Month: August 2014

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Beyond Twinkle Twinkle Little Star While Navel Gazing by Ray S.

Six-thirty AM, do you
wake up one eye at a time, or both at the same moment?
Another day has been
gifted to you what are you going to do with it?
Can love prevail over
so much hate?  The sign on the wall reads
“God is Love.”  Well, who is your god or
goddess or whatever name you have for the ultimate motivator–or is there an
ultimate in your existence?
Feels like it will be a
hot one today in spite of the morning coolness. Your reverie is intruded with the
crash of garbage trucks loading.
Maybe they could carry
away some of the trash in our heads–clear a way for beautiful thoughts and
deeds. Do a little “Do unto others” stuff for a change. Do you, do I have a
consciousness to guide us through this new beginning?
Climb up out of my
navel and fall lock-step into the same old pattern of activity until life or
whatever intervenes. The outside world–it is here and now. Deal!
The butcher, the baker,
the climate change, the wars, the bomb, the screwy religions that have their
own monopoly on a god that neither you nor I can lay claim to. At times it
feels good to be damned by those people.
                                    I am in
good company
                                    Belonging
is everything
                                    Join the
tribe.
                                    To each
his/her own!
Make the coffee, brush
your teeth, etc, etc. Settle down and think what I might have to do and what I
can procrastinate about.
Have a cup, an old
scrap of toast.
Do not move too
quickly, waking takes a while.
It is a good start, the
navel isn’t as full of miscellaneous wool as when my one eye and then the other
opened.
I’ve affirmed for a new
day that Love: i.e. God, the Buddha, Thor, Apollo, Venus, et al. are still in
their heavens patiently waiting for me and you to find It, Him, or Her.
In light of so much of
this self-revelatory navel gazing and wool gathering it may be time to go back
to bed and get a navel refill.
As the poetaster is
wont to say, “Have a nice day.”
  

© 30 June 2014  

About the Author  
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Military Me by Phillip Hoyle

I didn’t serve in the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force,
Coast Guard or Reserves. I dropped out of Boy Scouts after moving up several
classes and earning lots of badges. Although I liked singing in the choir at
Boy’s State I pretty much detested its political plotting, campaigning, and
especially marching. I wasn’t military material; not competitive, obedient, or
strong enough. Still I had a strong military background; I grew up in a
military town, Junction City, a railroad town next to Fort Riley in central
Kansas. I grew up next to where General George Armstrong Custer with his
Seventh Cavalry planned military campaigns against aboriginal folk. I grew up
next to military games of the Seventh Cavalry Armored Division that in my time
featured jeeps, tanks, big guns, infantry, and nighttime flares. I grew up
knowing my great grandfather had worked at three Kansas forts when he first emigrated
here from Germany and that two of my uncles had served in the military. I grew
up in schools peopled with the children of Army officers, GIs, and civil
service employees. I sat in classes with kids who had lived the past three
years in Germany. I attended school with girls who grew up in Europe and spoke
heavily accented English. Daily I heard the chop, chop, chop of overhead
passing helicopters from the base airport. When we drove through the Fort I saw
barracks, parade grounds, war memorials, historic officers’ houses, weapons, and
armories. I saw the PX and the Commissary. 
I went to church with folk from the Fort. I carried out groceries to
cars owned by soldiers. I watched my neighbor polish his boots to the most
unbelievable shine. I got to know his Japanese wife. I shopped in Army surplus
stores, daily walked past GI bars, and on payday night saw lines of enlisted young
men waiting to enter whore houses on East Ninth Street. I saw silk jackets with
wild-looking dragons on their backs brought home from Asian assignments. I heard
stories, saw military parades, and watched as convoys passed by on Interstate 70.
I played Army with my neighborhood buddies using either plastic soldiers or our
own play guns. I viewed endless military newsreels while awaiting my turn at
the Saturday morning gun club in the basement of the Municipal Auditorium where
local police took their target practice, in the same building that housed the
USO. Army was everywhere, even in my imagination, but I couldn’t feature
actually entering the service in any of its forms. I wasn’t a good match.
Dad told me of a worship service when America was on the
brink of war, probably at the onset of the Korean conflict. The preacher that
Sunday had waxed eloquently about the terrible enemy that was threatening our
values and safety. After Dad had turned off the organ, stowed his music scores,
and said goodbye to the choir, he stopped to shake the preacher’s hand.  He asked, “Why is it that preachers preach
peace until the nation is on the brink of war and then preach war?” He said the
preacher got really red in the face, but he didn’t tell me the man’s response
to him, or if he did I have no memory of it. I was fascinated with Dad’s
ability to support and confront, a natural counseling approach he had never
studied. He did so out of a sense of conscience, a tribute I suppose to his
father’s being reared Quaker. His people were thoughtful and honest. Coming out
of high school in the early thirties, he was unable to attend college, but he
was an avid reader, a theologically curious church lay leader, and very bright.
I don’t recall Dad leading me away from military service, but I do remember his
interest that I become a preacher. Perhaps he wanted me to preach peace.
In a Christian Ethics course in Seminary I developed a
great interest in how decisions are really made, at least that’s how I
expressed it. I opined over and over in the class the function of emotions in
moral judgment and action. I criticized our texts that said little about their
roles. I studied extensively in nineteenth and twentieth century philosophical,
theological, and psychological theory of the passions to find out all I could.
The teacher of the course liked to quantify our responses to ethical problems.
“On a scale of one to ten,” he’d say, “where do you place yourself…?” We were
supposed to choose a number. War was one issue. I refused to quantify my
response but, knowing myself, explained that if I were faced with an enemy I
would probably defend myself and my family. Having lived around the military
all my childhood, even without being interested in becoming a soldier, I
realized I’d probably want to defend my loved ones and country in some way. I might
declare myself a pacifist theoretically, but if the enemy was crossing the
border with guns aimed at me, I’d come to the defense. I was pretty sure that my
response would be visceral. Visions of helicopters and jeeps, guns and GI’s
still played out their power in me even fifteen years after I’d moved away from
the Fort. I guess that’s just old military me.
On the other hand I pretty much believe in the sanctity
of all life. Also I can pretty much be a wimp. Maybe I’d argue with myself as
the enemy approached and have no chance to use a gun I don’t know how to shoot,
be run over by an enemy who is stronger than I, or otherwise fight without any
chance of winning. And if I lasted very long, I’d surely wonder “winning what?”
Now that is really old me even though I can still hear the big guns blasting
off in the distance of my childhood. Guess I’d better stick with philosophy.
© 23 Nov 2011  

About the Author  
Phillip Hoyle
lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In
general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two
years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now
focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE
program “Telling Your Story.”
He also blogs
at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com
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Forbidden Fruits by Pat Gourley

“ First they ignore
you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you…then you win”

Mahatma Gandhi
This famous quote from Gandhi seems to aptly sum up our LGBT history
as society’s forbidden fruits.  If you
Google the word fruit and then add ‘slang’ to the search the Wikipedia post is
quite worth the read. The word “fruit” as derogative slang for LGBT folks has a
long rather bizarre and cruel if not at times a hilarious history.  In the spirit of making these stories
personal tales I won’t go into much of what is said about the word except for
one example that is simply too delicious to not share.
Believe it or not the Canadian Civil Service used what they
called the “Fruit Machine” to detect infiltrating queers especially into the
Canadian Mounties. The “machine” would often consist of exposing recruits to
erotic male imagery or sexually charged homoerotic words and then attempt to
measure the response of prospective candidates. I think it was just nervous
twitching, sweating and flushing responses and that electrodes were not hooked
up to a penis. This ‘fruit machine’ was actually in use from 1950-1973!
It would be egotiscal thinking on my part to try and remember
when I was someone else’s ‘forbidden fruit’. I suppose though that I might have
fit that bill somewhat in the 1970’s when married men looking for a quick
noon-hour fuck pursued me at least for a few hours at the bathes. I was
certainly forbidden to them and definitely a fruit.
For me personally my tastes in forbidden fruit-like things of
a sexual nature have always drifted toward the leather and S/M scenes but I
must say I have only nibbled at the edges around those communities. I was
certainly headed that way in the early 1980’s but that whole HIV thing kind of
slowed new avenues of sexual exploration for me. Though I suspect I could be
easily seduced even today with the promise of some creative verbal abuse and a
good ass whipping, pretty vanilla I know but I am still a novice in this area
of ‘forbidden fruit’.
To shift gears here rather rapidly I read a piece recently
from the British journal The Spectator
where a London Physician, rather provocatively I suppose, said that he would
these days rather have HIV than diabetes. I think he was actually serious and
gave several examples of how well controlled HIV was actually less of a health
threat that diabetes which he described as not only a chronic but also a
progressive illness. His point overall being that HIV alone is now considered
to simply be chronic and not progressive or interfering with living a normal
lifespan. For the record I do not believe that Type 2 diabetes is necessarily progressive
either.
So what the hell you may ask is the rather loose association
I am making with forbidden fruit. Well, and bare with me here, I find it very
personally ironic and quite unjust that I am now looking at pre-diabetes with a
recent HbA1c of 6.0. That mind you after well over thirty years of HIV
infection and the resulting metabolic derangement I lay mostly at the feet of
HIV meds, even as effective as they are at controlling the virus. As the
Grateful Dead so often sang, “if the thunder don’t get you the lightning will”.
So forbidden fruit for me has left the carnal realms of the flesh and moved
into actually eating fruit, or more accurately drinking fruit juice.  Juice is now something forbidden if I want to
try and control the metabolic syndrome fueling my early diabetes with diet and
exercise rather than with medicines.
I have become in the past couple years even more of a
voracious reader of diet and diet theory related books. My heroes being many of
the leading vegans, Neil Barnard, Rip Esselstyn, T. Colin Campbell and some of
the less strident diet advocates such as Robert Lustig and Mark Hyman. All of
these authors, several being noted physicians, believe Type 2 diabetes is
reversible with diet and exercise. The diet they espouse of course is not
standard American fare and is full of forbidden items not just fruit juice.
Fruit juice, even fresh squeezed for example, has as much sugar as the same
amount of Coke or Pepsi. I needed to come to the realization that my pancreas
and liver don’t give a fuck where the sugar comes from. It is the same poisons
whether honey, high fructose corn syrup, Agave nectar or table sugar.
My personal guru around things diet these days is the aforementioned Robert Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist from UCSF, whose excellent
book Fat Chance lays it all out in
plain English with of course rather long lists of the forbidden. His advice for
controlling metabolic syndrome and its evil sequelae can be summed-up easily: we
just need to eat real food. He suggests never buying anything with label on it.
Another of his pearls is that we have a choice in life, we can be fat or we can
fart. His reference to farting of course is related to the need for lots of
fiber in our diet, which only comes from real, unprocessed food.
So, for me now, in my mid-sixties, what have become forbidden
fruits are certainly much different than what they were in 1979. Ah, for the
simpler days when the choice was not between farting and unwanted visceral fat
but rather will it be an afternoon delight at the tubs or perhaps an evening
spent in a sling in the basement of dear friends. 
© April 2014 

About the Author  
I was
born in La Porte Indiana in 1949, raised on a farm and schooled by Holy Cross
nuns. The bulk of my adult life, some 40 plus years, was spent in Denver,
Colorado as a nurse, gardener and gay/AIDS activist. I have
currently returned to Denver after an extended sabbatical in San Francisco,
California.
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What Wisdom Is All About by Nicholas

          There will
come a day when I won’t have the strength to lift my mountain bike up the six
steps out of the basement to get out for a ride. My arms won’t lift it up to my
shoulder, my legs will feel weak, my back ache. There may come a day when even
the thought of riding will be too much.
          There will
come a day when I might not be surrounded by the good books I’ve read and have
yet to read.
          There will
come a day when I say even an hour’s work in the garden is too much and let it
go a little wild and a little overrun with weeds which I despise.
          There will
come a day when I won’t be able to settle down to an evening of reading with a
glass of Cointreau to warm my throat.
          There may come
a day when I won’t climb the stairs up to bed and will sell the house for a
smallish, one-floor condo to watch the world that I used to work in.
          There may come
a day when I no longer will want to or be able to cook up a whole dinner in my
beloved kitchen.
          I’m coming these
days to focus on letting go instead of holding onto. If a massive hail storm
shreds my lovely tomato plants, then, I told Jamie, I’m done with gardening in
this almost impossible climate to work in. Some things, I just am not going to
care so much about anymore.
At a point in my life when each
birthday marks not one more year but one less, I have taken to de-accessioning,
getting rid of stuff. Many people when they reach their upper years become
hoarders and collectors of everything, not wanting to part with anything. Not me.
I just took a stack of classical music cd’s to the Denver Public Library. Let
other people hear this wonderful music. I have other versions or am just tired
of it. I periodically prune my bookshelves to take advantage of Tattered
Cover’s trade-in program and get a new book or two.
          Call it
resignation and a sense of limitations, but I want to cut back and cut down,
give away and throw away. I want less. Less stuff, that is.
I also want more—more good times with
friends, more enjoyment, more fun, more commitment, more energy. Resignation and
acceptance doesn’t mean inactivity or laziness or carelessness.
There’s a prayer that goes something
like this:  Lord, help me let go of the
things I need to let go of and accept the things I need to accept and help me
keep doing the things I need to do and then let me know the difference between
the two.
          That, it seems
to me, is what wisdom is about.         

© May 2014  

About the Author  

Nicholas grew up in
Cleveland, then grew up in San Francisco, and is now growing up in Denver. He
retired from work with non-profits in 2009 and now bicycles, gardens, cooks,
does yoga, writes stories, and loves to go out for coffee.


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Where I Was in the 60’s by Louis

If you ask young people
today what they know about the 1960’s, some say the Beatles. Most are not aware
what a traumatic decade that was. As the war in Vietnam raged on and on and on,
pacifism and isolationism became more and more popular. The main problem with
the 60’s was the American people went left while the government went right.
There was a sort of  blow-up. The 1960’s
saw the blacks standing up and demanding their rights, and then there were the
riots. And then there were our riots that went on 3 days, the Stonewall riots,
that started on June 28, 1969. We must not forget either the assassination of
President Kennedy. (You were John Kennedy Jr.’s neighbor).
The only other
traumatic event that compares with the assassination of President Kennedy was
the blowing up of the Twin Towers. In both events, I think it is safe to say we
all felt personally threatened. I was an eye-witness to the blowing up of the
twin towers. I was on my way to work. I had to take a bus to get to the Long
Island Railroad stop that I took to get to work. On the bus route is a swampy
area with very low buildings that would enable the bus passenger to get a good
view of the twin towers. I saw smoke billowing out of the towers, and I
wondered what that was all about. When I got to the Long Island Railroad stop
in Flushing, I was told there was no service into Manhattan. Later I would know
why. So I tried the subway. I went a few stops to 61st Street. The
train stopped and the conductor said the train was not going any further since
the train was not permitted to enter Manhattan.
Where
were you when President John F. Kennedy was shot? I
remember I was on my way to swimming class in the Queens College gym. I never
got as far as the gym. A fellow student told me the President had been shot.
Next to the Queens College gym, that resembled an airplane hangar, was a
parking lot. The students with the cars turned on their car radios and let
passers-by listen. I listened and was horrified. Jack Kennedy was handsome,
well-educated, intelligent, well-spoken. Jacqueline Kennedy was beautiful,
soft-spoken, pretty much a perfect first lady. Remember how she remodeled the
White House? The whole world was dazzled. I was dazzled, and John Kennedy
convinced me that the USA would lead the world into a better place, that human
progress was going to continue. Our nasty right-wing neighbors in Dallas, Texas
had other ideas. Then Nixon got elected, and hope died, and it has been
downhill ever since, let’s face it.  
My
visit to the draft-board in lower Manhattan, on Whitehall Street:
I had to go for my physical. When the army doctor examined me, I told him I was
a homosexual, and I was pretty sure the U. S. military, for their reasons, did
not want homosexual men, I guess. So I asked to be excused on that basis though
I requested they do not write that down in my record. Whether they wrote that
down or not, I do not know. I did not show up in a gown, and I did not paint my
fingernails red, nothing like that. I got a 1-Y classification because I wore
glasses. My brother went through a long drawn-out rigmarole application process
as a conscientious objector. They ultimately denied his application for status
as a conscientious objector but they gave him a 1-Y classification. Much has
been made of student deferments in those days. Both I and my wannabe
conscientious objector brother were attending college, but we never received a
student deferment. Go figure. 1-Y meant we would not be drafted unless there
was a national emergency. I guess the Vietnam War was not considered a national
emergency for some unfathomable reason. Two of my other brothers got 1-Y
classifications. My oldest brother was in the Air Force, a major or something;
he got out when the Vietnam War was getting a little too hot.
© 19 May 2014
About the Author  
I was born in 1944, I lived most of my life in New York City, Queens County. I still commute there. I worked for many years as a Caseworker for New York City Human Resources Administration, dealing with mentally impaired clients, then as a social work Supervisor dealing with homeless PWA’s. I have an apartment in Wheat Ridge, CO. I retired in 2002. I have a few interesting stories to tell. My boyfriend Kevin lives in New York City. I graduated Queens College, CUNY, in 1967.
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No Good Will Come of It by Lewis

“No good will come of it,” usually prefaced by “believe me,” is a line I don’t believe I have ever used in ordinary conversation. I have read the line in books, heard it voiced on the silver screen or from a stage, and can imagine it spoken by a finger-wagging false prophet from an obscure pulpit or a domineering parent in an American backwater community. Typically, in my experience, the person to whom such an admonition is directed would proceed to do the very thing against which he or she has been warned, presumably motivated by the realization that the odds that said act would result in an outcome that the doer was hoping for have been measurably increased. 

In 99% of life’s daily situations, to announce as fact the conviction that doing act ‘a’ will inevitably lead to result ‘b’–‘b’ being shorthand for “bad”—is a presumption scarcely justified by the vast convolutions of possibility that life throws at us. Even to say to a person who has a cocked and loaded gun at their temple, “If you pull that trigger, no good will come of it,” may not be true in the opinion of everyone who knows the poor despondent in question. Or, the gun may misfire, in which case the owner at least knows not to rely on that particular weapon for protection against intruders.
If I were to say to you, as you are about to set fire to a stock certificate worth $10 million, “Surely, no good will come of that,” again, I would be liar, because its demise would mean that the value of every other shareholders holdings would thereby be increased.
Tell someone who is addicted that to imbibe would surely lead to no good, and they might respond, “But at least, I’ll feel better for awhile.”
Tell that to the boy who is about to throw the pet cat into a bathtub full of water and he might well answer, “But it’s funny.”
Tell the husband or wife who is about to have a fling with a third party and they might tell you to mind your own business.
In short, hardly anything good can come from saying to someone, “No good will come of it.” Either you may well lose the love or respect of your friend or you will prove to have been wrong. A better approach would be to express what, in your mind, the consequences of doing such-and-such will be and those consequences had better be ones over which you have control, such as “I will never speak to you again” (and mean it). This kind of trade-off the person you are admonishing can understand and actually has a chance of influencing their behavior.

© 5 May 2013

About the Author


I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and I came to the beautiful state of Colorado out of my native Kansas by way of Michigan, the state where I married and had two children while working as an engineer for the Ford Motor Company. I was married to a wonderful woman for 26 happy years and suddenly realized that life was passing me by. I figured that I should make a change, as our offspring were basically on their own and I wasn’t getting any younger. Luckily, a very attractive and personable man just happened to be crossing my path at that time, so the change-over was both fortuitous and smooth.

Soon after, I retired and we moved to Denver, my husband’s home town. He passed away after 13 blissful years together in October of 2012. I am left to find a new path to fulfillment. One possibility is through writing. Thank goodness, the SAGE Creative Writing Group was there to light the way.

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An Elder’s Day at Pridefest 2014 by Donaciano Martinez

In the post-Pride public announcement from the GLBT Community Center (which produces Pride each year), Communications Manager Melody Glover noted there were 365,000 people who attended the June 2014 two-day event and there were 145 contingents in the Pride parade. As someone who has been in Denver’s Pride march/parade since its first one in 1976, I always have noticed that there are more spectators than there are marchers.

When the parade was over and I attempted to enter the park at which the festival was being held, I was stopped by an official gatekeeper (yes, child, nowadays personal items of festival goers must be inspected at all public events – such as Pride – held in a park). The young lesbian gatekeeper said she wasn’t sure she could let me in because she thought the placard (“I’ve Been Marching for Justice Since 1965”) in my hand “seemed anti-gay” to her. I have been accused of being anti-many things in my 50-year activism since 1964, but being anti-gay was not among them. Quite amused by her comment, I told her: (a) I carried the placard in the parade; (b) I have been marching in the Pride parade long before she was born; and (c) she could check with the GLBT Center’s Elders Program Manager Reynaldo Mireles if she needed verification that I am NOT anti-gay. Still unsure, she reluctantly let me in and soon thereafter I reconnected with Reynaldo at what I thought was the Elders Program (SAGE) booth. It turned out it was the GLBT Center’s information booth for which I volunteered (at Reynaldo’s request) for three hours handing brochures to attendees as they walked by.
The highlight of the day was a straight married couple who brought their two young children to meet me as the parents were so impressed upon seeing me proudly marching in the parade while holding the aforementioned sign that was baffling to the young lesbian gatekeeper. Very nice and respectful, the married couple told me their children have a gay uncle and the children are being raised to accept and support their uncle and other GLBT people.
A confusing part of the day occurred when I had a good chat with a vendor whose appearance and aura were so gay, yet he turned out to be straight — my longtime gay radar obviously isn’t reliable anymore.
Reflecting on his experiences at this year’s Pride festival, community elder and longtime human rights activist William Watts wrote: “Sorry, but I found it fairly bland, insipid, un-special, a major sin and overly ordinary. It could have been the People’s Fair [a straight event] or Taste of Colorado Fair [a straight event] with rainbow county fair junk-goods. Listening to some of the vendors’ conversations, they knew nothing of the LGBTQQI struggle and history and didn’t care. It was such a letdown. With success comes failure quickly!”
Inevitably, an overt Q-hating incident occurred while I was waiting for the bus to head home. The target was an effeminate gay man, who strutted by the bus stop while carrying a rainbow-color umbrella. A het supremacist repeatedly yelled the “F” word (rhymes with the word maggot) at the gay man and told him that he should be a “real man” and pursue women instead of men. At any moment, there could have been violence on the part of the enraged het supremacist. Although there was no violence, the incident underscored the reality that Q hating is alive and well – even on Pride Day.

©
5 July 2014

About the Author


Since 1964 Donaciano Martinez has been an activist in peace and social justice movements in Colorado. His family was part of a big migration of Mexican Americans from northern New Mexico to Colorado Springs in the 1940s. He lived in Colorado Springs until 1975 and then moved to Denver, where he still resides. He was among 20 people arrested and jailed in Colorado Springs during a 1972 protest in support of the United Farm Workers union that was co-founded by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. For his many years of activism, Martinez received the 1998 Equality Award, 1999 Founders Award, 2000 Paul Hunter Award, 2001 Community Activist Award, 2005 Movement Veterans Award, 2006 Champion of Health Award, 2008 Cesar Chavez Award, 2013 Lifetime Achievement Award, and the 2013 Pendleton Award. La Gente Unida, a nonprofit co-founded by Martinez, received the 2002 Civil Rights Award. The year 2014 marks the 50-year anniversary of his volunteer work in numerous nonprofit situations.

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The Accident by Betsy

My first pregnancy which resulted in the birth of my oldest child Lynne was a so-called accident. The discovery of my unintended pregnancy was overwhelming, anxiety producing, and stressful–for about one day. Quickly when the reality of what was unfolding set in, the wonder, excitement, and joy of it firmly took hold in my psyche. 

My oldest daughter is anything but an accident to me. She is a joy and always has been to me and her father. Her conception may have been unintended, but SHE is my pride and joy as are her sister and brother. 
At the time this accident occurred, my husband and I were hardly in a position financially to start a family. However, we had the resources we needed to adjust to the situation. It would only be one or two years before we would intentionally have considered starting a family, and so we were able to welcome the accidental pregnancy. 
Unfortunately it is not so in most cases of unintended pregnancy. Here are some interesting facts on the subject.
Births resulting from unintended pregnancies are associated with adverse maternal and child health outcomes, such as delayed prenatal care, premature birth and negative physical and mental health effects for children. 
For these reasons reducing the unintended pregnancy rate is a national public health goal. The U.S Dept. of Health and Human Services “Healthy People 2020” campaign aims to reduce unintended pregnancy by 10% over the next 10 years. 
Guess how many pregnancies each year in the U.S. are unintended. Close to half–49%. Of the 6.7 million pregnancies 3.2 million are not intentional. Of the two million publicly funded births, about one million resulted from unintended pregnancies, accounting for one half the total public expenditures on births. Total public expenditures on births resulting from unintended pregnancies were estimated to be $11.1 billion in 2006.
The rate of unintended pregnancies in the U.S. is significantly higher than in many other developed countries.
In 2006 of women aged 15-44, those with incomes at or below the federal poverty level the rate of unintended pregnancies was five times higher than that of women of higher income levels. The unintended birth rate for those poor women was six times higher than that of the higher income group. 
The unintended pregnancy rate for sexually active teens is considerably higher than for women overall. 
Facts prove w/o a doubt that contraception works. Sixteen percent of women of child bearing age do not practice contraception. These 16% account for 52% of all unintended pregnancies in the U.S. Two thirds of the U.S. women who correctly practice contraception account for only 5% of unintended pregnancies.
Without publicly funded family planning services the number of unintended pregnancies and abortions occurring in the US would be nearly 2/3 higher among women overall. The number of unintended pregnancies among poor women would nearly double. 
The costs associated with unintended pregnancies would be even higher if not for continued federal and state investments in family planning services. In the absence of services provided by publicly funded planning centers, the annual public costs of non intentional births would increase 60% to $18 billion.
Oh why, then, are so many states shutting down their family planning centers? Why do the states doing away with family planning services think that abortion is the only service provided by these centers?

2

Why, oh why is it that political discussions focus on abortion only. I don’t think I have ever heard a politician discuss the pros and cons of contraception.

Let me repeat: without publicly funded family planning services the number of unintended pregnancies and abortions occurring in the US would be nearly two thirds higher among women overall. The number of unintended pregnancies among poor women will nearly double, and safe abortions will not be available to many. Shutting down publicly funded family planning clinics is hardly the answer. The overall cost of these actions to society as a whole is difficult to foresee as the consequences are many and far reaching.
Just last Friday Oklahoma based Hobby Lobby won a temporary injunction against the Obamacare requirement that employers provide contraceptive coverage for their employees. The conservative Christian owner’s site their religious beliefs as their reason for avoiding the required coverage.
Republican controlled legislatures in several states have recently shut down hundreds of family planning clinics or abortion clinics as they are usually characterized by the media.
In response to stringent abortion restrictions that the Texas GOP controlled legislature approved last week, the Democratic caucus of that state is asking the lawmakers to study the impact that sex education and family planning support has on reducing the abortion rate. Sex education and family planning support–as if that were a unique idea!
Sex education and family planning are so obviously lacking in our culture. In recent years Texas and many other states have defunded women’s health clinics and Planned Parenthood causing many clinics to shut down. If as they say they want to cut down on the number of abortions, then why, why shut down the means for women to acquire contraceptives and information. As a result of these actions the Texas health department has projected that unintended pregnancies and births will certainly increase, especially among those with the least resources.

3

Many unintended pregnancies turn out to be welcomed, as mine did. But in too many cases families,young teens, single women, people of meager means are unable to meet all the needs of a new life–material needs and emotional needs. Often the parent or parents themselves are terribly needy. In these cases the choice to continue or not continue the pregnancy should certainly be available. But in a society such as ours there is no good reason not to have an adequate support system in place for those families to turn to when help is needed.

  
Source
1.   Guttmacher Institute, Fact Sheet, December, 2013


© 13 July 2013

About the Author



Betsy has been active in the GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver women’s chorus, OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change). She has been retired from the Human Services field for about 15 years. Since her retirement, her major activities include tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor with National Sports Center for the Disabled, and learning. Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of marriage. She has a close relationship with her three children and enjoys spending time with her four grandchildren. Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her life with her partner of 25 years, Gillian Edwards.

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Grief and Its Enterage by Beth Kahmann

Grief greeted me unexpectedly.

Like the other day, when I tipped my toe in a icy cold pool
My mind, as well as my blood was frozen, stymied,
The scene reminded me of a generation of life’s collectible sorrows, all lined up in a row of dominoes, waiting for the first tile, of many accidents, assaults, barrages, ballistics and statistics of fallen human souls in an insanely, archaic savage battering, smatterings of shard glass thrown aimlessly afoot.

Not unlike the slinky that we placed upon the top of our musty, worn out wooden floors. With each step, year after year, catastrophe after calamity, corruption after collision,
Decision after division after dying, and after death.

Grief, then rage filled me and fueled my heart with madness, until I felt like a mummy, entombed in sadness. More than likely, until the day I perish, grief might accompany me on the many trips I take til that final resting place, ’til that final resting place.

©  25 February 2013

About the Author 

Beth is an artist, educator, and is very passionate about
poetry.

She owns Kahmann Sense Communications (bethkahmann@yahoo.com).
Posted on

Don’t Touch Me There by Will Stanton

This topic seems immediately to imply unwanted physical contact. Perhaps that’s what the person who chose it was thinking. I suppose one could, by extension, think of “touching the mind,” or “touching the soul.” But then again, maybe that’s stretching it; those approaches sound too philosophical for such a small presentation.

So, what can a person such as I write about unwanted touching? Any form of touching is foreign to my experience growing up and into my early adulthood. Coming from a rather Puritanical home where touching and expressions of love were extremely limited, I craved the kind of attention that psychologists have learned is so important for helping to develop happy, healthy people with a good sense of self-esteem. I’m speaking of wanted touching, of course. I would not have been comfortable with unwanted touching. In my case, that was not a problem. My having had a very controlled childhood, apparently I never was placed into a situation where I was vulnerable to unwanted touching.

So, rather than my speaking of my own limited experience, I’ll address the fact that the human need to be touched, to be held, to have sex, is a powerful need; and if a majority of people, or those people with power and authority, feel that some expressions are outside their experience and therefore not normal, they tend to make such expressions taboo. What human expressions are deemed to be abnormal and worthy of being demonized or punished has changed from era to era and country to country. This certainly is true with same-sex relationships and relationships of individuals of disparate ages.

What once was accepted may no longer be accepted. The spreading of the Judeo-Christian mindset and influence in the West and the Muslim belief-system in the Middle East is what turned same-sex attraction taboo and instilled greatly varying limits upon age-of-consent. Societies do change. To exist in contemporary society, one needs to makes certain rational accommodations if for no other reason than for self-preservation. Such accommodations, however, should not result in denying the reality of one’s own nature or the acceptance of the facts of human nature in general. Ignorance and fear should not negate empathy and love for other people. Unfortunately, that ignorance, intolerance, and even stupidity continue to be pervasive, and with terrible consequences to the health and wellbeing of individuals and society as a whole.

I have observed cases of persons suddenly developing extremely painful emotions with terrible shame and guilt when it has been drummed into them that they should, they must, harbor such destructive feelings. Churches with intolerant, antiquated dogma and social groups that have lived with such bias firmly ingrained for generations continue to contribute to a social atmosphere that harms rather than helps. The legal system and courts have exacerbated fears of human sex, both straight and gay.

In one case, the Denver County District Attorney charged a young man with ten felony counts for a several-month, mutually agreed-upon relationship because his girlfriend was not yet eighteen. Under the laws of age-of-consent in France, the relationship would have been legal. Those felony charges must have succeeded in causing life-long trauma to both individuals and also destroyed for life the reputation of the young man. I was so disturbed by seeing the young man crushed by the weight of authority and law that I could not stomach the idea of serving on the jury. I fortunately was able to have myself excused from the jury because of my work obligations.

In another example, had seventeen-year-old Daniel Radcliffe opened his play “Equus” in New York rather than London, he could have been arrested for public nudity because what was legal in England was not in New York. There are implied moral determinations here, too. What was moral in England would have been immoral in New York. A rational person would be right in questioning if this made any sense.

The news media also do their share of sensationalizing sex, too, turning human nature into titillating, yet shocking, tales of human depravity. The viewing audience and voting public, therefore, focus on sex rather than the important issues of the day.

Mind you, I’m not excusing unwanted touching or harming other people. Instead, I’m speaking of the profound need of humans for love and touch that often goes unmet. Years of psychological research has proved that emotional closeness and physical touch are essential for good mental and physical health. Without loving contact, the mind and body suffer. In addition, without them, the young, from frustration, may place themselves into undesirable situations, seeking that needed love and touch. A college friend of mine revealed to me that, during high school, he had been so desperate for love and touch that he briefly had turned to prostitution, not so much for money, but rather for hoped-for comfort.

I’ll relate a case of someone I met who described in detail his experience of touching. From his telling, it was hard to discern what his current feelings are regarding his experience, wanted or unwanted touching.

When I first met him, the scandal involving the Catholic Church was just breaking. At thirty, he still looked very boyish and attractive, although he also had made a macho place for himself in society by forming a successful concrete-cutting company. During a group-conversation about the apparent molestation of boys by priests, he ironically quipped, “None of the priests touched me. What was wrong with me?”

I say “ironically” because what he experienced was far more significant than a mere occasion or two being fondled by an adult. His experience also began at an age that even ancient Greeks thought to be too young, eleven; and the man was twenty-one.

There were stereotypical aspects to his childhood, such as a totally dysfunctional family and an absence of love. Lacking guidance, support, and affection, he was an easy target, as often is the case with such boys. Yet, the boy and the man apparently derived sufficient comfort and satisfaction from the relationship because it lasted ten years. One would assume that, as he grew into adulthood and gained some more mature perspective of his situation, he might have felt more comfortable withdrawing from the relationship if he had developed growing misgivings. Apparently, he had not.

As it turned out, it took an outside force to radically change his perspective. The disharmony and dysfunction within his family had only increased, so he sought professional help. Now, I know something about how to work constructively with patients, and immediately imposing one’s own, personal beliefs upon a patient, especially when such beliefs are intolerant and deny human nature, should be avoided. Apparently however, avoidance is precisely what this therapist did not do. When he was informed of the ten-year relationship, the therapist told the young man that he had been taken advantage of, abused, molested, scarred for life, that he always would feel guilt and shame. Not surprisingly, he consequently concluded that the therapist must be right and developed agitated feelings of having been scarred for life and shamed. So rather than coming to comfortable terms with his homosexuality, he became confused and angry.

All this occurred unbeknownst to the older man. To celebrate his young friend’s birthday, he had delivered to him a nice, new television set. Still feeling his new-found rage, the young man walked it over to the other’s home and smashed the TV on his front porch. Obviously, that was the end of their relationship.

Any thinking person who has become familiar with history can not escape the realization that such desires and relationships are ubiquitous and have existed for many centuries. This is not a limited nor new phenomenon. If any rational person takes the time and makes the effort to dispassionately analyze this fact, some logical questions are raised. What kind of touching is, in the truest sense, natural; what kind unnatural? What kind of intimacy is healthful; what kind unhealthful? If society or religion make normal human needs taboo, and people’s attempts to meet their desires become misunderstood, feared, corrupted, and unnatural, its logical to conclude that the resulting behaviors may become fear-laden, twisted and unnatural. Harm may come to one or both parties. Skewed behavior may turn even to violence.

Nobody should take advantage of another person, young or old, to selfishly attempt to satisfy a need. This is especially true with very young people who have not yet developed their minds and personalities to the extent where they can make rational decisions for themselves. That is precisely why the ancient Greeks assumed that young adolescents where not appropriate for intimate relationships, although courting older ephebes was not only accepted but celebrated. A thinking person might conclude that ancient Greeks had a more normal, healthful attitude about sex than modern societies. For any person to hold intolerant beliefs and to instill in others self-destructive thoughts and feelings not felt naturally is thoughtless and harmful.

Too little effort has been made by professionals and the general public to understand natural human needs, needs that have gone unmet with so many people for so long. I have read some surprising comments posted on YouTube regarding the film “For a Lost Soldier,” an autobiographical account similar to my description of the relationship told to me. There were several posted comments from viewers who, when young, apparently had lacked the love and touch they so desperately needed. Several of them said, “I wish that had happened to me.” How the relationship in the story happened was not the most healthful or desirable; however, I can understand the feelings of those who still felt hurt that they were denied a loving touch.

© 04/18/2013

About the Author

I have had a life-long fascination with people and their life stories. I also realize that, although my own life has not brought me particular fame or fortune, I too have had some noteworthy experiences and, at times, unusual ones. Since I joined this Story Time group, I have derived pleasure and satisfaction participating in the group. I do put some thought and effort into my stories, and I hope that you find them interesting.