In my entry on Bye Bye Birdie a while back, I forgot to mention that one of the pre-show announcements recognized some special guests in the audience, members of a local high-school gay-straight alliance. That’s awesome. (Why, back in my day… okay, fine, I can’t imagine my high school, a private Catholic school, having a gay-straight alliance, even now.) But anyway, it’s encouraging these days to see more and more gay youth getting the support they need. This reminds me that Youth Pride Day in D.C. is coming up, Saturday, Apr. 24. I’m definitely at the fringes of the target demographic, but I went last year with Lindsey and Lucy (both more youthful than I, let’s say), and it was kind of fun. Can you believe I hadn’t been to the P Street Beach before then?
Speaking of things queer, last week my mom sent me a letter and enclosed with it an article clipped from the San Francisco Chronicle: “Family legacy of fighting for freedom to love” (Mar. 12, 2004). It’s written by a lesbian–one of the first to be publicly married at City Hall in February–whose parents are an interracial couple and had their own struggles to face in the 1940s and ’50s. It’s a good read. Many thanks go to my mom for thinking of me when she read it, and taking the time to send it to me. My parents and I still have some gaps to bridge on the whole gay issue, lots of uncharted territory, but every now and then we take another surprising step, and that’s encouraging.