u/WidgetWarrior

I just watched this clip, which is not the well known clip of Clayton announcing he is getting married, which happens in a 1991 episode, but this was in December 1988, 9 months after I was born.

When Blanche says something to the effect of "I don't know if I know you anymore", Clayton hit it right on the head in responding "I'm the same person I always was...I spent a long time lying to myself. It felt a lot better when I stopped".

That was me when I finally got the courage to come out at 29. It felt like I had a new lease on life. Like I was finally living MY life, not the expectation someone had of me. I am still the guy who likes anime, politics, and sports, but I admitted to people that yes, romantically, I like men. It's not my whole personality, but it is part of who I am.

The Golden Girls, for this reason, will be forever loved by our community, at least in my opinion.

This made my blood boil. I'm so ready to go to war (figuratively speaking, don't ban me Reddit) against these motherfuckers.

So, I grew up in Green Township, specifically like around where the Western Bowl is on Westborne. I moved out of Cincinnati to Atlanta 8 years ago to pursue my career but that has ended recently. I came out at 29 as a gay man, the year prior to my moving to GA.

If I do move back, I still get the sense that the West Side is not very LGBT friendly. I sense a coldness/disdain for LGBT people there, if not outright hostility due to the conservative Catholicism. Am I incorrect in assuming this anymore? Has the West Side "evolved" in its thinking as a community? I would definitely like insight to those that live in the area currently.

When will Cincinnati get the respect it deserves?

Aaron Sorkin cease and desist order in 3.....2.....1.....

Jason Collins passing and Charles Barkley's awesome comment about our representation on sports made me think of this. Do you think in our lifetimes we will ever have a MLB, NFL, NHL player that will come out and not be put on the back burner, so to speak? I totally get there's an ingrained culture of homophobia in the sports leagues, but I hope at least by the time I'm like 60, which would be about 20 years from now, that we would have representation among the stars of the sports leagues. Or are we destined to just live in obscurity as we watch sports? Hope y'all get where I'm coming from here.

So, for those that don't know, the writer of the lyrics to the song "Part of Your World" from the 1989 Disney classic "The Little Mermaid" was a man by the name of Howard Ashman. Howard was an openly gay man, and from what I gathered about him, he was diagnosed with HIV/AIDS in 1988 and passed away at the age of 40 in 1991. When I listen to this song, it now hits completely differently for me and I was downright sobbing today. Give it a listen and never forget those we lost way too young to that terrible virus.

Happy Pride Month everyone. This is why we do it. 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🌈🌈

So about a year ago I posted here telling my story about how I came out as a gay man at 29 (I'm 38 now) after going through Catholic schools. It took me 11 years after I left the Catholic high school I graduated from in Cincinnati for me to get up the courage to come out. I don't know if I am angry at myself, or angry at the Church, or both for the fact I had so many years that I was unhappy and couldn't be myself, because of what people expected of me. I wish I never would have gone to Catholic school. I wish I had my younger sister's courage to leave her Catholic high school after her freshman year, when I was a sophomore at mine (we are 1 year apart), and she went to the local public school. I just felt this overriding expectation of me that I go to this Catholic all-male high school, like my dad, grandpa, and uncles did. I hate that I got so deeply programmed in the doctrine of the Church that it made me deny myself the truth that I came to many years later. I wish I never went to these schools.