Lesbian quotes for the NEW YEAR

Love is when you look into someone's eyes and see their heart.

Having a vagina doesn't stop me from believing that my balls are bigger than yours.

You can always tell who the strong women are. They are the ones you see building each other instead tearing each other down.

You are the peanut to my butter, twinkle in my eye, shake to my bake, blue in my sky, sprinkles on my sundae, flip to my flop, bumble to my bee, jewel on my crown, milk to my shake, spring in my step, beat of my heart, love of my life.

You don't need someone to complete you. You only need someone to accept you completely.

Another lesbian for straight women's rights.

Courage is being yourself everyday in a world that tells you to be someone else.

A strong woman stands up for herself. A stronger woman stands up for everyone else.

Gay rights are human rights.   --Hillary Clinton

I am not afraid of my truth anymore and I will not omit pieces of me to make you comfortable.

You will forever be my always.

Don't be afraid to show your true colors.

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind.

As I've grown older I've learned that pleasing everyone is impossible but pissing everyone off is a piece of cake.

Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.

My only regret is that I didn't tell enough people to fuck off.

Don't judge me by my past, I don't live there anymore.

Authenticity requires vulnerability, transparency and integrity.

If you want to be trusted just be honest.

Patience allows life time to fall into place.

Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn.

Only a fool trips on what is behind her.

The way I see it you have to take every chance you get because there may not be another one. You have to learn from your mistakes, because nobody's perfect. You have to laugh, love and live everyday as if it's your last.   --Mary Kate Olsen

I'm the rainbow sheep in my family.

Hate Against The LGBT Community

Open hostility against the LGBT community is less severe in the US than in many other countries, but unfortunately bullying, harassment, and sometimes even violence against people based on their real or perceived sexual orientation does occur. Whether or not you need to worry about harassment largely depends on where in the US you live. People living in rural areas and small towns as well as much of the South and the MidWest are known for being intolerant of LGBT individuals, whereas people in many big cities are known for being very open and accepting. 

General public acceptance of the LGBT community continues to increase each year, but a large proportion of the US population is still opposed to guaranteeing homosexuals equal rights in all areas of life. Unfortunately, these groups, which are usually religiously and politically conservative, generally show very strong opposition. Although the LGBT community continues to gain more rights each year and same-sex marriage is now legal in 18 states, a very vocal group continues to proclaim that the future of the American Family and the very natural order itself are threatened by these changes. 

Homophobia is a particularly troubling problem when it comes to LGBT youth. 8 out of 10 LGBT students report being bullied in school because of their sexual orientation. This can have devastating psychological effects then and later in life. The rights of transgender people are often less clearly defined by US laws, making gender discrimination on the basis of gender identity a prevalent problem in the courtroom, the workplace and schools.

Although most forms of discrimination in the US are nonviolent, there are over 1000 known hate groups in the US. These include neo-Nazis, white nationalists, border vigilantes, and black separatists. The Southern Poverty Law Center watches all these groups and other extremists and reports any illegal activity to the federal government. They also offer support to the victims of hate crimes and other forms of discrimination by these groups.

Members of the LGBT community are the most likely minority group to be a victim of a violent hate crime. Whenever a certain issue becomes very emotionally charged in the US, a spike in the number of hate crimes can be noticed.

Gay Rights In America Under Kavanaugh

Justice Kennedy's greatest legacy on the Supreme Court, and certainly what he hopes will be among his greatest legacy are his decisions expanding the scope of LGBTQ rights. 

In 1996's Romer v. Evans, he authored the Court's first major pro-gay rights decision, invoking the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause in striking down a Colorado state constitutional amendment that prevented cities and towns from adopting their own bans on discrimination against gays, lesbians, or bisexuals.

Seven years later, in 2003's Lawrence v. Texas, Kennedy wrote a 6-3 decision invalidating Texas's ban on oral and anal sex between two men or two women. That decision overrode 1986's Bowers v. Hardwick, a decision upholding Georgia

s solomy law. In Lawrence, Kennedy did not use equal protection reasoning but instead found that any bans on consensual sexual behavior between adults, regardless of the genders involved, violate the due process clause's guarantee of personal liberty. (This was similar to the reasoning the Court had used in Roe and to invalidate bans on contraception in Griswold v. Connecticut.)

A decade later, in 2013, Kennedy wrote the 5-4 decision in United States v. Windsor overturning the federal Defense of Marriage Act on equal protection grounds. The decision required the federal government to respect and honor same-sex marriages at the state level, while still allowing states to ban same-sex if they wished. And two years after that, in 2015's Obergefell v. Hodges, he swept away bans on smae-sex marriage altogether, ending with a stirring tribute to the value of marriage that's become a mainstay of wedding readings in the years since:

No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice and family. In forming a marital union, two people become greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilizations's oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right. 

It is fair, then, for gay rights advocates to worry about what could happen to the Obergefell precedent now that Kennedy has retired and will most likely be replaced by Kavanaugh, who is opposed by every LGBT rights group you can imagine.

There are certainly some conservatives on the Court who are interested in chipping away at the ruling's guarantees. Gorsuch, Thomas, and Alito in 2017 dissented from a ruling requiring Arkansas to list same-sex parents on their children's birth certificates, arguing that to do so does not violate Obergefell. That set the stages for a legal strategy based on gradually chipping away at the right to marriage until it's practically worthless.

Majorities of Americans in 44 of the 50 states now support same-sex marriage. The overwhelming public opinion shift in favor of marriage equality might make the conservatives on the Court more hesitant to chip away at the right, and also might deny the Court opportunities to take up the issue, if the popularity of same-sex marriage prevents states from trying to restrict the right in ways that would be challenged and make it to the Court.

LGBTQ rights as a part of Kennedy's legacy are probably going to be challenged now. And, the Court without Kennedy, and with Kavanaugh, will be less friendly to LGBTQ causes than one with Kennedy still around.

From The Heart

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My Great Aunt Leonie lives at the end of our street in a big yellow house right at the edge of town. Behind her house is a big wheat field—golden waves swishing back and forth, rippling as far as you can see. I am four and a half and get to go to her house all by myself. Early each morning the sun rises right behind her house and pops up over the roof—you can see it from my house if you wait.

I can’t wait! I have to run over to her house to taste homemade bread with yummy strawberry jam on top. I can’t wait to hear her sweet voice call out “good morning, my favorite Paula!” I reach up and grab the railing and pull myself up the big stairs onto the porch. When I open the screen door her eyes light up. They sparkle and are so clear. They are the color of blue of the wide-open sky without any clouds.

Aunt Leonie and her stepdaughter, Flossie, who lives with her, talk about clouds all the time. The big white fluffy ones are my favorite. We lie in the cool grass in Aunt Leonie’s backyard in the shade of a big leafy tree and watch the clouds roll past. “There’s a dog!” “Can you see the clown?” “Where do the clouds go?” Aunt Leonie listens to me carefully, taking a moment to find just the right words before she speaks. “The clouds love to dance across the sky. When the air turns cold their fluffy soft forms begin to turn into water. When they get heavy enough raindrops or snowflakes fall down to earth from way up in the sky. When all the water is gone, so are the clouds.” I am happy with that answer—especially the dancing part.

We go inside through the screen door off the side porch. We come into a large room at the back of the house where Aunt Leonie lives. Her room is plain and comfy. The kitchen is at one end and in the other corner is a day bed covered with a quilt with a log cabin pattern. A while back when she was working on it she showed me how the pieces fit together to make little houses. When I get older she is going to help me piece a quilt. “You have to be old enough to have patience,” she tells me, “because making a quilt takes a long, long time”.

Behind the kitchen is my favorite room in the house. Aunt Leonie calls this room her “pantry”. There is no door between it and the big room. It’s like its own long skinny room with a tall window at one end. On one wall there is a painted red counter running the full length of the room with cupboards above and below from floor to ceiling. There are lots of places to hide when we play “hide and seek”.  No one ever finds me here.

The floor in the pantry and in the big room is made out of boards. Braided rag rugs of various shapes and sizes cover worn spots and give a cozy feeling. I feel so comfortable right now I just want to crawl up on her bed and go to sleep.

I love when Aunt Leonie asks me, “would like to help me wash my hair?” She always wears her hair up on her head in a kind of bun, held up with hairpins. Every time she lets her hair down it is such a surprise! It is thick and white and a little curly and is so long it goes right down to where she might sit on it. I am always amazed how beautiful it is! Before she washes it she prepares a concoction of thick, blue liquid. “This will make my hair whiter. Otherwise it looks yellowish,” she explains. She shampoos her hair in the sink. I am standing on a chair next to her, far enough away not to get in her way but close enough to be able to spread the blue goo on her hair.

The blue stuff is cold and she shivers as I gently pour it over her head. I take a comb and slowly pull the blue through her hair. Coating all the hair takes a long time because her hair is so long. Once all of it has been covered she sets the metal timer for 10 minutes and we wait. When the timer dings she rinses her hair under the sink and dries it in a thick white towel. She wraps the towel around her head and tucks it in on one side. It makes her not look like Aunt Leonie at all! After a while she takes the towel off and combs her hair out. Then she lets it “air dry” she calls it. When it is all dry she brushes it, counting each stroke out loud with me, “one, two, three, four...all the way up to one hundred!”

One morning I slip out of bed and run all the way to Aunt Leonie and Flossie’s. They are already outside filling little pocked aluminum buckets with water from a green hose. I carry my bucket carefully through the tall grass so as not to spill one precious drop. The gravel driveway that circles behind the house is where I’m going. I find a place to sit, put the little bucket by my side, and begin looking all around for a beautiful rock. I find one and plop it into the water, sloshing it around.  When I reach in and pull it out, it sparkles like magic in the sun. I gasp! I spend the entire day in the hot Kansas sun finding the most beautiful rocks I can. My favorites are the arrowheads and one I found that is kind of pink in the shape of a heart. I wash each one until it glitters. I sort them carefully by size and shape. Then I arrange them on a flat place in the grass to go with my made-up stories.

Another day we bake sugar cinnamon crisps. I love helping! First flour is measured into a sifter and I am allowed to sift it into a big brown earthen bowl. Aunt Leonie and Flossy add other things and I get to stir it all together. The last time we did this I stirred too fast and a lot of the flour ended up on the floor and on me. This time I stir slowly. I end up with a large lump of yummy dough. Aunt Leonie doesn’t care how much dough I eat. She spreads flour on the counter and puts the dough into the middle. She hands me a long wooden rolling pin and I push the dough back and forth until it’s flat. We tear off pieces of dough and form shapes in our hands and then lay them on the cookie sheet. Cinnamon and sugar are sprinkled over the tops and the pan goes into the oven. Aunt Leonie says this is the same dough she would make if she were going to make a pie. When we can just begin to smell it, Flossie opens the oven door and takes out the puffy golden shapes. We let them cool down then sit at the table laughing and telling jokes while we eat crisps with a large glass of cold milk.

Most summer afternoons, when the locusts are droning their noisy tunes, I sit between Aunt Leonie and Flossy on their huge wooden porch swing. It is so big my feet can’t even touch the floor. There is something wonderful about the warm arm around me that gently pulls me into the huge lump on Aunt Leonie’s side she calls her “hernia”. The metal links of the chains above us creak as we swing but we don’t hear it because we are singing. Loudly! “Old Susanna”. “B-I-N-G-O”. “On Top Of Old Smokey”. “The Old Gray Mare”. My eyes glaze over with how good it feels to go back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. Aunt Leonie’s wobbly old-lady’s voice, Flossie’s deep clear one and my little girl’s high pitches—a bit too loud--form a choir, like angels singing in heaven.

I know some of the reasons why I can’t wait to be at Aunt Leonie’s. She enjoys hearing my stories and listens to every word. She is fun and likes me just the way I am. When I am here, I am happy. The things that make me feel bad seem to melt away. Here, it is different. When I am with Aunt Leonie, I know I have a place in the world. I belong.

Pope Francis Just Reminded Us How The Church Still Feels About Homosexuality

I am including an outstanding article by Michelangelo Signorile, who is an editor-at-large for HuffPost.

In the middle of a tumultuous controversy swirling around the Vatican – in which a conservative, anti-gay archbishop and nemesis of Pope Francis call on him to resign – the pope made a bizarre and concerning statement, which the Vatican has now attempted to walk back. 

On his way back from a trip to Ireland, marred by renewed allegations that the Church hierarchy was guilty of covering up clerical sex abuse, Francis was asked by a reporter what advice he would have for a father whose child came out as gay.

Francis first responded that the father should pray, and went on to say that he shouldn’t shun the child. “Don’t condemn,” he is reported to have said. “Dialogue. Understand, give the child space so he or she can express themselves.”

That was a good first response, and it’s what American media accounts focused on. But buried or omitted from those accounts – yet focused on a great deal in European media was the pope’s second statement.

As reported by the Guardian, the pope said: “When it shows itself from childhood, there is a lot that can be done through psychiatry, to see how things are. It is something else if it shows itself after 20 years.” and adding that ignoring a child who showed “homosexual tendencies” was an “error of fatherhood or motherhood.”

LGBTQ and human rights groups in Europe condemned the statements.

“He is basically saying that young gay people can be changed, which is archaic and has been refuted numerous times,” said Colm O’Gorman, executive director of Amnesty International of Ireland.

When the Vatican later published the transcript of the exchange, they erased the reference to psychiatry.

Asked by Agence France Press why the comment had been removed, a Vatican spokeswoman responded: “When the pope referred to ‘psychiatry,’ it is clear that he was doing it to highlight an example of ‘things that can be done.’ But with that word he didn’t mean to say that (homosexuality) was a ‘mental illness.’”

It’s possible that the pope, under attack by anti-LGBTQ forces in the church, was trying to placate them a bit, but then realized he went too far and tried to reign in the statement. Whatever the case, underscoring that homosexuality is not a mental illness was an important first step in trying to explain the pope’s statement.

The Vatican statement in fact only seems to be doubling down on the idea that homosexuality can and should somehow be suppressed.

But the clarification itself only further muddles the issue and doesn’t explain what the pope meant by his reference to psychiatry. Does he mean a psychiatrist can help a gay child come to terms with being queer? Why, then, shouldn’t that be the case for someone who comes out 20 years later? In a homophobic world, people may benefit from professional help in coming out no matter what age they are.

By claiming that the pope was highlighting an example of “things that can be done,” the Vatican statement in fact only seems to be doubling down on the idea that homosexuality can and should somehow be suppressed – even if it is not a mental illness.

That actually sums up the Catholic Church’s official position on the issue: Those who are gay may or may not be gay by nature, but they should do whatever they can to not act on their sexual and emotional desires. The Catechism, right there on the Vatican’s website, notes “the psychological genesis” of homosexuality “remains largely unexplained.” But it nonetheless describes, “homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity.”

When Francis said a few years back that if someone is gay, “Who am I to judge?” it was not inconsistent with that theology. A person can be struggling with something, trying hard to suppress it and still not be judged – even if what they’re struggling with is viewed as something destructive. “Love the sinner, hate the sin,” goes back quite far in the church.

Francis had been lauded for that statement but it still didn’t come close the embracing LGBTQ people as normal, natural and healthy.

With this new statement, and with the Vatican trying to walk it back without fully explaining it, it’s clear that Francis and the Catholic Church have been trying to have it both ways. Even giving remote legitimacy to the idea that homosexuality can be controlled in children if discerned early – which is nothing short of supporting “ex-gay” conversion or reparative therapy – should be enormously troubling to all.

Vice President Pence and Homosexuals

Vice President Mike Pence has a long history of taking religious positions in government that discriminate against LGBT issues. Here are some of the statements and positions Pence has had related to LGBT issues:

He said gay couples signaled ‘societal collapse’.

In 2006, as head of the Republican Study Committee, a group of the 100 most-conservative House members, Pence rose in support of a constitutional amendment that would have defined marriage as between a man and a woman. Citing a Harvard researcher, Pence said in his speech, “societal collapse was always brought about following the advent of the deterioration of marriage and family.” Pence also called being gay a choice and said keeping gays from marrying was not discrimination, but an enforcement of “God’s idea.”

He opposed a law that would prohibit discrimination against LGBT people in the workplace.

The Employment Non-Discrimination Act would have banned discrimination against people based on sexual orientation. Pence voted against that law in 2007 and later said the law “wages war on freedom and religion in the workplace. More than 20 years after the bill was first introduced, the Senate approved the proposal in 2013, but the bill failed in the House.

He opposed the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

Pence favored the longtime military policy of not letting soldiers openly identify as gay. In 2010, Pence told CNN he did not want to see the military become “a backdrop for social experimentation. The policy ended in 2011.

He opposed transgender bathrooms.

He rejected the Obama administration directive on transgender bathrooms. In May 2018, the federal government directed school districts to allow students to use the bathroom of the gender they identify with. The directive came as criticism grew around a North Carolina law that would have restricted the use of bathrooms. Along with many other conservatives, Pence opposed Obama’s directive and said it was a state issue. “The federal government has no business getting involved in the issues of this nature.” Pence said.

Pence is a supporter of conversion therapy.

Pence has been particularly dogged by accusations that he is a supporter of “conversion therapy”. This is the practice of trying to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity. It has been discredited by the medical establishment and denounced by gay and transgender groups.

Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign, has called Pence “the face of anti-LGBTQ hate in America.” Pence “has made attacking the rights and dignity of LGBT people a cornerstone of his political career—not just a part, but a defining part of his career” he said.

Once Trump mocked Pence’s socially conservative beliefs. When the conversation turned to gay rights, Trump motioned toward Pence and joked, “Don’t ask that guy—he wants to hang them all!” Before the Vice President could respond, many gay rights advocates responded to the report on social media, taking issue with both Trump’s joking tone and Pence’s history on their issues. The National Center for Lesbian Rights tweeted that having a president joke about the death of gay Americans is not normal.