Busy Day, and Phychic Powers

Let me see if I can explain how impressive my man is. Yesterday we woke up, he prepared and got cooking a ham and a turkey. Then we went off to karate, and then right off to the anti-prop 8, pro-marriage rally at the city and county building.

We then hurried home, where, within an hour, he finished off the ham and turkey, separating the white from dark meat while making the gravy.

Then we arrived, just in time, for the thanksgiving party for our group of same-sex headed families.
We had a lot of fun. It was held in one of our member's church, which was much better than the cramped quarters we used to use; the group is just getting to big for homes and the GLBT center. It's just nice to let the kids socialize and run wild, while the parents get to commiserate about politics; is there a sound more joyful, though, than the sound of a herd of children chasing each other? It's hard to commiserate with all that laughing :-).

We had a surprising amount of new members: people with infants and some grown families moving into the Salt Lake valley. One couple moved here from Ca to be around family, which made me reconsider our thought of moving away. But their family was completely on their side, not part of the politics fighting against us, and not part of the predominant faith here. So there are some differences; besides, we'd be taking the grandparents with us.

After we were stuffed with stuffing and turkey, we headed up to the candle light vigil at the capitol.
Here we were trying to spell out "EQUALITY" on the lawn. You can see it partially done by ksl's coverage, and it eventually got done, but it was tough to fight the wind and shelter the flames from going out faster than we could light them... There's an analogy in there somewhere :-).




Also, I thought this was cute: On the way home, Brian asked me what a mutant was (something he saw on T.V.?). I explained again about our genetic codes and such and then talked about some special mutations humans sometimes have. We talked about some genetic and semi-genetic differences humans have, like albinos, dwarfism, perfect pitch, and synesthesia. With each they were more and more enthralled and I was loving it.

After we talked about synesthesia and some people "hearing" sights and seeing numbers as colored, Alan wondered if some people can hear other people's thought. I told them that was called telepathy, and, without telling them what I believed, I asked them what they thought.

On the freeway on the way home we ended up conducting many experiments, trying to read each other's minds (and me trying to teach a lesson about science and skepticism :-)). Most tests were, of course, unsuccessful... but when it was my mind's turn to be read I picked a thought and thought hard, and they tried to hear me.

Alan asked if I was thinking of our dog and I said no. Then Brian asked if I was thinking "I love you."

I was! I laughed and said "Yes, how did you read my mind?" Wondering if I'd now inadvertently initiated him into new age magical thinking :-).

Brian said, in his little kid incredulous voice, "I didn't read your mind; that was just a lucky guess."

I'm lucky for many reasons. I'm lucky to have two sweet boys and an amazing husband. I'm lucky to have these teachable moments. I'm lucky, even in Utah, to have groups of tens and hundreds and thousands of activists and families to gather and hope with us.

I'm especially lucky my son finds it to be a good guess that his pop is thinking "I love you".

We're Here... Again

We have a busy day today and it's only half over, but I thought I'd hurry out a post so that there's not too much later.

After the boys' karate this morning we headed out to the local pro-marriage equality rally (I think they're weekly now :-)).
Again, it does my heart so much good to be around such support. I mean that both figurativly and literally; I can feel my pulse rate slow and the stress of protecting my family in this climate fall off in the optimism that I can find in all those many friendly faces.

One thing that is kind of amusing and disturbing is the difference in tone from what's being portrayed by those against our marriages. The angriest face I saw there (well, on our side) was this one:
And that's just Brian's pretend angry face (and yes, he's carrying a remote control; he likes to pause and rewind me sometimes).

Everyone was in a great mood and there were a lot of conciliatory and respectful words said with regards to the LDS church and others. I think the community as a whole is quite confused as to how they could think we want to alter their temple ceremonies, or take their rights, and such, and I hope the message gets across the polarization that all we want is for our families to be treated in law the way they'd want their families to be treated.

And despite the hope of some on the other side to make this into a race issue, and pit minority against minority, every community in Utah was represented there from our Latino friends to the Dakota native American who gave the blessing. It was a very heart warming event, once again.
Of course, others there we're in a less than good mood:
But that wasn't more than just kind of strange. It's funny how the group calling us hateful can't see a couple yards from their face into the love of that crowd, and it's odd they're the same group calling us "ignorant fools" and going on about our torture in hell. It's also odd that a group would be telling us we shouldn't exercise our right to free speech and assembly, while mistakenly assuming they were defending a person's right to vote.

We can vote, and we can speak. If there is a silver lining here, it certainly is the new strength we've found in each other.