CHAPTER PRESIDENT'S NOTE (Kay Heggestad)

Our National PFLAG convention was excellent, the best one I have ever been to. Five of us went to D.C. in October and all 5 came back fired up and ready to work. We lobbied our legislators and then took a variety of workshops. Jo Elder, Paul Wertsch, Harriet Bruyn, Diane Wensel and I have a wealth of information for you. (See Dec. 3 meeting information.)
Your homework for this month is to go to the www.straightforequality.org web site and click on everything there and learn about the Straight for Equality campaign. Take some of the suggestions on there and RUN with them.

Extra Special Super PFLAG meeting, Monday Dec. 3, at 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Please mark your calendars and plan to attend an extra PFLAG meeting. This will be held in our usual meeting house (Friends Meeting House, 1702 Roberts Ct.) on Monday, December 3 at 6 pm. Catina Lowery, an attorney from LAMBDA LEGAL, will come in from Chicago for an informal conversation about how state laws that discriminate against LGBT people of color impact us all. This will lead into a discussion of how we can attract people of color into our group.
Following that, each of the convention delegation members will tell us a bit about the parts of the convention that apply especially to us and how we can work together to further our mission of support, education and advocacy. Brooke Smith, our national field and policy person, is expected to be there as well. All of the GLBT organizations in Madison will be invited to attend.

Book Reports

Beyond Acceptance:  Parents of Lesbians & Gays Talk About Their Experiences by Carolyn Welch Griffin, Marian J. Wirth and Arthur G. Wirth  1986/1996 Revised/Updated

       This is a book written by 23 parents who belonged to a PFLAG group in a large Midwestern metropolitan city. They worked together over a number of years after they learned about their gay/lesbian children in an effort to tell their stories and help others.   Parents discuss their feelings in all the different stages they experienced and the levels of understanding they reached.   Parents and children relate their personal Progress in the understanding of AIDS is also discussed. The stories not only can help parents and friends while moving towards understanding and acceptance, but also can help LGBTQ individuals understand this journey.
       Parents go beyond acceptance when they begin working in their communities and the world for safety and equity of LGBTQ loved ones. Most of the book details the process of acceptance and of changing attitudes.  Books, communication methods, religious thinking and changing perceptions are also discussed.  A very important message from this book is to remind parents not to "let society rob you of your special children." 
     Although originally written about 20 years ago, the stories told in this book are still relevant.  Although the  LGBTQ reference was not being used and the research on AIDS was in its early stages, the emotions revealed have not changed.  The journey continues every day in our society.
This book and many others on the subject of our LGBTQ loved ones can be borrowed from the PFLAG library.

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

Excerpts from the review by Caroline Moore in the UK’s Sunday Telegraph.
… the true triumph of this novel lies in Eugenides's ability to move beyond mere titillation, and into a sort of intensification of universal experience. In the tale of Calliope Stephanides, who discovers in confused adolescence that she not only wants to be but is (almost) a boy, he taps into every reader's adolescent uncertainties: when fumbling excitement combines with a cringing dread of humiliation and the fear of being different.
Yet the book does not just want to be an account of the "coming of age" of a single teenager, however sexually ambiguous. Looping back through time, Calliope - now Cal - traces the "roller-coaster" career of the mutant gene that surfaced to shape what is now "his" life.
 There is immense richness here. The tale of Cal's grandparents, orphaned children in a village in Asia Minor, whose isolated interdependence spawned a delicately charted incestuous love, is followed through the horrors of Turkish invasion. They escape and arrive as exiles in Detroit, where they are able to reinvent themselves as man and wife.

Film notes

For the Bible Tells Me So was reviewed in last month’s newsletter. Now we hear that it is coming to Madison.  The HRC weekly email says that it will be shown starting November 30th at the Marcus 8 Theater at Westgate.  I talked to the manager at the Marcus 8 and he said that he didn’t get scheduling information that far ahead of time.  I suggest that you watch the listings for the Marcus 8 and Sundance theaters if you are interested in viewing this film.