Happy Thanksgiving

A very happy Thanksgiving to those of you celebrating it today. For my readers outside the U. S., I hope you’re amused by the spectacle of the American part of the blogosphere slowing to a crawl for a day while we gorge ourselves silly. (I posted this in advance so I can keep my day clear for eating pumpkin pie.)

Thanksgiving is, for most Americans, a family holiday. For LGBT people, however, that simple statement can hide layers of meaning. Let us give thanks today, then, for our families by birth and by choice, however we define them.

Thanksgiving Emergency Recovery

Turkey not defrosted in time? Diaper disaster with your toddler means you won’t have time to make stuffing? Hop over to Joe Kissel’s column at Wired News and learn how to Deal With Turkey Day Disasters. Disater or no, my family always uses his trick of baking the stuffing in a pan, not in the bird. Not only does the turkey take less time to cook, but you also get more stuffing. Kissel also recommends using canned sweet potatoes to make candied, baked potatoes, “but only in a real emergency.” I agree this is only for the desperate—but would also suggest that if you’re forced to go for canned, mash them with a little ginger, nutmeg, and butter rather than try to bake them. Canned spuds always come out mushy when baked, anyway, so don’t fight it.

If you need to keep your older kids amused while you cook, point them at MAKE’s podcast and downloadable pattern for creating a Thanksgiving turkey out of paper. Even better, have them sous-chef for you, mashing potatoes or cutting up green beans. (Younger children can snap beans with their hands or use safety scissors.) You might even avoid the last-minute panic if you have more hands to help (assuming you have enough space to keep stray elbows from ending up in the cooling pumpkin pie).

Mombian Shop Relaunch

Just in time for the holidays, I’m relaunching an updated Mombian Shop, chock full of books, music, videos, toys, baby gear, and lots of things for house and home. You’ll find items geared towards children of same-sex parents and items celebrating lesbian culture, but also more general categories of products. We’re a diverse lot, really, and I can’t attempt to guess what each and every one of you may want for yourselves, your family, and your friends.

Having said that, I’ve also created several pages of gift ideas and Mombian Picks, things that I’ve tried and liked or that simply caught my eye. (Your mileage may vary, of course.) I’ll be adding to and rotating these lists as time goes on, so check back often. I’m open to suggestion for additional items to feature.

Happy Birthday, Billie Jean King!

Out tennis legend Billie Jean King turns 63 today. How better to celebrate than with a Photoshop pastiche of candles on a tennis ball? King’s accomplishments are too many to list here, but include 71 singles titles, 12 Grand Slam singles titles, 20 Wimbledon titles, and becoming the first female athlete to win more than $100,000 in a single season in any sport.

If you want to learn more, you can read a short biography of King at ESPN. The Women’s Sports Foundation (an organization she founded) has an even more extensive list of her achievements, both on court and as a champion for women’s and LGBT equality.

Cranbanero Sauce

For the bold and adventurous diner this Thanksgiving, I’m republishing my recipe for Cranbanero Sauce, a fiery version of the classic condiment. If you like hot food, and grandma’s lumpy gravy just isn’t doing it for you, try this.

• Buy a standard 16-ounce bag of cranberries.
• Put cranberries, sugar, and water in pot according to directions on bag. (Personally, I usually reduce the amount of sugar by a few tablespoons, but it’s up to you.)
• Halve four habanero (or scotch bonnet) peppers. Remove stem, seeds, and veins. It’s important to halve them, not chop them, or you won’t be able to remove them easily. The sauce will go beyond pleasantly searing and become truly blistering. Wear rubber or latex gloves while handling the habaneros. Leave them on when you wash your knife and cutting board. Trust me on this.
• Put peppers into pot with rest of ingredients and simmer till sauce thickens. Stir a few times to keep from sticking.
• Remove habanero halves. Make sure you get all eight halves.
• Cool. Strain if you like, or leave the whole cranberries for more texture. Serve, with appropriate warning.
• You can experiment with adding orange juice instead of plain water. Habaneros complement fruity flavors well.

This is a great spread for turkey sandwiches the day after Thanksgiving, too. Just make sure to label it when you put it in the fridge so you don’t incinerate the unsuspecting. Enjoy!

Coffee Time

A publicist for Folgers Coffee contacted me a while ago and asked if I’d be interested in some free samples of their new Folgers Gourmet Selections coffee. All I’d have to do is blog about them. Since they were not paying me to do so, and wanted my honest opinion—good, bad, or ugly—I agreed. I soon received samples of their Lively Columbian, Morning Café and Vanilla Biscotti flavors.

First, a bit of background. Read the rest of this post »

Justice of the Peace Recommendation

One more wedding-related post and then I’ll stop for a while. I want to make sure and acknowledge our Justice of the Peace, Gayle Smalley, and happily recommend her to anyone considering a marriage in Massachusetts. She not only performed our ceremony on short notice, but helped us through the entire process of creating our vows and finding a location. She was willing to listen to our input and give us as much or as little help as we wanted. As it turned out, she sent us a very good first draft that we only needed to tweak slightly to say exactly what we wanted. She understood that the ceremony marked a long-term relationship already in progress, and crafted the language to reflect that.

During the ceremony, she was upbeat yet calming. Afterwards, she laughed at my parents’ anecdotes, which was enough in itself for her to earn her fee. She clearly loves her work as a JP. She’s based in Newton, a lovely suburb southwest of Boston, and her contact information is at Findajp.com.

Transgender Day of Remembrance

It’s the seventh annual Transgender Day of Remembrance, to memorialize those who were killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice. I don’t write a lot about trans issues here, because I don’t feel I have the experience or authority to do so. Nevertheless, issues of sexual orientation and gender identity, while they are not identical, are intertwined, and there is good reason the L, G, B, and T parts of our community often make common cause.

As parents, we need to be prepared to support our children regardless of their gender identities. Even if our children identify with their biological genders, we can help combat hatred and prejudice by educating them about the perspectives of those who are different than they are. If you’re not familiar with trans issues, take a few minutes today to browse the information and resources at Gender.org, Helen Boyd’s (en)Gender, or the HRC’s Transgender Issues page. That’s only scratching the surface of what’s out there, but should get you started.

Marital Bliss, IV: Void Where Prohibited

My partner and I are now officially married under the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. We had a small ceremony in Newton on Saturday, and then spent the night in Cambridge while my parents took our son home with them. It was a nice time for just the two of us, and a chance to reflect on what has kept us together through all the ups and downs and twists of thirteen-some-odd years.

Does getting married make me feel any different? Not in terms of what I feel about my partner. (And we shall likely continue to say “partner” since we’ve come to know each other that way and are comfortable with the term.) We’ve already been legally bound in varying degrees by signing powers of attorney and then by getting a court order naming us both parents of our son. We’ll continue to celebrate our anniversary in the spring, though we’ll add a “Massaversary” celebration in November.

I feel, though, that I now have a trump card up my sleeve. I can play it whenever we get questioned about our relationship on everything from hospital-visitation rights to health-club memberships. “We’re married,” I can say, and cut through the clutter with a term of immediate power.

Traveling to any of the 44 states where same-sex marriage is prohibited by statute, constitution, or both instantly nullifies this power, however. Even in the five other states that don’t prohibit same-sex marriage, our marital status becomes downgraded to a civil union or domestic partnership (though it’s unclear to me whether jurisdictions that require DP’s to be resident and register would even recognize our marriage as such, if we were just traveling through).

A trump card is perhaps a simplistic analogy. I feel more like I do when I’m playing one of the complex strategy games my partner and I enjoy, the ones that come with 20 pages of rules: “You can play the knight card on the castle, but only if the castle isn’t inhabited by a wizard. If, however, there is no wand card next to the wizard, you can stay for one turn but cannot play a tower card. . . .”

“If we have a legal marriage in Massachusetts, and we’re traveling in New York, which prohibits same-sex marriage, but allows same-sex domestic partnerships in New York City. . . .”

Regardless of the rules, I love you, honey. If I had to, I’d marry you in every state in the union.

LGBT-Friendly Call-ins Needed

Polly at LesbianDad passed on an urgent request to help counter ultra-right callers on a radio show about the National Longitudinal Lesbian Family Study.

Dr. Nanette Gartrell, the principal investigator of the study, will be interviewed this Monday alongside a guest from the Family Research Council. Dr. Gartrell expects that the FRC will organize many of their people to call in and speak against her.

The show will be streamed online by GreenStone Radio (the women’s radio network founded by Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda, among others) between 12:20 p.m. and 1:00 p.m. EST (that’s 9:20 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. PST) on November 20. The call-in number is toll-free: 1-877-4ROSHOW (1-877-476-7469).

Please listen and/or call in if you can, and help spread the word.