A Letter to My Son on January 21, 2017

January 21, 2017

Dear Barton,

Today is an historic day. Hundreds of thousands (millions?) of people around the world gathered in cities (and small towns) to vocalize their support of women (and others) in light of the recent election and inauguration of Donald Trump as the President of the United States. You are only seven months old right now, so you are blissfully unaware of this entire situation. But I want you to know about it when you are older so that hopefully you can learn from it and/or also know where your family stood on these issues.

As you have probably figured out from photos, your dad and I voted for Hillary Clinton in the presidential election. We were appalled at the numerous inappropriate statements and actions by Trump, and while we both agreed that Hillary had flaws, she also had plans for strong policies that we agreed with – that helped those less fortunate – and she had years of experience to make this happen, and certainly that she knew what she was talking about. But that is behind us now. Trump was elected because of the way our electoral college system works, but not because of the overall popular vote. This is important because it means that millions of people oppose his views. Today’s movement, though, is not against his presidency, but to be clear that there is no mandate on hate and oppression and discrimination.

Today people around the world marched in solidarity and support for our rights. It was officially called the Women’s March, but it was bigger than that. I want to share my thoughts about it with you for many reasons, but there is a selfish part of this letter in that it lets me process my own feelings about it all as I share it with you. Today I scrolled through my Facebook newsfeed (not sure Facebook or newsfeeds will still exist when you read this, but I’m sure you can look it up) to see images and video from around the world of people coming together, not so much in protest, but in celebration of humanity and in support of diversity, and my heart swelled with love for my country. You and I did not join in the marches today. You see, as a seven month old, you are in much better spirits when you can eat, sleep, and poop in your usual routine. And while we shake that up at times for various activities, I admit I was nervous about finding a place along the march to change your diaper. Seriously, that was a major limiting factor. But I spent the day checking in on the marches via the internet, and hoping that my support would somehow come through. While you nursed, for example, I used my available hand to check in and be sure all was well and that the marches were successful. Part of what people shared from the marches were the reasons they marched, and so despite the lack of physical attendance, I want to note my own reasons for marching in spirit. And I hope you will someday continue this movement (as I’m sure there will always be more work to do) and embrace these values, too.

My first reason is not about women, but about race. I believe with every fiber of my being that black lives matter. I will not be silent when others retort that “all lives matter” because, sure, of course, those are nice words, but that is not what is playing out in our country in actions on a daily basis. Pay attention to actions, Barton, not words. When Donald Trump said in his inauguration speech, “At the center of this movement is a crucial conviction: that a nation exists to serve its citizens” my first concern was about how Trump supporters define “citizens” because assumptions about people’s worth based on the color of their skin seem all too pervasive. You can use words about inclusion, but if actions don’t follow, the words mean nothing. Instead it seems that when people say “all lives matter” they mean “all lives that don’t frighten me based on how they look or what I assume they believe.” So Barton, we must say it loudly and clearly – Black Lives Matter!

The next reason is for religious freedom, which includes those who do not practice religion at all. Barton, you know that your parents were raised in Jewish and Catholic faiths, so you already understand diversity of beliefs and the lack of an absolute truth in this realm. Assumptions about “Godless people” run rampant in various communities, and Trump has proposed the idea of a registry of all Muslims (in his words to protect us from terrorism, as if ordinary Muslims are all potential terrorists – in case I’m not clear yet, they are not). No one should be targeted for their belief system or their lack of a belief system. Your great-grandparents were Holocaust survivors, and I wish you (and I, for that matter) had been able to meet them and hear their stories. Instead we hear their stories passed on through your dad and the rest of his family. My least favorite subject in school was always history. It bored me, and I wasn’t very good at memorizing seemingly mundane facts, like the specific dates of an event, such as the Pearl Harbor attack (December 7, 1941…ok, I actually do remember that one). But history is so important because it allows us to see how things occurred in the past in order to (hopefully) not repeat the mistakes of prior generations. We teach the events in the Holocaust, and your dad and I share the stories of your great-grandparents, so that we can recognize the recurrence of similar actions and stop them. We need to do better at teaching more of our own American history, even (and especially) when it makes our country look bad, so that we do not repeat mistakes like our treatment of Natives or of Japanese-Americans during WWII.

Which leads me to the next reason: immigrants. Many people who support anti-immigration actions that Trump proposed, such as building a giant wall between the US and Mexico, believe that job loss in our country can be at least partially explained by immigrants who have taken our jobs. Job loss is complex, and this idea is just a ridiculous scare tactic. Your dad took a pro-bono case once to help an undocumented immigrant obtain a U Visa (a special visa for victims of crimes who cooperate with law enforcement to prosecute those crimes). He told me stories of this man and his family and their friends, many of whom were also immigrants. They enter our country for a variety of reasons, most of them unpleasant and/or inhumane. And once they are here, they are so thankful for what the US has to offer, they become some of the most patriotic members of our society. Obviously, I cannot speak for every single immigrant, but we cannot let the mistakes of some lead to assumptions about all. Plus, we are descendants of immigrants ourselves, as are most Americans at some point in their history. Our friends and people we love are immigrants. We are the same!

And so are women. Yes, obviously I would have women’s rights on my list of reasons I march in spirit with the Women’s March. Let me start by saying that this is multi-faceted. Some people mean reproductive rights, specifically access to abortion, when they talk about women’s rights. Some people mean equality in the workplace. Some people mean protection from sexual assault and harassment. Some mean equality in much broader ways. I mean it all. When people say they are pro-life/anti-abortion, I would expect to see them working to help others avoid unwanted pregnancies, such as providing easy access to birth control through organizations like Planned Parenthood. But I don’t. I would expect to see them fighting for CHIP (the children’s health insurance program that Republicans in Congress recently voted against). But I don’t. So I will. And Barton, I hope you will. The Affordable Care Act, which Trump is working hard to eliminate, requires employers to provide unpaid breaks for breastfeeding mothers to pump breast milk during the work day. This sort of legislation is needed for equality to exist – because we must address our different needs to truly be equal. We need something as simple as a movement to change the language in everyday life so that the leader of our nation does not excuse blatantly oppressive statements about the ability to grab a woman’s genitals as “locker room talk” but instead points out that language perpetuates violence against women by normalizing the perception of women as property. Excusing small offenses normalizes the culture to allow for the big offenses, and none of it is ok. I hope by the time you read this letter, Barton, that you have learned this from me and your dad in action. I could go on and on about the minutiae of our fight for women in this country. This is just a handful of the things we need our government to step up and support in order to inch toward equality for women.

LGBTQ rights. We cannot allow recent progress to be undone. Marriage equality was just one part of the fight for equality throughout domains of life for people born with different sexual orientations. While I’ve tried to be vocal and active in this fight for many years (a counter-protest to a Fred Phelps Westboro Baptist Church protest in Nashville during college was my first protest), trans rights are a new fight for me. We must accept people for who they are, not how we expect them to be because of the genitalia they had at birth. And we must not allow people to make excuses for intolerance and hate by creating false fears of sexual deviance or molestation.

Support for and trust in science. I have no idea if you will think it is cool that both of your parents have PhDs or horrible because you don’t want to feel pressured to follow in our footsteps. I hope you know there are no expectations that you also become a scientist, but I’m sure you will understand that this issue is an obvious one for me. But it’s not just a selfish plea for the government to continue to fund my research. The private sector invests in research that can lead to quick monetary benefit, but there is much research that we benefit from as a society that will not result in that sort of gain, and thus would not occur without government support. Further, the risk of manipulated results of industry-funded research when there is a clear monetary interest in an outcome is another reason it is so important to have non-biased funding agencies for research. But beyond funding, the new executive branch is dangerously anti-science with regard to its trust for scientific findings. When the overwhelming majority of evidence supports the existence of climate change, the government needs to listen. When the overwhelming majority of evidence supports the safety and huge societal benefit of vaccines, the government must help calm the fears to keep up our herd immunity.

Access to good education. The aforementioned need for history lessons so that we do not repeat our mistakes is one aspect of why this is so important, but it is also important to help level the playing field for those who are born into less fortunate situations – not just academic education, but extracurricular programming in conjunction with strong public schools to support the growth of the whole person. You are seven months old right now and already have a 529 education investment fund.  Most babies in our country don’t. That is a privilege, and you must remember that other people’s paths in life are rougher. We need to help them because when our least privileged members of society can succeed, we all benefit. It can be frustrating when they are portrayed as lazy and “taking handouts” but that is not generally true of those struggling financially.

I know there are more reasons, but I think the other aspect of this movement that started after Trump’s election that really moves me is less political and more emotional. It’s what makes me teary (the happy kind) when I see thousands and thousands of people at marches around the world. It’s that the overarching goal that most of these marchers share is kindness and love toward others. There is anger, of course, and the anger is important. A friend recently shared this quote, “I think from now on, I will not trust anyone who isn’t angry.” –Joanna Russ, “How to Suppress Women’s Writing.” Anger is normal and is what drives this movement forward. But the anger comes from the lack of recognition and kindness evidenced by the most vocal Trump supporters and often by Trump himself. Underneath that anger is love.

And let me also make another note about anger. There are times in a movement when anger will be directed within our group because of past (and at times continued) silence and complacency. That is an important part of this, but we must use the love and kindness aspect of this to get through. A different friend posted this a few days ago, “Interesting, well to me it is. So many thugs, I mean protestors, marchers whatever coming out in support of women and whoever else but but but where were all your fb posts and show up of support for the BLM protests?”  At first, I felt an urge to defend the positive intent of a sudden motivation to take action in light of Trump’s election and inauguration, but in truth, although I agreed with the message of the Black Lives Matter protests and wrote occasional posts in support, I never joined them or loudly honored them anywhere. I must acknowledge those who have been fighting to be heard for much longer than I have. For many of us, Trump’s election was a tipping point where the fear became real enough and disturbing enough to take action, but why weren’t we taking action before? The fear of others has been just as real all along. So yes, I get uncomfortable when I am correctly called out on my silence, but that discomfort stems from the fact that I DO support causes like BLM, and it feels bad to realize that I was wrong to sit idly by in the safety of my home silent. The discomfort is because I WANT to show kindness, but I don’t always do it when or how I should. I have lived with privilege throughout my life – based on my race, my economic status, my educational attainment, etc. This allows me to remain silent whenever it’s inconvenient to speak up. And so I want to make a change by wearing my kindness in a more obvious way and speaking up for those with less privilege whenever I can. I hope, Barton, that by the time you read this letter, those words will be read with a nod and the memories of your mom taking actions to follow through on this. I look forward to the time in the future when I am not thinking about dirty diapers and can join where I am needed to make my voice heard in support of others and these needs we all share. And I hope, Barton, that by the time you read this, you will be doing the same.

Love,

Your momma.

Ferguson

I know I haven't written here in over a year, but this week, my mind keeps going back to the riots and protests related to the non-indictment of Officer Darren Wilson in the killing of Michael Brown. It even came up as an oh-so-pleasant Thanksgiving dinner topic. As a psychologist, I find myself not assigning blame as much as identifying a very flawed system. As a white female, I find myself realizing all the instances of my white privilege that make it difficult to fully understand all perspectives. My friend Nathan wrote on Facebook, "And so begins the flood of posts about how people don't understand the anger behind the destructive response that some (emphasis on some, as plenty are protesting peacefully) are displaying in Ferguson. Posts about how it doesn't make sense. I'll be honest, it doesn't make sense to me either. But thoughtful reflection brings me to the conclusion that it takes some life experiences profoundly different from mine for such a reaction to make sense. So what I can say that I understand for sure is that I am thankful as hell that it doesn't make sense to me. I'm glad, and fortunate, that my life experiences have not led me to a place where it makes sense." 

As I was reading some of the racist comments on various internet sites over the week, I would notice my heart rate elevate and find myself closing the window to get away from that feeling. But I can only get away from those comments because of the color of my skin. If I were black, I would have to face those realities everyday.

My cousins have been foster parents to a black baby for almost 2 years now. A year ago, they took in his newborn brother. So they are currently parents to two black toddlers. At this age, they are cute and non-threatening. But in 10+ years, they are going to look a lot like Michael Brown. And it makes me scared for these sweet little boys. I hope they learn to listen to cops so that they are not considered a threat. But what if the cop is being unreasonable? Should we really always follow unreasonable requests? We should be able to question authority in this country. A few years ago, a neighbor of mine was stopped in front of our apartment building on a felony stop. For those who do not know what this is, when someone is suspected of a felony, they are stopped with multiple cop cars (in this case 7), guns out (between 10-15 guns in this instance), with instructions to drop to the ground in a very specific manner. When this occurred outside of my apartment, there was a moment when my neighbor (who had no idea why he would have been stopped) was told to "face the wall." The place where he was standing was bordered by a half wall to his left and a gate into the apartment garage ahead of him. He assumed when the cop said "wall" that he meant the half wall. So that is the direction he faced. The cop yelled again, "face the f*cking wall!" Again, multiple cops had their guns pointed at my unarmed neighbor while this was going on. Confused, my neighbor looked around to try to figure out which direction he was being told to face. There was no way to clarify the instructions. He eventually figured out that they wanted him to face the gate to the garage, at which point he was able to follow the rest of the instructions (drop to his knees, hands behind his head, then lay down, face down, on the ground). I wonder so often what I would have done in that confusion. I wonder what someone younger may have done in that confusion. And I wonder what it would have taken for one of those many guns to have fired. It is important to note that my neighbor was a white man around age 45, and the suspected felony was theft, for which he was later cleared - no charges were ever filed. It was all a mistake. But I wonder if the same mistake had happened to a teenage black male, and the same confusion about which way to face had occurred, would the teenager be alive today? This is a real question, and in my opinion, this is the real issue in all of these protests. It is not whether Michael Brown was a "thug" or a criminal or whether he was appropriate in his behavior. There are too many unknowns that will never be clarified. But there is a real concern about perceived danger that is relevant to all of these shootings of black men by cops. Will the same behavior in a white man lead to the same outcome as that of a black man? There is a lot of evidence from psychology research to suggest it will not. And that is a problem.

Michael Brown stole some cigarillos before he was killed. Think back to when you were a teenager. I personally never stole anything, but I was a goodie-two-shoes kind of kid. I certainly knew of other teens who stole things. They were not bad people - just misguided and making poor choices. We know that brain development, particularly development of the brain areas responsible for inhibitory control, the ability to stop ourselves from certain behaviors, is still occurring through age 25. This does not excuse this sort of behavior, but for me it puts it in a different light. This behavior does not reflect a "criminal" mind, but a mind that is still developing. Should there be consequences to that sort of behavior? Absolutely. That is how learning takes place, which is another aspect of brain development. Should that consequence be death? Absolutely not. We would be killing off a large percentage of our population if petty theft became punishable by death. But the difference in whether something like this leads to death is the perception of the characteristics of the person who is stealing. If Michael Brown had been white, would the officer have approached him in a less threatening manner? My guess is that he would have been perceived as a "troubled teen acting out" rather than a "dangerous criminal." In Officer Wilson's description of the events that unfolded, he described Brown as looking like a "demon." Yes, he used the word demon. Would that same feeling have come about if Brown were white? I don't think so.

And here is why. A research study by Duncan in 1976 showed that white observers considered a shove by a black perpetrator more aggressive than the same shove by a white perpetrator. Furthermore, they attributed situational factors as influencing the behavior of the white perpetrator, but more personal factors (characteristic of the person) as influencing the behavior of the black perpetrator. In 2003, Hugenberg and Bodenhausen found an implicit prejudice in white volunteers with a greater readiness to perceive anger in black faces, but not white faces. And even more directly related to cases of police officers shooting black men, research has used video games to highlight the bias at play here. Participants were to shoot anyone in the video game holding a gun and not shoot if they were carrying anything else. Participants shot armed targets more quickly and frequently when they were black and decided not to shoot unarmed targets more quickly and frequently when they were white. (Correll et al., 2002). This has been replicated with brain data to support the effect (Correll, Urlo, & Ito, 2006). A similar study with white cops/black criminals versus black cops/white criminals in the video game found similar racial bias, with blacks being incorrectly shot at more than whites (Greenwald, Oakes, & Hoffman, 2003). And there are more and more studies noting various aspects of these perceptual biases.

So knowing that these biases are real. Knowing that it can be impossible to follow the instructions of cops all the time - misunderstandings and confusion can be real. Knowing that sometimes kids do stupid things - kids of all races. How do we stop innocent* people from dying? (*And yes, I know theft is a crime, but it is not a crime punishable by death). Regardless of what you think about Michael Brown and Darren Wilson, this issue is real, and it is not going away unless we do something about it systematically.

And I have have a new home (I admit this post is a bit belated)

Remember when I last wrote here about my housing situation? Yeah, I found a new place and moved in April, but life has been going at a ridiculous pace, and so I never posted an update.

I'm now living half a block from my old place, in a bi-level loft apartment with my boyfriend Todd. He moved across the bay from Oakland, increasing his commute to work, but ensuring that my commute didn't have to change since it already takes me an hour each way (tonight: make that 1.5 hours due to a car stuck on the train tracks).

As many people have expressed interest, I finally took pictures of the new place and thought I would share. Our biggest complaint about the new place is the kitchen. We have very few cabinets and even fewer drawers, so storing everything is a bit of a challenge. I think we've made the most of it, though, and I'm happy with how things have turned out. We did have the landlords replace the 24 year old microwave and dishwasher, and they offered to renovate the entire kitchen at first, but scheduling and arranging the details of all of that was becoming incredibly difficult considering that our landlords live about an hour out of town. So we settled for appliances.

And now for pictures (click to enlarge).

This is a converted warehouse, so the window is huge and the outside wall and ceiling are concrete.

View from the entry hall looking toward the living room

The closet area upstairs where we have our dressers (and hanging clothes along the wall to the left)

Our bedroom is a lofted area overlooking the rest of the apartment. We have a skylight and a hatch where we can climb a ladder for roof access. This (and the lack of window screens) means we end up with a few mosquitos inside, hence the mosquito net on the bed.

The bathroom is underneath the upstairs closet area, immediately to the left of the front door.

The kitchen with no storage - and our IKEA shelf solution.

View from the bedroom

It's never finished

My last post was about the coffee table I had custom made by an artist on Etsy. The final piece of furniture to complete my home. Done. Nothing else to get. I was so excited. It arrived on February 18th. On February 19th, I found out that my apartment needs to be combined with the apartment next door in order to comply with city codes, so I will have to move out at the end of my lease.

Seriously? Ugh. The story is like this. My building is a bunch of live/work lofts. These were approved by the city back when they were built in 2003. The original configuration of units in the building showed large lofts that could be used for both live and work space. My unit is 600 square feet. Perfect for a woman and her dog. Not ideal to run a full blown business and house a woman and her dog. (Although, to be perfectly honest, depending on what your business is, it could definitely be accomplished). The size isn't really the issue, though. The issue is that my 600 square foot unit was never approved by the city. The official plans were approved, and the building owner took it upon himself to divide some of the units into two in order to increase his profits (you can get more rent money from two smaller units than one larger units). Fast forward 9+ years, and the building was sold last December to a large company, Essex Property Trust. They learned of the discrepancy between the approved configurations and the actual configuration and tried to have the city approve the actual units that are in place. Since 2003, apparently a moratorium on new live/work spaces was placed in the neighborhood. So approving the current configuration would be like approving 35 new live/work spaces despite the moratorium. According to Essex, the city said its hands were tied. Now, the city did not say, "Essex, you must return the units to the approved configuration." The city only acts on zoning violations if someone submits a complaint. And in 9+ years with a lot of happy tenants, no one has complained. So Essex COULD keep the current configuration that is not in compliance and hope that this pattern continues, with no complaints. However, being a large company that fears litigation, apparently, they are choosing to put the units back into their originally approved formation. This means, my unit and my next door neighbor's unit will be combined into one unit of 1296 square feet. We each have the option to move back into the combined unit, but it will be at market rent, which means about double what I pay now. No thank you. (I also have been confused about how we can BOTH have the option to move back into the combined space. Seems like we'd have to do a little roshambo or something...)

The housing market in San Francisco sucks. I direct you to this post about last year's apartment search. It seems that fewer units are available in March than in June/July, but fewer people seem to be looking for them, too. That is good, but the pet issue still remains. And even worse than last year is the cost. Rents seem to have increased even more in the last year. The cheapest places I have found in my neighborhood are smaller than mine and cost about $600 more per month. It's absurd.

In addition to the annoyance of house hunting, the cost of moving is not something I had anticipated so soon. I intended to be here indefinitely. Obviously, there is always the chance that something could come up after your lease term expires, but had I known that my unit was essentially not in existence according to the city, I might have thought a little harder about whether I would have signed my lease last year.

And now I have the additional hassle of making my furniture fit into a new space. And/or finding new pieces to make a new space work. All over again.

So to the sketchy building owners who made this all happen, thanks. As if I didn't already have enough to do...

Coffee Table Part 1

Part 1 because I ordered it, but it's being created and won't be here for a few weeks. After months and months of searching and debating and hesitating and wishing I had unlimited funds, I had pretty much set my heart on a Vladimir Kagan sculptural coffee table. Then I saw some Adrian Pearsall tables, and thought maybe that was what I wanted instead. It didn't really matter because both are rare and cost over $1,000. Then I decided that I had a functional frustration with those tables anyway (yes, functional frustration...I just made that up). I liked how my old coffee table had a shelf underneath to stash magazines or coffee table books. The sculptural base tables were just wood with a piece of glass on top. I still love the look, but I wasn't in love enough to justify the cost.

So back to square one, I started some random searches online. My friend Kristen suggested that I talk to artists who make furniture about the style that I like and my desire for a shelf. Perhaps I could just have something made. So I decided to check out Etsy, and I came across a woman in LA who makes industrial style furniture out of salvaged steel. And suddenly the idea of the soft wooden sculptural look was gone. I'm still going glass, but I'm getting a shelf. And I'm getting a completely unique look with a salvaged steel base. Here is the basic idea of the table, but she's customizing it for me so that it will have glass on both top and bottom. It should be here at the end of the month/beginning of next month. I'm so excited! I'll post pictures of the room after it arrives.

For a look at what sorts of tables I had been considering over the last few months, you can see my Living Room Pinterest board.

Fulfilling

My first anorexia patient during internship at UCLA had to be fed via NG tube because of persistent food refusal. She asked for a clinical review to be released from the hospital because she didn't want to be there. She sat silent through our first 3-4 weeks of therapy in effort to derail treatment and just maintain her eating disorder. Her peers on the inpatient unit tried to throw her a 16th birthday party because she was in the hospital. They laughed and danced, and she sat in the corner reading with her hair covering her face.

Yesterday, 3.5 years after I first met her, she sent me a link to her Pinterest page. She is posting recipes for FOOD and awesome inspirational/motivational quotes. And other things that healthy teenage girls do.

I love my job.

Politics

Apologies in advance to those of you who were hoping to see more pictures of my apartment or some story about a concert I saw recently. I did buy a washer and dryer finally, and my most recent purchase was new pillows, sheets, and towels, which is really exciting (and the degree of my excitement definitely makes me feel old).

Instead this post is more in line with the election season. I recently read this quote from Doug Wright, author of Grey Gardens and Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize winner:

I wish my moderate Republican friends would simply be honest. They all say they’re voting for Romney because of his economic policies (tenuous and ill-formed as they are), and that they disagree with him on gay rights. Fine. Then look me in the eye, speak with a level clear voice, and say, “My taxes and take-home pay mean more than your fundamental civil rights, the sanctity of your marriage, your right to visit an ailing spouse in the hospital, your dignity as a citizen of this country, your healthcare, your right to inherit, the mental welfare and emotional well-being of your youth, and your very personhood.”

It’s like voting for George Wallace during the Civil Rights movements, and apologizing for his racism. You’re still complicit. You’re still perpetuating anti-gay legislation and cultural homophobia. You don’t get to walk away clean, because you say you “disagree” with your candidate on these issues.

It really resonated with me, but I felt there was more to be said. I have the echos of many Republican relatives in my head, noting that the economy may very well be more important than civil rights because if our economy collapses, it doesn't matter who is married or not if they cannot afford to live. I could challenge that one directly (civil rights in the face of an ailing economy may be even more important...), but I don't think I even need to. You see, the economy is such a large unknown. So complex and multi-faceted. The way it all plays out is this complicated Rube Goldberg machine with so many pieces to place. The difference is that we can plan out a Rube Goldberg machine to ensure that it flows just right, but there are too many unknowns and uncertainties with the economy. If there was one clear and sure-fire plan, then the best economists in our country would be able to come to an agreement about what is going to get us out of this enormous deficit. That hasn't happened. Some studies say this. Some studies say that. There is no consensus.

That is my problem with putting the economy above civil rights. A Romney presidency would certainly support DOMA and other anti-equality legislature. He has said as much. We know the consequences of this. It means many of my friends will continue to struggle with acceptance of their relationships in our society and will continue to be denied the legal rights to function as a family just as our heterosexual friends do. So we know what the outcome for this basic human right will be if Romney is elected, and it's not good.

The economy, though, is an unknown. I've heard some people say it's going to be bad no matter who wins. I have heard some say it will be better with Romney. I have heard some say it will be better with Obama. The truth is that economic recovery is going to be slow regardless, and there are many paths that may get us there. So if you say you're voting for Romney because of economics and despite his position on gay rights...well, it's even more of a slap in the face than Doug Wright notes. It's not just choosing the economy over the rights and well-being of an entire subset of our population. It's choosing the POSSIBILITY of a better economy over the CERTAINTY of poorer outcome for the rights and well-being of an entire subset of our population.

For me, this is a no-brainer.