Flowery Chic-Fil-A goodness

I usually don't get political on my blog but I feel this is not so much political as it is about my civil rights.  Civil rights is always important to mental health especially since it seems the people making the laws in this country seem to have some mental issues themselves.

A couple here in Washington was denied flowers from a local florists because they are gay.  Gay marriage IS LEGAL in the state of Washington.  What's illegal is discriminating against someone based on their sexual orientation.  She is discriminating because of her "relationship" with Jesus.  Well that's great but she should probably rethink being in the retail biz. 

Here is my response to people who think the florist has a right to discriminate against gays.

Link:  Florist Refuses Washington Gay Wedding Job Because Of Religion

Here is why your argument does not hold water.  First off, I’m a gay man.  I’m a veteran, as is my partner of 21 years.  I did not serve in a war zone so I could come home and have an American business owner deny me flowers for my wedding on the basis of her “relationship with Jesus.”

Besides drug prescriptions from your doctor, what business has a right to tell you how to use their product after you buy it?  Of course every product has a “recommended” use by the manufacturer and yet I’ve never been denied a Q-Tip because I like to stick them INSIDE my ear.  

If religion is going to be a marker for whom business owners decide to sell to then we need to start discriminating more frequently.  Jesus said nothing about gay marriage in the Bible.  I’m assuming her “relationship” with Jesus is a platonic one since they aren’t married.  Does this mean Jewish shop owners get to stop selling to Christians and vice versa?  Why not? My Baptist parents raised me to believe that Jews are going to hell when they die.  My parents do not believe in Judaism based on their relationship with Jesus Christ.  Does that mean they get to start denying them products for sale?

Can a shop owner deny sale to a black person or a muslim?

Yes, the florist’s constitutional rights are guaranteed in our country.  She has a right to feel a certain way about gay marriage.  She has a right to want to discriminate based on a religious belief.  I suggest she get out of the retail business. All anyone has been talking about is this florist’s constitutional rights but you can use the exact same argument for the gay couple.  The problem is that since they are gay than their voices are automatically ignored. We still feel that religion gets to dictate the rights of human beings.  We have a constitution to protect the florist’s religious freedoms but it also protects life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness of everybody.  For God’s sake we actually vote on whether or not human being get civil rights!! There’s no voting on rights in America!  We have two legitimate constitutional rights issues here.  However, one allows to discriminate and the other allows a life commitment.

These two guys could have just ordered flowers, not told the florists what they were for and she would have been none the wiser.  Crisis averted. But these men took it upon them selves to fight for my right to be able to order flowers at my wedding.  Sounds pretty stupid right?  Of course.  Why am I getting all worked up about flowers at my wedding?  That’s something your wife probably took care of.  It’s because you have never had to deal with stupid people and discriminating laws because you are a straight, white man.  Straight, white men are who make up these laws so they can keep their little life bubble stable.

 Yes, let’s let the free market decide what businesses stay open if they openly discriminate.  Makes sense.  If the florist down the road hates black people then maybe she will lose patrons and she will go out of business.  Great.  That is her right to feel that way.  We live in a country that is better than that.  We live in a country where everyone is equal under the LAW. If we can just go around denying different groups of people things that other people take for granted than we are no better than WWII era Nazi Germany. 

My solution? Business owners should just stop asking what the product you’re selling is going to be used for!  Simple.  It’s none of your damn business.  Stay out of my life and I’ll stay out of yours. 

So now I’m sure that hundreds of people are going to go to her floral shop and all buy tons of flowers on a certain day that will in no doubt be supported by Rush and Sean Hannity.  That’s awesome.  Since the florist is a woman they can call it Chic Flore’.™ How ever they want to spin it, it’s not about religious freedom.  It’s about equality and civil rights.  Oh and I’m sure politics fits in their somewhere. 

Final Countdown

May 3rd is coming up and that marks one year of this blog.

One year of multiple medications, injuries, jobs and moods.

It's been  a weird year so far.  It's gone by fast but at times it's as if time stands still.  My mind plays games with my body and they don't always like to play the same game.  One cheats while the other take his ball and goes home.

I'll report in in May 3rd and give an official one year update.  It might not be pretty.

Huey Lewis: Idea man

It's almost been a year since embarking on this journey of new found clarity.  I've still had my ups and downs but luckily more ups than downs.

This past 3 weeks has been a little piece of hell. I've become SO stressed out with work that I've become a ball of tension and tight muscles.  It's not that work is hard, it's that I hate it.  I don't like my job, there, simple.

The job is easy.  Drive to offices.  Talk to staff and give them samples.  I sit in my car and as I drive all I can think about is how much I would rather be doing something else.  Hunched over the steering wheel I pull into the office and realize the whole drive that my shoulders have been up near my ears, my jaw is clenched and my right arm is numb.

Stress is something that affects more than my mind.  It affects my physical body as well.  It has taken my muscles and twisted them and turned them into machines that wrench and pull my vertebrae out of alignment, pinching nerves and causing extreme pain in my shoulder and upper arm and cause my right hand to completely numb.

Stress is a strange animal.  It makes you so anxious, puts you into physical pain that the pain causes you to become depressed because you can't tolerate the stress that has caused all the pain.  It doesn't help when tight muscle pain can make an already depressed person more depressed.

I wish that there was a pill or something that could just make a person feel completely normal.  It somehow reacts with your body's chemistry and zips through your blood stream and just corrects anything that is not right.

Huey Lewis was right.  I want a new drug.

Monkey see, monkey do.

Study finds evidence that It Gets Better for gay teens

We all know that the gay teen suicide rate is higher than the heterosexual teen suicide rate. We all grew up with bullies.  I had one.  He knows who he is.  He made sophomore English hell for me.  The constant name calling, fag, queer, sissy and others I care not to try and remember.  

The anxiety I endured was, at times, unbearable.  Everyday I was petrified to go to class.  I had one friend of all the kids that sat around me that actually would try and defend me.  She knows who she is.  That was my little glimmer of hope in my little world of darkness.  

There were times when I contemplated suicide.  There were times when I almost decided to beat his face in.  I'm not a violent person and never was.  I'm the type of person that would probably hit him and then immediately apologize.  The thought of hurting another human being for any reason really does not settle well with me.

I have to imagine that most of this kid's bullying came from issues he had with his own sexuality.  I don't know if he was closeted or if he just really needed to assert his masculinity because of problems at home.  Whatever the reason he wasn't doing it for fun.

I think most of bullying is a result of bad parenting.  Kids have to learn it from somewhere.  I've never known people who are great parents to have kids that bully other kids.  Parents who have kids who bully probably bully themselves.  It's like overweight parents.  If the parents are fat, the kids are fat.  Monkey see, monkey do.

It does get better.  It got better for me but only to a point.  I was kind of an idiot in the way I handled my life once I graduated from high school. I not only tried to get married to a woman but I enlisted in the military, an organization filled with men.  Try not being gay in a world where you are surround by men all the time. Try not being gay in a job filled with homophobia, racism and sexism.  The military does great things, however, acceptance is not one of them.  I dated men but on the down low.  Bullying in the military is rampant and mainly because of the hyper-masculine environment.  My fault.  I was young and naive and didn't know how to handle my issues. 

To this day I still have problems making friends and getting close to people because of the fear of being judged and not being accepted or respected.  As I get older I have a "fuck'em all" attitude about it all but it does still make things difficult at time.  I usually have to really observe someone before I decide to let them really get to know me.

Still, it does get better. The teenage years are never easy.  All gay teens and straight teens alike just want to be loved and accepted. The worst thing to do if you find out your teen is gay is to tell them they are going to hell or even punishing them or sending them to counseling.  Counseling is fine if the kid really wants to talk about his feeling but you should NEVER send the kid to counseling to convert them back.  It won't work.  It's not "fixable."  There is nothing to fix.

Kids do what you do.  If you're an asshole chances are they are too.

The Final Countdown

3:30 pm:I'm at a Starbucks in Portland waiting to hear about a possible callback for an acting gig. I'm supposed to hear something in the next few minutes. If I don't hear anything by 4:00 pm than it's a "no."

3:35 pm: It's a really really important gig for me. It means national exposure, great acting credit for the resume and a shot at living the dream.

3:40 pm: I'm handling this better than I thought I would. I have been rejected so often in this job that it doesn't really phase me anymore. Usually. This is different though. I've never auditioned for a major television show.

3:46 pm: What to do, what to do? Waiting sucks. The thing is that I never know what the hell they are looking for when it comes to this shit. The character description was very precise yet no one else at the audition looked anything like the character break-down. It's frustrating. In the end it's going to come down to what the actor looks like.

3:51 pm: Ever wanted anything so bad you could just see it? Taste it? Smell it? How do you keep up a positive attitude with so much sadness weighing down on me like a wet blanket?

Calling it. Time of death, 3:55 pm, January 30, 2013. The dream has died.

Time to make the donuts.

I have been waking up at 530 am this week and going to the gym.  It is totally out of my comfort zone. I LOVE to sleep.  

Since I started a new job I have found that I only have time to go to the gym in the mornings.  In order for me to get out the door by 830 for work, I need to get to the 6 am spin class.

I've read that it takes 21 days to form a habit.  19 more days to go!  If I can keep this up I should see results quickly.  This is yet another way of shocking my body into change.  The only way to avoid plateau is to shake it up.  Do something different.  Just waking up early is enough for your body to say, "What the WHAT?"  It has to change and adapt to make up for it.

Time to make the donuts. 

Resolve to resolve your resolutions

One thing I have learned over my years working in gyms at the beginning of a new year is that New Year's resolutions are not a real thing.

New Year's Resolutions are a gimmick cooked up by the fitness industry to make more money. They know that every one has been eating themselves into comas during the holiday season and now are feeling remorseful for doing so.

This is the time of the year that national chain clubs are ramping up their commercial ads to get more of you to come in, sign up, and then forget about it.

I worked at a chain gym for about 5 years. They had over 10,000 members in their database. Sounds great! All those people using the gym and getting in shape. Unfortunately that's not what's going on. In reality only about one third of that 10,000 are actually using the gym.
If all 10,000 people were using the gym, you would never ever get a workout in because it would be too crowded.

The gyms are betting on the fact that most of you will not workout after you have signed up. That's how the big chains make their money. You sign up, have direct withdrawal dues taken out of your bank account each month that you forget about after a few months. You stop coming which makes more room for the gym rats and the gym still makes money off of you.

The bright side? If you are seriously considering getting into a gym membership, NOW is the time. It's true that now is the time of year when their memberships are at their lowest. Once again it's how they make their money.

Here is a hint to getting the best deal. Never go for the cheap membership. In the long run the expensive package is the best one because your monthly dues will be cheaper. The catch is that you will have to put more money down on the sign up cost. If you are serious about working out and changing your life than spend the money to get the most out of your membership.

There are private gyms that are usually more money but private gyms are not so much about quantity as they are about quality. If you want a state-of-the-art, high-end gym that will cater to you and make you feel special and you have the money than that's the way to go. If you like a down and dirty, big box with weights and type A people into seriously grueling workouts a la Crossfit, than that's your wheel house.

Find a gym that fits your lifestyle. Find one that makes you feel comfortable. Find one that's clean and find one that won't drain your bank account.

Remember: If you feel like you're not going to keep working out, cancel that membership as soon as it's legally possible. The chain gyms make tons of money off all those thousands who are still paying monthly dues and not coming because they forgot they have direct withdrawal from their bank accounts.

Happy 2013!