So is it homophobia, or just a clueless sister...

Yesterday for Thanksgiving, we hosted my partner's family dinner. His parents, who are in their 80s (oh, and they are Chinese), have both had health issues recently, so the siblings decided it was better to not have the dinner at their house, where it is traditionally, because they would want to do too much of the work themselves. None of his three siblings wanted to have it at their place, and ours is apparently the most company-friendly. So we were elected.

Some family background to set the stage: Everyone except for his brother and sister-in-law, have been here before for dinners or parties, so that wasn't a big deal. We've been together for almost 10 years and I've been around his family for family functions for about 9 of those years. There has not, however, been any kind of formal acknowledgement from his "traditional" parents of our relationship. They are very nice to me, seem to expect me to be around for any function, and talk about "family" stuff in front of me (in their culture, only family hears about family stuff). So there is a level of acceptance. And his sisters seem fine with it all; his brother and his wife now at least talk to me (he's kind of the redneck of the family, and the sisters have issues with him for other reasons...so it's not like we're missing anything important by not having him on "our side").

So everyone's here and the food's finally ready. Lotus, his "unofficial god mother" decides that Molly (as she usually does) should say the prayer. In my upbringing, it was up to the host to decide when dinner started and who said the prayer. But Lotus is just kind of pushy like that, so no more annoying than usual.

So in her (very Southern Baptist) prayer, Molly thanks "Gary for opening his house to us." Uh, yeah Molly, it's not like I don't own half the house, and was as much involved in "opening the house" as Gary was. Not to mention the fact that I gave up going to see my family in order to help with Gary's family event. It's little things like this that make me wonder how far her "acceptance" of me and my relationship with her brother goes.

Questioning Bloggers

I've been reading blogs of guys who are at various stages of the coming out process. Since I didn't have the option when I was coming out, I'm interested to find out what the blog does for them. It seems that it can be a venue for airing feelings and thoughts, but I wonder if it keeps them from connecting with real people. Part of coming out includes actually getting out and meeting some other gay folks to see how it is to be out. Do the blogs prevent them from doing that sooner than they would without the blog? Just a thought.