I'm A PFLAG Mom

May 24

Gayest Cities in America 2012 | Advocate.com -

Road Trip?

oh-voldey-voldemort asked: I just wanted to say thank you. I think more people like you need to exist. Educated and supportive. Thank you.

thank you very much.♡♡

Anonymous asked: I'd like to explain to my parents that my boyfriend is trans*. They don't know. They also don't know I have dated women before. I know there are going to be a lot of questions and I am ready for them. My biggest concern is how to explain to my parents that he is the guy they have always thought he was and not the man he is with an anatomy of someone they have never seen me with. How do I properly, from the first step, educate them about the difference?

This is a very difficult and personal question. Personal in that it will vary with each individual in question. My son and his girlfriend went though a similar situation- when to tell her mom that her bf was trans. When to tell them, how to tell them, IF to tell them… My best GUESS is to tell them he is transgender and have educational material on hand or in your head- ready to start the process. I would also suggest you ask people who have personally experienced this on sites like FYFTM and maybe Adrain and Zak’s (my son) Art of Transliness. You might also get good info from Zak’s gf’s tumblr Soffasupport. These are people who can give you their own personal experiences and how it went. Do emphasize that there is nothing different about him that would concern them—— and your sex life is nobody’s business so you should not have to answer any questions on that. Therefore, you are just telling them because you want them to know one part of your bf’s life and that’s about it. ♡

genderedintelligence: In conjunction with the LGBT Consortium, Gendered Intelligence has produced a ‘A guide for parents and family members of trans people in the UK’. We hope that this might offer parents and family members some information about what it means to be trans, how it might feel as a parent or family member of a young trans person, and perhaps most importantly, a bit of advice on how to move forward after a young person has shared their trans identity with their family. This booklet was compiled through a series of focus groups with parents and family members of young trans people.  It is available online here, or you can order hard copies on our website. Gendered Intelligence also runs ‘SOFFA’ youth group sessions every quarter, which are for significant others, family, friends and allies to come along with trans young people, meet other families of trans people and gain support. More details of our next SOFFA session will be posted soon on our tumblr.

genderedintelligence:

In conjunction with the LGBT Consortium, Gendered Intelligence has produced a ‘A guide for parents and family members of trans people in the UK’. We hope that this might offer parents and family members some information about what it means to be trans, how it might feel as a parent or family member of a young trans person, and perhaps most importantly, a bit of advice on how to move forward after a young person has shared their trans identity with their family.

This booklet was compiled through a series of focus groups with parents and family members of young trans people. 

It is available online here, or you can order hard copies on our website.

Gendered Intelligence also runs ‘SOFFA’ youth group sessions every quarter, which are for significant others, family, friends and allies to come along with trans young people, meet other families of trans people and gain support. More details of our next SOFFA session will be posted soon on our tumblr.

(via artoftransliness)

Welcome End of a Pseudotheory -

The claims that homosexuality is a choice have been discredited now that a giant in psychiatry has renounced his own study that said gay people could be cured.

Obama’s LGBT Outreach program -

MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts speaks with Joe Solmonese, President of the Human Rights Campaign and Obama campaign co-chair, about President Barack Obama’s new outreach to the LGBT community.

May 23

[video]

BAZINGA! -

Emmy-winning Big Bang Theory actor Jim Parsons has revealed he’s gay in a profile in the New York Times.

Full story here: http://www.queerty.com/big-bang-theorys-jim-parsons-comes-out-in-ny-times-profile-20120523/#ixzz1viwPW3lv

May 22

Today is Harvey Milk Day. -

gaywrites:

Today we honor the birthday of Harvey Milk, one of our community’s most influential activists and most passionate leaders.

Milk stood up for equality for LGBT people when few had given it a passing thought. He organized thousands of people, many of whom had nowhere else to turn, around a common cause. He was one of many invaluable founders of the gay rights movement as we know it, and I am certain the world would be a different, more hurtful place had it not been for his courage and leadership.

At the site above, brought to you by the Harvey Milk Foundation, you can learn more about different remembrance events taking place across the country or brainstorm ways to get involved. Today’s an important day, and we should honor it.

What will you do?

(via boimeetsboi)

May 21

Careful not to judge others

So easy to judge Catholics as a group. But it is important to look at individuals. My very supportive husband, my son’s loving  father, is Catholic. They have that Pope and all but Catholics don’t speak with one voice. Also see Dignity USA.
German Catholic Cardinal Calls for Equal Treatment of Same-Sex Relationships

Posted May 21st, 2012 by John M. Becker

There seem to be cracks in the rampant institutional bigotry of the Roman Catholic hierarchy. Last weekend, New Ways Ministry – a pro-LGBT Catholic ministry founded by the courageous Sr. Jeannine Gramick (whom the Vatican attempted to silence after she refused to renounce her support for the LGBT community) —postedabout a fascinatingstoryfrom a German English-language newspaper called The Local. Apparently, in an address to a conference of 60,000 Catholics in Mannheim, Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki of Berlin called for an end to the Catholic Church’s refusal to recognize and affirm loving, committed same-sex relationships:

 Hetolda crowd on Thursday that the church should view long-term, faithful homosexual relationships as they do heterosexual ones:

“When two homosexuals take responsibility for one another, if they deal with each other in a faithful and long-term way, then you have to see it in the same way as heterosexual relationships,” Woelki told an astonished crowd, according to a story in the Tagesspiegel newspaper.

Woekli acknowledged that the church saw the relationship between a man and a woman as the basis for creation, but added that it was time to think further about the church’s attitude toward same sex relationships.

Francis DeBernardo, Executive Director of New Ways Ministry, pointed out that Woelki joins a chorus of Catholic voices demanding a change in the way that church views LGBT people:

Last December, London’s Archbishop Vincent Nichols made headlines by supporting civil partnerships for lesbian and gay couples in the U.K. That same month, Fr. Frank Brennan, a Jesuit legal scholar in Australia, also called for similar recognition of same-sex relationships. In January, Bishop Paolo Urso of Ragusa, Italy, also called for recognition of civil partnerships in his country.

March of 2012 saw an explosion of questioning from prelates of the hierarchy’s ban on marriage equality. At New Ways Ministry’s Seventh National Symposium, Bishop Geoffrey Robinson of Australia called for a total re-examination of Catholic sexual ethics to allow for, among other things, moral approval of same-sex relationships. The Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire, supported a billthat would legalize civil unions (albeit as a stopgap measure to prevent marriage equality). Bishop Richard Malone of Portland, Maine,announced that the diocese would not take an active rolein opposing the state’s upcoming referendum on marriage equality, as it had in 2009. In Italy, Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini of Milanstatedin hisbook, Credere e Cognoscere (Faith and Understanding), that “I do not agree with the positions of those in the Church who takes issue with civil unions.”

Just last week, dozens of current and former Catholic priests in Minnesota held apress conferenceto announce their opposition to a proposed constitutional marriage discrimination amendment on the ballot in that state this November.

As I’vesaid before, prelates like Cardinal Woelki of Berlin who dare to challenge their church’s persecution of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people face a very real risk of retribution from their superiors. Their acts of courage should be commended, so that this positive and encouraging trend can continue.

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