It Was Time For Him to Go

I’m coming off a high. I just fired someone, and it was one of the crowning achievements of my adult life.  I made sure to make a scene of it too by gathering everyone into the conference room, laying out a long list of offenses, and walking him out of the room and building to never return. It was awesome!

Nine months earlier I came out to my wife of 13 years...  I married her with the best of intentions, desiring to do all that was expected of me as a man in the Mormon Church.  From the time I was a child I wanted nothing more than to please my God by doing the things I was taught to do; including choosing the right, following the prophet, abstaining from coffee, tea, and alcohol, serving a mission, and marrying in the temple.  From there it was a simple matter of re-populating the earth and enduring until the end.  If I kept my end of the promises made at baptism and in the temple I would be rewarded with eternal life which...

                                         CHOOSING TO BE GOOD PARENTS

As someone has said, parenting is the easiest thing in the world to have an opinion about, but the hardest thing in the world to actually do.

In India, parenting is something everybody around you involved in; the grandparents, uncles, aunts, neighbours and the list goes on. This is because there is an unofficial fundamental right to peep into how others are raising their children and make comments and suggestions and also teach them religious and ‘traditional values’ if they get a chance. 

Yes, it is stupid, but unfortunately true. Joint families still exist in India, hesitating to break into nuclear ones. This makes it more common to have a lot of people getting involved in the process of raising a child. Even if the family is a nuclear one, the grandparents never step back from their...

As a lot of you know, I am a pretty open-minded individual. I would go as far as saying that I am probably one of the more socially progressive people in most of the local groups I volunteer with, my small circle of local friends, my lifelong friends from childhood, and even my immediate family. I mean, one of my favorite shows on TV right now is "We're Here". It's a series on HBO about three drag queens traveling around to small, conservative communities with hopes of opening the minds and hearts of the folks who live there, to be more accepting of people within their communities, who feel like they don't belong. It has ALL the feels and the best cast! I'm also an empath, I'm learning how to be a better ally, and I always pull for the people who feel like they don't really fit in. Mainly, because I know that feeling all too well.

I have very short hair, I have broad shoulders, not much to speak up for hips, I wear a t-shirt or hoodie every day and I rarely go without...

It takes insight and intelligence to know our ‘self’. Not everyone dares to discover it and embrace their real whole self. Because it takes immense strength too.

 As a straight ally, I have tried to know the puzzle and pain one has to go through in the process of finding one’s ‘self’. It is quite a baffling state of existence where you don’t identify with the terms society has attributed to you. Because for the majority of the society, sexuality is something to be attributed to a person based on the biological or physical appearance they can interpret. For them, everything is either black or white, no greys in between.

Coming out for LGBTQ people would have been an easier process if their society would start to understand that sexuality never exists in binary. It’s a spectrum of different shades.

I have friends who ended up in forced marriages against their will and got...

We are so excited that Chelsea Chapman is joining our team, alongside Gopika Kalarikkal and Gabrielle Ackerman.  She will creating digital content for us, specifically designing teaser trailers for our "Conversations that Create Change" series.  I'll let her introduce herself to you.

Hey all, Chelsea here.   Uber stoked to join the Pride and Joy family!!

I am a marketing student (the second bachelor’s for me— I know I’m crazy for going back to college ).  Before this, I taught elementary school for 6 years.  Loved it, but felt the call to change.  As much as change terrifies me (hello anxiety),  I am a firm believer in following your gut-or at least trying to.  I love board games and card games.  My family is currently playing Dungeons and Dragons, like the paper and pencil kind (Family time growing up was DnD or some other type of game).  I was born...

One of the most beautiful things about the Pride and Joy Foundation is that it is “striving to build self-awareness within and safety for LGBTQ+ families and their allies.”  Let’s take a second to talk about how important allies are (hint: so freakin’ important!) to the LGBTQ+ community.  Let’s think about it this way - even if every member of a marginalized community banded together to fight for their cause, they would still be up against a majority, making change near impossible.  For any marginalized community, having strong ally support is integral in the fight for equality because allies allow for the community to show up in numbers and to prove that their cause isn’t only their own. 

But what does it mean to truly be an ally?  Queer sex educator and trauma specialist Jimanekia discussed in an Instagram video post her position on allies.  Though her post specifically references non-Black allyship within the Black...

Editor's Note:   On September 22, 2017, Sarah Hegazi attended a concert for Mashrou' Leila whose lead singer, Hamed Sinno, is openly gay. She was arrested along with a group of others for waving a rainbow flag in support of LGBT rights. Her arrest coincided with Egypt's zero-tolerance crackdown response to end public support for LGBT rights in the country.  She recalled being jailed, beaten, and abused by inmates. 

Sarah (Zarah) was granted asylum in Canada but lived with the PTSD from her experience.  

“To my siblings,

I tried to survive and I failed, forgive me.

To my friends,

The experience was cruel and I’m too weak

to resist it, forgive me.

To the world,

You were awfully cruel, but I forgive.”

This is the last note left behind by Zarah Hijazi, an Egyptian LGBTQ rights activist who committed suicide last week in Canada. She was raped and tortured in the prison by the US-backed Sisi government for her...

Editor's Note: I met Sheena with The Lesbian Review when I did a podcast series with her "Ask a Conversion Therapy Survivor".  During the show, it became obvious that I had no idea there was an entire genre of literature based on women loving women.  (baby gay, right here).  I realized I was really missing out and I asked Sheena to give us a list of the best intro books.  I've finished one of these on the list and I've already started on my second.  I have to say, I rarely read fiction (self-growth junkie) but these fun books are so fun and so relaxing to dive into.  I am SO glad I found Sheena and The Lesbian Review.  

The Lesbian Review brings you a selection of 3 Coming Of Age Stories To Make Your WLW Heart Happy.

These are three novels that we enjoyed tremendously and recommend to readers who are looking for women loving women books.

Floodtide by Heather Rose Jones

 The streets are a perilous place for a...

Now that quarantine in my state is slowly starting to lift, I was excited to visit my local Target last week that I hadn’t been to in months (and by “local” I mean an hour away, because in Idaho that’s considered local).  After walking up and down a few aisles, I realized that there was absolutely no Pride display or any Pride merchandise being sold. 

When I lived in New Jersey, every year, a huge Pride display greeted customers as soon as they walked in the door.  This led me down a rabbit hole of thoughts surrounding Pride merchandise and the economics behind it. Some thoughts that came to mind -

1. How genuine are brands in supporting the LGBTQ+ community if they aren’t selling Pride merchandise in all of their stores?
2. How do brands decide which stores to sell their merchandise in?
3. Do brands actually support the community or are they just trying to capitalize on us during Pride month?
4. By choosing not to sell Pride merchandise in certain...

This week, here at the Pride and Joy Foundation, we are exploring the theme of "PRIDE: What does it mean to you?"  In this essay our intern Gopika offers her take as an Indian woman...

Pride month 2020 has been flagged off and it’s time to celebrate the equality, visibility, and dignity of LGBTQ people all over the world.

Wait!!!

I think I got it wrong by using the phrase ‘All over the world’.  While Pride parades are in full swing and people celebrate the existence and acceptance of their identity in countries like the U.S, France, Canada, Belgium, etc, there is a harsh truth on the other side that there are numerous countries which still criminalize homosexuality and deny LGBTQ identity. There are people who still march on streets amidst violence from authority just like the Stonewall riot. For them, nothing has changed yet. 

As an Indian girl, I grew up hearing the term “Unnatural relationships” as whispers and...