Family by Fate and by Choice

I come from a large family. I'm the oldest of six - a brother and four sisters. My Aunt Bea, my mother's sister, had ten children. Of all those kids, one turned out gay - one of my cousins, who lives in North Carolina with his partner. Of my siblings, only two of us had children - my brothers' two sons, and my two daughters. One of my daughters is gay.

Why the family history? Because although the vast majority of the marriages and partnerships in this family are heterosexual, we're still an LGBT family. Most families, if you cast the net wide enough to encompass a family reunion, are LGBT families.

Families come in so many permutations, and the one that today's American fundamentalists insist is the only one, isn't. Family is a malleable concept, changing based on the culture, the times, and the human spirit.

As far as I'm concerned, a family exists when the people within it call themselves a family. Whether they're the same gender or not, whether they have children or not, whether they are the same generation or multiple generations, they are family. Let no man cast them asunder.

Sounds like Bull to me

This has to be a drive-by post; lots of house cleaning and car cleaning going on today. Many others have commented quite eloquently on LaLa the Mayor's "decision" to not sign a proclamation or approve a parade permit for the nearly 20-year-old Pride Parade. He says a "personal lifestyle choice" should not be "endorsed by government."

There are a lot of things that are personal lifestyle choices: wearing expensive clothes, borrowing money from friends who you give government business to, attending a Christian church, participating in medieval Catholic rituals. Being gay is just not one of them.

What a fool.

Two Boats and a Helicopter

Once there was a man whose house was in a flood. He stood on the porch as the waters rose. A boat came by, the driver urged the man to get on board but the man said he was waiting on the Lord to save him. The waters rose, the first floor was flooded and as the man looked out his second story window, another boat came to rescue him. The man turned the boat away, saying he would wait for God to rescue him. Finally he was clinging to the chimney on the roof. A helicopter flew overhead and dropped down a ladder. The man waved it off, saying Jesus would save his life. Finally he was swept away in the waters and drowned. At the pearly gates, he saw God and said, Lord, all my life I did as you asked but when the time came you did not save me. And God said, "I sent you two boats and a helicopter, what else did you want?"

Mayor Larry Langford wants us all to pray and wear burlap and ashes, so we'll stop shooting each other. "We're hoping this will get the attention of God as we humble ourselves and say to God, `We need you desperately,'" one citizen says. "We need to humble ourselves and ask God to forgive us, and he will heal our land," proclaims a preacher. Langford tells the people at his revival meeting to pray for an end to the violence plaguing the city.

Here's another story: In Wisconsin, parents let their little girl die. She was sick, from diabetes it turns out, but they wouldn't take her to a doctor because they believe in the Bible and that prayer would heal her.

Langford and his preachers and an awful lot of Birmingham's citizens are like those parents.

Why do you think that you do not already have the attention of God? And more importantly, what exactly do you expect God to do? Are you waiting for some magical light from the sky that will transubstantiate bullets into butterflies? Perhaps you expect every thug and miscreant in the metro area to simultaneously have a Road to Damascus experience. Maybe you will wake up tomorrow, the ashes still gritty on your forehead, and all the falling down houses and unkempt yards miraculously will have picket fences and fresh bright paint.

Or maybe, just maybe, God wants you to get out there and do the work. Maybe he has sent you what you need, but you're ignoring it because you'd rather make a spectacle. That way it looks like you're doing something. But in reality, your child is dying.

It must be the ZIP Code

I've gotten two robocalls for Republicans in the last three days. Don't know why they're calling me, except that I live in a ZIP Code that includes a lot of rich people.

The McCain call was actually pretty benign. It was recorded by an Alabama person (I didn't take notes unfortunately). He talked about how McCain was the best person to lead us in the war against radical Islamic terrorism, and he invoked the sacred name of Reagan.

UPDATE: Just got another McCain robocall, this one from McCain himself. He's ready to lead the nation as a Reagan Republican. Lower taxes and return "our party" to the small government principles it was founded on. Secure our borders, appoint conservative justices like Alito. Protect the sanctity of life, which his 24-year record supports. Best qualified to fight our relentless enemy of radical Islamic terrorism. We can and will win this war.

(Good thing he's not promoting the sanctity of marriage, considering his record in that regard. And it seems like saying he wants to return to small government roots is a bit of a dig on the current Republican party, no?)

The scary one came today from Mike Huckabee, who recorded the message. Sounding oh so sincere, he talked about how he was the one to further conservative principles and be a leader for "conservatives like us." His main focus - and this is what scares me - was how he would immediately get to work on a federal "life" amendment and a federal "marriage" amendment. No details of what those actually entail; I assume his target audience responds like Pavlov's dogs to the words and doesn't need an explanation.

He also talked about how he "cut taxes 94 times" when he was governor and that he would be the person to promote "the values of Alabama."

Not a word from Huckabee about the economy or Iraq, which as we know are the main issues people care about. At least McCain, misguided as he might be, acknowledged the issue.

Most of us, regardless of our political bent, are a lot more concerned about whether they'll have a job and be able to pay the mortgage, or whether their family member or friend is going to come back from Iraq in a flag-draped coffin. They really don't care about the homosexuals and they barely care about abortion. They might parrot the lines that the preacher gives them on Sunday, but in day to day life they are a) more tolerant and b) more realistic than Huckabee seems to give them credit for.

If you must vote on the Republican ballot, please for the sake of our nation, vote for anyone but Huck. That kind of narrow minded dogmatic thinking doesn't deserve the respect of your vote.

Beyond the Pro-Choice Cliche

The Birmingham News ran its annual "Roe v. Wade is bad and women are stupid" editorial today. I've gotten to the point that I don't even get mad at them any more, because it's the same old stuff. Abortion kills babies. Women are idiots. Just Trust Us.

Well, I have decided that I am beyond pro-choice. I am pro-abortion. Perhaps a stupid thing to say on the Internets, but damn it I'm tired. I was annoyed when NARAL changed their name from National Abortion Rights Action League to a meaningless acronym. I think "pro-choice" is a weak and meaningless word and "right to choose" is a meaningless phrase. We gave power to the forced-birth advocates (I will not call them pro-life because they're not) when we stopped claiming abortion, and now we're letting them set the terms of the debate.

There shouldn't even be a debate. Abortion is a medical procedure. Any woman who gets pregnant should have access to an abortion if she wants one, and I don't care why. It's none of my business. It's not the government's business, and it's not some sidewalk preacher's business either.

And, you anti-abortion folks who might actually read this, remember - if you think abortion should be illegal "except" - except for rape victims for example - they YOU are pro-abortion. You just think the government should be making a decision instead of the individual.

This is the letter to the editor that I sent in to the Birmingham News. We'll see if they print it.

I gladly celebrate the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision. That Supreme Court decision recognized that every citizen has a right to make personal medical decisions without the interference of the government.

Roe v. Wade means that no politician can force me to bear a child against my will. Without the right to abortion, the state can decide for me whether I should have a child.

Once the government is the one making the decision, then you have had your rights taken away. If today the government can force you to have children by prohibiting abortion, then tomorrow it can force you to not have children by requiring abortion, e.g. China.

If you want to speak out against abortion or even demonstrate across the street from a clinic, I completely support your right to do so. It's a free country. And I want it to stay that way.

Il viaggio a Italia

Real life interfered with blogging life for a while. I had a lot of work to catch up with, and then I was preparing for a fabulous two-week visit to Italy with my mother. She goes to Italy every couple of years, and it's my turn to go with her. We will go to Pompeii, Florence, Bergamo and Como (the last two are in Northern Italy in the mountains). I set up a travel blog, please visit!

Not enough lipstick

So now our fiscally responsible Jefferson County Commission wants to hire 'em some PR. According to an article in the Birmingham Business Journal, they've put out an RFP (Request for Proposal) for someone to do "multimedia public relations including radio, television, newspapers and magazines."

OK, so are these the same "radio, television newspapers and magazines" that the Commission thinks AREN'T telling the great things the county is doing? The "media" who are just focusing on the negatives - you know, like cutting out $26 million dollars from arts programs that are one of those positive things that we could tell people about except well, we won't HAVE them anymore.

And I guess these are the same media outlets that get eleventy-hundred self-serving press releases a day (full disclosure - as a PR person I've sent my share of them, which is how I know this) and the commission actually thinks that their PR guy/gal is going to get a serious reading of them?

No, what will happen is that the firm will come back and tell the Commission that they will have to buy time if they want their message out. And that's more taxpayer money getting spent to tell taxpayers they're not getting ripped off, that everything is fine, just move along now, and whatever you do, don't look behind the curtain.

In 2004, the County Commission had a $250,000 contract with a PR firm, and that didn't even include the cost of the ads. By 2006, the county had spent $202,000 for PR work over 15 months, and $320,000 more to print and mail four newsletters (Birmingham News, April 2, 2006)

There's always a question about how money could be better spent, but considering that the County Commission is thought of just as highly (actually lowly) today as it was in 2004, even though it's a new group, the argument could be made that $570,000 of OUR money was spent on programs that didn't work. Maybe it could have been better spent on crime prevention programs or parks or potholes.

If you're doing your job, a communications or PR pro can help you communicate with the public. If you're doing a lousy job, the only thing PR does is wastes money and makes the public and press even more cynical. And if you keep doing it, then, well, it's the definition of insanity.

Sorry guys, you can call yourselves fiscally responsible conservatives, but you're just trying to put lipstick on a pig.