“Mommy, they are just like me.”
My oldest son is six years old and in love for the first time. He is in love with Blaine from Glee.
For those who don’t know Blaine is a boy…a gay boy, the boyfriend of one of the main characters, Kurt.
This isn’t a ‘he thinks Blaine is really cool’ kind of love. It is a mooning at a picture of Blaine’s face for a half hour followed by a wistful “He’s so pretty” kind of love.
He loves the episode where two boys kiss. My son will call people in from other parts of the house to make sure they don’t miss his ‘favorite part.’ He’s been known to rewind it and watch it over again…and force other to, as well, if he doesn’t think people have been paying enough attention.
This infatuation doesn’t bother me or his father. We live in a very hip-liberal neighborhood, many of our friends are gay, and idea of having a gay son isn’t something that bothers either of us. Our son is going to be who he is, and it is our job to love him. End of story.
He is also six. Six year olds get obsessed with all kinds of things. This might not mean anything at all. We always joke that he’s either gay, or we have the best blackmail material in the history of mankind when he’s a 16 year old straight boy. (Take that naked bath time pictures!)
Then the other day we were traveling across the state listening to the Warblers album (of course), and in the middle of Candles, my son pipes up from the back seat.
“Mommy, Kurt and Blaine are boyfriends.”
“Yes, they are,” I affirm.
“They don’t like kissing girls. They just kiss boys.”
“That’s true.”
“Mommy, they are just like me.”
“That’s great, baby. You know I love you no matter what?”
“I know…” I could hear him rolling his eyes at me.
When we got home I recapped this conversation to his Dad, and we stood simply looking into each other’s eyes for a moment. Then we smiled.
“So if at 16 he wants to make a big announcement at the dinner table, we can say ‘You told us when you were six. Pass the carrots’ and he’ll be disappointed we stole his big dramatic moment,” my husband says with a laugh and hugs me.
Only time will tell if my son is gay, but if he is I am glad he’s mine. I am glad he has been born into our family. A family full of people who will love and accept him. People who will never want him to change. With parents who will look forward to dancing at his wedding.
And I have to admit, Blaine would be a really cute son-in-law.
“The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied… but written off as trash. The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first culture for which a beggar is a reminder of nothing.”
One of the world’s largest ever strikes began at midnight on Monday 27th Feb and will end at midnight tonight. Up to 100,000,000 Indian workers from different sectors and industries are calling for a national minimum wage, permanent jobs, and much more.
- Banks, industry in India hit by trade-union strike (sfgate.com)
- Cameron considers call to freeze minimum wage (telegraph.co.uk)
good:
Dear Tumblr,
We are writing to ask you to consider adding a ‘Conservation’ or ‘Environment’ featured tag.
We’re not outright asking. We know that featured tags are those that have a certain amount of traffic, but please consider the following:
1. The field of conservation is wide-ranging. As a result related content is tagged under a mix of terms. Combining the traffic for the following (and related) tags could amount to enough traffic for a featured tag. Like Science, with it’s different fields, combined under one umbrella term.
- Conservation
- Environment
- Sustainability (already featured in your directory)
- Eco-friendly
- Nature
- Climate Change
- Global Warming
- Wildlife Trade
- Recycling
- Renewable energy
- Endangered Species
Followers, please feel free to add to this list any tags that may have missed out.
2. It’s the right thing to do. Conservation issues are as pertinent to modern society as Science, Politics, Film, Fashion…….even Nail Art which has it’s own featured tag.
3. Tumblr is opening up as a platform for high profile conservation organizations, much as Facebook and Twitter are now the most used platforms for sharing conservation news.
- WWF
- ARKive
- National Resources Defence Council
- Jane Goodall’s Roots and Shoot programme
- Scubazoo
[Edit] Forgot Earth Hour. How silly!
Social media is a powerful tool in conservation, and can make a difference in the “real world”. We’d hate to see Tumblr left out of the excitement. Especially with it’s viral powers.
4. Tumblr has been an essential part of publicizing social and political changes in several countries during protests and revolutions last year. The content that would be featured in this tag involve changes that affect us globally, and deserve a share of the spotlight.
We hope you will consider looking at the combined content of the above tags to see if they merit a featured tag.
As there is no central email to contact Tumblr on, please reblog and spread the word if you agree!
I totally agree and have suggested this to tumblr staff as well. In its absence, I’ve often felt a responsibility to post environmental and conservation issues in the science tag - cause, without its own category, where else would it go? And while I think it does OK there, I think “environment” is broad enough and important enough a topic to deserve its own category.
I mean, it’s gotta be at least as worthy as Robots. (And I do love me some robots!)
We are so in agreement here and we also tag much of our environment content in science. (Also, some fine Tumblrs here to follow.)
Co-signed. (Energy and/or Climate would be nice buckets as well.)
Make it so, Tumblr!
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Declassified CIA document (via sinidentidades) …the FUCK. (via rabbitfeminist) I definitely need a source (via autumn-and-eve) Ratner, Michael (1997). Che Guevara and the FBI: The U.S. Political Police Dossier on the Latin American Revolutionary. Ocean Press. ISBN 1875284761. A February 13, 1958, declassified CIA ‘biographical and personality report’ would make note of Guevara’s wide range of academic interests and intellect, describing him as “quite well read” while adding that “Che is fairly intellectual for a Latino.” (via sinidentidades) Ever get the feeling that we’d be better off if the CIA was actually composed of the cast of Get Smart? (via joemccarthyblues) |
I think you’ll find that only very rarely do people who embrace some new ideology think it has made them worse. Your statement, while no doubt true from your perspective, is meaningless when you consider that it could be voiced with equal conviction by a proponent of any ideology. What neo-nazi, for instance, doesn’t think that their new found racism helps them to see the world more clearly?
