Word.

I am the girl kicked out of her home because I confided in my mother that I am a lesbian.

I am the prostitute working the streets because nobody will hire a transsexual woman.

I am the sister who holds her gay brother tight through the painful, tear-filled nights.

We are the parents who buried our daughter long before her time.

I am the man who died alone in the hospital because they would not let my partner of twenty-seven years into the room.

I am the foster child who wakes up with nightmares of being taken away from the two fathers who are the only loving family I have ever had. I wish they could adopt me.

I am one of the lucky ones, I guess. I survived the attack that left me in a coma for three weeks, and in another year I will probably be able to walk again.

I am not one of the lucky ones. I killed myself just weeks before graduating high school. It was simply too much to bear.

We are the couple who had the realtor hang up on us when she found out we wanted to rent a one-bedroom for two men.

I am the person who never knows which bathroom I should use if I want to avoid getting the management called on me.

I am the mother who is not allowed to even visit the children I bore, nursed, and raised. The court says I am an unfit mother because I now live with another woman.

I am the domestic-violence survivor who found the support system grow suddenly cold and distant when they found out my abusive partner is also a woman.

I am the domestic-violence survivor who has no support system to turn to because I am male.

I am the father who has never hugged his son because I grew up afraid to show affection to other men.

I am the home-economics teacher who always wanted to teach gym until someone told me that only lesbians do that.

I am the man who died when the paramedics stopped treating me as soon as they realized I was transsexual.

I am the person who feels guilty because I think I could be a much better person if I didn’t have to always deal with society hating me.

I am the man who stopped attending church, not because I don't believe, but because they closed their doors to my kind.

I am the person who has to hide what this world needs most, love.

Repost this if you believe homophobia is wrong.

An anniversary I'd rather forget.

Ten years ago, I was sitting in our tiny studio apartment in East Palo Alto, hunched over in pain from the then-undiagnosed blood clots that had developed post-surgery, and still dealing with the fact that I had cancer.

Then Kirsten called. Jerry Garcia was dead.

Most people need to think a bit to come up with the worst moment in their lives. Not me. It was that instant that my morale crashed through the floor, all hope vanished, and I just about gave up. Jerry dead? What kind of sick joke was the universe playing on me anyway?

I turned on the radio, and immediately heard Touch of Grey. That song, and its message of perseverance, brought me back. I will get by, I will survive.

So here's to you Jerry, I hope wherever you are the sound is clean, and you and Pigpen are jamming the Electric Blues all night long.

There's mosquitoes on the river
Fish are rising up like birds
It's been hot for seven weeks now,
Too hot to even speak now,
Did you hear what I just heard?

Say it might have been a fiddle
Or it could have been the wind
But there seems to be a beat now
I can feel it my feet now
Listen here it comes again!

There's a band out on the highway,
They're high steppin' into town
It's a rainbow full of sound,
It's fireworks, calliopes and clowns
Everybody dancin'

C'mon children, C'mon children, Come on clap your hands.

Sun went down in honey
And the moon came up in wine,
You know stars were spinnin' dizzy,
Lord The band kept us too busy
We forgot about the time.

They're a band beyond description,
Like Jehovah's favorite choir
People joining hand in hand
While the music played the band,
Lord they're setting us on fire.

Crazy rooster crowin' midnight,
Balls of lightin' roll along
Old men sing about their dreams,
Women laugh and children scream
And the band keeps playin' on.

Keep on dancin' thru the daylight,
Greet the mornin' air with song
No ones's noticed, but the band's all pack and gone.
Was it ever there at all?
But they keep on dancin'

C'mon children, C'mon children, Come on clap your hands

Well the cool breeze came on Tuesday,
And the corn's a bumper crop
And the fields are full of dancin'
Full of singin' and romancin'
The music never stopped.

(no subject)

The following was posted in the Steve Jackson newsgroups by Emily Smirle and is reposted with permission. Everything behind the cut is her words, not mine.

( the Kobolds and the Princess )