fashion clothes

Last week, I wrote up a list of all the things about my youngest that make me laugh.  That drive me crazy.  That he requires.  That he asks for.  That he needs.  I'll be going through the kids, one at a time, making these lists.  Today is about the oldest.  That kid who's taller than me now.


Just in case I ever make good on those thinly veiled threats to run away....

1) Make sure he always has lots of good pencils and paper.  He gets antsy when he runs low on his drawing supplies.  He likely won't ask for new stuff, so just check periodically if he needs any.

2) When he isn't feeling well, there will be marathons of Dr. Who, Star Wars and Must Love Cats.  There is no rhyme or reason that dictates which marathon will be viewed.  Eventually you'll get used to watching six hours of kittens on tv.  I promise.

3) Buy lots of cans of peas.  He likes cold, canned peas.  It makes me throw up in my mouth a little too.  I know.  He's gross.

4) When you're going to the store, ask him no fewer than three times if he needs any bathroom supplies.  Even then, be prepared for an emergency declaration of the fact that he's out of deodorant the following day.

5) He sings in the shower.  He sings whenever he's in the bathroom.  He sings in the car.  He sings a lot.

6) He's obsessed with his knit beanie hat right now.  If you're ever at the store and see something like it, buy five and stash them for later.

7) His feet grow every 37 days.  I'm convinced of this.

8) He likes to pull out baby teeth.  He's almost out of them. Thank god.

9) He'll ask you for a computer, but be perfectly content with a box of Legos.

10) He has a cell phone, but you shouldn't expect to be able to contact him most of the time.  I'm pretty sure his battery is always dead.  That's his story and he's sticking to it.

11) He flails.  A lot.  He comes by it honestly, though.  I blame myself.

12) It takes him 45 minutes to empty the dishwasher, an hour if you count the obligatory trip to the bathroom.  I swear it has a laxative effect.

13) He will do anything to get out of picking up dog poop.

14) He is adult sized, but will still sit on your lap if you let him.

15) He has a completely grounded, self-deprecating sense of humor.  He is goofy as hell.  He's hilarious and he makes me laugh all the time.

He would still totally do this.

16) He's a really good big brother.  Unless they touch his stuff.  He doesn't like it when they touch his stuff.

17) Every self portrait he's ever drawn has his signature mole.  His Mii on the Nintendo even has a mole.

18) When he was little, he called himself Annie because he couldn't pronounce the letter "d".  It became a nickname and he still answers to it.

19) He asks a million questions and is convinced his mother has all the answers. Start studying.

20) He's a big kid, but a gentle soul.  He's my calm in the storm.  He's mature when he needs to be.  He's thoughtful and kind.  He has a good heart.  Take care of it.

For the most part, I can say that the response to the post yesterday about gay marriage have been positive.  Supportive.

For the most part.

There is a small, but vocal group of people expressing outrage about gay marriage.

Most of the people I know who oppose it do their best to respect other people.  Many of them have resigned themselves to the fact that while this may be something they don't agree with, it is happening.

Some haven't. There are people who take it and run with it, citing bible verses and tradition, many of which who clearly don't understand the most basic functions of our government.  The people who claim they aren't dictating how anyone else should live their lives, yet in the same breath would deny rights purely based on someone's sexual orientation. Then there are all the people who'll hop on any current issue, just to distort it with their own agendas.

If you're tired of reading about gay rights, too bad.

People like me will stop talking about it when there is nothing to talk about anymore.


People like me will stop talking about it when everyone is treated equally in the eyes of the law.

People can debate gay marriage endlessly on Facebook and Twitter, on political television shows, on blogs like this one, but at the end of the day, very little of what anyone thinks matters anymore.

Public opinion doesn't much matter anymore.  Votes are irrelevant now.  Swaying the polls with money funneled by conservative churches won't do any good.  You can quote all the bible verses you want and it will get you nowhere.

The cases are at the Supreme Court, where the constitutionality of the laws are at issue.

Constitutionality has nothing to do with popular opinion.  Absolutely nothing.  In fact, the decisions handed down by the court quite often go against what the majority wants, for an important reason.

That reason is simple: the will of the majority is not always right.  It is not always in line with the Constitution. It's often quite contrary.

Just a few generations ago, interracial marriage was forbidden, schools were segregated, at the will of the majority.

We live in a Constitutional Democratic Republic.  It's not just a democracy, where the will of the majority wins out.  Our founders were smarter than that.  They understood the concept of the tyranny of the majority, and carefully drafted the Constitution to ensure there would be balancing interests.  They created ways to undo the will of the many.  To protect the interests of those without large and imposing numbers. To protect the rights of those marginalized by society.

To further protect the rights of those who would be oppressed, the founders established the Supreme Court and gave it the final say on the interpretation of the Constitution.

Some make the argument that gay marriage goes against God.  Although many people seem to believe so, this nation was not founded on Christian beliefs.  It is founded on the freedom to believe whatever you want, to practice or not practice whatever faith you choose.  Consequently, the laws are not to be dictated by religion.  The separation of church and state is well established.  Quoting bible verses will get you nowhere in a court of law, a court charged with interpreting a document which guarantees freedom and equality to all citizens.

Some make the argument that gay marriage shouldn't be legal simply for the sake of tradition.  To them I present this quote, taken from the Jefferson Memorial, voiced by one of the founders of our nation.

c : like for each member of a group, class, or society

Since today is the day that the United States Supreme Court is hearing argument in the case of California's Proposition 8, I figured it was just as good a time as any to tell this story.

I am a flaming liberal, an unflinching ally of the LGBT community, and will forever be so.

I've had friends I knew were gay since we were small children.  I have friends who came out in the hormonal, emotional years of adolescence.  I have friends who came out in college, to rooms full of   people who embraced them for what we already knew.  I have friends who stifled their orientation because society told them it was the right thing to do, who married and had kids with partners of the opposite sex because it was what they were supposed to do, only to come to terms with their identity years later.  I have friends who stayed in the closet until they were grandparents.

I have friends who are still afraid to come out.

Being gay in a society like ours isn't easy, not when there are sizable percentages of the population that proclaim that you are a sinner and flawed and broken, or that maybe if you just prayed harder God would fix you.  Our society is one where kids are tied to fences and left to die because of their orientation.  Where thousands of parents put placards into the hands of their children and stand them on street corners.  Where the funerals of fallen soldiers are a platform for hatred.

It's not just those people over there that spew hatred and intolerance.  It's not just those people who refuse to have compassion and love in their souls.  It's not just those people who refuse to heed the teachings of the very man they claim to follow, Jesus...you know the ones where you are supposed to love your neighbor as yourself, all that.

It's far more people than you'd realize.  People you know. People I know.

People like the family of the man I helped all those years ago.

This is his story.

*names will be changed because this story is real, and was from a time in my life when I was working in a legal capacity with clients*

While I was in law school, I worked with a legal aid group.  My area of focus was the AIDS clinic, and to qualify for our free services, clients had to be HIV+/AIDS patients, and have income levels below a designated point.  Unlike the other clinics, ours had a broad range of legal issues because we were serving a population, not a specific need per se.

I worked on debtor relief, I helped with Social Security Disability appeals, I helped resolve a lot of landlord/tenant disputes.  I wrote wills and advance directives.  I wrote a lot of wills and advance directives.

Back then, the cocktails of drugs to combat the disease were just coming into common usage.  More and more of our clients were surviving, which meant that they'd often have a new set of legal challenges.  If they'd spent their life savings thinking they were dying, then run up credit cards, they had to pay the piper when they got better.  If they had to stop working when they were too sick to do so, but were well enough now, they had to contend with being out of the marketplace for however long they were gone.

Even with the advances in medicine, every week or so, the phone would ring.  Someone else would be gone.

The youngest client I lost was a 23 year old man.  I held his hand the day he died, when I brought his will to the hospital for him to sign.  He literally had nothing to his name, but he wanted to make sure he'd done all he could to make this easier on his family.

The family that disowned him when he came out.

That happened a lot, to far too many of my clients.  The very people who brought them into this world rejected them because of who they were.

There is one client that hangs on to a bigger piece of my heart than the rest, though.

I first met John when he came into one of our satellite clinics.  I didn't work at those very often, spending more time in the office.  He was shy and nervous, unsure of what he was really there for. He was HIV+, but in relatively good health so far. He was starting to worry about seeing his friends dying, starting to worry about tying up loose ends, starting to worry about taking care of things.

He, like most of my clients, didn't have anything to his name.

Even still, he wanted a will.  He wanted the medical paperwork all filled out.

In the process of interviewing him for all that, I had to ask questions about who he wanted to make health care decisions in the event he became unable.  

He grew silent.  The tears welled up in his eyes, and I realized quickly why.  His family, like too many of the rest of them, had disowned him.  He had friends, yes, but most of them were sick too.  He had tried and tried to repair the relationship with his father especially for years, and been met time and again with rejection.

He was disgusting.  He brought shame to the family.  He was a freak.  He was a sinner and he was going to hell.  HIV was his punishment, and he deserved it.

This grown man sat across a table from me and cried.  And cried.  I did my best to console him, knowing that there was a hole in his heart too big for anyone else to fix.

He said something about wishing that he could just disown them too.  That since they wanted nothing to do with him, that he could start over as someone else.  That it was torturing him to carry around the name of a family that hated and rejected him.

I smiled.  I said that I was pretty sure we could do that.  He asked if I was serious, and I assured him that I was.

Though I'd never worked on one before, we got the ball rolling that day.  I drafted his will and medical paperwork too, knowing that I would have to do it all over in a few months, but knowing that it would all be worth it.

He legally changed his name.

The hearings for adult name changes are simple enough.  You just need to give public notice, and almost no one ever shows up to contest them.  His wasn't contested.

The day he walked into my office after the hearing, he was smiling ear to ear.

He had spent his entire adult life feeling like he wasn't good enough for them, and now he didn't have to anymore.

He was his own man.

I saw him once more when we signed his amended paperwork a few weeks later, then never saw him again.  Before he left that last time, he thanked me for changing his life.

Still, after all these years, he is my favorite client.  It was the easiest motion to file, but the best one.

I knew from that day forward that I would fight for the men and women like him, no matter who disagreed with me, no matter who hid behind the Bible, no matter who tried to tell me I was wrong.


So, today I stand here, united with my brothers and sisters.

For equality.

I spent all day today trying to get help for one of my kids. Answers. Reasons.

That phase we had hoped would be outgrown someday hasn't been.  It's not just a phase, it's more than that.

The first person I met with today, the psychologist.  The intro meeting, the info meeting, the warn them what they're dealing with meeting, the before the kid meets them meeting.

Giving a full history for both sides of the family, opening all the closet doors, digging up all the ugly skeletons and laying it out there for someone else to see is exhausting to say the least.

Let's just say we have the kind of history that tends to make even the most seasoned therapists flinch.

I'm going to assume that's not a good thing.

Combine all that with medical histories on both sides of anxiety, depression, addictions, anorexia and more....it's no wonder that my kids have issues.

I have issues.

Their father has issues.

Most of the people in our family have issues.

I just naively wished that they would somehow escape it all.  That they'd be able to go through life without all this excess baggage.  Without extra challenges in addition to whatever else life throws at them.  I wished that they would somehow defy the odds, and not take after us.

I was wrong.

The apple didn't fall very far from the tree at all.

Goddamn apple trees.

That all would have been draining enough, but I seem determined to get the ball rolling in every way I can to figure all this out.  Met with the pediatrician too.  The doctor who's known my kids since they were babies.  Who knows our history.  Who knows their quirks.  Who knows that what's going on isn't normal.  Who knows we need help.  Who called me on a weekend to talk about it all before I marched in there with my brave mama face on today, holding the hand of my child.

We can do this.

We will do this.

We will do everything we can to help them navigate this world, no matter what cards they are dealt, no matter how much the deck is stacked against them.

I've got my eyes wide open, and as much as it hurts to admit that so much of this comes from me, I'm doing it.  I'm owning it.  I'm staring it down in the mirror, and I'm seeing it in the eyes of my babies.

I'll be all the things the tree is supposed to be, even with it's flaws and knots, with it's twisted branches and spots of weakness.

I'll be strong and sturdy.  I'll weather the storms.  I'll shield them from harm, I'll raise them the best I can, I'll help them as much as I'm able.

They'll be the apples they are.  Beautiful, different, sweet and sour.  Delicate, yet full of life.  Some just a little more bruised than the others.

As much as it hurts, I'll let them fall.


I'll just be there to pick them up when they do.

It's not been a good week here, and the last few days have been bad.  Really bad.

Friday was actually a pretty fantastic day, the only part of the week that I didn't hate with everything I have.

My friends made me meet them for lunch. They give me a hard time pretty frequently about the fact that I rarely make public appearances.  I'm perfectly content to hole up in my house, and over the past few years and all the stuff that has gone down, I've found that it's usually better for me to avoid other humans.

I'm terrible at feigning interest in small talk, I can't rally behind people who complain about things constantly but never do anything to fix them, and I have bigger things going on than worrying about whether my kid lost their lunchbox or if soccer practice will be canceled on any given Tuesday.

It seems like there's always something bigger going on around here.

And I'm tired.

It's been like this for three and a half years now.

There are times, when I'm wallowing in my hole, wondering what the hell happened.  When just about every facet of my life is messed up beyond anything I could have ever imagined, I can't help but start wondering if it's some cosmic game, if it's some divine test, if life's just a raging bitch, or if it's me.

I tend to carry a lot of blame for things that weren't my fault.  I know that rationally, it makes no sense.  That these things would have happened regardless of what I could have ever done differently.  That other people made choices.  That sometimes shit just happens.  That genetics suck, that autoimmune diseases are assholes, that the apples don't fall far from the tree.

I wanted to run outside last night into the cold air and scream uncle.

I didn't.

Mostly because doing that would have just pissed me off more.

I am really angry right now.  Beyond angry, actually.  So angry that I know that I can't call him right now because I know that I can't control my anger.

And I'm worried.  And I'm hurting.  And I'm sad.

And I'm powerless to do anything to help.

I can't change anything.

I can't make it better.

I can't fix this.

It would have been nice if he told me when he should have. If he thought for even one second that I deserved to know.  If he could have put aside whatever he thinks about me, whatever he believes, and just been human long enough to pick up the phone.

It would have been nice.

But that's not how things work around here.

I could really go for a few months of boring monotony.

This kid.


Man, is he entertaining.

As I type this, he is simultaneously writing his letters on the worksheets I printed today (I so did not sign up for this homeschooling stuff btw), dancing, singing Katy Perry's Hot and Cold laced with lyrics from Born This Way by Gaga, and tearing apart a sticky eyeball.

We've spent way too much time together lately, me and this boy.

He's with me 24/7.  Save a few date nights and one or two nights out with the girls, he's been in my back pocket.  Firmly attached.

Since October.

His blood sugar issues are no less a mystery now than they were back then, and we've been stuck here in diabetes limbo for over five months. Together.  All.the.time.

He has to touch me.  He follows me to the bathroom and decides that's a great time to play 20 questions.  He's taken up sleepwalking at night, and inevitably lands in my bed.  When he falls asleep, he talks.  He is a tucker, wedging hands and feet under me at all times.

No one else can ever understand a word this kid says.  In need of speech therapy, he is.  I know what he is saying, I know what he needs, I know what he wants.  I know because I'm with him all the time.

Well, what if I'm not?

It could happen.

This isn't me being morbid or weird, just a handy list of my son's requirements for whoever might have to take care of the boy at some point if and when I'm not around.  I'll warn you in advance....he's quirky.

1) He drinks most of his daily intake of water between 2-4am.  I'm pretty sure he'll be in pull-ups at night until he goes to college.  Get used to buying them.

2) He despises jeans and prefers to wear what he refers to as "running pants".

3) He has a deep love and affection for oatmeal, but it has to be the kind you cook with milk. No shortcuts. You have to add a teaspoon of brown sugar after it's cooled off a little, but not too much. There are rules about these things. He prefers the dinosaur bowl.

4) He loves watching Jurassic Park and Godzilla, but is terrified of the Hulk.  I know it doesn't make sense.  Just accept this.

5) He sings the alphabet wrong.  On purpose.  It always ends with "W...Z".  Always.

6) He's a scab picker.  Don't say I didn't warn you.

7) He doesn't like showers, but will take a bath.  He refuses to consent to hair washing, so just use the baby shampoo like a ninja and say it's water.  Trust me.

8) He will ask you to feed him.  He never let us feed him when he was a baby, but thinks it's hilarious now.  You can say no, but that means also accepting that sometimes he won't eat.  Instead he will stand on his kitchen chair and shake his booty. The rest of the kids will stage a mutiny.

9) He prefers to be naked.  Some days just getting underwear on him is an accomplishment.

10) He's a daredevil that somehow never hurts himself.  He's like a cat.  He always lands on his feet and came with 9 lives.  Sometimes it's better not to watch when he's climbing rocks and banisters.

11) He will scream in the car.  Only when he's in the back row of the van and only when you're on a highway with nowhere to stop.  It's like he plans it.  Bring some earplugs.

12) He is convinced he's a big kid, but will happily curl up in your lap and take a nap.

13) He farts louder than anyone else in the house and will try to ride the dog.

14) He's a little OCD when it comes to handwashing.  If the water has been running more than a minute, you should go investigate.

15) He will cause all kinds of trouble when you're on the phone.  He has a sixth sense if it's an especially important phone call and will wait until then to do things like flush an entire box of tampons down the toilet or color himself purple.  He will do it whilst smiling and laughing maniacally.

16) He hates to stand in the corner, so it's the best way to punish him.  Until he sits down and falls asleep.  Then, not so much.

17) He has an enlarged lymph gland on his neck that will warn you when he's getting sick.  If you can see it get bigger, watch out.  It'll be a doozy.

18) If he's being a monster, check his blood sugar.  He's probably low.  He'll want to use the finger poker all by himself unless he's feeling really crappy. Let him. He does okay with it. Keep smarties in your purse.

19) He runs fast.  Really fast.  Practice.

20) He's my baby.  Please take care of him.  No matter how much he drives you crazy, he loves you.

In the light of the Steubenville rape case, the post I wrote yesterday and what Slice of Humble wrote today, I've seen almost unanimous agreement from both men and women that this has to stop.  That we have to slam our collective foot on the brakes until we grind it into the floorboards.  That something has to give.

But how?

How do we change a society that lacks empathy?

How do we put a stop to the sick things that the instant self gratification of the internet allows?

How do we teach children to respect others?

How do we ensure that victims can come forward safely?

It's a daunting task, for sure.  I know there are fellow writers attacking other angles of this, from the stigma of the victim label, to the life long effects on people, to the fact that rape doesn't just happen to drunk girls, to the fact that rape doesn't just happen to girls at all.

There are a few specific steps I have in mind, though, ways that we can reverse our society's distorted view of all this, ways that we can indeed take a stand.

Almost nothing changes overnight.  Almost nothing changes simply.  And almost all change starts with one person.

You.

Here's how we start.

We need to fire politicians who don't get it.
Those who claim there are legitimate rapes and illegitimate ones. Those who claim that women cannot become impregnated from rape. Those who seem to think we have magic voodoo vaginas to protect us. Those who buy into the notion that it's perfectly acceptable to lay fault at the feet of the victims. Those who look for loopholes and exceptions.  Fire them.

We need to demand that the media do the right thing.
Victims cannot live in fear of being outed by the media.  Victims cannot be further victimized by reporters.  The media cannot package and sell to the American public the idea that some criminals are less liable because they once had promising futures.

We need to demand equal punishment of rapists.
The person who rapes someone in an alleyway is no different than the husband who rapes his wife in their marital bed.  The charming football coach raping children in the shower is no different than the knife wielding stranger.  Rape is rape is rape is rape.  It is all wrong.  It is all crime.  No one that perpetrates this crime should be viewed as less culpable because of anything else in their lives.  At that moment, they willfully violated another human being.  Period.

We need to extend the statute of limitations on rape and sexual assault.
Every state is different, and while some don't have a limit on the time to allege forcible rape, most states range between 2-7 years for offenses of lesser degrees.  One thing I am hearing over and over and over again from people sharing their stories is that it often takes years for the victim to come to terms with what happened to them, years before they tell anyone at all, let alone consider pressing charges.  These offenders walk free indefinitely.

We need to take the statistics seriously.



This graphic resides on the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network's website.

We need to act.
We need more women like the blogger who saved screenshots of the Twitter feed before postings were pulled and less of the kids who stood by idly while it all took place.  We need more people who are willing to tell on their friends when they brag about violating someone else.  We need adults to be brave enough to do the right thing, so that those adults can teach their children to be brave enough to do the right thing.  We can't stand back and shrug our shoulders and claim there is nothing we can do.  We can't.

We need to teach children empathy.
We absolutely need to do this, and too many adults need a refresher lesson themselves.  Our society sees nothing wrong with mocking other people on websites and reality shows. We love to see a hero fall from grace.  Children are born to be selfish.  Toddlers truly believe the world revolves around them.  A decade later, when that child has been catered to, coddled, enabled, they become teens with perhaps the strongest weapon we could give them - cameras and unfettered internet access.  Tell your kids no.  Hold them accountable.  Stop making excuses for their misbehavior.  Discipline them.  Teach them to volunteer for the less fortunate so that they will understand what it's like to have not. Teach them to care about other people, about strangers, about people they've never met.  Spy on them when they are on their phones and computers - make sure they do all those things, and be willing to take it all away if they aren't.  Is it hard?  Hell yes it is, but no one said parenting was easy.  Just do it.

We need to stop forgiving faults in exchange for talent.
Michael Vick can throw a ball, so we will forgive his dog fighting.  Ray Lewis tackled a lot of people, so we'll ignore that whole murder charge thing.  Chris Brown beat his girlfriend, but can sing a catchy tune.  Those kids in Ohio played football, so we'll try to cover up the rape.  No.  No, no, no.  I don't care how great someone is at something, if they have talents and abilities that most of us don't.  I don't care if they are popular and well-liked.  I don't care if they hold promise or have already accomplished great things.  A rapist is a rapist is a rapist.  No free passes, no lesser charges, no sympathy card.  We need to hold them all accountable.

Teach sex education, all of it.
Stop believing that if we teach children to be abstinent that they will be.  Stop falling for the idea that if we buy them a chastity ring and make them promise to wait that they will.  Some of them might, but most of them won't...no matter what you do.  We have to equip these children not just with the physical realities of their bodies and everyone else's, but with the realities of sexual abuse and assault.  They need to be taught that their bodies are their temples, their sacred places, that they belong to them only and that only they should decide what happens with them.  Then they need to be ingrained with the idea that the same holds true for every.single.person.in.the.world.  No one has the right to tell anyone else what to do, to force them to do it, to take the chance to do it of their own volition because someone is drunk and passed out.  We need to teach children about the ugly truths in life before they find out the hard way or hurt someone else.

Teach kids to drink responsibly.
This one will catch me some heat, I know it.  Maybe even more than the sex education idea.  Truth time again, mom and dad....ready?  Your kids are going to drink.  It doesn't matter if you tell them not to.  It doesn't matter if it's illegal.  It doesn't matter if they are underage.  They are going to do it.  The more I think about it, the more I realize we do it all wrong in this country.  In many European countries, the legal drinking age is 16, but you can't get a license to drive until you are much older.  Imagine that?  Imagine giving kids a few years to figure out how alcohol affects them before we put them behind the wheel and send them out into the world.  I'm not advocating that parents get their kids drunk, but I am very much advocating truthfulness between parents and kids about drinking.  About how much is too much.  About when to stop.  About how to identify when you need help.  About avoiding blackouts.  About keeping your senses about you.  About calling when you need a ride, or anything feels wrong.  About not being afraid to make that call because the child doesn't want to get in trouble.

I'm sure that there are more ideas out there, more ways to change this societal distortion.

Demand better.



Raise the Bar.

1 in 4 women will be the victim of sexual assault in her life time.  Take a look around you right now.  If it's not you, it's someone you know and love.

Though I'm not technically sure whether I fit the criteria since I was able to fight off my attacker and escape, I am a victim.

I was 15.

My attacker was a 15 year old boy.  A friend.  A good friend.

Until something in him flipped and he decided to try and overpower me, force me to do things against my will, locked me in a bathroom and scared the shit out of me.

I am thankful for years of martial arts training for saving my ass that day.

Did I press charges?  No.

Did I tell my parents right away?  No.

Did I tell our circle of friends?  No.

Did I tell ANYONE?  No.  

I didn't because I was afraid, even back then, that the events would be distorted.  That I would be somehow blamed, responsible.  That my shorts were too short.  That I'd looked at him the wrong way.  That I'd said something he misinterpreted.  That I asked for it.  That I was a whore.  That I was easy.

That he wasn't to blame.

That he was just a boy being a boy.

That it was crazy teenage hormones.

Stop.

Stop right here for a moment and think about that.

What if I was your sister?  What if I was your friend?  What if I was your daughter?

Rape is not about sex.  Rape is about power.  It is about control.  It is not perpetrated by horny young men without an ability to control themselves.  It is perpetrated by criminals with intent to hurt someone else for the sake of making themselves feel bigger, stronger, greater, better.

I think all the time about what might have happened if I hadn't been able to fight back enough, if he'd gotten his way.

Then I think about what might have happened if it all went down now, in this generation.  If he had a cell phone and a Twitter account.  If he took pictures of what he did and showed them to anyone who wanted to see.  If those people who saw the pictures did nothing.  If there were other people there when he took them, and none of them did anything to stop him.

Then I think about what might have happened if I was drunk when it went down.  I drank a lot back then, way more than an irresponsible teenager should have.  I blacked out sometimes.  It could have happened.  If it had happened at a party and there was more than one guy.  If they passed me around like a toy.  If they thought I was dead and laughed about it.

This is what happened to the girl in Ohio.

The guy who attacked me wasn't an athlete.  He wasn't a great student.  He didn't have a wonderful future waiting for him.  These kids in Steubenville, did, so the media says.  They were good students, great football players.

Why should that matter?

Who gives a shit?

It does not change the fact that they are criminals.  Sexually violent criminals.

They didn't make a mistake.  They didn't have hormones raging out of control.  They are criminals.

If we are going to give boys like them a pass or feel sympathy for them because they are hormonal and drunk, then what are we saying about boys in general???  That they simply lack the ability to control themselves?  That they are not capable of empathy?  That they are just automated semen machines waiting for something to hump after a few beers? That if they have talents in some other area, we'll let violent sex crimes go?

No.

Men are more than their irresistible primal urges, and women are more than holes waiting to be penetrated.

Does that make you uncomfortable???

GOOD.  It should.

Raise the goddamn bar, society.

Hold these kids accountable for what they've done.  Stop feeling sorry for the ones here who had a choice in what happened, regardless of what their GPAs were.  Stand up in support of this girl, for speaking out about what happened to her, doing something I did not do out of fear, even though she knew that there would be horrible consequences.

These boys are criminals; criminals that should have been tried as adults in my opinion, if not for the actions that took place that night, for what they did after they sobered up.  They did unspeakable things to this girl, treated her like a piece of meat.  She's since had to deal with even more abuse at the hands of the rest of the school, and now by the media.

It doesn't matter that she was drunk.

It doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter.

Rape is rape.

We need to stop allowing this twisted society we live in to portray these boys as victims, we need to give the victims incentives to come forward - like protecting their identity on the nationwide news, we need to stop allowing our politicians to qualify rape with words like legitimate, we need to stop believing that if we teach our girls to dress conservatively and not to drink that they'll be safe.

We need to start teaching our children, ALL OF OUR CHILDREN, male and female, to respect other people.

We need to teach them empathy and compassion.

We need to teach them that rapists are criminals and that victims aren't to blame.

We need to teach them that there are consequences for hurting other people, and that society isn't going to give a damn how well they can catch a ball once they are sitting in a defendant's chair.

Raise the bar.

The state which I now call home has a long and controversial history in the area of gay rights.  All the way back in the early 90's, Amendment 2 was passed, which basically prohibited the LGBT community from asserting that their orientation could be grounds for discrimination.

Even all those years ago, most people knew that such a law was preposterous, as there are very real and legitimate claims to discrimination against people within those communities.  The challenge of that law went all the way to the Supreme Court, where it was found unconstitutional as a violation of the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause in Romer v. Evans.

I remember when the amendment was passed, and I remember thinking that the people of Colorado weren't just in denial, but that they were cruel and uncaring in the level of disdain shown to this population.  After all, back then, I lived in California...one of the most liberal places in the country, right?

Wrong.

I underestimated the power of conservative churches to influence the outcome of elections where measures pertaining to gay marriage were on the ballot.  I was sickened to see pictures of children holding signs on street corners proclaiming gay marriage to be a sin back when Proposition 8 was on the ballot in California in 2008.

Here, when Amendment 43 was on the ballot in 2006, the same war was waged, largely at the hands of conservative churches.

Both California, the otherwise ultra liberal state, and Colorado, the place I call home now, have the state Constitution amended to define marriage as only between one man and one woman.

The legal case challenging Proposition 8, Hollingsworth v. Perry, was granted certiorari and will be decided by the United States Supreme Court this year.  This case will inevitably affect all states, like Colorado, that have enacted similar laws.  Arguments are scheduled to take place next week.

There is also a case pending at the Supreme Court challenging the federal Defense of Marriage Act under the 5th Amendment's equal protection clause, as the law refuses to recognize marriages deemed legal by states that have allowed gay marriage.

In light of all the uncertainty surrounding the legal definition of marriage, and what a state may or may not be allowed to legislate in terms of it, Colorado quietly passed a law last week granting the right to establish civil unions to gay couples.  

Colorado, the state that tried to tell LGBT people that they had no grounds for discrimination, the state that went to the extreme of amending the state constitution to ensure they would never be allowed to marry, just passed a law allowing civil unions.

There is a large and growing percentage of people here in Colorado, and across the nation, who believe that gay marriage is an inevitability.  Of note, 54% of Catholics are in favor of gay marriage, in direct contradiction to church teachings.

There are those who hold strong to the idea that marriage is a sacred union between a man and a woman only, and that everything but that is acceptable.  Those who seem to believe that the word marriage is deserving of a special category granted only to relationships they decide are worthy of it.

Some claim it's purely a semantic argument, at least in the states where civil unions are allowed, because all the same legal rights and responsibilities exist within the civil unions as with marriage.

I go further, though, and I say it's not just a semantic argument.  Civil unions aren't enough.  Marriage is marriage is marriage.  Anything less cannot be the same.

Trying to say that a civil union is just as good as marriage even though we define them completely differently is akin to that infamous phrasing used back in the days when people fought against school integration.

Separate but equal.

Separate but equal is a fallacy.  The court knew it then, the court will see it now.  I have confidence in that truth.

Here, in Colorado, the state legislature did the most they could.  They passed civil unions.  Under the existing state constitution, they couldn't legalize marriage.  After the Supreme Court issues opinions, I suspect that will change.

The Speaker of the House here in Colorado, Mark Ferrandino, is gay. The first openly gay Speaker here in the state.  He said that this bill is about family, love and equality.

Which is exactly what this is about.  Gay rights aren't just gay rights.  They are human rights.  Basic human rights.  Singling out people based on their race or ethnicity was wrong, but was something done legally for years in this country.  Limiting rights of women was legal too.  The time has come to recognize that restricting rights based on sexual orientation falls into the same category.

They are all antiquated, outdated notions of discrimination.

The Constitution protects everyone, equally.

When the story ran in the Denver Post last week about the passage of the law, a picture accompanied it.  This picture.

Colorado Speaker Mark Ferrandino and his partner Greg Wertsch, courtesy of the Denver Post

I see a successful leader and the love of his life, celebrating a moment of happiness.  Joy.

Other people are disgusted.  Sickened by the fact that a baby bottle sits on the desk.  Repulsed by the image, asserting that public displays of affection are wrong.  The opinion section of the paper yesterday was full of outrage.

For this.

Until we can look at a picture like this and see it no differently than a picture of a man and a woman sharing a very simple gesture of affection, we've got work to do.

Change doesn't come quickly or easily, and there will always be opposition to it, but change is gonna come.

If you're new to the hive, you should know that I am a geek.  A dork.  Goofy as hell.  I make a lot of references to geeky things, and this may have happened last Halloween.


Batman, the little one in the front, is the daredevil of the family.  Tiny Evel Knievel, he is.

The kid is literally afraid of nothing.  He is pretty sure that he's at least twice his actual size.  I've found him on top of the refrigerator fairly recently.  He routinely climbs the outside of the banister. He'll jump off of just about anything.  He was riding a two wheeler bike before two and got in trouble for doing flips off the side of the pool last year during swimming lessons.

If you ask him, he'd probably tell you that he is actually Batman.

His goal in life, right now, is to win American Ninja Warrior.  He has an obstacle course he runs in the house, scaling the railing of the stairs to finish.

He holds the tarantula at the museum here locally, he roars at the lions at the zoo.  He was mad that he was too small to go on the good rides at Disneyland.

Fearless.

Except for one thing.

He has something that we refer here to as his kryptonite, and it's something I would have never expected a kid like him to be afraid of.

Car washes.

He absolutely is terrified of the car wash.  He hyperventilates when we get near one, crying hysterically.  He has a designated face of terror reserved only for the moments when someone mentions how dirty the car is getting.  He cringes every time I get gas at a station that has a car wash.

I have no idea why or when this started, but it was getting really severe.  I think it's a claustrophobia thing.  My grandmother was claustrophobic, and I remember it well.  She was afraid of the car wash too.  She used to close her eyes, turn up the radio loud and sing the whole way through.

He comes by it honestly.

Since he's with me all the time these days because of the diabetes thing right now, I don't have time to get the car washed when he's at school.  So, for months and months and months, I didn't get the car washed.

It got dirtier and dirtier.

We've gone through the entire winter season without a car wash, because this kid's mom didn't want to torture him.  Three months or more of dirt, road grime, mag chloride, splashback, half assed attempts at cleaning windows....that bad. It was all well and good until the oldest wrote SUCK IT on the back window.

Superman messed with Batman.

Turd.

I knew then that it was time, we had no choice, the car needed washed.  I'm not driving around with SUCK IT on the back window.

There is a new car wash on the other side of town with clear glass sides, I thought maybe we'd give it a go.  I was getting desperate.

We pulled up to the entrance and little boy started breathing faster.  He was fidgeting in his seat.  Once we were on the conveyor belt and he realized he could see, he started laughing.

Maniacally, of course.

When we pulled out, he was pumping his fists in the air and carrying on about how awesome the car wash was.  Ran home to tell Daddy right away that he went to the car wash.

Conquering fears, we are.

I forgot what my van looked like clean.  I have to get used to what it is supposed to look like again.


Take that, General Zod.