NCSF Action Alert

We will be leaving home late Friday afternoon to attend Adventures in Sexuality's Winter Wickedness Event. We've had our event and hotel reservations for a couple of months, and we'll gladly join other members of the "local" BDSM community to celebrate a weekend to be ourselves with one another. These weekend "kink" events are a place where we've always gone as a way to immerse ourselves in "our" culture -- to refresh and renew and really relax in a setting where we do not have to pretend or hide.

This time, however, there's trouble brewing in Paradise. A radical, right-wing, religious group has learned the details of the event, and they are making a fuss with the host hotel, and working hard to stir up the community to oppose our right to gather and enjoy our time with one another. Today, the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom has stepped in to advocate for all of us against this viscious attack. Here are the details and a plea for your help and support:

Support the Holiday Inn - Worthington, OH!
February 4, 2009

Please make a phone call now to support the Holiday Inn Worthington, the host hotel for Adventures In Sexuality's (AIS) Winter Wickedness Event taking place February 6-8th.

The religious extremist group, Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, along with a local religious radio station in the Columbus, Ohio, area are running a smear campaign against this pansexual BDSM event. Peter LaBarbara of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality calls the event "a freakish sadomasochistic perversion-fest" and urges people to call the hotel's corporate headquarters to pressure them into canceling "for the sake of decency and public health." Bob Burney, a religious extremist Talk Radio DJ, devoted an entire segment of his show slamming Winter Wickedness and attempting to link the event with non-consensual and criminal activities. He urged his listeners to call and mount a campaign against the hotel. (Tuesday, Part 3 starting at 10 min 42sec: ) Click here to listen.

It will only take a minute for you to help! It doesn't matter where you live or if you're not going to attend this event. Please call the Intercontinental Hotels Group Corporate Customer service line at 800-621-0555, then press option 1, then option 5, and thank them for not discriminating against groups, and for being willing to face minor adversity for the sake of our freedom. You can also call the Holiday Inn Columbus-Worthington today at 614-436-0700 – they'll be very glad to hear a friendly voice to counter the hatred of the religious extremists. Suggested points to make:

1. Thank you for upholding the Fair Accommodations Act and choosing not to discriminate against legal events.

2. Please don't let a small number of religious extremists manipulate you by drumming up fear with their misinformation campaigns.

3. There are over 200 weekend-long BDSM events that take place every year in America – we bring in a lot of revenue in these hard times. We like to stay at hotel chains where we have been welcomed when we're traveling on personal or business travel.

4. Organizers of BDSM events such as Winter Wickedness at The Holiday Inn comply with state and local laws prohibiting public sexual intercourse and other forms of sexual intimacy. Demonstrations, lectures and discussion groups as well as dinners and evening parties compose the variety of offerings to guests, nothing different from any of the other hundreds of conventions hosted by your franchisees on a weekly basis.

5. Thank you for standing strong against hate and ignorance.

Please pass this on to your friends to call now!

swan

Prickly

This is us. We are all just as raw as can be and "prickly" seems to be the best word I can think of to describe our relatedness these days. We growl more than we should, and we find places to be tender or offended or pissed off way more than is normal for any of us. There is a wealth of criticism being flung around our family circle -- seems no one of us is doing anything well or right or in a way that makes everyone else happy.

I really do believe that this is nerves and stress and worry manifesting between us all, and I am hopeful that it will resolve itself as we get to the other side of this surgical hurdle. I'm just worried that we might all KILL each other before we get there -- probably over something critically important like which way the handles are pointed on the teacups at the dinner table... Good grief!

swan

Scared

I've been trying to work my way around this without actually owning up to it, but it just sits there making me crazier by the day. A large part of what was intended to happen when I was directed to start writing a personal blog, was that it was supposed to help me get things out of my mind and into words. The idea was (and is) that I'd write and by doing so, silence the voices that drive me around the bend.

So. Deep breath.

I'm scared. Witless. Worried to the point of distraction. And my fears and worries keep building on each other, and no amount of "rational" self-talk seems to have any impact at all on my ever-growing anxieties.

Things are moving along here; progressing toward the approval and scheduling of bariatric surgery for Master AND T. If all goes well, they'll have surgery on the same day at the beginning of my spring break, late in March. I'll be able to be around while they are hospitalized and for the first few days after they come home. They'll hopefully move through the post-operative phases in sync with one another, and we'll minimize the time that we have to deal with liquid and soft diets for the two of them.

They should be the ones who are scared and worried. They, after all, are the ones having the surgeries. They are the ones who have to go through all the preparation and recovery, and deal with the "forever" lifestyle changes that this all requires. I am just the support person -- easy as pie for me...

I know, intellectually, how much improvement this will likely bring to their health and well-being; how much it might improve their self-images and sense of self-worth. I know that this is really the only way to give us all a shot at a long and happy life together. Part of me is enthusiastically counting the days until we'll no longer need medications for diabetes, and high blood pressure, and high cholesterol, and acid-reflux. I can't wait until the time when the aches and pains that have become so much a part of our lives in the last few years are lessened and relieved due to significant weight loss. I am enthusiastically imagining the day when I can take the C-Pap out onto the driveway and beat it into a pile of rubble. There is so much potential good that can reasonably be expected to come out of all ofthis, but I keep running into the dark corners in my mind where terrible, unspeakable, scarcely imagined disasters happen as we go through this, and it is almost more than I can bear. If I get too close to my fears, it just about drops me to my knees.

I know I'm being silly. I know I have to stop letting this stuff get me all wound up. I know I have to find a way to be strong and sure and positive, so that I can be as helpful and supportive as it is possible to be for my family. I can do that, and I will do that.

But for today, I just need to tell someone that I'm scared.

swan

Dreams

My alarm clock goes off at 5:30AM on school mornings. So this morning, I was still sound asleep when the phone rang at 5:02 with a call from the person who is above me on the school phone chain -- no school today due to snow here in Cincinnati. I made my own calls to forward the phone chain, and snuggled back into the warmth of His arms, under the heavy wool of the Hudson Bay blanket. Soon, I was back sleeping and dreaming ... a dream that was so clear and so sweet and so simple:

I walked across the room, our bedroom, in the quiet morning darkness -- padding softly across the carpet, feeling the cool morning air on my naked skin. He lay sleeping in the bed behind me. Just as I was about to pass through the door, and out of the room, He spoke from the darkness behind me, His voice quiet and very calm: "Please bring me the paddle."

In the magical way of dreams, the Hanson birch paddle was there in my hands as I turned and offered it to Him. "Yes, Sir..."

That was it. Just a snippet, clear and evocative. Nothing much really ... except that I have quit dreaming of any of that, and so that little gem assured me that my subconcious self is still there, still doing the work of living this life.

swan

Lies

Unless you've been living under the proverbial rock for the last week or so, you've gotten wind of the "dust up" here in our little blogging neighborhood over LIES put out by some, and the varying reactions to that reality across the community.

I don't personally know how this particular blowup came to be, I just know that there are people that we thought we knew something about who turned out to be not quite as advertised. So these folks can be added to the list which already includes such luminaries as Vickie Blue, Robin Whittle (of Fondly and Firmly), and Patty (of Creative Spanked Wench/Wife). Likely there have been others over the years who misled and deceived -- and pehaps just vanished without most of us ever being any the wiser. Surely, our family got suckered by one such on a very personal level once upon a time. It hurts.

But let's face it -- people lie. They do. We do. In big and small ways, and for a thousand different reasons, the human animal practices deception. People lie to get ahead, to avoid consequences, to seem more "whatever" to their fellows, to protect themselves, to gain power and control, to create the potential for relationship, to maintain ongoing relationship, and on and on and on. We lie by omission and by commission. We don't like it when we are duped by a liar, and I imagine most of us want to be thought of has people of honesty and integrity, but if we are truthful with ourselves, we can almost all point to times when we have been less than open, honest, and straightforward with others.

I don't like being lied to. It feels icky. It makes me question all sorts of things that I want to have be bedrock solid. And, I know that there are places, even with the ones I love best, where the truth gets "bent" or "shaded" or simply is withheld. I do it, and I know they do it too. If I want to climb up on my soap box and hold forth about how dishonesty is a cancer on our relationship and destroys trust and makes it impossible to really BELIEVE in anything, then I'd probably better be real sure that I am without blame (NOT), and I'd better be sure that what I'll gain by standing on principle on this is worth more than what I'll throw away by being an unbending prig.

So. I don't know all the nuances of this latest firestorm of lies and recriminations. I'm surely disappointed. I am not however ready to condemn anyone to the outer darkness. It's a reminder of the realities of our lives together. Not a nice one. Still, understanding that we are all human and all capable of falling short, I can go on.

swan

Oh Canada...

We have, for a good long while, believed that it might be that people like us, in unconventional families, practicing poly, could look northward to Canada for some sort of refuge from the narrow-minded bigotry that pervades the culture here in the U.S. It seems we may have been very, very wrong. Apparently, according to a post over at Polyamorous Percolations, there is some pretty virulent legal prosecution of polygamists and anyone else that looks even remotely related to polygamy -- all going on in Canada. Here's the text of the Canadian legal code that is being used to prosecute members of a small Mormon polygamist sect:


Section 293 of Canada's Criminal Code:
(1) Every one who

(a) practices or enters into or in any manner agrees or consents to practice or enter into
(i) any form of polygamy, or
(ii) any kind of conjugal union with more than one person at the same time, whether or not it is by law recognized as a binding form of marriage, or

(b) celebrates, assists or is a party to a rite, ceremony, contract or consent that purports to sanction a relationship mentioned in subparagraph (a)(i) or (ii), is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years.

Evidence in case of polygamy

(2) Where an accused is charged with an offence under this section, no averment or proof of the method by which the alleged relationship was entered into, agreed to or consented to is necessary in the indictment or on the trial of the accused, nor is it necessary on the trial to prove that the persons who are alleged to have entered into the relationship had or intended to have sexual intercourse.

Sigh. No refuge there.

swan

It's a Boy!

I am entirely sure that there are a fair number of people who will be more than happy when May comes and goes and they don't have to read anymore posts here about my coming grandbaby, and I can absolutely understand that sentiment. I'm trying not to be totally obnoxious about it, and I really know that most people don't come here to read about my excitement over this little peanut, but for those of you who willing to play along with "Granny," here's the very first ultrasound picture of Baby Zander. Yes -- the child is to be named Alexander and then called (we think) "Zander." Tah Dah! It's a boy! Did I mention that my sister-heart is already buying adorable baby onesies for the little dude. The one that I have lying here -- ready to send says, "Lock Up Your Daughters." We're only just a little bit nuts about this...

swan