Pride Number Five

Yesterday was the fifth Lexington Pride festival and probably the hottest in its history. Despite the oven-like temperatures, people from all across the tri-state area celebrated the GLBTQ community.

I've been to the Lexington Pride festival every year since 2008. The first year was very monumental for me. I had come out January of that year and just 6 months later I was walking through Cheapside letting my gay pride show to all of Lexington.

Pan the rainbow crowd

It was quite an experience to say the least. I went with my friend Robeij who had also recently come out. Together, we took some huge steps in maturing and developing as gay youth.

Wet homosexuals

Looking back, I can see how far I have come, how I started to realize that my identity as a person could never be summed up in one word, how I deserved more than what I settled for, how putting your happiness first isn't always selfish, and how powerful it is when people unite together for a common cause.

Dance like nobody's watching

The above picture is from Lex Pride 2009. I love this picture, because I remember this as a moment of hope for me. Many of us, especially in the gay community, face such adversity in our relationships. Those of us who are "out" still live in fear of persecution, religious altercation, and societal judgement in general. Seeing these two women dance and show their lasting love for each other was beyond amazing.

After Pride 2009, the location moved to the courthouse due to growth! In a very short amount of time, this festival had some extreme growing pains and needed room. The 2010 Lex Pride also started having local and national sponsors.

We knew him and C3PO were close but not that close!

As I was looking through all my facebook albums for pictures, I noticed that I always caption it with "hot". I suppose Pride being a hot, homorific day is not all that new.

I'm not sure if the leotard is scarier or the hand that is coming to get me

The outfits at Pride (any year) are always a hoot. This particular fella from Pride 2011 was great. From the frontview, nothing was left to the imagination. I'm pretty sure I could have told you what his kids would look like. 

Pride 2011 was an extra special year, because it was the first Pride that Emily and I went to as a couple. This is not to say I haven't gone to Pride with a girlfriend before, but, for me, going with Emily was great in that she got to see that it is possible to create a world where we can hold hands. We don't have to hide behind closed doors or around close friends. 

<3

So that brings us to Lexington Pride 2012. This was a great year in and of itself. We got to see so many people that we love. And, to me, I saw so many more gay parents this year with their children. It was heartwarming and hopeful. We signed the rainbow truck, had some beer, watching some drag shows, talked with friends, rain through a fountain, drank our weight in water, ate great food, and loved every minute and every one of it. 

LeeBroSto made it on the truck

Trans-itioning Through Hate

Too little purple and too much hate

Earlier this year, I was involved with gay & lesbian and feminist groups on my campus to raise awareness about trans issues. Admittedly, prior to this I had little knowledge of these issues myself. Although I have been relatively active in gay and lesbian issues in my community and on campus, I had never researched trans issues, because I did not feel like they related to me. I felt that it was not my battle; however, I've come to realize that the discrimination that trans people suffer are very parallel to anyone who is not a heterosexual male.

The suicide rate for transgender people is 50%. If you know two transgender people, then one of them has more than likely attempted suicide, perhaps even both. Depending on which website you read, gay and lesbian youth are five times more likely to commit suicide. They are three times more likely as adults. And, collectively, almost  non-heterosexual people suffer from discrimination.

Not only do transgender people (and GLBTQ individuals as well) suffer from suicide and discrimination, they are often the victims of violence and sexual harassment.

If you find these statistics appalling or what to know more about Trans issues, click "TranSouth". This is a digital version of the zine created last semester to raise awareness about transgender issues and learn more about transgender individuals

Look it Up!

Everyone thinks the the "look it up" mentality is a phenomenon. What I am referring to here is the idea that any time anyone is clueless about a certain piece of information, we immediately go to the internet to..well.."look it up." We have turned Google into a verb as well as IMDB (despite the clunky sound). With iPhones, smartphones, and even most pre-paid "cheap" phones, we have access to limitless amounts of information.

This concept is not new, not if you were raised like I was. Despite my family's modest means, we always manged to have access to dictionaries, thesauruses, and encyclopedias. Whenever I came upon information I didn't know, which was usually vocabulary, I would ask my mom who in turn would tell me to "Look it up."

In case you were thinking they were digital

After I got older, I began to believe that this response was because she was too prideful to admit that she didn't know the answer. After I looked a word up without asking her, I would drop the word into normal conversation to see if she looked confused. She never did.

The older I get the more I realize how much smarter my mother is than I am. All the time I spent trying to exploit why she made me look things up for myself was time spent learning vocabulary and history. It also taught me how to learn things for myself and even self-teach to some extent.

Some people say that the internet is making us stupid, and there may be logic to that, but I cannot help but wonder if those of us who love to "look it up" had folk who pushed us to always know more.

Bad Etiquette for Zombie Enthusiasts

On May 26th, police killed a man who was nakedly eating another man's face. The man who was attacked is recouping at a Miami hospital with obvious wounds to his head and also to his legs.

Because of the zombie-like behavior of the man, this Huffington post article has been shared almost 60,000 times with as many as 250,000 likes. What is scarier than the drugged out, disturbed individual in is article is the compassion, common decency, and humanism missing from my Facebook feed and from comments on the article itself. It seems this article has spurred zombie enthusiasts into their own feeding frenzy, clogging up their posts with jokes about melee weapons, guns, and other supplies necessary for a zombie apocalypse.

Now, before someone starts whining about me "ruining all their fun" and "it was only a joke" let me say that I am a huge fan of the zombie entertainment industry; however, you can be damn well sure I don't want a zombie apocalypse to happen even if it could (in the way portrayed by Hollywood anyways).Putting the joking about a man's death aside, there is nothing appealing about a zombie apocalypse. 

I highly doubt these will be your post-apocalyptic procreation choices

Besides being hunted every day of your life until you eventually die (sooner rather than later), your time will consist of foraging for food, learning weapons, contending for alpha(fe)male, building fortresses, tearing down fortresses, moving....in other words, think about that History Channel special about prehistoric men who may have lived during the dinosaurs and multiple that by your lucky number.

This isn't a joke, kids. This is a man's life. If you actually read the article and/or watch the video, you will notice that they say that the man was likely coked out of his mind. This is a very sad story, and I don't think the family of the man who almost died would appreciate the zombie nonsense.

Thoughts on a Side Story: J. Edgar

No plot spoilers that aren't in history

Last night I watched J. Edgar with some friends, and it turned out to be a better movie than expected. I'll shed some historic light on it, so you won't have to refer to Wikipedia constantly after the movie to understand what's going on. J. Edgar Hoover (no relation to Herbert Hoover, 31st president) is famous  for having started and directed the FBI. So, the movie is pretty much how the FBI comes to life, what J. Edgar has to do to make that happen, the crimes that take place, backlashes, adversity, etc. 

What I am more interested in are the side stories. This movie takes into account the rumor that J. Edgar was a closeted homosexual and had a relationship with Clyde Tolson, the associate director of the FBI. I believe that albeit this was a rumor which  could have exploited, it was actually represented very tastefully. It shows a confused J. Edgar who seems extremely tormented by his sexuality. And this story, which is gingerly touched on, is what truly affected me from the movie.

Tolson and Hoover in 1939

It affected me to think of how tormented poor J. Edgar was and how he lived his life the truest he could with Tolson and with apparently little to no physical contact. Of course, this movie focuses on Hoover, but what about Tolson, the man who reportedly loved Edgar for the rest of his life? He stayed his companion to the very end, so much so that he was Hoover's heir and inherited all he had. I'm sure Tolson would have traded that inheritance for one moment when they could have been true to themselves without fear.