because it will only make him hit on you harder, and with more lesbian jokes. No, it’s not worth it to keep holding your girlfriend’s hand when you’re walking home late at night and nearing a large group of unruly men.
So for every person out there who persists on thinking we’re just shoving our big gay agenda into their faces, trust me – we’ve thought about the consequences of what we’re doing a lot more than you ever have. And we do what we do because we’ve decided that it’s worth it – despite all the bullshit – to be who we are. Because to self-censor ourselves for other people’s so-called comfort isn’t doing the world any favors. In fact, it hurts the world to let this double standard exist that says one kind of love is more acceptable than another kind of love. We think long and hard and endlessly about many of the simple gestures that straight people just take for granted.
So each time gay people demand to be treated equal, cry foul against discrimination and simply dare to give the person we love a kiss before the plane takes off, we chip away at that double standard. We stake our claim on our own equality. We say, I have the right to do this. If that makes you uncomfortable world, well, that’s your fucking problem. It’s not excessive to kiss someone you love, Southwest Airlines. And it is definitely worth it.
Self Evident Truths: This is wonderful. Spread the word.
