As we sit around the Thanksgiving table counting our blessings, we won't forget to put the best of life in LGBT Atlanta on our list. Sure, we live in a blue oasis in a red state. Sure, we're still fighting to pass an LGBT-inclusive hate crimes law and employment non-discrimination law, and same-sex marriage remains illegal here. Sure, the bars close earlier now than they once did.
But just like the relative that everyone always complains about but still fiercely loves and can't wait to see during the holidays, we can't imagine our lives without this city.
Here are 15 of the people, places and things that make us grateful to live in the undisputed LGBT Mecca of the South.
15 reasons we're grateful for LGBT Atlanta
Today, Creative Loafing Atlanta writer Andrew Alexander penned a wonderful opinion piece on Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed and his continuing to drag his feet on the issue of same-sex marriage.
After President Barack Obama expressed his opinion that same-sex couples should be given the same rights as heterosexual couples earlier this year, local eyes turned to Reed, arguably the state's most prominent Democrat.
Reed's stance on the issue was the cover story of our May 25 issue (and one of my personal favorites) after local activists created a social media campaign calling on the mayor to “evolve” on the issue.
Sunday's edition of the Macon Telegraph included a harsh rebuke of same-sex marriages penned by Macon resident Rinda Wilson.
Wilson holds no punches, arguing that same-sex marriages should continue to be outlawed in Georgia for a variety of ridiculous reasons, like the “health risks” of being gay and the “psychological harm” children suffer who are raised in same-sex households.
Wilson apparently had the honor of serving on a task force to help determine whether or not Bibb County schools should teach “homosexuality as an acceptable alternative to heterosexuality” to the county's children, so she's obviously an expert:
“Now, people have their bat kites and their regular shaped kites,” Dad said to me when I was 10 years old, “but the box kite, Mark, now there is the most aerodynamically sound of them all.”
He demonstrated by making a box kite out of balsa wood and brown paper. We took it to the park on the Air Force base where Dad was stationed, just behind the theater where I saw horror movies whenever I could get Mom to provide the parental guidance suggested.
“But it looks so weird,” I told him about the kite. “It’s just a box, Dad.”
What a difference a year makes.
“Hopes dim for ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ repeal this year,” read a headline in last year’s GA Voice Atlanta Pride issue, which hit the streets on Oct. 1, 2010.
Headline on page 36 of this Pride issue? “Atlanta celebrates end of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
Of course, the end of the military’s discriminatory ban on openly gay service members was years in the making. Efforts to repeal the ban began as soon as it was passed in 1993 as a disappointing compromise after newly elected President Bill Clinton had pledged to let gays serve in the military.
Clinton’s election played a small but meaningful role in my own coming out story. I never doubted my parents’ love, but they weren’t exactly thrilled in 1991 when they found out I was gay.
Re: “How do we define ‘openly gay elected official’?” (editorial about Milton City Councilman Alan Tart by Laura Douglas-Brown, June 10)
"I think if somebody is led to seek office, s/he should do it regardless of orientation. If you don’t want to, then don’t. I want people in office who are led to public service. And I don’t care who they sleep with."