Florida Man Gets 30 Years in Prison for Murdering Trans Woman

A 23-year-old Florida man has been sentenced for the murder of Ashley Sinclair (pictured), over a year after the transgender woman’s murder.

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Jorge Rodriguez-Jimenez

www.advocate.com/florida/2014/12/23/florida-man-gets-30-years-prison-murdering-trans-woman

The Secret to Staying Together

December 31, 1994, was the last night I spent alone. I wasn’t actually physically alone that night. I was with my live-in ex-girlfriend with whom I’d happily split several months before and a mutual friend of ours that we both had a crush on. Our crush was a young butch who hadn’t yet come into her own and was still struggling to get past the abusive echoes of her childhood. We were all damaged in some way and looking for something that would make us feel whole. Maybe we thought our awkward triangle would bring us some comfort that night. At least none of us would be alone that New Year’s Eve.

We arrived at a party, already annoyed with each other. I split from them and started mingling with other friends, finding my groove in the muted light of the apartment with a glass of gin in my hand. I felt more at ease socializing with strangers and finding my way through the crowded room than with my ex and our crush. Whenever I looked at them they looked miserable, taking swigs from their beer bottles and side-eyeing me. Finally, they approached me and insisted that we leave and go to a bar a few blocks away. Begrudgingly I left the party and followed them outside and up Market Street toward the second-floor bar in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood. As we approached we spotted the long line to get in. It was already 11:40, and it was unlikely we would get in before midnight. I felt a few sprinkles hit my face.

I stood in the rain, steam rising from my already-fuming body. I was tired of not feeling seen. By the stroke of midnight I had a realization that I was going to have to change my life. I was going to take a risk.

A few weeks prior I had presented my ex with a dare to place a personal ad in the San Francisco Bay Times. As a show of support, and on a lark, I placed one too – with no expectation or desire to find a new lover. My ad read, “I LIKE FUN. Irreverent voluptuous grad student seeks brainy, brawny girls to frolic with. Must like opening doors, bitchy banter, and wicked laughter. I won’t bite unless you ask me to.” I immediately received three calls in response. One I dismissed out of hand as I listened to the recorded message, “Like I says, I think you might like me.” I went on a date with one woman who regaled me with stories about snuggling with her pet rat. There was one other message. The voice was sexy and confident, and the message both titillated and offended me. I could tell this person was bold, and wanted to rock my world. I didn’t call back.

But as I stood in the rain that New Year’s Eve, I made a dare with myself, and when I woke on January 1, 1995, I took a few moments to collect myself. I dialed the phone number. When the person answered the phone, the voice captured me right away and we sunk down into an hour-long conversation about butch/femme, Stone Butch Blues, trans bodies, femme bodies, what we wanted and how. We spent the next two weeks talking on the phone, challenging each other with ideas and -isms and mellifluous words. We often disagreed and spent hours hashing things out and coming back together. By the time we met, we were already in love.

That was 20 years ago on January 1, 2015, and we are still together, now with three children. We like to remind each other that we are living the dream at the end of a long day when we are exhausted by the effort of being grown adults with kids and a mortgage and the cost of living in the Bay Area. But my partner still rocks my world after all these years, and I thank my lucky stars for that shitty New Year’s Eve so many years ago.

Sometimes we meet younger couples that are impressed by the longevity of our relationship and ask us, somewhat jokingly but with real earnestness in their eyes what the secret is to staying together so long. My response is always the same. You always have to listen to the other person, even when what they are saying makes no sense at all to you. You have to squint your eyes, try to pretend you are them, and take to heart that what they are saying is real and matters to them. Something magical happens when you do that. The other person softens because they have been heard. That is when the real conversation begins. And if you can do that for each other, you can find your real feelings and know that your vulnerability is safe.

Perhaps we are also lucky that both our parents have had very long relationships. Willy’s parents have been happily together for 62 years. My parents were unhappily together for 50 years until my father’s death. Despite their rocky start through an ill-advised arranged marriage and the challenges of being working-class immigrants, they stayed together. After my father had a stroke, he told my mother he wanted to die at home. My mother quit her waitressing job and spent the next 18 years caring for him until he died in his bed on his86th birthday on January 2, 2009. I believe that her sacrifice to give him the end he needed allowed them to finally soften after 50 years of fighting. He finally felt heard.

The secret to staying together is staying together, but more than that it is caring enough to see the world through someone else’s eyes and saying, I see you. Not just the bluster or hubris, but the soft core inside that is oftentimes hidden from the harshness of the world. I see you.

Happy Anniversary, Willy Wilkinson.

www.huffingtonpost.com/georgia-kolias/the-secret-to-staying-together_b_6379276.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices&ir=Gay+Voices

The Advocate Recognizes HRC’s All God’s Children Campaign

The first-of-its-kind public education campaign made the publication’s list of “Religious People Who Give Us Hope for Religion.”
HRC.org

www.hrc.org/blog/entry/the-advocate-recognizes-hrcs-all-gods-children-campaign?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed

All That X-Rated Smut Is Killing Off Marriage, According To The FRC

The Family Research Council just won’t quit. Having clearly lost the battle to convince Americans that being gay is just about the worst thing you can “choose” to do, they’ve widened their scope in an attempt to shake their proverbial finger at the rest of a society they see as crumbling relentlessly around them.

Marriage — that sacred bond between a man and a woman, has been on the decline lately. Why? Well, according to them, it’s all that porn everyone is watching! They call it “common-sensical” that the more x-rated smut is freely available on the interwebs, the more damaged the institution of marriage becomes.

What they’re actually doing is taking the results from a study by a German think tank and using them to prop up their distorted view of reality. The Washington Post looked at the same study and had this to say:

“There are many reasons for the trend. One of the most provocative is the rise of wealth inequality. Andrew J. Cherlin made this point in a recent op-ed in the New York Times: Historically, low and stable inequality has coincided with periods of higher marriage rates among all socioeconomic groups. Marriage can be a expensive institution, especially without two sustainable sources of income. It’s likely of little coincidence that the United States is particularly unequal today, and its poor are particularly less likely to marry than the rich.”

They went on to point out several flaws in the study, one of which being that it examines data collected from 2000-2004, so, data that are a decade old.

Also, the researchers themselves note that their “findings fall short of being conclusive.”

But far be it for the FRC to use real-world logic when deciding which damaging thing to assert next.

[h/t The New Civil Rights Movement]

Dan Tracer

feedproxy.google.com/~r/queerty2/~3/-zORUC0i76Y/all-that-x-rated-smut-is-killing-off-marriage-according-to-the-frc-20141225

Under the Covers, 2014

A year-end look at who graced the covers of the nation’s top publications.

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Dawn Ennis

www.advocate.com/politics/media/2014/12/25/under-covers-2014

Leather Daddy Gingerbread Men Tutorial Released On YouTube
Do you love making gingerbread men but are tired of those ho-hum traditional styles of decorating? Then why not turn those edible men into — what else — leather daddies for your family this year?

This step-by-step tutorial uploaded to YouTube details how you can turn your favorite holiday cookie into a full-fledged leather daddy. The video comes from professional chef Sara Whittlesey and includes instructions on how to achieve that perfect icing jockstrap, harness and ball gag this Christmas.

Grandma will love it!

www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/25/leather-daddy-gingerbread-men_n_6372536.html?utm_hp_ref=gay-voices&ir=Gay+Voices