Gay Pride Weekend

This weekend was Phoenix Gay Pride. Kathy and I went on both Saturday and Sunday to help with the HRC booth. Saturday started off with the parade. This was this first year HRC had a float in the parade.

This is the float when we were working on it the night before. It had more balloons on Saturday morning but it looked great. We also had poster board that stated facts about HRC and what they have done for the LGBT community. Such as HRC is lobbying congress to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell, HRC supports a fully inclusive ENDA (Employee Non-discrimination Act). HRC has 750,000 thousand members and 8,000 in Arizona. People watching the parade were very supportive and clapped and cheered for us as we went by. We have some ideas for next year to jazz up our float. Many of the other ones had music, were throwing out candy and giving out mardi gras beads. We were able to had out the bumper sticks but then we ran out in like 45 mins.

After the parade we worked at the booth and talked to people about HRC. Sometimes it is surprising how much the gay community doesn't know about their own community and groups that fight for their rights. The weekend was a success in educating and also in signing people up for membership. When we left late Sunday afternoon we were up to about 85 memberships. Which means that is just 85 more people that are going to continue to get information about what is happening on a federal level with LGBT rights.


On Sunday we got to see some live music which was great. One of the performers that we really liked was Jennifer Vazquez, she had a great sound to her and had great songs, she is based out of California. The food is also very good at Pride. It is the only time of year that I get to eat my Indian Fry bread burritos! Yummy!

Phoenix is one of the first prides of the year and there were a lot of out-of-state people that were their and some even said that we have a really good pride festival compared to where they are from. Even though we had a great time at pride we were definately missing the kids as they did not attend the festival. Now it is time to relax and enjoy the family time.

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.