Tag: Life Stories

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I Used to Think by Gillian

I used to think I was straight, but now I know I am actually as queer, as the saying goes, as a three dollar bill. No, that’s not really true. Oh, the queer part is, but back then I didn’t think I was straight, because the words straight and gay were not yet in play; indeed the concepts barely were. So what I actually thought was that there was something wrong with me that I didn’t get all excited about boys the way my girlfriends did. But I also believed it would go away. It was just a phase. It would pass.

I used to think, when I got married to a man, that it was forever. I took my marriage vows very seriously and meant every word of that rather horrid phrase, till death us do part. It was the end of a phase. Of course I know now that it was doomed from day one. My previous feelings were not a phase, and neither was my marriage, being no more than a piece of rather good acting on my part, albeit somewhat subconscious.

I used to think, when it came over me that I just had to come out, that I would lose a few people I thought of as my friends, but so be it. Now I know that most people, even back in the early eighties, really didn’t care. And it gets more that way with each passing day.

I used to think, when I first came out, that I would never get too serious about any one woman. I would simply play the field making up for decades of lost time. Now I know that when you meet that special woman, all previous thoughts, in fact all thought of any kind, flies right out the window.

I used to think, long after coming out, long after committing my life to partnership with my beautiful Betsy, that there was no hope that gay marriage would ever come to this country, even as it spread to many countries across the globe. I told myself I didn’t care. We had as loving and committed a relationship as was possible. We didn’t need, or even want, that failed straight institution. I know, now, that I was in a wee state of denial. After all, if something is unavailable what is the point in hungering for it? I still have a dream that we queers can do something better, but meanwhile I proudly clutch my official, legal (at least in about twenty states) marriage license.

I used to think that my liking for alcohol would pass. Just another phase. I know now that at the age of 72, after drinking my way quite steadily through over half a century, that is not likely to happen. On the other hand, it is not the temptation it once was. Or perhaps to be more accurate I should say that the temptation, if succumbed to, is much shorter lived. I tend to fall asleep after one beer, unless I remain in constant motion and my arthritis argues strongly against that.

I used to think, as a pudgy child, that my battle with weight would also pass. Yet another phase! And indeed for many years taken up with raising four step-children and putting in long exhausting hours at work, I settled comfortably in the acceptable center of that BMI range. For several years now, though, I have been pushing greedily against the BMI north face, and sometimes toppling over. I now know that if I ever return to the center, where all the charts and measurements estimate I should be, if I ever lose considerable weight, it will probably result from some condition not promising me health and longevity.

I used to think that someday I would no longer feel pain from the death of my mom and dad. Suffering the loss of one’s parents is, after all, the natural progression of life. Now I know I shall never get used to being an orphan, and will always have that tiny empty space inside me.

I used to think that someday I would write that unique novel. It would be translated into at least thirty different languages. My name would be recognized in as many countries. I would walk into a meeting room on a business trip to, say, the IBM facility in Melbourne. Those Aussie jaws would drop as they chorused, “Oh my word! You don’t say you’re THE Gillian Edwards?!” Now I know it’s one chance in a million that I’ll even have some inane comment go viral to make me at least famous for a day. Or a nano-second. I am honored to have a very occasional short piece published in that most erudite of journals, Out Front. I also know, now, that if I can write a few hundred words which occasionally amuse or emotionally captivate a small minority of a group of wonderful people gathered around a table on a Monday afternoon, that is the only claim to fame I need.

© August 2014

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25 years.

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A Salute to PFLAG by Betsy

“I knew my son was gay. He didn’t want to tell me. I told him I loved him and nothing else mattered. He didn’t believe I was accepting, but I was.” These are the words of Jeanne Manford, cofounder of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, the internationally known organization of allies of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgendered.

The concept for the organization was born in 1972 when Jeanne Manford marched with her gay son Morty in New York’s Christopher Street Liberation Day March, the precursor to today’s Pride parade. She carried a sign which read “Parents of Gays Unite in Support for Our Children.” This brought on cheers yelling, crying and clapping and to Jeanne’s surprise many people came up to her during the march, shook hands, hugged her, begged her to talk to their parents. The requests continued after the parade with hundreds of telephone calls from gay and lesbian people wanting Jeanne to speak to their parents. It became clear to her that a support group was needed. Thus the first meeting was held in March 1973 in Greenwich Village. Twenty people attended.

Jeanne continued answering the calls and began traveling the country making appearances on radio and tv promoting the cause.

By 1979 many similar groups had sprung up around the country. By 1980 the first PFLAG National office was established in Los Angeles followed by the incorporation and granting of tax exempt status to the organization which now included some 20 groups. The headquarters was relocated to Denver in 1987 under President Elinor Lewallen, whom many of us knew well. PFLAG took off in the 1990’s and the national office employed an executive director and some staff and moved to Washington DC.

The administration of George H.W. Bush became the first to be directly supportive of gay rights when the then PFLAG president Paulette Goodman sent Barbara Bush a letter asking for her support. Her reply was “I firmly believe that we cannot tolerate discrimination against any individuals or groups in our country. Such treatment always brings with it pain and perpetuates intolerance.” Unbeknownst to some powers that be, the first lady’s comments were given to the press and caused a political maelstrom.

Today 40 years after it’s inception PFLAG has grown to a network of 350 chapters worldwide with more than 200,000 members. Perhaps one of the greatest services provided by PFLAG over the years has been the dissemination of information to educational institutions and communities of faith and the general public nationwide. This along with personal and group support for parents who sometimes are in tears and in shock and are trying to understand.

I became involved in PFLAG around 2003 when I learned that the Denver Chapter was meeting in my neighborhood. I decided to attend a meeting.

At the meeting I found many acquaintances, gays, lesbians, and straight.

The chair of the board was an old acquaintance from my married days–she had worked with my husband at CU medical school. I think she was surprised to see me there. Before I knew it I found myself on the board of directors of the Denver Chapter. There I remained for 7 years having held the office of president for 2 years until my tenure ended due to term limits.

I was glad to be active and committed to this organization. I believe that PFLAG, being an organization of allies, has been in the right place at the right time to help open people’s minds and bring about attitude and policy changes.

The credibility of parents who love their children just as they are and want to support them can be very powerful. I thought at first that I knew a good bit of what being both the parent of a lesbian and being a lesbian myself was about. But I quickly discovered at PFLAG that being a straight parent of a lesbian is very much a different thing. My eyes were opened when in a “coming out” support group meeting parents were talking about how difficult it is to come out to their friends and family. Some were having difficulty with this, fearing rejection by those closest to them, and had been closeted themselves for a long time. It had never occurred to me that these straight people had the same fear issues that their gay children did, and that they, like their gay and lesbian children had to summon up some courage to “come out” and reveal the secret of their son or daughter.

Our chapter’s major activities during my active years included

1. Speaking with school groups, students, staff, and parents to promote better understanding and acceptance of GLBT. Working with schools who have bullying issues to address. Providing support and education to parents and school personnel around transgender issues.

2. Speaking similarly with other community groups including churches.

3. Providing educational materials put out by the national office.

4. Providing an emergency “helpline” for parents or others in distress.

5. Providing a monthly support meeting with a trained facilitator for parents whose sons or daughters have just come out to them. The support meeting is followed by a program featuring a speaker or panel of speakers always bringing enlightenment to their audiences.

6. Advocating for marriage equality.

Will the support and advocacy of PFLAG be a continuing need in the future? I believe there will always be a need. The specific activities of the organization may change with the times. With more awareness, more children are coming out and often at a younger age than in past decades.

Although there has been increased acceptance and policy changes, there is still much misinformation and misunderstanding and hatred of homosexual people. The more recent emergence of awareness of transgender issues by itself presents huge challenges to families involved and to advocacy groups. In my opinion PFLAG will be in business for a long time.

Denver, 2014

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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Locked Out by Ricky

Locked Out or Locked In, It’s All the Same

Perhaps the greatest fear a person can have short of going to hell when one dies, is the fear that they might become locked into their own minds, and locked out of reality at the same time. Dementia and Alzheimer diseases are two examples of this condition. Another would be where a person has an active and normal mental state but is incapable of communicating anything to anyone. I certainly would not like to be in any of those conditions. Although I have made jokes about the good thing about Alzheimer disease is that, you get to meet new people every day; it really is not funny.

Can you imagine the frustration, confusion, disorientation, and fear that probably results from not being able to communicate or understand what is happening around you or even to you? It is easy for me to imagine it as I have been “locked out” and “locked in” a few times in my life so I remember the feeling. I imagine I would feel mental anguish a thousand times worse, if I had any of those conditions permanently.

My future wife got off from work one Friday night in Pensacola and drove to her mother’s home 50-miles away in Niceville (yes, that’s a real town). Her arrival at about 9PM was unexpected and her mother refused to let her in for the night, effectively locking her out of the home where her childhood bedroom was. In desperation she came to my trailer (or called me first) where upon I let her stay that night and the rest of the weekend. I knew how she felt because her tears and words were communicating perfectly.

As a youngster, I was fairly fearless or perhaps my parents would have used different words such as thoughtless or even stupid. Even then, I had a healthy case of acrophobia. Climbing the ladder to join my father on the roof of our single-story home was no problem. The problem manifested upon my turning around to get back on the ladder to go down. Anyway, at about 14-years old my father had taken me to somewhere in Minnesota to visit one of his childhood friends who just happened to have two boys, both younger than me.

These boys were truly farm boys, while I was only a 2-year “pretender” to farm life. As farmer’s sons, they naturally had to help with all the farm work, which included stacking hay bales in the hayloft of the barn during summer harvesting. So being boys, they stacked the bales to create a secret passage to their “hideaway” near one of the windows in the wall that was hidden by 10 or 15 feet of stacked hay. There were three hidden access “tunnels” to the hideaway; two along the wall and one in the middle of the hayloft with a vertical drop and a crawl-only tunnel at the bottom under tons of hay.

The boys told me about their hideaway and wanted to show it to me so I went to the barn with them being anxious to see what I had only fantasized doing while living on my grandfather’s farm. By this time in my life I had mentally matured somewhat so I was not thoughtless, but still not completely un-stupid either. The boys would only take me to their hideaway if I used the vertical shaft as the entrance. I looked at the opening and told them that I was too big to fit and they said there was plenty of room as they were not that much smaller than me. My common sense was overruled by my desire to see the hideaway and so ignoring my eyes, which had been telling me the truth, I started down the shaft to the bottom and then managed to back into the tunnel, which was only about 9 inches high and 13 or 14 inches wide. I managed to crawl backwards about four feet and then got stuck. I spent three-months stuck under all that hay during the five-minutes it took them to use one of the other tunnels to get behind me and pull me feet first into the hideaway. Using the other entrances along the wall I easily returned to the surface of the hay. Needless to say, I’ve been claustrophobic ever since, all because of being locked-in under a “mountain” of hay and locked-out of normal life.

One could say that I was locked-out of a normal life because beginning in high school I was not attracted to girls’ looks but only their personalities and only then when thinking about having someone with which to go to movies or other non-sexual activities associated with dating—at that time I only fantasized sexually about boys. Although this has not been as explosively traumatic as being stuck under tons of hay and the result thereof, this type of locked-out was nonetheless a chronically mild trauma whose persistent presence kept building consequences beyond it’s apparent significance. Of course it didn’t help that apparently none of my female classmates took any interest, sexual or otherwise, in me either even though I was always a gentleman, respectful, and spoke with them easily. However, I never asked any of them for a date and they never offered either.

As I’ve mentioned in prior stories, my emotional trauma caused by my parents incorrectly shutting me out of their divorce situation and my father erroneously waiting to tell me about it the night before he left, was for me the most important and crippling locked-out or locked-in depending upon point of view. Having access to only half, if even that much, of the range of possible human emotions is not desirable or even close to being a good thing. If one is so severely locked-in to depression and locked-out of empathy, how could one feel the opposites? I could not feel joy or true happiness as they were denied me until the effects of the emotional locked-out could be reversed or canceled. Fortunately, for me, as I have stated before, I am now free of those influences and am emotionally whole, but still learning how to deal with the new emotions.

Being free of emotional lockouts does not prevent my unfortunate tendency towards being physically locked-out. After I got married a new mental condition surfaced—forgetfulness. I suspect I may have had it before, but my wife certainly was able to point it out. I don’t know if it is a genetic condition or if it is a naturally occurring phenomenon of marriage as I’ve heard almost all wives complaining about their husbands’ lack of memory.

My wife and I once visited Arches National Monument on a nice hot summer day. As I exited the vehicle and shut the door, I suddenly realized that I had left the keys in the ignition. My wife had left her purse under the seat so we had no keys and the doors were locked. We were locked-out of our vehicle and locked-in to the great American Desert—without a cell phone—without water—without clothing for nighttime in the desert—and most importantly without a coat-hanger or any other object with which to unlock the door. Eventually, another tourist happened by and gave us a hanger.

I tend to believe in my genetic theory of carelessness or forgetfulness; perhaps they are really manifestations of the same thing. Even when my wife was not around to be involved, I would still lock myself out of my vehicles occasionally but still far too often. This was most evident and embarrassing while I was serving as a Missile Security Officer in Montana, Arkansas, and South Dakota.

Part of my military duty was to drive around the “missile field” to visit and inspect the security police guards. I had a deserved reputation of locking myself out of my vehicle while over 200-miles away from the base where the spare keys were. Fortunately, I had personnel on my security flight that grew up in New York City, so they had the skills needed to open locked vehicles and they were only 20-miles away on the average.

Eventually, I began to carry two sets of vehicle keys with me whenever I leave home. I still lock myself out occasionally, but now I don’t need help when it happens. Who says you can’t teach a senior citizen new tricks?

© 9 January 2012

About the Author

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach. Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.

When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11 terrorist attack.

I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010. I find writing these memories to be therapeutic.

My story blog is TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com

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The Women in My Life by Ray S

Contrary to some, not all, there still exists the opinion on the part of some sociologists, psychologists, and worst of all the public citizenry that the shared lot in this life is the fault of the mother.

Not wishing to be branded a misogynist, God forbid I hasten to rise to the defense of all of the innocent, or otherwise, mothers that have brought forth a world of heterosexual beings and very special homosexual beings. Get serious, those fare ladies didn’t have the slightest idea of how that 3 minutes or 3 seconds of passion would turn out. Nowadays medical science has taken the surprise out of all that labor during childbirth and the proud parents know ahead of time whether it will be a son and heir to carry on the family name, or a Madam Currie’ or Lady Ga Ga. So what does this preamble have to do with our subject today? Guess!

As an aftermath of my own coming out party, oh I don’t mean that October day some 80+ years ago, it dawned on me that in spite of my life long fondness for boys, consciously or sub-consciously, most of my best friends have been women, or girls when we were very young.

Sure, I yearned to be like and envied the guys I’ve grown up with–seeing them as role models I could never be–but it was then and is now that the women in my life that have made me what I am, well sort of.

I had planned to submit a list of all of my very own women’s names, but have run out of time and besides you all have your own special names in mind. So suffice it to say, “Where would we be without some special female of the species?” And that is meant literally as well as emotionally.

© 11/24/14

About the Author

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Signposts by Phillip Hoyle

Ted grew up on a large farm in southwestern Kansas, near Liberal. Ted seemed to have inherited his musical ear and talent from his mother, a fine pianist who accompanied her son’s solos throughout his childhood and teens. Ted’s clear, resonant, and lovely voice and his ability to interpret songs came from somewhere. His mom? His dad? I didn’t know them well enough to judge. Ted did seem to have inherited from his dad his tall frame, his good looks, his organizational ability, and his alcoholism. Ted sang in church and school choirs and pranced down Main Street and around the football field as drum major of the high school band. He was also a straight-A student.

When Ted was fifteen he attended the Fred Waring Choral Summer Workshop where he learned a lot about music and had sex with a man. When he got home, he asked his mom if he could see a psychiatrist. “You need a psychiatrist like I need a hole in my head,” she responded. That ended the conversation but not Ted’s worry over his life and its direction.

Ted attended college at Wichita State University as a music education major with vocal and choral options. One of his college teachers told me Ted was brilliant, not just smart, perhaps the most brilliant student she had ever taught. I figured she might know something about that since she had taught grade school, high school, college, and graduate courses. While an undergraduate student, Ted ably led the choir in his Wichita church. Upon graduation he began his music career as a vocal and choral instructor in a small church-related college in north-central Kansas. That’s where I met him during my last semester.

Ted and I seemed very much alike yet at the same time quite different. I had been married about a year and a half; the summer before we met, Ted had terminated his engagement to be married. We did share our love of vocal and choral music. We both had been directing choirs. Somehow I also knew that like me he would be open to sex with another man. He too may have known that about me, but we didn’t move toward that kind of relationship. Rather we became good friends.

Ted’s musical brilliance was supported by his tremendous organizing skills and natural gift as a teacher. He made musicians of his students. A couple of years into his work at the college, he tried again to court and to marry but in so doing pushed himself into an emotional and mental breakdown. His high-school self analysis had been too accurate.

By then, my wife and I lived in Wichita. Ted entered the graduate music program in voice at WSU. On weekends he’d stay with us and our new baby boy. One weekend he came out to me and seemed a little angry with me when I told him I’d realized he was gay the very first time I met him. When he lived with us a couple of months the following summer, Ted’s homosexuality revealed itself to be as intense as his brilliance, musicality, musicianship, and ability to organize. He and I stayed with our chosen friendship, yet he told me many, many things about his life, including some of his sexual experiences. He seemed a little disappointed as well as relived when his psychiatrist and counselors at the mental hospital where over a number of years he received care told him they were not treating his homosexuality; they did not consider it an illness. We continued to become even greater friends. Ted was a friend with my wife as well and an uncle to our son.

Ted left college teaching and followed his voice teacher to Texas where he studied music at Trinity University. I visited him in San Antonio, saw the university, met teachers, observed his great choral programming at a church where he was music director, sang with him, and more. On that trip Ted became my gay educator interpreting such phenomena as gay bars, drag queens, gay language (verbal and non-), gay people, and the emerging gay literature; and he told me many more stories from his own experience.

Eventually Ted moved to San Francisco where he plunged into a gay scene not imaginable in Wichita, San Antonio, Houston, or Dallas. There he sang in the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus, organized and led the SFGM Chorale. He taught voice at a community music school, led other ensembles, and sang professionally in a Catholic Church choir. On one visit I went to mass with him. The organist and all the singers seemed to be gay. But even more than all these things, and in a very personal way equally important, Ted became an A-List masochist. He contracted HIV, doctored at San Francisco General Hospital, and became an AIDS activist. Ted showed me the photo of himself at a party wearing his mother’s mink stole and explained he was exploring his feminine side. He told me stories of unrequited love. When we walked around together he made comments about beautiful men we encountered. I must add this: Ted lived at 944 Castro. Do I really need to say more? I’m sure Ted was the gayest person I ever met.

Ted died from AIDS-related conditions. I attended his balloon-crowded memorial service at First Congregational Church, heard spoken tributes by a number of his gay friends, listen to his beloved chorale sing, and enjoyed a gay party after the service. When I came to Denver to live as a gay man, I dedicated myself to giving massages to people living with HIV/AIDS in his memory. Ted was and continues to be my gay icon.

 Denver, 2014

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

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Stories of GLBT Organizations by Lewis

My thirty-year career at Ford Motor Company reached its culmination at the end of the last century, coincident with the last of my 26 years of being in a straight marriage and the birth of the GLBT organization that has played the largest part in my personal journey toward wholeness. That organization is Ford GLOBE.

GLOBE is an acronym for Gay, Lesbian, Or Bisexual Employees. It was hatched in the minds of two Ford employees, a woman and a man, in Dearborn, MI, in July of 1994. By September, they had composed a letter to the Vice President of Employee Relations–with a copy to Ford CEO, Alex Trotman–expressing a desire to begin a dialogue with top management on workplace issues of concern to Ford’s gay, lesbian and bisexual employees. They were invited to meet with the VP of Employee Relations in November.

In 1995, the group, now flying in full view of corporate radar and growing, elected a five-member board, adopted its formal name of Ford GLOBE; designed their logo; adopted mission, vision, and objective statements; and adopted bylaws. The fresh-faced Board was invited to meet with the staff of the newly-created corporate Diversity Office. Soon after, “sexual orientation” was incorporated into Ford’s Global Diversity Initiative. Members of Ford GLOBE participated in the filming of two company videos on workplace diversity. Also that year, Ford was a sponsor of the world-premier on NBC of Serving in Silence, starring Glenn Close as Army Reserve Colonel Margarethe Cammermeyer. By September of 1996, Ford GLOBE chapters were forming in Great Britain and Germany.

In March of 1996, Ford GLOBE submitted to upper management the coming-out stories of 23 members in hope of putting a human face on what had been an invisible minority. Along with the stories came a formal request for Ford’s non-discrimination policy to be rewritten to include sexual orientation. At the time, only Ford of Britain had such a policy.

Ford GLOBE was beginning to network with similar interest groups at General Motors and Chrysler, including sharing a table at the 1996 Pridefest and walking together in the Michigan Pride Parade in Lansing. After two years of discussion between Ford GLOBE and top management, on November 14, 1996, Ford CEO, Alex Trotman, issued Revised Corporate Policy Letter # 2, adding “sexual orientation” to the company’s official non-discrimination policy. To this day, some of our largest and most profitable corporations, including Exxon Mobile, have refused to do the same.

My involvement with Ford GLOBE began sometime in 1997. For that reason and the fact that I have scrapped many of my records of this period, I have relied heavily on Ford GLOBE’s website for the dates and particulars of these events.

In February of 1998, I attended a “Gay Issues in the Workplace” Workshop, led by Brian McNaught, at Ford World Headquarters, jointed sponsored by GLOBE and the Ford Diversity Office. I remember a Ford Vice President taking the podium at that event. He was a white man of considerable social cachet and I assumed that the privilege that normally goes with that status would have shielded him from any brushes with discrimination. In fact, he told a story of riding a public transit bus with his mother at the height of World War II. His family was German. His mother had warned him sternly not to speak German while riding the bus. Thus, he, too, had known the fear of being outed because of who he was. The experience had made him into an unlikely ally of GLOBE members over 50 years later.

In 1999, Ford GLOBE amended its by-laws to make it their mission to include transgendered employees in Ford’s non-discrimination policy and gender identity in Ford’s diversity training. Ford Motor Company was the first and only U.S. automotive company listed on the 1999 Gay and Lesbian Values Index of top 100 companies working on gay issues, an achievement noted by Ford CEO Jac Nasser. It was about this time that retired Ford Vice Chairman and Chief Financial Officer Alan Gilmore came out as gay. The Advocate named Ford Motor Company to its list of 25 companies that provide good environments for gay employees in its Oct. 26 edition.

Having earlier written the contract bargaining teams for Ford Motor Company, United Auto Workers, and Canadian Auto Workers requesting specific changes in the upcoming union contracts, Ford GLOBE was pleased to see that the resulting Ford/CAW union contract included provision for same-sex domestic partners to be treated as common law spouses in Canada, for sexual orientation to be added to the nondiscrimination statement of the Ford/UAW contract, and that Ford and the UAW agreed to investigate implementation of same-sex domestic partner benefits during the current four-year union contract.

The year 2000 was not only the year that I became Board Chair of Ford GLOBE but also the year that marked a momentous event in automotive history as Ford, General Motors, and the Chrysler Division of DaimlerChrysler issued a joint press release with the United Auto Workers announcing same-sex health care benefits for the Big Three auto companies’ salaried and hourly employees in the U.S. As the first-ever industry-wide joint announcement of domestic partner benefits and largest ever workforce of 465,000 U.S. employees eligible in one stroke, the historic announcement made headlines across the nation. It was truly a proud moment for all of us in the Ford GLOBE organization.

On January 1 of 2001, my last year with the company, Ford expanded its benefits program for the spouses of gay employees to include financial planning, legal services, the personal protection plan, vehicle programs, and the vision plan.

Since my departure from the company, Ford and GLOBE have continued to advance the cause of GLBT equality and fairness both within the corporation and without. I am fortunate to have been supported in my own coming out process by my associates within the company, both gay and straight, and to Ford GLOBE in particular for the bonds of friendship honed in the common struggle toward a better and freer world.

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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Summer Camp by Betsy

Unlike their counterpart the Boy
Scouts of America, the Girl Scouts of the USA have historically been accepting
of their lesbian members–girls and adult leaders and professional staff
members.   The policy regarding sexual
orientation is and always has been not to condemn or condone any sexual
behavior, and that displays of or promotion of any lifestyle over another is
inappropriate and has no place in the conduct of adult leaders or girl
members.  Inappropriate conduct sexual or
otherwise is subject to evaluation and condemnation by the administrative
authorities of the organization.
I had a 25 year career as a
professional staff member and about 40 years as a girl member and a volunteer
leader and administrator.  In those 65
years I have known many women both gay and straight who have been dedicated to
the Girl Scout program and ideals.
The Girl Scout program and the
places where it is carried out offer girls something unique; namely, a place
for girls only, a place where girls can carry out their activities and projects
without the presence of boys.  In a
girls-only environment, the dynamics are different from an environment where
boys are present.  Expectations of the
girls are higher and their performance is often higher.  The stereotypes assigned by society to
females usually disappear in an all-girl setting.  Stereotypes of acceptable female roles simply
do not apply in such circumstances. 
Studies have shown clearly that students in an all girl setting
consistently out perform those in co-ed settings.  Girl Scouting offers this all-girl setting
where recreational activities can be carried out.
It seems that homophobia has never
been an issue in my experience in girl scouting with one exception.  Summer camp. 
One can certainly understand how a
college aged lesbian seeking summer employment would be attracted to the Girl
Scout summer camp counsellor job.  How
many times have I heard these words from many of my lesbian acquaintances: “Oh,
you worked for the Girl Scouts?  I was a
summer camp counsellor when I was in college.”
There are very few times the
homophobia monster reared its ugly head in the 25 years I was with Mile Hi
Council staff.   Both were very ugly
indeed. 
I was not involved in the camp
program so I heard this story second hand but I am sure it’s accurate.  During one two-week session of camp somehow
word got out that there were two lesbians on the camp staff–maybe more.  The word got to some of the campers’
parents–parents who did not want their children exposed to homosexuality.  In the middle of the session two of the
parents appeared one day at camp and publicly and loudly demanded that their
children be removed immediately from whatever they were doing.  The mothers were there to take there darlings
home lest they fall under the damaging 
influence of the lesbian counsellors.
The second appearance of the
monster occurred when an acquaintance, the administrator of a camping program
told me that she had been directed by her CEO to be sure not to recruit camp
staff from the lesbian community.  How do
we know an applicant is a lesbian,” she asked.  
“We can’t ask.”  “They all have
short hair,” was the reply from the CEO, who, by the way, herself had never
been known to have anything but short hair.
Ahh! Summer camp.  No wonder I loved it so much myself.  Crawling with lesbians.  How is it that I ended up with a life-long
partner who doesn’t even know what summer camp is!
© 25 August 2014
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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Favorite Places by Ricky

I
have many “favorite places” depending upon which part of my life I am
remembering.  Only a few can be called
absolute favorites throughout my life. 
What follows is only a listing of those places which are withstanding
the ravages of time upon my memories.

These places are listed in no particular “favorite” order.

1.   Disneyland
– Peter Pan Ride (I first rode this in 1955)
2.   Disneyland
– Alice in Wonderland Ride (I first rode this in 1955)
3.   Lake
Tahoe – Emerald Bay (My first summer home at Lake Tahoe – 1958)
4.   LDS
Manti Temple (Deborah and I married here in 1973)
5.   Mt.
Rushmore, South Dakota (I recharge my patriotism here)
6.   Epcot
Center – Journey Into Imagination with Figment (My family LOVED this ride.  We rode it three times in a row without
getting off the ride to reenter.  This
link is for the newest version not the one we saw years ago.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuPr7G-uBmM
  
7.   BSA
Camp Winton (I was a boy camper 2 years and on the “Staph” in 1966.  The “staph” spelling was my idea.  My name is recorded around the “XX” brand
left of center.)
8.   Disneyland
Paris – Space Mountain (My youngest daughter, her friend boy, and I rode this
twice.) 
  
9.   Step-father’s
Tour Boat (I was his deckhand all summer in 1958)
10.   The
California Redwood forest at Trees of
Mystery.  Specifically, the
“Cathedral Trees.”
Cathedral Tree video 1:48
minutes.
The Redwoods

Joseph B. Strauss

Here,
sown by the Creator’s hand.
In serried ranks, the Redwoods stand:
No other clime is honored so,
No other lands their glory know.

The greatest of Earth’s living forms,
Tall conquerors that laugh at storms;
Their challenge still unanswered rings,
Through fifty centuries of kings.

The nations that with them were young,
Rich empires, with their forts far-flung,
Lie buried now-their splendor gone:
But these proud monarchs still live on.

So shall they live, when ends our days,
When our crude citadels decay;
For brief the years allotted man,
But infinite perennials’ span.

This is their temple, vaulted high,
And here, we pause with reverent eye,
With silent tongue and awestruck soul;
For here we sense life’s proper goal:

To be like these, straight, true and fine,
to make our world like theirs, a shrine;
Sink down, Oh, traveler, on your knees,
God stands before you in these trees.

© 7 July 2013

About the Author 

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in
Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach.  Just
prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on
their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my
parents divorced.
When united with my mother and stepfather two years later
in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California,
graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966.  After three tours of duty with the Air Force,
I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until
her passing from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11
terrorist attack.
I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010.   I find writing these memories to be
therapeutic.
My story blog is, TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com.
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Endless Joy by Phillip Hoyle

The minister’s wife from the church my wife and I attended one year while going to college was a joy addict. By that I mean that she emphasized joy all the time. Her gifts featured the word joy. Her correspondence addressed the topic. Her conversation seemed always to include some idea or experience concerning her take on joy. Joy seemed to be in her every thought.

My wife loved it and took up the theme for herself. It suited her perfectly: the positive, energetic, loving Myrna. She embodied joy; still does! To this day any card she sends to the minister’s home shows up announcing JOY. The word also became for Myrna an emphasis in gifts to others, letters to anyone, even messages on her answering machine, a usage that has persisted for decades. With both women, the minister’s wife and mine (now ex-), you can assume they are talking about joy, about endless joy, and that they are living endlessly joyful.

The lovely three-letter word almost requires a smile to pronounce it. Something about the shape of the lips to make the initial sound, to form the “o,” and to end with the “e” just looks joyful, especially if one’s eyes twinkle at the same time as the utterance. JOY, like in the Noel “While by their sheep” that says of the shepherds in Luke’s nativity story, “How great their joy!” and then in an ascending scale and increasing volume repeats it three times: “Joy, joy, joy.” Just can’t get enough of this word or of the feeling it represents. While I’ve never attended sheep on a winter’s night or encountered a troop of angels who were singing “Glory to God in the highest,” I do know something of the emotion, and in my imagination it far surpasses the feelings experienced while, say, opening a surprise package from under the Christmas tree or a small box that proffers an engagement ring or even the realization that one didn’t die from the last dread disease! Joy is just plain good in my book.

I like Joy’s feeling of excitement, elevated heart rate, infectious smiles, sense of well being, and its general love of life. I hope to experience it endlessly although I may not quite have enough strength for that. Oh, do I need to define my words? I don’t believe so, but I am aware that my life has provided many, many joyful occasions. This new year I celebrate these:

Being in junior and senior plays,
Singing a solo atop the singing Christmas tree,
Going to college,
Being married to Myrna,
Rearing children in our home,
Going on choir tour,
Conducting my own choirs,
Directing a musical play,
Writing curriculum resources,
Having intense relationships with several men,
Showing and selling quite a few of my paintings,
Completing thirty years of ministry in religious education and music,
Completing fifteen years of giving massage therapy to people in pain,
Reading hundreds of books as well as writing several myself, and
Telling my story to grandkids and sages.

My life has provided almost endless joy when I take time to think about it. May these experiences continue giving me more such emotional riches like the Noel’s, “Joy, joy, joy” in ascending, crescendoing repetition.

© 6 January 2014

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

Posted on

From God to Santa Claus by Gillian

If you grew up when most of
us here did, in the nineteen-thirties or ‘forties, practically every figure of
influence and power, from God to Santa Claus, was male. Oh sure there was Mom,
and maybe some other female family members; even possibly a teacher, nurse, or
some kind of social worker in the traditionally female nurturing/caring roles.
But the police, firemen, ministers, lawyers, doctors, drivers, sports figures,
business owners, politicians, bankers, musicians and artists, etc etc, were
almost exclusively male, with one or two rare exceptions.
When today’s topic of The
Women in My Life came up, I expected to bore you all some more with ravings
about My Beautiful Betsy – and not that she is not deserving of it – but a
couple of weeks ago the topic Sports brought me to a different approach. Many
women talked about the bond they had developed with their fathers over sports.
Or maybe it was the bond they had developed with sports through their fathers!
And not to denigrate father-daughter relationships, but I was struck by the
lack of mothers or even grandmothers. They simply did not figure. They were not
there. So I am going to talk about the leitmotif which seems to have followed
me – Women (not) in My Life.
I have written before about
my mother, but in case anyone has been woefully remiss and not memorized every
word I’ve ever written, I’ll repeat it briefly as she was the first woman who
was not in my life; not in the way I wanted and needed her to be, at least.
There was some unidentifiable something that came between us. It left a
gap; a space. She wasn’t with me. Children intuit things but cannot
possibly explain them, even to themselves. Much later in my life, a
psychiatrist interpreted this all for me and I think she had got it right. It feels
right to me.
In my teens my aunt told me
my parents had had two children who died before I was born. At ages I think two
and three, they died of meningitis in 1940. My mother, the therapist
postulated, could not bare the prospect of a repeat of such pain, so she didn’t
allow herself to be as close to me as she doubtless would have been otherwise.
That explained so much. I loved my mother and she loved me. I was never in
doubt of that, but nevertheless she was, in some sense, not in my life.
As far back as I can
remember, decades before I came out even to myself, I have always been in love
with some female figure in my life. Only one at a time. Even in my fantasy
world I was seriously, if serially, monogamous. They were wonderful friends but
were never in my life the way I wished they were; needed them to be. Of
course I only recognized this at some deeply buried subliminal level, so I
didn’t even give them the chance to be what I only dreamed of. Those with whom
I am still in contact were, when I told them of my long-ago love, flattered
rather than horrified. I seem to have chosen wisely, these women who were not
in my life!
I don’t think I have ever
met a lesbian who was not at some stage in love with her gym teacher. I am no
exception. But I was a pudgy un-athletic child who did not impress her at all.
I played on the high school
field hockey and tennis teams only because it was a very small school requiring
all hands to the wheel. I enjoyed both, probably mostly due to my infatuation,
lapping up her gentle criticism as I would have praise from my other teachers.
When she married the geography teacher I was broken hearted, but then she never
was really in my life.
Growing up in England, I had
certain female role models absent in the U.S. When I was nine, the king died
and Queen Elizabeth ascended the throne. She’s been there ever since and seems,
as I’m sure it must to Prince Charles, destined to live forever. Previous
queens, Elizabeth the First and Victoria, lived long and reigned well. Women in
power were nothing new. But they had been born to it. That’s the only way you
get there! You don’t think, as a “commoner” in Britain, maybe I
should work towards being queen when I grow up!
Maggie Thatcher, of  course, did spring from common stock. I could
admire the position she had; the power she had taken. But her politics were not
mine. The family I had still remaining in Britain despised her. She was a role
model in some sense, perhaps, but she was not in my life: nor would I want her
to be.
Even the musicians and
artists of the day were overwhelmingly male. Come on, I know you can rattle off
half a dozen world-famous male landscape or portrait painters. How many women
can you name?
Ah, but the times they are
a-changing!
In 1970 only 10% of doctors
in the U.S. were women. Now the number is over 30%, with women making up half
of the students in Medical School. The percentage of women in the legal
profession these days is much the same. After the recent mid-term election,
there will be more women in Congress than ever before. (One of the few good
things to come from that election, sadly) There is no longer any shortage of
women athletes. When I grew up, we would have considered it a joke if anyone
had prophesied that within our lifetimes we would watch women’s teams competing
in soccer, and all the way up to the Olympics. Coaching is rather a different
story. Many women, in teams or in individual sports, employ male rather than
female coaches, something I find hard to understand. Many in individual sports
are coached by their fathers, but only occasionally by mothers. And as for
women coaching men, well……. But there are a few examples even of that, one
very notable. Brit. tennis champion Andy Murray, winner of Wimbledon and an
Olympic gold medal, was originally coached by his mother and is currently
coached by Amelie Mauresmo, an openly lesbian French tennis champion. Some
changes are slow in coming. Women currently hold only 5% of Fortune 500
companies’ CEO positions. But it will come. Hard as the Republicans might try
to push women’s rights back into the Dark Ages, I cannot believe they will
succeed. We have come too far and fought too long to go back now.
I feel the loss of the many
women (not) in my life, but they are in fact still with me, if in some cases only
in memory, and the relationship I have with them now is genuine, real, in a way
it never could be before. One of the women I was madly in love with for years,
remains my closest friend as she has been for almost fifty years. We love each
other like sisters and there are no longer all those confused emotions on my
part to complicate our love. My mother is still with me. She always will be. I
hear her chuckle at some silliness – she had a great sense of humor. And now at
least I have a little understanding of the flaw in our relationship, and the
reason for it, I accept that it was not about me, so I am free of the
many negative, confused, emotions it once visited upon me.
My latest loss of a female
is that of Brunhilda! She, as most of you know, was our VW camper van which we
drove over 100,000 miles around this country. She, Betsy, and I, had a little menage
a trois for 15 years. Sadly the old girl got battered and worn out and way
too expensive to maintain so it was time to say goodbye. But the story ends
happily. She went to live with a man who restores these beasts. So after a
while, with new hips and knees and a heart transplant, she’ll be in better
shape than any of us. And perhaps, as she remains with us only in memory, we
will learn in fact to love her more. Because in real time there were more than
a few occasions when I came close to wishing she was one of those women (not)
join my life. It was something of a stormy relationship, to say the least! Now
we can just gaze fondly at our photographs and see her through those
rose-colored glasses we all tend to favor as the years go by. And all those
women once (not) in my life slide quietly into their correct, comfortable, and
comforting, places, whether in my life or only in my memory.
© 27 November 2014
About
the Author

 I
was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to
the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the
Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised
four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting
myself as a lesbian. I have now been with my wonderful partner Betsy for 25
years.