Almost a year ago I went to a gathering Family Pride put together with Equality Texas. It was a media training meant to inform queer parents on how to deal with the media but, more than that, it was an opportunity to have the organizations meet would be queer media darlings for future stories.
At one point one of the Equality Texas staff (nameless) suggested my daughter and I could be on the cover of any number of pamphlets they had which shows a rainbow of faces, with pairs of adults and one or more children all around. I haven't gotten that call. I don't fit the preferred mold of queer parent: two, intelligent (possibly educated) adults in a committed relationship for 5 of more years, with kids (bi-racial or opposite gender from the parents is the best!) who happen to have a huge back yard with oak trees and a dog.
Talk about minority in a minority in a minority.
So, I get emails from Family Pride regularly. They are numbered to show the 52 things I can do to be an out and proud family. And I got one, sometimes two, emails a day awhile back when Kevin Bacon was "challenging" us to give money to this national organization. But I didn't get an email telling me they were having a coloring contest where children could draw their family and say why they loved their family. Well, that contest has ended and here are the winners. Of course, everyone is paired up. Are there no single queer parents out there?
Equality is no better. I would love to support them but with brunch fundraisers costing $75 minimum per person and not even a reduced amount for children (do we not have children?), it would be $150 just for me to watch my daughter play with the scrambled eggs with her fork and sneak the 3rd waffle so that later I'm cursing the maple syrup high she would walk out with.
I have to hand it to them, though. Initial emails from "friends of Equality Texas" didn't give prices and I actually debated going and realized that if I had to go 3 pages into a website to get the price for this brunch I could not afford it. Those guys at ET really have earned their degrees in media presentation, I'm telling you.
I'm going to a LGBT Legislative Townhall tonight to see the latest on some of lege work that may affect queers in Texas and the US.
Among them:
Before Congress
The Hate Crimes bill
The Employment Non-Discrimination Act
"Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" repeal
Before Texas lege
Hate Crimes bill
Insurance Nondiscrimination
Student Harassment Bill
Foster Children’s Bill of Rights
CPS reform
It's gonna be a fun night.
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