A North West View

So You Tube has created a hash tag to help celebrate pride month (especially in the wake of Orlando), I thought that I would do a blog post in the spirit of the prompt as I have not had time to make a video, and I am not sure when or if I will.  However I still want to show my pride, not just as a gay man but as a person in general, as I think that all of myself sort of melds together.

It is very clear the perpetrator of the terrorist attack on Orlando, probably had multiple levels of twisted reasoning behind the attack.  Fueled by a dangerous allegiance to ISIS.  It is clear the utmost goal of the attack though is to instill fear in those that have been attack, to place fear in the hearts of the American public (and others around the world) that you are not safe anywhere. Part of the goal of this fear is to get us to turn on our fellow Americans, most specifically those in the Muslim community. Even though like every community of faith, it is made up almost entirely by people of peace who would not do a thing to harm another human, let alone take their life.  However their goal is to turn Americans against fellow Americans, to make us alienate, and segregate the Muslim community in our country. For the very reason that an alienated community is one that is much easier to radicalize then one that is an integrated part of the community, one that is tr...

Flower Takes Bloom This really is really a multi-front process in my case with multiple stages of progress, but with each step forward it seems that the mental framing is only strengthened for those areas that are still lagging.  The biggest hurdle seems to simply be getting past the why me and the shame, but instead starting to embrace it. That which used to be a wrong, something that was bad, that should be hidden away, or fit to be ashamed of, it/they become things that instead of flaws are things that make me uniquely me, that they are strengths and as such they are things that I should be proud of that, should not have to be hidden away, but can become just as matter of fact parts of life as waking up in the morning or enjoying a good cup of (decaf) coffee.  It is also the recognition of the fact that if someone thinks lesser of you for what ever it may be, or if they have a problem with it, t...

What is pride?  I could give a history lesson on how pride first started along with the modern gay rights movement with the stone wall riots, but I think by now that is something that if not all most know, and if they don't they can easily find out or find some one that dose.  Instead I want to try to answer the question of what is pride what dose it mean now and what dose it stand for now.  I want to answer this because like every other thing in life as time has passed things have changed somethings for the better some possibly not all depending on ones view, but they have not stayed statically the same, as that is all but imposable in life.