Arkansas Family Council files ballot petition

Jerry Cox and company have filed a 2008 ballot proposal to ban unmarried cohabitating sexual partners from adopting or serving as foster parents. I guess prospective single adoptive or foster parents have been deemed worthy now, but it still is a hateful measure to discriminate against people (such as gays and lesbians) that are not ALLOWED to be married. More information can be found at http://www.nwanews.com/adg/National/199286/

Once again, our community is under attack and we must not sit idly by while the Arkansas Family Council pushes their homophobic agenda. Let's circle the wagons, build coalitions with our allies and let our family, friends and neighbors know that life, liberty and justice for ALL is more than lip service in our democracy. We the people, must unite under the ideal that denying rights to any group of people erodes the freedoms of all of the people.

Hang-over from Hell!

OK- I must admit that about twice a year, I foolishly mis-judge the amount of alchohol I can *reasonably* consume and end up paying a horrible price for my error in judgement. Today I am paying the piper. I started off the evening at Sidetracks to celebrate Jim's "anniversary" (birthday to you and me- but he says he no longer celebrates those :-) I planned on just drinking a pitcher of beer and heading home--- oh, the road to hell is paved with such good intentions. I started chatting with some guys around me who claimed their names were Carey, Terry and Larry... but since I was also dubbed "Larry" and every newcomer ended up being Mary, Barry, Gary, Sherry etc., I am not really sure what their names really were! At this point the shots started to come into the picture. I don't really know who originally had the idea, but it seemed like a good one at the time. Well, the pitcher of beer was gone so I decided to have a dirty martini, or two, or three. Meanwhile, the shots kept coming. Now, normally, I would have realized that this should have been the point that I called it a night--- but NOOOOOOO, I had to go check out Backstreet. I don't have a clue what I drank there, but I found a credit card receipt for $19 (before tip) so I guess I had 3 or 4 there as well. Like I said, my memory is a little patchy about my time at Backstreet, all I really remember chatting with DJ Moongod (what a sweetie), John Paul and his friend, Will-- who I think I remember arguing with, and Jeremy, a friend of my friend Cody Bray. Long story short, my only vivid memory occurs during the drive home when I became.....uh, *inelegant* out of the window of the van. God watches out for fools (like me) because I actually made it home safe to my bed and slept until 1 o'clock this afternoon. I keep thinking of that line from the Indigo Girls' song "Closer to fine" about waking up with the feeling of your head against a board--- only my board is pulsing. Anyway, I am going to eat something greasy and go back to bed and hope that I wake up feeling human again. Oh, and if you saw me at Sidetracks or Backstreet and I said or did anything stupid-----PLEASE, don't remind me of it :)

Starting the ball rolling

After taking some time off away from Pride activities, I am ready to start fresh planning for Capital Pride '08. Honestly, I wasn't sure that we would have enough people interested in serving on our board to meet quorom, but- I am proud to announce- we do have enough folks to toss their name in the hat and we should be scheduling our big annual meeting/board elections. The meeting will probably be held around the second week of September, if we can coordinate with everyone's schedule. I truly believe that we learned so much last year that we can build on that this year won't be such a struggle. My hope is that we can get enough input from the community to fashion an event that meets their wants/needs. It can be frustrating sometimes when, after months of planning, you hear criticisms about the decisions made when you don't get that insight during the planning stage. Either way, we will do our best and if we can sustain the type of growth that we saw last year, then we will be very successful. If we use the InterPride theme again this year then it will be......"Live.Love.Be."

I'm back!

After a very long posting hiatus, I am back to the blogoshere. June was a very exciting Pride month for me as I attended Capital Pride in Little Rock; attended the Coming Together as One Gala in Fayetteville; Mid-South Pride in Memphis; celebrated Pride week at local bars; Conway Pride and NWA Pride in Fayetteville. It was a lot of fun, but I hope everyone can understand why I needed a month to recover :) I have also been seeing someone for the past month and have been spending most of my free time with him.

That being said, it is now time to jump back in the saddle and get the ball rolling for next year. We should have already had board elections in July, so we are a bit behind schedule already. Truth be told, we still need some new folks to step up and join our board. We have sent announcements for those interested in serving, however we still need at least one more person to have the required number of board members. I am also concerned with the diversity of our board as it is mostly gay white men that have expressed interest. Hopefully we will have more minority participation and women volunteer soon. If anyone is interested, they can email me at joe@lrcpride.org .

I hope to be blogging much more in the future and keeping everyone up-to-date on events and activities. I encourage everyone to get involved and help make a difference in your community.