Foster Diaries...Laying Your Heart On The Line

When I used to look forward to the future and wonder what my life would be like, one of the things I NEVER saw myself doing was foster parenting. First and foremost I was scared of having to face the way hurting kids can act out that hurt. I imagined kids having raging tantrums and screams of, "Your not my parents! I hate you!." I imagined kids who were sad and lost in a world of bewildering adult goings on, with hearts full of hurt and minds full of questions with no easy answers. If I am being totally honest, I need to admit that I was afraid....afraid to face the pain of others and all the emotional messiness that I knew would come with trying to help another hurting soul make their way through the world. I just did not feel I had what it took to do that....Yet here I am.

like most things in life, it's not as scary as I had projected it to be. BUT...sometimes a crisis can make us stand back and reevaluate our lives and how we got were we are. I was having one such crisis the other night in the form of one very cranky baby...

The President and DoJ Decline To Further Defend DOMA...Time To Celebrate?

Some Days I log on to the Internet and simply can't believe what I read....and todays news has totally left me gobsmacked. Chief Attorney General Eric Holder has released a statement that the Department of Justice will no longer defend DOMA's section three. In addition, this means that President Obama has taken the official, public stance that he believes DOMA to be unconstitutional. You heard that correctly. The same president that has been ducking and weaving around taking an official stance on the Defense of Marriage Act has not only come out against it...but come out swinging.

The details of this announcement are still emerging and are still somewhat subject to the fog of war. While the news is on almost every site imaginable,  the discussion and analysis of the President and DoJ's move is still somewhat conflicting. However, while this may not be the killing blow to DOMA it definitely removes it's bullet proof vest. but what does all this really mean in a practicle sense?

The Supremes Take The Case

...The California Supreme Court that is..not the bouffant becoiffed divas of Motown....though it sure would make this trial alot more bearable.

When last we left Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the ninth circuit court of appeals could not..or would not...tackle the issue of whether the individuals at protectmarriage.com had legal standing to defend Prop 8 in court if the Governor and Attorney General would not. This leaves many of us wondering...where did our love go? Why could they not answer this themselves? Instead of coming to their own determination, they elected to send a certified question back to the California Supreme Court to get their official opinion on what state law says on the matter. Your may remember that they were same court who's tragic love child was upholding Prop 8 in the first place. My reaction to this was one of frustration and my reasoning for this is twofold:

Unmaking The Monster

How do you make a monster? Is he made from disembodied parts? Animated by electricity and mad genius? Must he be the result of an evil curse or radioactive mutation? What takes an ordinary man and turns him into a thing to be feared and hated?

Personally, I don't think it takes mad science or evil curses under full moons. All it takes to make a monster is one lie told often enough. You see, it doesn't matter if the man really is a monster...only if everyone else believes he is. Tell everyone he is the shadow in every dark room....a menace to men women and children....rampaging through the streets seeking his next victim. You don't need  proof....You need only tap into the fear that already lives in there hearts. It won't be long before our ordinary man will sees to be ordinary and will transform into a fiend right before our very eyes. Keep Repeating the lie enough and even the monster himself may come to fear and hate himself.

Most times I forget the way the world looks at my life. I have never accepted the idea that being who I am is a thing to be feared or hated. I thought I had healed that vision of myself a long time ago. Yet, all it took was one comment from the mom of a foster child to punch me in the gut and remind me, that while I may not see an evil face in the mirror anymore...many others are still see us that way.

Safety

Most gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people learn from a very early age that the world is not necessarily a safe place for them. Maybe it's a comment made by your parent's that teaches you...or the first time some guy at school calls you a faggot and makes your life a living hell...but you learn early and often in ways that you will never be able to forget. No matter where you are...being out of the closet carries with it a certain amount of risk and you weigh that risk against the gains of living an honest life. Through all the advances we make as a community, and all the hard won strides we make in gay rights...sometimes we are still reminded of the nature of the world we live in.

Clayton, North Carolina gives us one such reminder. Recently the home of a gay couple there was burned down in what is being ruled as arson...and wonder of wonders...a hate crime. Fortunately for the couple, who's names have been kept anonymous, they were out of town at the time the fire was set. A Neighbor who also chose to remain anonymous for fear of her own safety claims that the couple had also experienced harassing notes dropped in their mailbox...had their home defaced with anti-gay slurs...and tires slashed on a vehicle in their garage. According to an Towleroad update, police are looking for a White Chevy S-10 pickup pulling a trailer containing ride on lawn mowers stolen from the home. The couple is being put up in a hotel by the Red Cross who is also helping out with food, clothes and insurance contacts.

This whole event just angers me. Who should have to live their lives in fear that something like this will happen? And what if this couple had been home asleep? The consequences of events like these are not merely the burning of a home...or the loss of possessions...It's the damage done to the soul that can take so much longer to repair.

The Naked Truth...Pt 2: Body Image And Our Inner Critic

Sometimes simple stories bring up themes that go far beyond the simple details of the story itself and last weeks feature on Tom Ford was no exception. To refresh our memories...Tom Ford, the famous fashion designer and film director was featured in an issue of Interview magazine and in that article he discusses societies discomfort with showing naked men and his own penchant for not wearing any clothes while at home. Which lead me to ask my blog readers why it is that Americans are o.k. seeing a woman completely naked yet we censor a similarly naked man.

But as with most good topics, there is so much more to talk about than just what lies on the surface. I don't know about anyone else, but when I read that Mr. Ford hangs around his house in the nude, my first thought was how confident he must be with his own body to be comfortable doing that. That is simply something that I would not be comfortable doing for obvious reasons...like my families horrified looks...as well as those reasons I will explain below.

But first a disclaimer....Last week I got accused of parading around my house naked in front of my children simply because I posted about Mr. Ford doing it and probably because it was a rather frank discussion about an adult topic. So let me be clear....I am not advocating any such thing. This topic is meant to address the attitudes we carry in our most private selves as adults navigating an adult world. This is not meant to address how to appropriately teach kids about the human body...that said...Let's move on...

A Parents Worst Nightmare...Justice For Peter and Laurent

Meet Peter and Laurent...two men who remind me very much of my husband and myself. The are two men who decided to have a family and researched all their options...and finally deciding on surrogacy. They found an agency that they trusted to help them through the process and eventually connected with a surrogate mother in the Ukraine...leading to the birth of their son Samuel. The problem?...Belgium won't let them bring their son home. Since Belgium has no laws regulating surrogacy, they will not issue any official papers for the child. Peter and Laurent have been going through a bureaucratic nightmare trying to get any Belgian official to help them bring their child home...who is now three and languishing in an orphanage.

Check it out for yourself and don't forget to click the CC button for English subtitles...

I can't help but think how I would feel if I was in their shoes...gutted...devastated...willing to do just about anything to see this thing through. That's how I would feel and seems to sum up the emotions I see in Perter and Laurent. That is heartbreaking and appalling. I can't believe that Belgian lawmakers would rather see this little boy sit in an orphanage while they dither about surrogacy laws. If there are no laws forbidding surrogacy then there should not be so much resistance to allowing these men to bring their son home. I hope these two men NEVER give up. Don't let the dream die gentlemen that little boy will know that he was loved and wanted by his two dads who love him very much...that's something we can never give up hope on.

Facebook pages in English and in French have been created to help support these men and an online petition has been launched to help these men bring their son home. find the petition here. Lets hope we can bring enough pressure to make someone in the Belgian government stand up and help this family. I hope their family can be whole again someday soon.

Until next time dear readers.....