FREEDOM FOUNDATION

DO you hear that? That sound bellowing over the crowd of the indignant hoards of people screaming "NO". Do you hear it?

I hear it! It's the sound of a thousand homosexuals all demanding the right to choose. The rights not necessarily to choose who they want to spend their lives with, but at least the right to choose how they choose spend their lives with the one that they love and what they call their union. It's a right that the masses seem to want to take away from them. Me, personally I ain't having it, and I don't think my fellow homosexuals are going to take it lying down either. "No pun intended" Their choosing to be equal despite who they sleep with. Something the masses have determined to make the cause of our separate but equal classifications.

Something is happening in America today; something that directly affects Lesbian and Gay men living in America trying to build families and lives. That affects me as a gay black man living in America and at some point will affect choices that I may or may not make in my future. It's at a crucial point in the time line of American History where if we don’t stand soon, there is no doubt that we are going to fall. If you haven’t figured out what I am talking about by now let me be clear.

Amendment #1 is a state constitutional ban on gay marriages on The Georgia Law books today. The amendment is clearly a blatant disregard for our first amendment rights. Which give us the freedom to exercise our beliefs, weather they be religious or in love. But Lets take this one step further it is a blatant disregard for separation of church and state. Is it not the Religious masses that seem to think we don’t deserve the title of marriage? Clearly it makes no sense that LGBT men and women should not be allowed such a title as husband and wife, especially not if it means saying Husband and Husband, or Wife and Wife. In my opinion, and this is my opinion, this new brand of persecution is tearing into the foundation of which this country was initially established, Freedom.

Is this not the reason why the Pilgrams fled from England; to escape the religious persecution of the English. Is Freedom of choice not what they were in persuit of? So what pray tell gives the whore government it’s religious pimps the right to tell us What freedom is, what our choices should, or should not be? Who are they to tell us who we can and can not spend our life with?

Honestly, is it truly fare that my lover of fifteen years lay dying in a hospital bed, while I debate the validity of our relationship with a night nurse. Is it truly right that our child sit in some school nurses office petulant, stomach seething with pain, and sickly while I try to explain to the admissions office why I came to pick he/she up from school instead of his working father, whom I have been building a life with for the last seven years, and loving his son as if he were my own. Was it not I who packs his lunch every day? Was it not I who drops him off at school everyday, takes him to his Tae-kwon-do class everyday, washes those dirty things he calls sock EVERYDAY! I MEAN REALLY EVERYDAY! Is that not apart of parenthood?

Let’s get real Life here ends, that is what makes it so special. The relationships we build, the people you love; are they not all that much more special because you realize one day that they will be gone? I May not have a special someone now, hell, you may not have a special someone now, but do we not all aspire to have that? The white picket fence, the 3 bedroom house with the 2.5 bedrooms, with the amazing kitchen, the two bad ass kids with ADD, and lets not forget Snickers the dog. I do, I so want that. But who gives the government the right to tell me what foundation that should be built on and what foundation is solid. Marriage is a word, the love, the connection, the rights are what we’re fighting for. Keep your word, but give us our rights…

He Is (vision of a Future)

Meeting him is like finding myself

He says the things that I am thinking,
He knows the things that I am hiding
He makes me face my lies

He says the things:
I need
Long
Desire, to hear
And even the things I would prefer not to.

He knows me

well,

better than I know myself
It is frightening

It is overwhelming

It is love.

He is all I asked for,
Exactly, and a little bit more.

I believe him to be my soul-mate

That's what "He Is"

Rafael Solece

"Taken"

I sank to the floor like a rock in a river bed. I just couldn't believe what I had just heard. But some how I knew it before the words had spilled through the receiver. It was like poison spreading through my veins. It spilled from my ear, through my brain cortex. Down my spine passing into my blood stream, and disbursing through my vital organs.

I thought for sure that I might die. For surely her hateful piercing words were meant to kill me. In some way they were; killing me that is, softly but with hatred and unfathomable hostility that she could not have possibly recognized unless I had revealed it to her with anguished screams of terror.

The phone fell from my hand onto the floor, and I heard a voiece call out into the darkness of what was our living room. I looked to see where the horribly pained screams were coming from but there wasn't a soul in sight. I could feel the Tears falling down my face like the streaming rain outside my window. I couldn't feel the floor beneath me but I couldn't feel my body. I couldn't feel my voice blasting from my throat into the open space. But I could feel my heart breaking in my chest.

My Jay was dead.

I knew I had heard but it didn't sound right. I replayed it over and over again in my head trying desperately to understand if I had heard it wrong. But the playback was the same every time and I felt myself crying out into the night with every new understanding. My Jay, My Jayln was Dead.

I felt her hands across my arms and I tore away from her. My sister had come running from the kitchen. Startled by my sudden terrifying out cry of emotion. Of course she didn't know what could cause me to break out into such hysteria; wailing and moaning into the night as if someone was killing me. But I was dieing, My heart was breaking and the pain I felt couldn't be anything but death ripping into my chest and pulling from this earthly plain. I would much rather be dead than have to face the reality of life without him. I felt my body fall to the ground. The tears were still coming down my face.

"NOOOOOOO" I could hear the strange voice anguished and pained.

"WWHhhyyyyy!" He Begged for some explanation as to why god had taken his heart. And I sympathized with him for having been left all alone so suddenly.

I heard My sister voice next, screaming for an explanation as to why he was sobbing so. And I wanted to tell her how I could feel The pain of his loss of the only MAN he had, would, ever love. I saw her kneeling down in front of me. I wondered why she had tears streaming down her face, and why she felt the need to touch me. But I couldn't feel Her hands moving over my body. I couldnt feel her breath against my skin as she spoke to me, demanding that I tell her what was wrong. BUt I didn't understand why she was asking me that question. There was nothing wrong with me. It was him, that poor hurt soul crying out in the darkness around us that needed to be consoled. Finally I saw her tear away from me. SHe was reaching for something on the floor to the left of me. I heard her speaking into the phone. I heard her gasping for air, and I knew coulod now understand what that poor heartbroken boy was crying about. She swung her arm over my shoulder. SHe pulled me close into an embrace, and it was at that moment that I felt the pain of my own voice as it puched its way from my chest into my throat, and out of my mouth.

The voice that tore so heavily through the air, almost shattering my ear drums was my own. I realized that the pain that boy was feeling was not his but mine. He was me, and empathy I had felt so for him, was now replaced with a great longing pain. My Jayln was gone. I felt her hand against my back but I didn't want to be touched by her or anyone else. Jayln was gone and If he could not touch me. If he could not be there. Then no one else deserved the right. No one else had earned the right.

For two years we had lived in bliss. For two years he had been my everything. And all of a sudden now our time was up. "How could he do this to me?" I wondered. "Leave me alone like this. He had promised me that he would never go away. Yet he had." He had floated away into the deep abyss. Leaving My world shut up in darkness.

I pushed my sister away, and I fell to the floor. My hands tore at the carpet, Pulling at the soft shag fabric, and sobbing uncontrollably. I hated that carpet, he had picked that carpet, and I hated it, but I had gotten it for him. But I hated that carpet. I cried into the plush cream space that was the carpet that I hated, but was a symbol of who he was.I cursed that carpet and called it vile things. I spit into it's plush crema face. I hit it with my bald up fist, and I cursed the day we had ever picked it out together. He and I; together. I hated carpet but I had gotten it for him. Now I was stuck with it and he would never see it again.

I would never see him again. As the thought ran through my mind I froze against that plush carpet and I laid there thinking of his last kiss. SOftly against the soft layer of skin on my forehead. I remembered how he smelt. How his lips lingered there in that place, and I closed my eyes so that I could feel him kiss me again. It was a perfect kiss as if he some how knew he would not be walking back through that door as he had promised me before he left. A perfect kiss that said good bye as only he knew how to say good bye. I laid there on that carpet that I hated, that he loved, that I had only purchased for him, and I knew I would never get rid of it, Because it was the carpet he loved so much.

I cursed that carpet, I cursed his name. "Jayln" More tears came as I cursed his name. I cried for him, and there was my pain. I hated him, and wished he was there to wrap me up in his safe strong arms. There to tell me it would all be okay. But Jayln was gone. He was gone, and I was all alone, with that carpet that I hated, but I had gotten because he loved it.