Tag: Beyonders

General interest/Lifestyle/Politics & Causes/USA
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Right time for gay rights?

by Fran Johns

President Obama, having repeated his promise to end “don’t ask, don”t tell” on Saturday, got an additional nudge from the National Equality March on Sunday. Tens of thousands of gay rights supporters from across the country poured through the streets of the nation’s capital to demand equal rights for LGBT citizens. They have their work cut out for them. With a few small, scattered gains having been made, there are battlegrounds shaping up everywhere from Maine to California over the issues highlighted by the events of this past weekend.

My friend Joe, who celebrated 35 years with his partner last summer, asked why I haven’t written about gay rights. Boomers and Beyonders, he says, have a unique perspective. “We have won a few battles that won’t have to be fought again, but there’s a long road ahead and the netroots now taking the lead need to have strong support from the veterans.”

So here goes.

While reiterating his promise to end “don’t ask, don’t tell,” Obama  gave no timetable for doing so. It’s time. Given everything else on his plate, those of us who support gay rights may be willing to cut the president a little slack, but this small step toward clearing some of the large injustices gays and lesbians have lived with since approximately forever is one Obama should be taking soon. 2010 sounds about right.

Other gay rights battlegrounds are active in Maine, where a ballot measure would repeal marriage rights for gays and lesbians, in Washington where a referendum must pass if full domestic partnership benefits are retained, and elsewhere. Meanwhile, according to Change.org, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops “is planning a major statement on marriage in November, preparing to issue new language about how the church views same-sex marriage. Unfortunately, the new language is more of the same… hateful, tired and representative of a theology that views people who are LGBT as less than.”

Compared to the record of togetherness set by Joe and Robert, my marital history is pretty lousy. (Up until this, my final marriage, that is, and its extraordinarily happy 17 years.) So it is hard to see my marital state being threatened by theirs being legitimized. Joe and I were also part of an AIDS support group during the 1990s, and witnessed tragic injustices suffered by dying young men whose hospital doors were barred to those who loved them best. A lot more needs changing than just “don’t ask, don’t tell.”

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Michigan) was quoted by Elizabeth Williamson and Neil King in Monday’s Wall Street Journal as saying it was “now possible ‘to get a buy-in from the military’ to end a policy opposed by gays and many liberals since it was passed by Congress in 1993.” The monumental pile of global problems to be solved may keep Obama from seizing this good opportunity; gay rights supporters could keep that door open until he does act.

Global issues aside, one home front fact remains: LGBT Americans have been unjustly treated in innumerable ways, for innumerable years.

Getting rid of “don’t ask, don’t tell” seems a very good way to start putting things right.

General interest/Health/USA
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Texting as anti-social networking

by Fran Johns

A faithful reader of this space, among the several faithful readers enjoyed by this space, weighed in on the texting truck driver (see Sept. 27th below) to say I ought to write about the real problem: texting while conversing. Conversational texting may not be as lethal, except in terms of mortally wounded relationships, but it does indeed seem a growing threat to humankind.

We checked with several members of the Under Twenty generation (is there a generational designation for today’s teens and sub-teens?) who assure us they would never be guilty of such a thing but we’re not convinced they’re telling the whole truth. It is the Boomers and Beyonders, though, who have come late to this perpetual connectedness and pose the greater threat. Faithful Reader confessed to having a close personal relation whom she is about to disinherit because he will not stop surreptitiously, perpetually, rudely texting beneath the table while pretending to carry on a conversation. Or sometimes not even bothering to pretend.

In a former life I had a husband — I no longer have this particular husband — who was prone to walk into a room, immediately pick up the remote and click on whatever ball game happened to be in progress. Guests found this disconcerting; wife found it maddening. The message, similar to the message of incessant texting-while -supposedly-conversing is that something afar is infinitely more important than anything at hand.

If you are a reader of this space, you are surely too cultured and polite to commit inappropriate texting. But you are invited to e-mail it to any texting truckers or friends you may have, in the interest of general civility.

Health/Money
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Waterfront Condos: More on the housing dilemma

by Fran Johns

Waterfront esplanade, expansive views from a sunny terrace, walk to the ballpark — what’s not to love about this housing choice?

Downsizing from a large, Victorian house filled to overflowing with the accumulations of two very active lives, the Langleys of San Francisco decamped, a few months ago, to a new, easy-care, sun-filled two-bedroom condo in the city’s happening-place Mission Bay neighborhood. They love the convenience, the mix of ages and cultures, the freedom from old-house maintenance worries and some unexpected bonuses like new friends living on houseboats from another era who are within conversation range of their 4th floor deck. “We (the new condo development) block the view they used to have all those years,” Judy Langley says, “but there are a lot of  trade-offs like getting the creek (which leads into San Francisco Bay) cleaned up, and the park over there…” For the newcomers, the young dog-walkers on the esplanade below, the middle-aged Chinese couple doing tai chi on the common lawn, it is an urban idyll.

Urban condos, even those without kayaks at the door and aged houseboats for neighbors, are an increasingly popular answer to the downsizing dilemma. But the dilemma remains huge and answers are seldom easy.

On the day the Langleys were hosting an Open House in their new digs, my sister was packing the last boxes from the high-ceilinged Boston condo that’s been her family’s home for decades. She and her husband are headed for a New York retirement community to which a physician daughter will also relocate from the west coast. Elsewhere this weekend a childhood friend was finalizing plans for a move from Northern Virginia to a coastal community where her husband will be able to live in a Memory Unit while she lives independently nearby.

These choices typify the variety of factors that go into contemporary downsizing decision-making: Is it affordable? Will I (or my parents) have the care that’s needed? Can life still be good (or even get better?)

And any of these families might also have considered co-housing. Yet another option for Boomers and Beyonders as well as for younger families and individuals, co-housing in some ways harkens back to a simpler, long-ago lifestyle and in other ways could only work in the 21st century. It was the topic of an OWL-sponsored panel discussion on Saturday, and will be tomorrow’s Boomers and Beyond topic.