Postcards From the First Day of Summer

1) This is the time of year when the bloom of garden excitement begins to fade. You know, the weeds are coming back after initial clearing but there's not much in the way of food. At least not yet. It appears, though, that my early efforts may pay off in the form of yellow squash. Note to self: look up summer squash recipes.

2) This month's issue of Country Living featured a cover line that read something along the lines of "Summer's Perfect Wine" or somesuch. Turns out the editors have become fond of a particular "summer white" which I have loved for some time.

 We usually pick up a couple cases for summer fun but this year we bought three. One doesn't mess around in the face of media madness, you see. If you were to come to my house for dinner between, say, the end of May and Labor Day this is what I'd pour for you.

At $8ish dollars a bottle, Famega Vinho Verde is hands down the best affordable fizz you'll ever buy. Do you think less of me for waiting to take delivery of my three cases before recommending that you, too, seek it out?





3) I'm reading cookbooks again after a long hiatus. Through a convoluted path I've become a late addition to the Claudia Roden fan club (if there isn't such a thing, there ought to be - Claudia, call me!). Although I am not particular to Spanish cuisine, I'm relishing a slow, deliberate read of The Food of Spain. This book is absolutely amazing. Literally epic in scope, the first 100 or so pages is nothing short of a culinary history textbook. Roden traces Spain's intertwining Christian, Jewish, and Muslim histories that are the underpinning of every summer's breathless tapas articles. Truly extraordinary and I insist that you go buy a copy immediately, if not sooner.

4) We're enjoying a very nice lack of extracurricular activities at the moment. Baseball and dance are over and there's little movement on the scout (girl or cub) front. The next six weeks stretch luxuriously mayhem-free. There are some camps on the calendar, of course (in our town, parents who do not abundantly enrich their offspring during summer break are considered reportable to the U.N.), but until football and cheer begin August, it's nothing but old-fashioned summer fun around here. Firefly-chasing, popsicle-licking, tree-climbing, dog-hugging summer fun.

It's glorious.

For a Queer Christmas - Send Gay / Lesbian Cards.

Advent begins this week, and with it the season for shopping.

For all Christians, this time of year can be difficult, with tension to negotiated, between Advent as a solemn season of preparation for the important Christian festival of Christmas, and the purely secular festive season leading up to the winter solstice, which marks the mid-point of winter's darkness and gloom.

For Christian sexual minorities (including the many straight singles and childless couples) there is an additional difficulty - the relentless emphasis in both church and stores on children and family. Kittredge Cherry at Jesus in Love Blog has come up with an ingenious way to counter this. Send your friends gay or lesbian themed Nativity cards. Love, after all, makes a family.

(I like Kitt's use of the term "Nativity" card - the word "Christmas" has been as much distorted and misused as the festival.)

Read her original post at Jesus in Love Blog, where she makes an important point: we must remember that in the traditional Nativity story, the biological details of the birth are extraordinary. Is the idea of a same sex couple procreating any more extraordinary than the Virgin birth?

To that, I would add the observation by the Catholic theologians Salzmann & Lawler, in "The Sexual Person": procreation refers not only to the physical production of an infant, but also the the subsequent care and nurturing of the child.  Procreation by same-sex couples is not nearly as far-fetched as some people would have us believe.

Order your nativity cards from the "Jesus in Love Card Shop"

Related Articles

• Noah's Queer Ark
• Patrick Chen: Out Christ / Rethinking Sin and Grace for LGBT People
• Patrick Chen: Erotic Christ / Rethinking Sin and Grace for LGBT People
• A Catholic Case For Blessing Civil Unions
• Gay Marriage: The Fallacy of the Church’s Argument Against.
• Noah's Queer Ark

What Constitutes a “Family”? Empirical Study Finds A Wider View

Religious conservatives are regularly referring to the “traditional family” as a foundation for their beliefs, but there is no such thing. The conservative interpretation of the so-called traditional family is  a relatively modern invention, created to fit the conditions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Western Europe and North America. In earlier times, and other parts of the world. family structures varied enormously from  this particular model.

Family history, like all other history, is constantly changing to fit new circumstances, so it should be no surprise that conceptions of family in the twenty first century are continuing to evolve, to fit a world that is no longer what it was in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Some of these changes are obvious, but like so much that is familiar, can easily be “hidden in plain sight.” A new study by sociologist  Brian Powell brings this into plain view. (His study is specifically of American views, but with the emergence of a shared world culture, many of his findings will also have relevance across a much wider geographic region.)

The central finding is that people no longer define “family” as mom pop and kids, but also include   same-sex couples with children (Children seem to be central: childless couples, gay or straight, are not seen as “families”, but just as couples). However, there is an increasing movement towards acceptance. An important finding, familiar from previous studies on the subject, is that people who know gay people (more accurately, who recognize that people they know are gay), are more supportive than those who are not aware that family members or acquaintances are gay. This simply reinforces the necessity for the wider political struggle, that wherever possible, gay men and lesbians should come out openly, in as many contexts as possible. Coming out personally will improve acceptance in our circles of friends and family. Politicians and other public figures who come out   do so indirectly for the wider community.

I particularly liked an argument on gay adoption that I have been using regularly: framing arguments in terms of the “the best interests of the child” can work to our advantage, not those opposed to gay adoption. (In adoption considerations, the best interests of the child require placement with the best parents available. Sometimes, they will be gay).  Indeed, the claim made (but not elaborated on in the reports I have seen), is that the interests of children may well be a more effective argument than others in making the case for more general equality of same-sex couples.

From the New York Times

A majority of Americans now say their definition of family includes same-sex couples with children, as well as married gay and lesbian couples.

At the same time, most Americans do not consider unmarried cohabiting couples, either heterosexual or same-sex, to be a family — unless they have children.

The findings — part of a survey conducted this year as well as in 2003 and 2006 by Brian Powell, a sociology professor at Indiana University, Bloomington — are reported in a new book, “Counted Out: Same-Sex Relations and Americans’ Definitions of Family,” to be published on Wednesday by the Russell Sage Foundation. Since the surveys began, the proportion of people who reported having a gay friend or relative rose 10 percentage points, said Professor Powell, the book’s lead author.

“This is not because more people are gay now than in 2003,” he said. “This indicates a more open social environment in which individuals now feel more comfortable discussing and acknowledging sexuality. Ironically with all the antigay initiatives, all of a sudden people were saying the word ‘gay’ out loud. Just the discussion about it made people more comfortable.”

The book concludes that framing the equality of same-sex couples in terms of “the best interests of the child” might prove to be a more successful political argument than others.

Related articles at Queering the Church

• The Gospels' Queer Values
• Traditional "Family Values"; "Traditional Family" Values.
• Church Marriage: Required Only For Priests?
• LGBT community: The Real Defenders of Traditional Marriage.
• "Traditional Marriage Is Between Men": US Bishop.
• An Ignorant Mexican Cardinal, vs  Authentic History of Marriage
• Natural Law, Natural Sex, Natural Families.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Now I Know Who All These People Running Around My House Are (bilerico.com)
• Who's a family? New study tracks shifting US views (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

Guests Merry With Your Cheer

My sister and her family are coming to visit this weekend. Among the routine logistical back-and-forths, the plans have involved a long Facebook thread about what we'll eat while they're here and where we'll buy it and how it will be prepared and whether or not I'll bother pleasing anyone but the two of us.

This kind of selfishness will surprise no one who knows me even a little bit well. It also has some precedent when applied to my sister and myself. We're the duo that, once upon a time, flew clear across the country to visit with our father's sisters and spent the entire long weekend with them eating pancakes at this very specific place and having dessert at that very specific place and so on (that we were young at the time and somewhat in their care comforts me in that it means we come by our obsessions honestly). Among other memories, I carry with me the yogurt and berries we ate at some posh hotel (the only breakfast we could afford), the peach daiquiris our grandmother served (it was the last time I saw her before her death less than two months later), the picnic lunch our aunt packed for the plane ride back to Philadelphia (shrimp & cream cheese spread on mini bagels which lasted until we just barely cleared the runway in San Francisco).

Some years after that trip we sat together in our parents' kitchen with the man that she would soon marry. Why we were there and our parents were not I don't recall, but I do remember what we ate. Brie and roasted garlic (hey, it was the 90s), a pesto made with half spinach and half basil (it shrunk in the micro), smoked salmon. That my future brother-in-law loves my sister was abundantly evident because knowing him better now I can say that there's no way on earth we'd get away with putting that array of foodstuffs on the table these days.

She'd like to do a bit of canning while they're visiting so I'm hoping to cue up some brandied blueberries or blackberries. That's an easy choice because we won't need to monitor a jelling point or whatever and can thus accommodate the distractions our collected five children will no doubt visit upon us. We'll also visit the local farm market, the merits of which she's listened to me extol for years now. I'll buy a couple chickens to grill and maybe some peaches to make into soup. Friday night I'll grill some cheese (yes! it's true - man, I love this stuff) and wrap bacon around jalapeños from the plants out by the old stone wall. We'll open the olives that are already marinating and the red onions I mixed up earlier this evening. Collectively, they'll be the perfect foils for a hot, humid Philadelphia summer evening.

When my sister comes to town.

I Love* You

Give me your unconditional love
the kind of love I deserve
the kind I want to return

That's the chorus of the Donna Summer song Unconditional Love. It's one of the things that next to respecting our constitutional rights, a desire to be loved by someone and having loyal friends in our lives that have our backs no matter what is one of the things at the top of our request list when it comes to our families.

Unconditional love. Sounds like a simple, straightforward, logical concept, right?

Not when you have a gender identity issues and you come out to your family about it.

It's irritating to see family members that are chronically unemployed, go to prison or have drug problems get more support than a transgender person who's clean and sober, successful in their careers and never seen the inside of a jail.

If there's anything that a transperson needs most, it's the support of their family when they're trying to negotiate the drama of dealing with a gender identity issue. If you're reading this and you're the lucky transperson that has the unconditional love and support of your family, congratulations. I ain't mad at ya.

Just remember to say prayers of thanks to God every night from now until the time you pass away for the situation you find yourself in. Some of your fellow transpeeps aren't so lucky. If they aren't rejected out of hand, then the situation that is just as bad is the support and love with conditions attached to it.

You may have parents who continue to call you by the wrong pronoun or the old male name despite the fact you've been transitioned for a decade or more. You find out about family reunions AFTER they've taken place or too late for you to rearrange the work schedule to attend. You may have situations where you're sent an invite to a wedding, but a few days before the event your relatives call you up and request that you don't wear a dress or heels to the event or insultingly ask you if it's possible for you to 'dress like a man'.

The ones that are really irritating are the relatives that say they support you, but start imposing their religious beliefs on you or are bold enough to tell you to your face that you'll never be a woman in their eyes.

If that sounds like you, stop it. Unconditional love means just what it says.
We need the validation of having our blood relatives acknowledge the person we've evolved into now, not the kid they remember ten to twenty years ago.

We transpeeps need that connection, that feeling of belonging, that desire to be recognized as a valued respected member of the family in our new gender role. It's something we need to help fortify our self-esteem. It's comforting to know that as we go out and deal with the slings and arrows hurled at us from a not too sympathetic and sometimes hostile world, our families love us unconditionally.

We transpeeps need to believe that come hell or high water our families be they our nuclear or extended ones, have our backs and are not finding excuses to place knives in our backs.