I read a blog post on Bilerico asking ‘Is My Generation Destroying Gay Subculture‘.  Now I came out of the closet late in life and except for meeting someone who was in the process of transitioning from male to female I’m pretty sure I never even met anyone whom I knew was queer until after I started to come out.  Honestly I don’t even know if the Twin Cites ever had anything like Castro or West Hollywood gay neighborhoods.  There is a bar called the Gay 90′s which has been around for ages, though now it is as much a place for straights as it is for gays.  When Jeffrey and I were still in a long distance relationship and I would go to LA to visit, while driving around Jeffrey would point out various gay hangouts and we went to the Abbey once.  Finally after Jeffrey first moved here he really had a hard time wrapping his head around how integrated the queer community is here.  You can see it during the Pride celebrations.  There are lots of families and kids of all ages in attendance, at the Parade and at the festival in the park.  Plus there is a family picnic event as well.  Lesbians and gays hang out together more here than they do in LA according to Jeffrey.

A couple other articles I’ve read in the last year or so also talked about how the gays were being more integrated into mainstream society and how sad it was.  But they were really lamenting the loss of gay promiscuity.  Apparently we are pairing up and settling down in droves.  :)  Of course promiscuity is not limited to gays. I’ve known men and women who probably had more sex partners in a month than I have had in my life.  As for the other sex kinks that a lot of people think of as part of the gay sub-culture, a search of the Internet shows that there isn’t anything queers do that straights don’t do too.

Jeffrey and I do like going out to gay hangouts and events.  Because as integrated as things are getting, public displays of affection between gays still generates some pretty hostile responses.  It’s nice being able to hold hands or kiss without worrying about a bottle flying at you from a passing car.  Like sports bars I suspect there will always be places like gay bars where people can get together and enjoy being with people that have something in common.  The queer culture may be more integrated, but there will always be a queer community.

Jeffrey's Birch Cluster

Before planting the Birch, this nearly dead tree had to go, so out came the chainsaw.  Normally I like to keep a dead tree or two as I think it adds an Adamms Family feel to the place, but this wasn’t a very interesting looking tree.  I think it was originally planted by someone thinking it would be ready to take over for a larger tree nearby when it died, but the larger tree unfortunately is still very much alive and dumping billions of seeds.

Dead Tree

The clematis and a dead pine tree I had trimmed all the branches off for the clematis to climb was removed by this picture.  Just need to roll up the root mat and chop out a bunch of other tree roots criss-crossing the site.

Future home for Birch

Here is the Birch finally planted and ready to settle in for the winter.  Got pretty muddy trying to tease out the roots of the tree.  It was container grown and the roots were in pretty tight.  I’ve read that if you don’t do something about that, the roots will tend to keep wrapping around rather than spreading out and the tree will either fall over or strangle itself.

Birch Planted

Now to get everything else done that needs doing.

Are the audiences really what the typical American is like?  I don’t think I am and I don’t think any of my friends are.  If they are representative of the typical American, America is in very big trouble.

When talking to a pollster, a person will tend to lie because they don’t want to sound prejudiced and they are embarrassed, but once in the voting booth they are anonymous and can vote their true feelings.  My partner was living in California when Prop 8 was on the ballot and he moved here rather than insisting I move there because of that.  It has torn the people there apart because of the hate it engendered and people there still are not talking to the those they once considered friends.  He believes that will happen here now and I won’t be surprised.

Will we have a yard sign telling people to vote no next year?  I don’t know yet.  Part of me wants to and part of me is afraid of getting rocks thrown through the windows or worse.  If we do, I’ll setup a webcam pointed at the sign, because I’m sure that the sign will be vandalized or stolen at the very least.

In the meantime, we’ll be the best neighbors we can and be out to show everyone we want to be in a committed relationship and it doesn’t threaten their relationships.

A couple weeks ago I met an old friend for dinner who was back in Minnesota for a visit.  We were in grade school together before my family moved back to South Dakota and we reconnected a couple times while in college and then lost touch.  We found each other on Facebook a few months ago.  I remember Bruce as being in love with plants and gardening when we were kids.  It was great to see him again and he is still in love with plants and gardening.

When I bought this house, I put in a small water feature pond.  Just about every year or two since I’ve reconfigured that pond making is bigger and deeper and then shrinking back down.  Jeffrey and I were talking the other day about it and our vegetable garden.  With food prices climbing dramatically we want to put more vegetables in this year and I suggested filling in the pond initially.  After thinking about it though I hate to loose it so now we are talking about moving it to behind the house.

Space behind the house

This is the space where we are thinking about moving the pond.  Then we can hear it from inside the house and look at it without having to go out and around the other side of the garage.  It would also be in keeping to redo again this year, since I didn’t change it last year, except to replace the waterfall pump which quit working.

I will try to post more often in the future.  I really feel the need to rant about the budget and hypocritical politicians.

Before meeting Jeffrey and his subsequent move in last November, I never really paid much attention to the future.  As a kid I was raised Jehovah’s Witness which preached Armageddon is on the way so not much future to worry about there.  As an young adult, well not many think seriously about retirement or even getting old.  Middle aged I was still single, going to stay that way for certain, working steadily and really enjoying myself.  Couldn’t imagine ever wanting to retire.  Still can’t really.   Didn’t really care what happened after I died though, so still didn’t worry about the future.  Now I have someone else and everything changes.

When getting the life insurance policy she went through a series of questions about health etc.  Only a few months away from 50 now and so far no medical issues except for my eyes.  I’ll probably need new corneas eventually, but nothing life threatening just  inconvenient.  When she got to risk taking questions I started thinking I’ve kinda let myself get a bit fuddy-duddy the last few years.  My helicopter pilot license has expired, haven’t been skydiving in years, nor ice/rock climbing.  The race motorcycles are dusty and probably would need major overhauls to get started.  Granted I did come out of the closet, fall in love and am now living with someone, all of which has been quite an experience.

Planning for the future as a gay couple in America is a real pain in the ass.  There are no real legal protections at all anywhere and especially not here in Minnesota.  Don’t let the phrase ‘Minnesota Nice’ fool you.  It just means they smile and say how much they like you before they stab you in the back.  Jeffrey and I’ll be talking to a lawyer soon who knows what can be done to try to put some protections in place, but all to often all the legal documents get ignored by the insurance companies, hospitals, local and federal governments and you end up in court suing someone who refuses to admit the person you spend the last X years loving is anything more than just your roommate.  None of that is going to change until there is equality for gays at the Federal level.

Word of advice to nephews and nieces, get life insurance while it’s cheap.  :)

Lately in the news there has been a lot of coverage about bullying.  People have been coming out at younger ages in numbers unimagined a generation ago.  And we’ve seen what appears to be spike in GLBT youth suicides.  Personally I think about the same numbers are committing suicide, but since they have come out to friends and family when they do commit suicide, the family actually knows instead of guessing and wondering why.  No matter the reason it is sad when someone kills themself.

I’m looking forward to the time when no one needs to come out, because being GLBT won’t be any more special than having blue eyes or being heterosexual.

There are 37 different men who contributed their experiences to this book and they are all unique.  Some like me are living in urban centers now and some are still living a rural life.  Most are at least mostly out the closet, though a couple are still very closeted.  All of them had lives as diverse as any life of someone who grew up in the city.  One thing that stood out was that for many growing up in a rural setting was not a hindrance to finding partners for sex.  Others were more like me and really didn’t have a clue about being gay and only started figuring things out after leaving the farm for an urban life and even then fought against it, sometimes for most of their lives.  Several months ago someone I knew from the church I attended as teenager contacted me on Facebook and re-introduced himself by saying “Wow I didn’t know you were gay too!”.  Makes me wonder who else I used to know back then is gay too.  :)

Something else that was fascinating was how the general outlook of being gay changed over the lives of everyone in the book.  The book was published in 1994 and now 15 years later kids are coming out younger and are more open about it.  They still have problems though shown by the three suicides here in Anoka-Hennipen County this last year by youths who were bullied for either being gay or perceived as gay.

I loved this book and highly recommend it to anyone interested seeing a cross-section of a largely ignored gay community.