lgbtq
Non-nuclear is the new normal; millions of children belong to happy families with lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender parents.
Are You Ready to Go From Anonymous to Ally?
--- Becoming an LGBTQ ally is the best way to keep your family together without losing who you are. For many families, when a beloved family member shares their true sexual identity with you, the result hits some of us like a locomotive.
By Teresa Kuhl3 years ago in Families
Wild Orchids
I couldn't understand why she chose me, of all her grandchildren, to leave anything to. Let alone what she left me. According to my father's side of the family, I was the least responsible, the most traumatized, and, frankly, the one who knew her least.
By Nel Cestero3 years ago in Families
Once Upon a Friday
"The sight of you in the kitchen in the morning is the only thing better than the way this place smells! Mmmm!" Jayne exclaimed, burying her face in the crook of Lindsay's neck, and wrapping her waist in a big hug from behind. "Having a single set of stairs be our commute, is another thing I do love!"
By Skipper Knudson3 years ago in Families
Hijra Dreams
Ratnagiri, India, 1967 Hands are spaces of relation, undeterminable from the present reality. Fingers are digits of imagination, capable of creating realities of possibility. What happens when I tell my story of forsaken worlds that were a breath away from being?
By Rishi Guné3 years ago in Families
Being Transgender and Wanting a Child
Disclaimer - These are my views and opinions and do not reflect anyone else's. So a bit of a backstory about me, I'm 18, and I'm a man. A transgender man. This means that I was assigned female at birth. Around the age of nine, I realised I wasn't female and I was actually male. I didn't come out until I was 14, but that is a completely different story.
By Alec Blackwater3 years ago in Families
The Outcast Path
My sweating palms told me that I was making a big mistake. The thick letter-headed paper with the address on shook in my hand. I was at the correct location. My phone in the other hand also shook, it’s screen still displaying details of the type of establishment I’d been sent to. I had been expecting an office, a house, anything but this.
By Laura-Jo McCarthy3 years ago in Families
Packaged Women
Staring in her bedroom mirror, Babe grabbed her stomach with the left hand, and with the right one she smacked the roll several times: this image seared on my psyche at age five. She was convinced her stomach had fattened itself and for its defiance she would publicly humiliate it. Chastising it in the car after strapping her belt and especially when trying on new clothes. As our grandmother, she’d take us clothing shopping at one of those stores that sell groceries, tires, and furniture. All the women in our family are indistinct, but with a bit of flare added through differing hairstyles. Uniform and humdrum—like fortune cookies—uninteresting until cracked open.
By Hali Kimball3 years ago in Families
The Inheritance
“I can’t believe it’s been a year already,” thought Alice Hooper as she was browsing Reddit. It’s been exactly a year since she came out as transgender, and yet it still hasn’t fully sunk in. As she kept on browsing, she couldn’t help but reflect on everything that’s happened. Alice furrowed her brow slightly as she thought of everyone she lost over the last year. Some left right away, in silence, others left gradually, slowly fading away from her life. Somehow nobody made a scene as they left her life, to the disappointment of some of her more confrontational friends. The ones that hurt the most were the ones that she had to leave herself… Her phone rang with the one contact she did not expect to see.
By Alice Capewell3 years ago in Families
8 ways to show your at-risk LGBT teenager you love them
An earlier version of this article appeared on News Break. The nation’s first large study assessing teen suicide risk by gender and self-identifying sexuality shows gay, lesbian, and bisexual children have more than double the risk compared to their heterosexual peers.
By David Heitz3 years ago in Families
The Greatest Love
Jane was an eccentric being, standing alone in a community full of Gospel. It were of no surprise to her, being raised within the Bible Belt, that she didn’t fit “in”. Coming of course from a family of prestigious Pentecostals, she felt a certain duty toward morality. However, that wasn’t quite who she desired to be. Never was she allowed to cut her hair, she was also forced itno wearing long skirts, as pants may entice those of the opposing sex. If only it were the opposite sex that she suffered worry. Shackled from herself within, a person she couldn’t quite come to terms with. Truly she loved her family, which love, did breed her inclination to guilt. Unsure of what was wrong with her, why did she feel in her stomach this rushing warm sensation every time she saw her best friend Lily. Or why she would lay awake each night thinking only of Lily’s smile.
By Derek Smith3 years ago in Families