 | Slammers opened its doors in downtown Columbus back in 1993. And owner Marcia Riley said she didn’t have much choice but to keep on going.
“I quit my job at DCSC, and I had two children,” she said. “I lived in Newark at the time, and then I moved here. Once you start investing, you have to sink or swim.”
But swim, she did, going on nearly 30 years now.
“After quite a few years, I was ready to relax, but I just couldn’t do it,” Riley said. “You know, I just kept hanging in there and hanging in there.”
And she did, through a pandemic most recently, but also through years and years of change and growing acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community.
“It’s a great place for a lot of the younger lesbians to come out, you know, and they have no clue what it was like when it was not so accepting,” she said.
Even for Bobbi Moore, the bar’s general manager, it’s not so easy to remember. After all, she was just 14 when Slammers opened its doors.
“I see some people who say, I was here on the first day it opened, and then you have your younger generation coming up, looking for a safe space, and so, you have anywhere from 21 to 75 on any given day, sitting together in the same room,” Moore said.
Slammers Is Still Going Strong |
American Idol Runner-Up Comes Out As Bisexual
 | One of “American Idol’s” more memorable runner-ups, David Archuleta, revealed that he identifies as bisexual and asexual. He is also encouraging people from religious backgrounds like his own to respect those that are wrestling with their own identities.
Archuleta, who placed second behind David Cook in 2008 during the show’s seventh season, came out in an emotional Instagram post on Saturday. The “Crush” singer also detailed his struggles to reconcile his sexual identity with his Mormon upbringing.
“I like to keep to myself but also thought this was important to share because I know so many other people from religious upbringings feel the same way,” Archuleta began. “I’ve been open to myself and my close family for some years now that I am not sure about my own sexuality. I came out in 2014 as gay to my family. But then I had similar feelings for both genders so maybe a spectrum of bisexual. Then I also have learned I don’t have too much sexual desires and urges as most people which works I guess because I have a commitment to save myself until marriage. Which people call asexual when they don’t experience sexual urges.”
Archuleta noted how easy it can be for LGBTQIA+ individuals to feel isolated in their struggles to understand themselves, a struggle that is often further complicated by religion. He invited people of faith to make room for “more understanding” and compassion for those reconciling such important elements of their identity.
“I think we can do better as people of faith and Christians, including Latter-day Saints,” he continued, “To listen more to the wrestle between being LGBTQIA+ and a person of faith. I don’t think it should come down to feeling you have to accept one or the other. For me to find peace the reality has been to accept both are real things I experience and make who I am….You can be part of the LGBTQIA+ community and still believe in God and His gospel plan.”
American Idol Runner-Up Comes Out As Bisexual |
Transgender Doctor Alters Medical History
 | In February 1918 Alan L. Hart was a talented, up-and-coming 27-year-old intern at San Francisco Hospital. Hart, who stood at 5'4" and weighed about 120 pounds, mixed well with his colleagues at work and afterward—smoking, drinking, swearing and playing cards. His round glasses hemmed in his pensive eyes, a high white collar often flanked his dark tie, and his short hair was slicked neatly to the right. Though the young doctor’s alabaster face was smooth, he could deftly go through the motions of shaving with a safety razor. A photograph of a woman, who he had told colleagues was his wife, hung on his boarding-room wall.
Then, one day that February, Hart was gone. He left behind nothing but his razor, a stack of mail, a pile of men’s clothing—and the photograph, still gazing down from the wall.
Alberta Lucille Hart, known as Lucille, was born on October 4, 1890, in Halls Summit—a lonesome part of Kansas just west of the Missouri border. The child’s father Albert, a hay, grain and hog merchant, died two years later, and his widow Edna moved with Lucille to make a new start in Oregon. They eventually settled there in the pretty town of Albany, where the Calapooia and Willamette rivers twist together like twine into a single sprawling flow.
When Lucille Hart grew old enough to learn about her father’s death, she would comfort her mother: someday, she said, she would grow up to be a man, her mother’s caretaker. Hart often secretly fantasized about marrying her female high school teacher—reveries in which she also saw herself as a man.
Transgender Doctor Alters Medical History |
GenderQueer Author, Activist and Rabbinical Student
 | Jericho Vincent, who describes themselves as “a post-ultra-Orthodox genderqueer Jew,” has given me permission to relay that I first encountered them after they published their affecting memoir, “Cut Me Loose: Sin and Salvation After My Ultra-Orthodox Girlhood,” under the name Leah. “I think of myself as a tree with many rings, and Leah is still inside of me,” they said.
Vincent said they had the biblical walls of Jericho in mind when they took their name. As described in the Book of Joshua, the walls were a symbol of the first battle the Israelites waged to conquer Canaan. Legend has it that the Israelites marched around the walls once every day for six days, followed by the priests carrying the Ark of the Covenant. On the seventh day, the Israelites changed course and marched seven times around the walls. The priests blew their rams’ horns, and in combination with the Israelites’ shouting, the city’s walls famously fell.
Vincent’s personal and internal walls came tumbling down when they left ultra-Orthodoxy as a teenager. As recounted in their memoir, they told JewishBoston they “had been pushed out of my family. I was always a devout child, and I had this enormous spiritual life that had no community to hold it.” Vincent said that going through puberty in their Haredi community, they encountered unsettling biological and social expectations associated with their gender role assigned at birth. Increasingly uncomfortable in their new body, they had no framework to understand why they felt at war with their body.
Soon after, Vincent embarked on a spiritual journey. Along the way, some of the stops included spending time in Buddhist circles and, for a time, joining the Sufis, a mystical Islamic community. Twelve years ago, Vincent’s life changed again when they joined the emerging OTD community. OTD stands for “off the derech”—derech is the Hebrew word for “path,” and people in the group banded together after leaving ultra-Orthodox Judaism. Vincent pointed out that many of their peers “were passionate about their perspectives on Judaism and identity.”
GenderQueer Author, Activist and Rabbinical Student |
Teach Kids to Be Allies
 | So many parents want to raise children who are LGBTQ allies, but it isn’t always clear how to do that instead of just paying lip service to the idea, particularly for non-LGBTQ families. These conversations can feel difficult, especially if you never had them in your own household growing up.
But parents should not assume allyship is something their child will just learn on their own, no matter how kind they are.
“Unfortunately, anti-LGBTQ policies and rhetoric are all too common in our communities and institutions. Children are incredibly perceptive and when they see people around them discriminating against LGBTQ people, whether it’s a school administrator, classmate or someone in public, they’re seeing that behavior as a norm,” explained Melanie Willingham-Jaggers, interim executive director of Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network (GLSEN), a group that works to make schools safe for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students.
But raising good allies is definitely doable, and it can be done through simple but powerful daily strategies.
Teaching children to be LGBTQ+ allies can be done in simple but powerful ways, every single day. Here are 5 to have in mind.
Teach Kids to Be Allies |
Your Laugh For The Day!
Contributors: michaelflanagansf, CellarDweller115
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