Randomness on Television

I can't believe that it has been more than a year since I last blogged. Therefore I have a lot of little things crowding my mind.

One of the things is that I love watching television. I know it's not PC or cool to admit it, but there you have it. I hate reality shows. They are a mindless wasteland that circumvents the talents of writers, actors, and others who have perfected their crafts to entertain us. I miss the days when there were more shows on that make use of clever and witty dialog delivered with perfection. Oh, yes, there are some that still come to that standard, but they seem so few and far between. Thank God for The Big Bang Theory and reruns of shows like M*A*S*H, Frasier, The Golden Girls, Roseanne, and Barney Miller. These shows helped me hone my writing chops.

On the other hand, there are a couple of reality shows I do watch. Both address issues in my own life and I use them as inspiration. One is The Biggest Loser, even though the quality of the show has dropped as they cut the show from two hours to one hour per episode. I miss getting to know more of the issues facing the contestants as they go on their weight-loss journey and how they deal with them. The other show is Hoarders. I am a low-level hoarder and this show inspires me to clean and organize. Beyond these I don't do reality shows.

Of course, television is currently loaded with the Presidential race. This is at once entertaining and very alarming. The Republicans seem to have made a platform out of pandering to the lowest common denominator among their constituents -- or perhaps even a but below that. Those candidates seem to be actively trying to say the stupidest, most racist, most outrageous things to garner attention. It is almost like watching a group of young boys trying to show off to get the attention of a girl. Then you add Donald Trump's temper tantrums and I suddenly think this is Kindergarten

Not that the Dems don't have their issues, but at least they aren't dipping their toes into racism, misogyny, and hatred. Even those who are attempting to take the high road seem destined to descend into finger pointing.

Is it any wonder that after all of this I sometimes feel the need to take refuge in an episode of Arthur and let my inner child take over for a half an hour? There the biggest enemy is dealing with a few growing pains. What a burden they seemed to be back in the day and yet now we would gladly return. Back then the only presidential election we cared about was whether Mr. Howell or the Skipper would become president of the island.

Zingers - Love or Hate?

There are things that are politically correct and things that are not. Over the past few decades we have learned the face of bigotry against different races, religions, gender, gender identification, and disabilities. For the most part we agree that we must be kinder in the way we treat people in these areas. The one area that we are still struggling is the way we treat fat people. It seems that it is still open season on us, despite the fact that the bulk of the country is overweight (pun not intended but appreciated).

There is a fine line between telling a joke and making fun of someone. A lot of people don't know where this dividing line lies.

First of all, for all of the idiots out there -- you don't need to point out our fat to us. We have already realized this fact from the sobbing sound the scale makes when we step on it. Also, don't think that humiliating us is what it will take to get us to lose weight. If that actually worked this would be among the skinniest on earth rather than the opposite. You also need to look in the mirror. You could be the pot calling the kettle fat.

There was a recent kerfuffle on line about a guy who took a woman's photo from her blog that showed her holding a sign that said "This is what a feminist looks like." He reposted it with a comment that it was just as he figured -- indicating that only fat women and perhaps women without the perfect airbrushed look would be a feminist. Yeah. Tell it to former Playboy Bunny Gloria Steinem. This kind of crap attitude is a large part of where feminism stems from. But I take this guy with a grain of salt. He is undoubtedly the loser he was accusing this woman of being. Hello! Pot, it's the kettle calling!

Oh, yes, you could be handsome and well-muscled as all get out. But inside you are small, gnarled, and distasteful, possessing the need to make others feel like less so that you can feel like more. Humor should not come at someone else's expense. You delude yourself by mistaking the desire to hurt under the mask of the desire to be funny. Shame on you!

Now, I can take a real joke. I love Gabriel Iglesias's five (and now six) levels of fat -- big, healthy, husky, fluffy, and DAMN!!!! More recently he added Aw, Hell No! to the list. Now I could delude myself into thinking I am any of the first three. I, like Gabriel, am fluffy. I have verged on DAMN!!!! at one point, but have lost a few lbs. to get back. I did not do it for vanity's sake. I did it to improve my health and mobility. Of course I still need to lose weight and want to, but it really is easier said than done.

Just recently I got into a fit of joke telling about my weight with a Facebook friend and fellow writer.  I was having a blast. I love being funny. So I copied my jokes and will share them here with you:

My figure is more like Jabba the Hut's than it is like Princess Leia's. The whole look worked better when I was younger and not so, ummm, spongy. (This was in relation to the fact that I have three Princess Leia costumes hidden away in an old suitcase.)

Last time I tried to wear a halter top in public five guys went blind. And that was with a jacket over it.

I thought of buying myself a tent to wear, but the sporting goods store didn't carry my size.

I didn't wear a costume for Halloween one year and everyone thought I was going as Miss Piggy.

I went as the Flying Nun and people took bets on just how high the wind speed would actually have to be to get me off the ground. An F5 tornado was the final consensus.

I tried to go down to the Mall one Halloween as a skinny person but the police kept trying to break up the crowd.

Last time I went to the beach some guy with a harpoon showed up. I had a whale of a time.

Last time I went to the beach some guy with a harpoon showed up. I had a whale of a time.

I went jogging without a bra once and gave myself a black eye.

People used to try to give me support by telling me to keep my chins up.

If you laughed, good for you. The intention behind these was good-natured fun. It was also done through a bit of self-deprecation. People like Gabriel Iglesias and I can do that  because we understand that we are pointing at ourselves and not others. In like kind, he will make jokes about Hispanics and I won't. Since I am not Hispanic I do not have the background to go there. I could, on the other hand, go to what it is like to date a Hispanic. 

One of the keys to being funny rather than hurtful is to make it accessible to people. Make it key into their experiences or the experiences of the people close to them. The power of intention also comes in here. My jokes are not intended to hurt anyone. I point the finger only at myself and hope that other people, especially the fluffy ones, can identify and maybe feel a little kinder toward themselves.

And to the poster child for feminism -- you go girl! Leave the jerks out there in the dust where they belong. For the guys who get it -- bless you for you are truly men. 

Shirley You Jest!

As I have mentioned in another post, my mother passed away last year. Her name was Shirley. In the last couple of years before she passed I managed to uncover some of the history behind her name.

The basic meaning of her name is "from Shirley, England." Boooooorrrrrrrrring! Oh, but there is so much more to this story than that. To get a bit more concrete than that, it is supposed to mean "bright glade" or "place of hope." Shirley was originally a man's name and a surname.

Mum always struggled to be hopeful in the face of some pretty tall odds - two failed marriages, lifelong health issues, rape, a baby out of wedlock, and dealing with me and my issues. She tried to live up to the name given to her.

Mum loved literature, dabbled with being a writer, a dream that she passed along to me. I think it was in the genes. I don't remember her doing much writing when I was little, but I grew up in a household lined with hundreds of books. Mum, Dad, and I were all avid readers.

She was pleased when I discovered the history behind how she came to be named Shirley. Back in 1849 Charlotte Bronte (author of Jane Eyre) published a book entitled "Shirley." Going against convention, Bronte had given her strong female character a man's name. While the book is all but forgotten by most people these days, it was a best seller back then and forever changed the gender association of the name.
Lovers of the book began to name their girls Shirley instead of their boys.

The association between my mother and the literary Shirley does not stop there. The Shirley in the book is concerned for the poor and the working class during an economic depression following the end of the Napoleonic wars. She becomes involved, after a fashion, in the dealings of labor and the rights of workers. My Shirley, after her divorce from my father and return to the workforce, became first a union steward and later the president of her union's local.

Mum was impressed with the likeness and I gave her a copy of the book for Christmas a couple of years ago. I don't think she ever had the chance to read it. It now sits in my stack of books to be read. I will one day get to it and remember Mum with every word.

In a twist of fate she named her daughter (me) with a name that also used to be a man's name. If you don't believe me, go back and read Little Women. Back in the day Laurie was short for Laurence.

Her name also became a part of one of the most famous running jokes in any movie. In the movie Airplane people say to Leslie Nielsen's character "surely you jest!" He would look at them with a deadpan face and reply, "No. And please don't call me Shirley." Leslie is another name that is slowly making the transition from male to female.

Paranoid Prepping

Back in the 50s and 60s people were so freaked out about nuclear proliferation that some were building emergency bunkers in their backyards. They wanted to be prepared just in case the Cold War suddenly heated p. Most of them were more like storm shelters in the Midwest rather than something that would be able to withstand nuclear fallout and "the end of the world." But people felt safer when they had one.

These days bunkers are back in style and they are getting pretty extreme -- not to mention being extremely expensive. However, now people are putting in filters to collect the radioactive fallout, communication systems, arsenals, food stocks, and living amenities knowing that it isn't just about surviving the initial event, but the aftermath as well. They also build with the knowledge that there are any of a number of events that could bring civilization to the brink of anarchy and survival.

I have a friend who is paranoid and is working on her own prepping plan. Not having the money or the land to build a bunker she is doing more of her own thing. She has had no survival training and is in her 70s with some serious health issues, so it would be interesting to see if her plans would ever work. Her basic plan at this point is to have a bug-out bag for herself and one for her cat. A few weeks ago she informed me that she was making me a bug-out bag as well. Somehow I managed not to roll my eyes, and just asked her not to.

I am definitely interested in prepping, but for me it is fodder for the writing grist mill. I like to ponder the possibilities of what it would take to survive and the issues that might arise. When I was 11 I started writing a book I titled "The Day the World Started Over." It was crap, of course, because I had no real notion of what it would take to survive with only a handful of people left on the planet. Nor did I have much of a clue about the things that might lead to such an apocalypse. The subject has always interested me, but I don't walk around with enough paranoia to think that this is something that is likely to happen -- not on that scale anyway. 

It is not that I don't want to have a bag for emergencies, it is just that I would rather create my own. This is because I know her. She gets ideas that she thinks are really good and they may work for her, but they don't necessarily work for other people. If you don't like the idea she gets terribly offended on top of it all.

Another part of the conflict here is that I have had survival training and so I am aware of things that she isn't. So I know what I want in an emergency bag -- like the one I've had in the car for years. Ever since the survival training I have tried to keep a few basics in the car just in case the car breaks down in a tough place.

Since her packing is based on watching television and mine on training I don't know what I will think of what she comes up with. I know that she has been all up in the air over packing paperwork that she thinks she will need.  I have no plans for that beyond what I usually carry in my purse.

The actual emergency planning I have done is having some extra canned goods and water on hand, as well as some candles. Most of what is most likely to happen will not take me out of my home. Same for her, but her head is filled with all of the things that could go wrong.

To me there is one most important thing you need to have to survive and that you have with you all the time anyway -- right between your ears. If you aren't thinking straight you can have all of the tools, food, and arms in the world and still end up as a spot on what's left of the pavement.

So if the worst happens she may be more prepared, but I'm okay with that. I'm more interested in being prepared for today.

Jaws -- The Weight-Loss Dilemma

The whole country from news anchors to late night comedians have been giving New Jersey governor Chris Christie a hard time about having Lapband surgery to lose weight. These were the same people who were giving him a hard time for being overweight in the first place. Skinny people just don't get it and that is an American tragedy because there are fewer skinny people every day in this country.

I've been through much of the same thing. I have been overweight almost my entire life. The last argument I remember my parents having before they separated was about whether I was getting fat or not. I was only seven. And I may as well have been invisible. It was as though they were discussing a piece of furniture than needed refinishing.

I spent years being criticized for my weight. Ironically, the more I was picked on for the fat, the fatter I got. This was because I had picked up the habit of eating to comfort myself when I felt miserable -- and I felt miserable most of the time.

My father and stepmother picked on me a great deal about my weight. In college I asked for an extra $9 to be able to take an extra dance class. They were very tight about money and freaked out all over me and denied my request in no uncertain and not very kind terms. After I left the room one of my step-brothers gave them some grief in return. He pointed out that they were always on my case to exercise more but they weren't at all willing to back it up with actions to support me doing what they wanted. I ended up with my $9 and my dance class. I lost 25 pounds that school year.

That single act of support did not change my life. The support began and ended there. So that particular portion of my weight-loss journey was short-lived. From there I ended up diving headlong into years of eating disorders. The first being anorexia, followed by bulimia. Years of therapy helped me emerge from that particular self-destructive behavior.

Years later I ended up in a bad job situation where I was constantly being undermined and at the same time started having thyroid problems at the same time. After years of fairly stable, though still obese, weight, I started gaining weight again. I went on a special weight-loss program that my doctor got me a scholarship for and managed to gain weight while on the diet.

My health deteriorated and I was losing my ability to move. I couldn't hold down a job when I couldn't make it from my car into a building. It was taking all I could do to get from my house into my car which was only the matter of about 12 to 15 feet. Because of my thyroid issues (Grave's Disease) I was not only gaining weight, I was losing muscle.

Like Governor Christie I finally decided that I had to go drastic to save my life. I, too, had Lapband surgery. Not everyone was thrilled with my decision. There is a public perception that reaching this point in your life is a personal failure -- that somehow you are less of a person because you weren't able to just lose the weight. This perceptions persists in spite of the fact that diets succeed less than 2% of the time. They have a horrible track record.

It is no wonder that Christie kept his surgery a secret. Who wants to be judged as a failure when trying to do the right thing for themselves and their loved ones? The procedure is not a guarantee of success, either. I just hope that he has a larger number of people supporting him than I did. Emotional support means a lot.

BTW, "support" does NOT mean monitoring and judging every piece of food that goes into the person's mouth. Weight loss can be hampered just as much by eating too little as by eating too much. Support is loving the person and demonstrating that love whenever possible. Find out from them what you can do to assist in their journey. Chances are they are now on a diet you may not understand.

I lost weight afterwards, though not as much as I would have liked thanks to my wonky thyroid which quickly went too low after surgery. However, I lost enough weight to get myself mobile and able to work again, which was my primary goal in having the surgery. I still struggle every day. I still have a huge amount of weight to lose.

Governor Christie still has a struggle ahead of him. This is not magic, it is a tool. Years later I still cannot eat as much as I used to. So I still have the benefit of the band helping me limit my intake, but I still also hit times when I engage in emotional eating and times when I want to forget about diets and just eat Christmas dinner.

So, instead of making fun of him or expecting him to fail, become a part of this cheering squad. He has taken a big, really scary step in the right direction.

Integrity -- On the Brink of Extinction?

It seems that personal integrity is becoming less and less important to the people of this country. Case in point -- the people of South Carolina voting former governor Mark Sanford back into public office despite his lack of integrity in dealing with his affair with a woman in Argentina. The man had made a joke of his office, his state, and his marriage, and yet the people would rather vote for this Republican with a total lack of integrity than take a chance on the upstanding Elizabeth Colbert Busch because she is a Democrat

Can you really trust Mark Sanford? Let me put it this way: Past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior. If I were that Argentinian fiancee of his I wouldn't trust him for a moment.

Much of our politicians, both Democrats and Republicans, seem to have ditched any sense of integrity whatsoever.

For many years the Republicans gleefully espoused the lack of fidelity and family values of the Democrats and one Dem after another was caught in a compromising situation. They were keen to paint themselves as the party supporting the "disappearing" family values.

And that was great -- right up until the truth caught up with them. Wow, it turns out that they have just as much trouble keeping their trousers zipped as the Democrats! Who would have guessed that this is an issue of humans in power and NOT a partisan issue?

This same "family values" party is also the party that wants to get rid of many programs that support women and children. It is a party plagued with misogynistic and racist white men and yet they can't figure out why their party is on the critical list.

Both sides should be ashamed of selling out their integrity to the overly-powerful gun lobby to not strengthen background checks for gun purchases to include gun shows and private sales. Despite what Republicans and gun enthusiasts want everyone to believe, this is NOT an attempt to deny any law-abiding citizens the right to bear arms. It IS an attempt to weed out some of the not-so-law-abiding citizens from having this particular avenue to get guns. The majority of their constituencies were for this law.

Both sides of the aisle have some culpability in the fact that the budget still hangs in limbo. There are items that the military would have liked to cut to save money, but Congress insisted that those programs remain intact, no doubt because they affected programs the politicians treasured.

Some Republicans have openly declared that they will block any ideas or plans that come from the Democrats -- especially from President Obama. This is partisan politics at its worst. Congress has been holding the American people hostage to support their petty bickering.

Politicians have devolved into spending all of their time worrying about getting re-elected and playing to that rather than getting down to the work they were elected to do in the first place. The rest of us working stiff would have been fired from our jobs long ago if we were sporting this kind of job performance.

Here's an idea: stop blaming Obama for being ineffective when you block him at every turn, pull yourselves out of the lobbyists pockets, stop blaming the poor for being poor, keep support programs in place, tax the rich equitably, be fair, be honest, don't wag the dog with issues like abortion, "birther" red herrings, and gay marriage, and, most of all, start being for all the people you are there to represent.

Take back your integrity and own it. In my opinion that would go far further in getting you re-elected than a boat-load of campaign rhetoric. We're worth it

Hoarding -- A Personal Confession

Hi, my name is Laurie, and I am a hoarder.

Okay, not as bad as those people you see on television shows like Hoarders and Hoarding Buried Alive. There is only the one cat and she does her business only in her litter box or outside. I take care of mice and the occasional fly promptly. The electricity and plumbing work. The furnace is a bit dodgy, but that is new and in the works.

I am a third generation hoarder. My grandmother kept just about everything, especially after having raised her children during the depression. With her, however, she was able to keep everything neatly filed and organized so it never became the out-of-control mess. When she passed away my mother kept an odd assortment of her mother's hoard to bring home and add to her hoard.

My mother was approaching the level of the television show, but did not quite make it there. The saddest part of her hoarding for me was that I eventually had to distance myself from her and her home as she began to blame me for the mess in her home. If I brought fast food to her home to eat while I was there helping her with the computer or what not, she would begin cleaning this up before I was done eating -- in the middle of a horrendous mess that was far more in need of cleaning than a couple of taco wrappers and sauce packets.

A couple of times a friend and I tried to clean the house for her. The first time was when she had gone off to Georgia for a family reunion. We hauled out so much trash that I had to arrange to use the trash and recycling receptacles of her neighbors. We cleared out more than a dozen years of junk mail and
 old calendars.And that was just the beginning. Of course, the cleaning did not last.

Another time Mum was disappearing for several hours every Saturday for an art class and we used that time to clean house again -- this time as her Christmas and birthday presents. Again, it didn't last.

Several years ago Mum had to move out of her mobile home and into an apartment as a part of getting subsidized housing. More people were on hand to help this time. Mum tried to help, but much like the people on the television shows, she wanted to go through absolutely everything and throw away nothing. No matter what we said, she couldn't understand that the entire hoard from a large two-bedroom mobile home was not going to fit into a small two-bedroom apartment. Finally we got enough to the apartment for her to go stay there while we finished up the mobile home. So we moved her and told her to stay there.

After more than a month of moving and cleaning it was just impossible to get it all done. Fortunately the mobile home was slated to be hauled away and discarded. So we ended up just throwing trash into several big piles as we searched for what needed to move and tossed the rest. Even then we weren't able to get everything moved. Most of the books had to be left behind.

Mum busted my chops for so long over what hadn't gotten moved that I finally told her off. I pointed out that we had spent WEEKS moving what we could and that within that God-awful mess it was impossible to find everything. A large number of us had shut down our lives for those weeks to do this just for her and instead of any gratitude all we were getting was complaining. She was also damn lucky that I had lost my job at just the right time to allow me to do this for her or she would have lost the apartment and the subsidy.

She was much kinder after that, but no less a hoarder. After the move she had an elder care helper come in and help her with things like housework. I charged the woman with helping keep down the hoarding. She did as I asked and kept Mum from picking up broken toys from the grounds of the apartment building and bringing them home.

Last year Mum passed away and I was still faced with a mountain of crap that had come with her. Toward the last few months of her life she finally understood when I called her a hoarder and what a hoarder was. I told her in the light that I was also one, as is a good friend of ours.

As I was packing up her things to be tossed, given away, or kept I was constantly amazed at many things that I found. When the friends and family who had come to help me get the apartment cleaned out heard me swear they knew I had run across something baffling. I gave all of them whatever I wanted as long as it wasn't something I needed to keep or sell.

Being a hoarder myself I knew that I needed to be strong. I was fairly ruthless in getting rid of stuff. Every now and then someone would say "Oh, you want to keep that!" I would emphatically decline. If they asked me if I was sure then I offered it to them. They would decline and I would respond with "If you don't want it, why would I?"

I still kept too much. Much of it is sitting on my patio and inside my car. I am loathe to bring it inside until I have a proper place for it. Much of it will still be given away or sold. I have just been waiting for winter to wain enough to allow me to really get at things. Murphy's Law being what it is we have had 47 inches of snow in April and another foot in May so far.

From the inside, hoarding is a complicated and difficult thing. I can get easily confused and baffled on what to get rid of and what to keep, not to mention what to do with the things I choose to keep. I will get to the end of an evening and only then realize that the dishes went undone, in spite of the intention to do them. It becomes easier to leave everything rather than trying to deal with them -- much like difficult emotions that I haven't dealt with. Having learned to hang on to everything doesn't help.

So I have to work at it every day. My daily to-do list includes such obvious things as "collect trash" to make sure it all makes it in the bin, and "wash dishes" to help me remember. Things will still get away from me. The house still smell of the litter box, though I can't smell it any more. The important thing is that I am aware and keep trying.

The one thing I keep reminding myself is that if it lost in the mess and I have forgotten I had it, I don't need it. If something is lost in the mess and I bought three more because I couldn't find it then I need to find a proper place for that item. There is a fear of lack involved. A terror that when I am truly in need I will not have what I need. It is not really about the stuff. It is about feeling unsupported emotionally so I try to manufacture what appears to be support.

With Mum gone I will also not end up with so much stuff. She was constantly buying me stuff I "needed." This is how I ended up with far more sheets, towels, socks, undies, pots, pans, dishes, and books than I needed. A friend once suggested that I get rid of it all. I replied that I would but then she would just buy it all for me again.

My last bout of unemployment became my mission to downsize while I searched for a new job. I figure that I threw out at least a ton of old crap. I gave away 75 bags and boxes to charity. And still I have too much.

So my struggle continues.

Gay Rights

Okay. I'm going out on a limb again. I will probably offend someone here, though I know that most of my friends are on the same page.

On May 1, 2013, the State of Colorado started allowing civil unions for gay couples. A dear friend of mine and his significant other of more than 15 years were among the first to make their relationship official. I am so happy for them both, except . . . I still think that they should be allowed to get married.

What is marriage, really, when it comes down to it? It is a civil union to make sure that the couple has legal rights on many issues, such as shared property and inheritance. It covers any progeny that the union may produce, etc., etc., etc.

While many people add God into the institution, it is really a covenant created by man, not God. Historically marriage has been used to create and cement political and economic alliances. It has been an institution for survival. Marrying for love is a fairly new concept and that, too, took a great deal of arguing to be accepted.

The musical "Fiddler on the Roof" was about this struggle set against the backdrop of the Russian Revolution. Tevye is a poor dairyman with daughters he must marry off. Even though it is the early 20th Century, the characters are still living in a culture where they believed that young people were incapable of deciding such important things for themselves. So Tevye sets out with the best intentions to make the best possible match for his eldest daughter, with no real consideration of her feelings. He made a choice to make sure she would be economically well-off. Never mind that the man was old enough to be her father.

She protests, begs her father to let her marry the poor tailor she loves. He relents and has to convince his wife that the original plan would have been a horrible mistake. Why did he relent so easily?

The musical did not tell the entire story. If you go back to the original short stories from which the musical was taken, Tevye had another daughter, older than Tzeitel. He had tried to arrange her marriage and he had been completely intractable about her personal feelings and he insisted that she would marry the man he and the matchmaker had chosen for her. So she drowned herself in the lake.

Not exactly the stuff of Broadway musicals, so they left that particular story out of the equation. However, it does explain a lot. Tevye was not a man without feelings and he couldn't face losing another daughter in such a horrific way. So his beliefs began to change.

Marriage is not a static state. It has been evolving for centuries. A wife is no longer considered chattel (the legal property of her husband). The right to marriage dissolution has become commonplace.  Interracial marriage is increasingly accepted and unquestioned. It is now thought of as an institution of love instead of a contractual arrangement.

Allowing same-sex couples to marry is the natural next step in this evolution.

Heterosexual couples have often made an even greater mockery of the institution of marriage than any gay couple anyway. Marrying for a few hours is the first to come to mind. Marrying and divorcing seven or eight times also doesn't help. Religious sects forcing young girls to marry old men is right up there. It goes on from there.

Where is God in all of this? God is love. If you don't believe me, check your Bible. These people love one another. God loves "them" as much as she does you. (Yeah, I went there too.) God doesn't make mistakes, least of all in the creation of sweet, beautiful people who may just happen to be a bit left of center to you.

The problem, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. I behold gay people to be people first and the gay part to be as incidental as the fact that I am not. Their sexuality is not a definition of who they are as individuals.

If we cannot accept this, then what happens to women's rights? Does this mean that we have to go back to the whole barefoot and pregnant thing? We have spent years learning to not judge women by their gender, that this is not the full measure of their identity.

Gay rights ARE human rights. It is the right to be who we are and as we were meant to be. Gay or straight. Right or wrong. Love or hate.

I choose love.

Bullying -- The Undiscussed Issues

Bullying is one of the biggest challenges facing young people and it long has been. In our media-saturated age we hear about it far more often and in more detail than when I was that age. The devastating consequences are brought home to us as never before.

We all want parents and teachers to take a stronger stance against bullies to protect those being bullied. While this is a laudable position, there is a serious flaw in that thinking. It is a problem that no one is addressing in the overall bullying issue.

This problem is that many of the people we are expecting to be responsible for ending the bullying are also bullies themselves. Bullying is not something that only children and teenagers engage in.

I was bullied as a child -- and as an adult. I was bullied by both children and adults. By far the adults were worse simply due to the fact that they were generally authority figures.

I was the fat kid by the time I was seven. So that opened me up to bullying. I was also a gentle and sensitive child, so that made me easily victimized. There were boys who tormented me, and the occasional girl.

Most of all there was my father, my stepmother, some of my teachers, and eventually some of my bosses. These bullies were worse because there was no escaping or ignoring them. They had power over me and they knew I had to take it.

My father could be both physically and mentally abusive. He had most likely been abused and bullied as a boy. So he continued the pattern. My stepmother has always gone more with being highly insulting and using overt attempts at humiliation. She once even told me that if I became humiliated enough I would lose my weight.

My second grade teacher was someone who never should have become a teacher, but it was back in the days when there still weren't a lot of options for women. Still, she was ill-suited to the career. For some reason she didn't like me and that colored all of her interactions with me. She didn't want me to be as smart as I was, so she kept trying to put me into a lower level reading group but she had to keep moving me back up because I so obviously didn't belong in the slower group. One day I had a bloody nose during a spelling test. The paper became soaked in blood and had to be discarded. The next day she called me up to her desk and began to berate me for not having turned in my spelling test. She wouldn't let me speak so that I could remind her of what had happened to the test. She just kept telling me what an awful and deceitful child I was and she kept it up for some time. Who knows how long she would have gone on bullying me mercilessly if my body had not had a negative reaction to her venom.

I threw up on her desk. I blew chunks everywhere. It was, and still remains, one of the proudest moments of my life. At the end of the school year she was banned from the school district. Apparently I had not been her only victim.

My third grade teacher was not much better. My family life was falling apart at this time as my parents divorced and Mom was returning to work, leaving me feeling marginalized. Not to mention that I was still dealing with the pain of my previous year of school. So I tended to check out of the real world and daydream. To deal with this my teacher would sneak up behind me and hit me in the back of the head -- hard.

This was the year that we were introduced to class elections from President down to Trash Monitor. To my frustration I could never get elected to anything more than Trash Monitor. So I asked my mother what I should do. She suggested that I talk with my teacher. So that is what I did. She looked disdainfully at me and said that she couldn't do anything if the other kids didn't like me.

Another time she hauled me out into the hallway to chew me out because I had been accused of stealing a pencil from one of the boys. She had the boy out there too. As she started in on me I was horrified. I would never steal someone else's pencil. So I lost my temper with the boy and asked him if his name was on it. He said that it had been written on it, really lightly, in pencil. That was when the teacher realized that it was the boy who was lying. She couldn't handle the fact that this child (me) that she disliked so much was innocent. She hustled us back into the classroom without another word. The boy received no punishment for having lied.

Fortunately most of my teachers were far better than this, but I didn't exactly get off to a good start in the world of academia.

When I got out into the working world it was frightening to realize that many companies had (and still have) a corporate culture of bullying. There is a mistaken belief out there that if you keep people terrified about losing their job that you will get more and better work from people. The truth is that I always work harder for the companies that treat me well. When I am treated well I will also accept making less money.

How can we expect adults to stop our children from engaging in bullying when so many adults are willing to agree with the bullies, or by also being bullies themselves? These are the role models for our children. We need to stop bullying overall, not just among children.