Rainbow Festival and a Coming Out of Sorts

The annual Rainbows Festival was held here in Phoenix October 4th and 5th. This is a type of gay pride event but on a much smaller scale (no parade, less performers, etc.) I am always in charge of getting volunteers to work the booth for the Human Rights Campaign. For those of you that don't know I am on the Board of Governors for this organization. This year I am the gala dinner co-chair, membership co-chair, community events co-chair, and volunteer co-chair. Needless to say this keeps me busy.

This year we were extremely short staffed for the booth. I was going to have to be there all day Sunday with very little help. My mom says to me right before the weekend, "If you don't need me to watch the kids then I'll come help you." Now she has come and walked the festival before so it wasn't a big deal for her to go but to spend the whole day there was a big deal.

We got to the booth around 10am and set up. Then spent until 5pm signing up new members and educating people on voting No on Prop 102 and encouraging them to donate money to Arizona Together, the group fighting the amendment. Proposition 102 is the so called Marriage Amendment, which will write discrimination into the constitution here in Arizona. Arizona was the first and is the only state to ever defeat an anti-gay amendment. However the legislators have decided to ignore the voters and put it back on the ballot. It was a great day and I enjoyed having my mom there. The gay community LOVES interacting with supportive parents. I know it always has an impact on my mom when she hears some of the stories of parents that have disowned their kids or are currently making it hard for them to be who they are. She always has a little bit of support to share with them and gives them hope that their parents can one day be accepting of them.

This leads me to my "coming out" portion. I have been maintaining another blog that I write under the name Lezzymom- more political and opinionated. This blog has been featured on C-Span for some of the political commentary I made on the Democratic and Republican National Convention - which I must say was pretty cool to see your website pop up on screen and be featured followed by a top news blog. It was very cool!

This has led to me being asked to be a contributing writer on another blog called Lez Get Real - A Girl's View on the Gay World. My first article was posted yesterday and was on Prop 102. You can read it here. The best thing was one of the first comments was from a straight man supporting the No Vote and wanting to stop the discrimination.

I have not wanted to overly push my political views here (nudge maybe but not push) so I have kept it separate. However, I am very proud of these blogs and that the writing is being recognized. If you all visit feel free and please leave a comment.