Give your input on Christmas Parade and December dinner
Plenty of time to share your personal issues and concerns
Location:
Fellowship Room (upstairs)
Elon Community Church UCC
271 N. Williamson Ave.
Elon, NC
Please enter the building through the covered walk behind the sanctuary.
Plenty of parking there.
It's membership renewal time for 2020 . . .
Membership is not a requirement for attending and participating in PFLAG meetings and activities. It is meaningful, however, for us to indicate the level of interest in the purposes of PFLAG to provide support, education and advocacy for the causes of LGBTQIA persons, their families and friends. Your $25 contribution also makes you a member of PFLAG National.
Just give us the information on a form like the one above, along with your check made payable to PFLAG Alamance, bring it to our meeting or mail it to PO Box 623, Elon, NC 27244.
COFFEE COUNTY, Tenn. (WKRN) - Gavin Benson is remembering the day he lost his best friend. "I wanted to get out of the car and just run as fast as I could," Benson said.
"I lost it."
B
enson says the past few weeks have been hard.
"I couldn't say anything like goodbye or anything really just hurt me the most," he said.
His best friend, 16-year-old Channing Smith, committed suicide in September.
Family members say classmates outed the teen on social media as bisexual.
"I really do not understand why they would make that decision and just do that to someone and just completely destroy them," Benson said. Benson turned his anger into action. "I think I want to do something about this," he said.
Benson and his mother are working with lawmakers to develop "Channing's Law."
"We actually started researching the laws and kind of getting a better understanding," said Benson's mother, Laura Trail.
If passed, the law would address bullying, cyberbullying, and harassment that happens while off school grounds.
We're the first to kind of get the ball rolling on this, but it's got to start somewhere." Trail said.
Inconvenient truths: Potholes along the yellow brick road of LGBTQ history
The word "faggot" does not come from burning gays at the stake.
Errors in published histories, misreading, selective perception, willful historical fiction on the big screen, little screen, and web; alternative facts simply made up to suit various agendas; and the desire to believe what some wish to be true have created a constantly reverberating echo chamber of false knowledge which George Bernard Shaw warned "is more dangerous than ignorance."
This post is an antidote for some of it.
The origin of "faggot"
"Faggot" as a male homosexual slur did not derive from burning gays at the stake. The word is English and did not evolve from another language. England hanged - but did not burn - gays at the stake as some other countries did. Its first known published gay connotation appeared in 1914's A Vocabulary of Criminal Slang: "All the fagots (sissies) will be dressed in drag at the ball tonight."
"Any connection to the firewood used for executions is pure fantasy," says Word Myths: Debunking Linguistic Urban Legends, 2004.
Victims included Bishop John Atherton and his alleged lover John Childe;
both hanged in 1640.
I hope you're enjoying these series of LGBTQ History Month emails. It's beyond important and necessary that we recognize the work and leadership of queer folks from all walks of life. This week, we're uplifting Karen Oliveto, the first openly gay Bishop in the history of the United Methodist Church.
Bishop Oliveto stepped more prominently into the national spotlight this year following the fracturing of the United Methodist Church over the issue of openly gay clergy and the right of church bodies to perform same-sex marriages. She is now among a group of progressive Methodist leaders who seek to change the culture of the church and help LGBTQ folks see themselves as crucial and important members of their faith communities.
"No matter how hard they try to legislate us out of the denomination, babies will be born into United Methodist families who will grow to love God and the church and seek to serve as clergy," she said earlier this year. "Some of these will realize they are queer, and then a new expression of justice seeking will begin. The UMC has not seen the last of the queer community."
The United Methodist church is but one of many governing faith bodies grappling with their policies and doctrines as they relate to LGBTQ experience. Queer people are in every community -- including faith communities. We need progressive faith leaders like Bishop Oliveto standing up to injustice and helping to push their spiritual communities towards the path of acceptance.
Faith work is also central to the work of Equality NC. We're fighting for all LGBTQ people in North Carolina -- including those that belong to faith communities. Will you help support our work as we build out our efforts to change hearts and minds in the years to come?
Your support means the world. Thank you for all that you do.
Talk soon,
Kendra R. Johnson
Equality NC Executive Director
November is Transgender Awareness Month, and the 20th of November is Transgender Day of Remembrance, which is a day dedicated to the lives of transgender people who have been lost in anti-trans violence.
This ABC News journalist's Coming Out Day letter gives advice to his younger, closeted self
Emmy Award-winning broadcast journalist Gio Benitez celebrated National Coming Out Day by penning an open letter to his past self. The letter was published yesterday by his employer, ABC News.
Throughout the letter, Benitez tries to comfort his younger, 12-year-old self and convince him that he'll be okay, despite being confused by discovering his sexuality and the feelings he had.
"You're only 12, but your mind is already asking questions no 12-year-old could possibly answer. Questions that will take years to explore, embrace and understand," Benitez writes. "Questions that may flip your whole world upside-down."
Welcome to PFLAG Alamance. We offer a safe, confidential space in which to explore our feelings and under-standings about the LGBT experience, especially "coming out" and what this means to families and other loved ones. Listen and share as much or as little as you feel comfortable with, knowing that others can understand.
And remember....when you no longer feel you need PFLAG, PFLAG needs you! There are people out there who need a supportive friend.
