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This is America today.
Author: TriSec    Date: 08/18/2019 13:24:03

Good Morning.

I wanted to post this yesterday, but things went sideways rather quickly, and instead of posting a half-assed summary, I decided to think and take the time to do it right.

Take a look at this lovely couple.

https://external.fbed1-2.fna.fbcdn.net/safe_image.php?d=AQBr_WVEx6y35vQf&w=540&h=282&url=https%3A%2F%2Fjerryandjoel.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F06%2Fcropped-Background-3-1.jpg&cfs=1&upscale=1&fallback=news_d_placeholder_publisher&_nc_hash=AQDCO3QA1wIfQ-uI




This is Jerry and Joel Miller; Jerry was once only a work acquaintance, but after spending some months working side-by-side with him during some turbulent times here in Boston, I am pleased to call him friend. Joel, the younger-looking man here, is Jerry's spouse. While I know Joel less well, I immediately took to him because he's a Pinoy, just like me. (and there's damn few of us here in the Northeast.)

Jerry and Joel have a permanent home in the St. Augustine area in Florida. They announced recently that they have started a blog to record the challenges of their daily life in these United States.


As you all know, Joel and I are a gay, interracial, married couple with an age gap of about 16 ½ years between us. In our [almost] three years together, we have already encountered prejudices, bigotry and racism (in several forms, in several places) because of every one of our “descriptors”.

We wanted to create a place where “people like us” can go and know that they aren’t alone in dealing with this country’s prejudices, bigotry and racism. We hope that followers of our blog will share their own experiences and maybe find comfort from our, or someone else’s, words.

We also wanted a place where people can find advice on the United States immigration process, which we have found to be an imperfect, confusing, costly, frustrating and sluggish piece of antiquated machinery.

The blog has been a long process. We started working on it several months ago. Neither Joel nor I are IT gurus and I personally get very frustrated very quickly when things don’t work right (I’ve slammed my keyboard tray into the desk several times throughout this process). Writing the content wasn’t the problem, as I love to tell stories and can be quite long-winded. Our problem was getting the website to do the many things we wanted it to do. It’s not perfect yet by any means, and it still needs some tweaking, but it’s going to be a work-in-progress, and we both realize that. It is, however, ready for you all to see.

A bit of warning: We’ve put a lot of ourselves “out there” in our blog. Some of it is very personal to us, but as we see it, maybe we can help other couples who are experiencing some of the same stuff we are experiencing.


While I applaud Jerry and Joel for doing this, I am equally dismayed that such a thing is necessary. While I can be smug here in Liberal Boston and say "we don't do these things here", I know that's not true. Discrimination comes in all forms, subtle and overt, and the sad truth is that many of us carry our own prejudices, sometimes for life, and we behave in those ways without even being consciously aware of it.

My friends here have not chosen an easy life together in this day and age, but more power to them for being open and bold about it. It strikes a chord with me, because as most of you on this blog know, I have chosen a religious path that I don't dare publicize, so all of this is close to home.

I strongly recommend you follow this blog, and pass along words of encouragement if you can.


 
 

8 comments (Latest Comment: 08/21/2019 03:21:10 by BobR)
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