The Higher Callings of Flowers and Chocolate

It’s Valentine’s Day and Facebook and Twitter are blowing up with statuses, images, tweets, and memes expressing more vehement oppositions than we saw through the entire election season. Single people are out in droves protesting the grave elitism of chocolate and flowers, baring their jealousy with fangs and herbicide  Sympathetic couples declare that it’s “just another day” and “show your partner you love them everyday.” More romantic couples are trying to convince such V-day haters to stop peeing on their Poptarts. Or in this case, Russel Stovers. It’s war out there people. Perhaps that’s why Cupid is depicted as an archer. But there’s much more to this holiday than the joining lips of lovers, and spitting mouths of singles. It appears that no one seems to get the point of the love potion tipped arrows.
Like most holidays, St Valentine’s Day begins with a legend. We like our legends here. It gives us the power of shouting ‘It’s just a made up bogus tradition” around any holiday or festival we are not fond of. Still, the legend of St. Valentine is one we should all consider carefully, before setting any Hallmark stores ablaze. As it is told, In third century Rome, Emperor Claudius Gothicus set many laws oppressing the Christian minority in his state. One of these edicts was that Christians were not allowed to marry. A minority group denied the right to marry by the government? Rings familiar doesn’t it?

Saint Valentine, who was Valentinus at the time, defied the Emperor by committing the brash crime of showing empathy and kindness and performing marriages of gay .. I mean Christian couples. For his troubles he was arrested and eventually beheaded. All for the sake of equal rights for those whom the law of the land prohibited their marriage.

Kind of a different perspective from let’s all eat chocolate and have sex while we point and laugh and single people, right? Saint Valentine worked in direct opposition of the government performing marriages the state had banned. Then he lost his life for it.


What would our reactions be if such occurred today? How would we feel if a pastor was arrested and beaten, and hanged all for the crime of acting on the belief that marriage is a human right and not a heterosexual privilege? How much would we, gay or ally, appreciate his sacrifice? Would we begrudge this modern martyr the honor of smelling a few roses and eating a piece of chocolate? Would we even accept that we picked the coconut one, because we celebrate the life and work of a person so important to ending our struggles? Do the Whites bitterly continue to clock in while only the Blacks take Martin Luther King Jr day off? Should single people curse such contributions and acts of love for those prohibited from marrying? Or do we all salute the overcoming of barriers to equality and those who worked and died for it?

It is my hope and plea, to all of those who decry Valentine’s Day to consider it’s deeper meaning. To understand how the actions of one man 18 centuries ago, apply so directly to the struggles of right now. Rights now. For all who hate or celebrate, remember too look beyond the pink and red, and perhaps see the rainbow waiting behind it. Look past smoochy couples, and perhaps see how that kiss will not seal a wedding ceremony for so many of your friends, or for yourself.
We have come far. We have so much further to go. Single or in a relationship, If you believe in equal rights, smell a flower, eat a chocolate, and remember the man who started this fight.

National Coming Out Day, Confessions of a Small Town, Teenage Queer, All Grown Up

This photo was taken Oct. 8th, 2001, the day I came out of the closet, shouting into a microphone on the University of Texas at Austin campus. Because I've never done a damn thing half way.

Hey Kiddies! It's National Coming Out Day! Time for me to reflect that I have been out of the closet almost four times as long as I was in it, and I am very very old. It baffles me to think back on that 15, 16, 17, year old kid, so terrified of what she was, when now I don't know how to be anything but exactly what I am. I'm old, and lying and avoiding the truth takes far too much energy. I remember, night after night, day after day, i spent in prayer over the feelings I couldn't deal with, which became more and more unwieldy each day. I remember that never once, in two and a half years, did I pray for G-d to make me straight, but every time asked to be shown which path He intended for me. He eventually did, and I followed it, and it sucked, for a while.

I lost a lot, a damn lot, for being true to myself. Contact with my little brother and sister, being the biggest and most painful. Their father, my step-dad, didn’t want them exposed to any one who was gay, and that meant their big sister.I haven’t been able to speak more than a few words to them in 11 years, not even on their birthdays and Christmas. I also had to quit my favorite subjects in school and hide in the art classes because of the bullying. Yes, small town Texas is so bass akwards, the drama department is/was the least safe environment for gay kids. But there were a lot of victories, to. I found a community, thanks to the Austin non-profit Out Youth, and I found a voice. My skin became armor and  I developed my biting wit, because nothing is more fun than making a bully look like an idiot with one good quip. I started writing the poetry that later made me locally famous. I learned that my well being deserved to be my first priority, and unlike far too many queer teens, I survived.

I also became obnoxious. The more and more those around me pushed that I was wrong for being a lesbian, the more lesbian I became. From the pretty blonde happily waving in the photo above, in a few months, I became a spiky haired, men’s clothed, facially pierced, in your face, junior bull-dyke, given to wearing t-shirts with slogans like “I can do everything your last boyfriend couldn’t,” and “hold my hammer while I nail your girlfriend.” My older sister jokes that when I met people for the first time, during those days, the introduction went like this, “Hi, I’m a lesbian, I like girls, I’m 100% queer! queer! queer! and I will probably bang your sister at some point. Oh, and my name is Mouse”  As you can imagine, for the loved ones around me, this got old ...quick. It didn’t take long for my sister to give me the advice of my life, one day over lunch. “You’re a lesbian,” she said “and that’s great. That’s wonderful. But it’s not the only thing you are. You are smart, and creative and a pain in my ass and I want you to be all of those things because the whole package is far more interesting than the angry one-dimensional loudmouth you are acting like right now.”

It all seems so far away now. I honestly don't think of the anniversary of my coming out, until someone mentions National Coming Out Day, which heralded my own escape from the closet, 11 years ago. That, and somehow all that came with it, is but a dream on the mist. The pain. The fear. The triumph. The first kiss with a girl. Over the last decade I have been transformed. Shifted and settled into a woman who never tells people she’s queer, because it doesn't matter, but will tell everyone, if it comes up in conversation, about her precious wife, because nothing matters more than she. A woman who fights for equality because equality is the only right way, not so much because it directly affects her, because her marriage is perfect, legal or no. A woman who every once in a while, is shocked, momentarily, by the fact that she is gay, married to a woman, and that there are people in the world who think that these things aren't as natural and comfortable as tomato soup on a cold, rainy day. Being gay isn't a big deal to me. It was once, but is no longer my principle trait, just a weave in the fabric of who I am. Not to be hidden, not to be highlighted. Just a small part of the big, wonderful, picture.

This post is dedicated to all the men and women and people in between, young or not so young, who still must be themselves only in secret.It is my hope and prayer that all of you find the safety to live as you truly are. Wonderful, whole, individuals deserving of all the love in the world, from whomever you choose.