KEEP SEATTLE CENTER CLEAN

Hey, brothers and sisters! Yes, say it loud, Gay, and proud! Yes, I am loud, Gay, and proud!

A marvelous eight hours of techno dancing and colored joy had bodies gyrating, bumping, and grinding under blue skies. I am proud.

However, if the Hempfest people can do it, so can we. Let's plan a nice surprise for our Seattle Center's staff next year.

Like Hempfest, leave it as clean as before the festival began. I was embarrassed by the litter left. A few of us tried for an hour to pick up afterward. Come on, now. If you owned a house, would you trash your yard?

Many did properly place refuse where it belonged. Many did not.

It is our Seattle Center facility. If enough of us would respect the facility and volunteer to bring trash bags and maybe a picker, how pleasant of a surprise for Seattle Center staff!

There is more to LGBTQI pride than the festive extravaganza of color, dance, and celebration.

I will be back and do a little bit of a huge task. Let's do it larger, better, and clean next year.

Boe Oddisey



FURTHER EDUCATION IN TRIBAL SAME-SEX MARRIAGES

I was glad to inform your readers of the fact that 'Suquamish Tribe Marriage Follows Long Tradition.' [SGN, Letters to the Editor, September 9, 2011.] Thanks for publishing it!

If you or your readers want to learn more, you can look up the word 'berdache' on Wikipedia or wherever. This is considered a Gay-insulting word by more 'aware' LGBT people. It originally came from Middle Eastern languages via French; its original meaning was something like 'male prostitute'! This shows that the explorers and Jesuit priests who first encountered 'men acting in the role of wives to other men' had no other frame of reference to even conceive of such a thing!

The word, divorced from its linguistic origins, is still found in earlier anthropological literature, but is less used recently. But tribes in their original languages have retained perfectly proper words for these same-sex marriage phenomena! Solidarity.

Barbara Tomlinson

 Share on Facebook

Share on MySpace!

    Share on Delicious

Share on StumbleUpon!