This is how you help.

I’m not any kind of an activist. At least, I don’t think of myself as one. There are causes that stir me up and to which I’ll happily donate time or money. When my English prof asked our class to write in our journals about the things we’re most passionate about, this is what I wrote.

Here in Ohio, I’m not allowed to marry Jazz. Not Allowed. I can sign different papers and have other ceremonies, but not the ones that make my state accept us as married. I call him my husband because it’s the word I want to use to define what he is to me. Part of what he is to me, since there are a lot of other words that define him in my mind too. I’ve seen people wince and I’ve seen them smile when I introduce him as my husband.

He’s mine, I’m his, and so I support Equality Ohio and Freedom to Marry.

I have never been so badly bullied as since I’ve come online to interact with people all over the world and share bits of my life. Hiding behind anonymity, cyberbullies seem to have no problem tearing into people even while hiding behind rainbows. There is a list in my WordPress admin area of email and IP addresses for people who will never be allowed to comment in here and a couple who I want to approve before I’ll let them have their say. Yep, I’m totally oppressing people’s freedom of speech, but it’s what I’ve got in my arsenal against bullying and I’m going to use it. Honestly, if I didn’t, Jazz would.

So I support this film called Bully and I support The Trevor Project and NOH8 Campaign.

My family loves me and Jazz, but there are a lot of kids who aren’t so lucky and adults who are still scarred from what their families did to them. I know people who were thrown out on their own, beaten, raped, or shunned. I have a friend who has a scar beside his eye from his father hitting him. I have a friend who’s tried to commit suicide more than once. I had a friend who succeeded.

I want to change the world by changing minds. Educate a generation of people who won’t hate me, hurt me, ignore me and those like me. This is why I support M/M romance authors. Statistics show that the majority of people who read their stories are middle-class, middle-aged women with children. These readers are open to learning about LGBTQ people and teaching their children to be the same way. No one has to know what they read because the characters are in their heads and in their hearts. No one has to know how they vote, but I’m going to believe that we’ll benefit from it because they know that love is love and no law should stop that.

And since you’re reading this post, I’d just like to say thank you.

This is how you help.