outandaround: Coming Home and Coming Out in Chile, 05/17/2012 - http://t.co/aGnfbnYG 2012/05/17

Latest Post

Coming Home and Coming Out in Chile

By Lisa on May 17, 2012 . 0 comments

"A desert wasteland next to the beach." That is how my guidebook described Arica, a small city in the middle of nowhere Chile. It was 2001, and I was looking up the place where I would spend the next two and a half years with the Jesuit Volunteers Corps (JVC). Fresh out of college, I agreed to live anywhere in the world. They sent me to Arica, Chile. While JVC and everyone at home knew I was gay, I could tell right away that I would not be able to come out to my Chilean colleagues. At the time in 2001, divorce was not even legal in Chile due to the overwhelming influence of the Catholic c
Read More ..

Supergay: Pastor Maria Caruana

By Jenni on April 10, 2011 · 4 comments

Religion is not a popular subject in the queer community. And of all religions, Christianity probably has the worst rap. Bring up this topic, and we think of right wing anti-gay protestors holding horrible signs like “God is your enemy” and “Homosexuals are possessed by demons.” At the forefront of this issue is 53 year-old [...]

How to Get Over Your Excuses to Follow a Dream. Excuse #3

By Lisa on April 8, 2011 · 3 comments

This is part of a 5 blog series telling you my top five excuses….. If you’ve ever wondered, “could I leave my job and travel for a year?” The answer is if I can, you can. Most who know me would call me practical, predictable, even. I had many excellent reasons not to pack my [...]

How to Get Over Your Excuses to Follow a Dream. Excuse #2

By Lisa on April 4, 2011 · 5 comments

What would Suze Orman say?

By Jenni on March 31, 2011 · 0 comments

As the kid growing up in a stereotypically thrifty Asian immigrant family, I desperately lusted after the brand-name stuff of my Caucasian classmates. L.A. Gear high-top sneakers. A real Sony walkman. A Schwinn 21-speed bicycle. For my mom, who grew up poor in Taiwan, money represented security. So when she and my dad started their [...]

How to Get Over Your Excuses to Follow a Dream

By Lisa on March 28, 2011 · 8 comments

Guest Blogger Gilda Mansour: Coming In

By Guest on March 23, 2011 · 3 comments

Back by popular demand, guest blogger of Pita in a White Bread World, Gilda Mansour, shares with us her story of “Coming In.” The coming out journey is a common experience that binds together the LGBT community. Whether you live in San Francisco, Asia, Africa, or South America each coming out experience is deeply personal, [...]

Supergays: CA Marriage Plaintiffs John and Stuart

By Lisa on March 20, 2011 · 5 comments

John Lewis and Stuart Gaffney have been speaking out in our community and have made headlines in local, national, and international news throughout the marriage equality movement. Together now for 24 years, they were two of the plaintiffs in the historic 2008 lawsuit that held that California’s ban on same-sex marriage violated the state constitution. [...]

Gilda Finds the Supergay Palestinians

By Guest on March 2, 2011 · 4 comments

After years of estrangement from creativity, Gilda Mansour and writing have begun seeing each other again. Even though they are taking it slow, their time together is cathartic, enchanting and quite sexy. Gilda hopes that she and writing will be together forever, even if their romance morphs into friendship. Queer Here and Palestinian There Abeer [...]

Supergay: Writer and Poet Cheryl Dumesnil

By Lisa on February 19, 2011 · 3 comments

Cheryl Dumesnil’s collection In Praise of Falling won the 2008 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize. Editor of Hitched! Wedding Stories from San Francisco City Hall and co-editor, of Dorothy Parker’s Elbow: Tattoos on Writers, Writers on Tattoos, she is currently in the final edits of her new book . A small, Catholic college is not [...]

Gearing Up for the AIDS Lifecycle

By Lisa on February 14, 2011 · 4 comments

So why do I keep doing the AIDS Lifecycle? The Lifecycle gave me one last vacation with my mother, kept me in HIV social work for ten years, and introduced me to my life partner. In 2005, as a new employee at SFAF, I cycled in the first of five Lifecycles. My mother, who despised [...]