Thursday, May 28, 2009




Call me crazy. Tod told me about his school’s 5th grade class' trip to the A M A Z I N G Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio (which is ironically north of Upper Sandusky, Ohioans are apparently geographically challenged) so I jumped on it and booked some places on the bus. So tomorrow, Miss Anna and I, along with her BFF Chloe and her Grandma Beth will venture to the Buckeye State to soak up the wonder that is the Point.

I can’t wait.

I grew up going to both Cedar Point and King’s Island as a kid but love CP for its charm and amazing roller coasters. The Beast is the best coaster in the world, hands down, but I won’t drive all the way down there to Southern Ohio for just one coaster. Millennium Force is my second coaster, with Michigan’s Adventure’s Shivering Timbers a close third. And, my chiropractor loves the fact that I adore the Mean Streak at CP, or as my friend Dale calls it, the Spine Crusher 2000. While some of the pussy coaster purists call it too rough, I love it. It’s a grand ride with a great presence in the park. Buck up ACE nerds, your weak spines will survive. Oh, and don’t forget the Cyclone in New York. A great ride, worth every minute.

Call me callous, but I can’t wait until Anna is tall enough to go on the big ones. Tod is apparently coast-challenged and almost tossed his cookies on the return loop on Magnum XL 2000. To his defense, we had just done Top Thrill Dragster a moment before… and his little tummy was upset. As he was holding in his lunch, I was yelling at him and warning him that if he puked on the crowd below he would totally spend the rest of the day in the car. I love Tod, but I wish I would have known about this coaster issue before I put a ring on it.

My expectations for tomorrow are lowered. In the past, the trips to the Point have been guerrilla in nature. Get in; get in line, GET IT DONE. Tomorrow will be about exploring the park from a three year old’s eyes.

I can’t wait.

My folks were patient with my brother and I, it’s my turn now to show Anna and Chloe the sublime wonders of this great place. While some of the greatness is gone, much remains from my childhood.
What do I miss?
• the Earthquake Ride and the Pirate’s Ride.
• the Fun House.
• the Jumbo Jet
• the Frontier Lift
• the artists on Frontier Trail. I took pottery because I watched a guy throw on the wheel for an afternoon once when I was in high school.
• And who could forget the Schwabinchen and the Rotor?


My brother called CP and booked a special trip on the Space Needle to propose to his bride a few years back, so yeah, this park has a history in my family. I have many fond memories from the park as well, some with folks who are still with us, some with folks who have passed on. I will never forget my high school band trip to Cedar Point with my dear friend Christopher. We laughed, we explored, and we took it all in. The black and white images from the photo booth in the massive arcade are one of my prized possessions. He left Toledo shortly after high school and died a few years later from HIV/AIDS. I miss him dearly. And, from a trip with my old friend Terry, I don’t recommend doing poppers prior to dropping on Demon Drop.

Just sayin’.

But, I will recommend laughing hysterically watching a group of nuns go down that perilous drop and seeing their wimples fly up as they catapulted to earth. We lol’d.

Tomorrow will be a new chapter, and I can’t wait. Anna is stoked and is delaying going to bed as I write this. But we’ll survive. When she hears the clack clack clack of the Blue Streak going around its end curve as we walk into the park, she’ll know that she is in a different place and all will be good. That’s why I love amusement parks, it’s suspended reality and in times like these, that’s a good thing.

Anna better get busy



We did the BIG PIANO at FAO Swartz when we were in NYC, as all parents of toddlers will do. Yes, the movie BIG will reach yet another generation via this infernal contraption. I didn't wear my hearing aides when we were in NYC, as I knew the noise would be incredible and it would only be amplified. Boy, am I ever glad I didn't have them when we were there with Anna. The noise coming off the piano was crazy and loud. As I was off shopping for gifts for our host's kids, Anna and Tod played on the piano and made music. Apparently Anna wanted to do a solo as she got a time out for pushing another kid while on the toy. Hey Anna, it's New York, they will cut a bitch for stuff like that!


However, I must give mad props to these two for hammering out Bach's organ masterpiece.



Watch and be amazed.

Monday, May 25, 2009

What do we know? An update on our family

The past two weeks have been a blur. On Mother’s Day, our minister stopped us prior to church and mentioned that a friend of hers, a social worker, was trying to place a boy with a same-sex couple.

Were we interested?

She didn’t know much, but she knew that bonding was going to be an issue, since this boy had been in foster care for much of his life. We knew that since we were “off” as teachers during the summer, so we might be a good match. We told her to contact her friend and tell her we’d be interested. In the meantime, Tod’s parents were coming over for the holiday, and we had food to get ready while we secretly assembled our home-study papers and birth parents letter, all under the cloak of secrecy.
Our minister told us that her friend was a no-nonsense kind of person, so if she began talking to us after reading our information, we could pretty much guarantee that she had picked us for placement.

We faxed our stuff to her and waited.

We waited on pins and needles, not really knowing what to do. Our minister had talked with the social worker and she said that we could create a book for the boy in anticipation of the transition from foster care to placement with us. We combed our many picture files and made a collection of photos showing him who we were as a family for his photo album. I remembered my Children’s Literature class, and printed out a simple, repetitive text for the photos. “Anna, Daddy, and Papa” started each picture heading. The pictures showed us playing, during the holidays, swimming, etc. Having this little task seemed to keep our minds from driving us crazy with anticipation and uncertainty.

Due to a variety of circumstances, the social worker was extremely overworked, so it came as no surprise that the initial phone call from her came on a late Friday afternoon. I had carried my cell phone and the landline wherever I went that week in anticipation of her call. As it would happen, she called when I was in the shower and Tod was gone to get the babysitter for our date night that night. Tod heard the phone ringing as he closed the door to leave, but assumed that I would answer it. I listened to her message and I quickly called her back on her cell phone, even though she said she would “get with us next week” and we talked for quite a bit setting up a meeting time for the following Tuesday. I kept my phone conversation quiet as we got Anna settled with the sitter and headed out to find food prior to the cabaret performance. When our beers came, I told Tod about the conversation and we cheered to our potential new son. As mentioned, Pastor Julie told us that her friend wouldn’t mess around with us if she didn’t think we were the ones, so reality set in as we waited for our food.

We had talked with Julie quite a bit during the week, as she was eager to find out what we knew. She and her partner are adoptive parents as well, with two little girls. She was in contact with the social worker and would relay our thoughts and messages to her as we waited for her to contact us. A while back, we stopped at the park across from our church and Anna tossed a penny into the fountain making a wish. We asked her what she wished for and she said, “A little brother!” Pastor Julie shared this with the social worker and she remarked that she couldn’t compete with that kind of cuteness.

Tod took the day off of work on Tuesday, and we puttered around the house getting stuff ready for the boy to come. Meanwhile, I was mentally getting ready to go back to work for the spring/summer session the next day. My blood pressure was probably through the roof. During our initial home study, I cleaned like I had never cleaned before, our house was spotless and everything was in its place. With this meeting, my level of concern was high for sure, but now that we are parents, my sense of reality took precedence over the need to clean. If we presented a house that housed a three and half year-old, as well as a 150 pound St. Bernard that was too clean, she’d think we were freaks. I cleaned up the chunks and called it good as I quickly stashed stuff in closets and vacuumed up the visible crumbs and clumps of dog hair.

The meeting with the social worker went well. We were all in a pretty good space when she came, and were actually sitting in the living room calmly reading when the doorbell rang. We sat around our dinning room table and began to talk about life, kids, adoption, and this little guy who was the center of our attention. We talked about the boy’s history and I kept asking question, as we had made a list at lunch of things we thought we should know. As his narrative was read to us off his file, our questions were answered and we began to know more about who this little guy was. His birth parents were drug users and he tested positive for marijuana at birth. His weight was normal and his Apgar score was 9 (which is good). I can’t go into details about the birth parents right now, but needless to say, they are out of the picture and he has been in foster care with a retired couple since shortly after birth. We found out that his name is Elijah and we debated keeping that as his name since his birth parents live here in Jackson. We settled on keeping the name and calling him Eli for short. Speaking of biblical names, I live up to my biblical counter-part Doubting Thomas. I tend to be the one that errs on the side of caution and will believe it when I see it. As the social worker shared more and more about Eli, I stopped the conversation and asked point blank if this was a match for placement. She said yes and the news began to sink in for good. Instead of speculative language, we began to talk in terms of this happening for sure within the next few months.

I asked if we could see pictures, but she said that people tend to get stupid and stop listening once they see the pictures, so she wanted to finish up the paperwork before we could see him. When that time came, my hands were sweaty and my heart was beating fast. I got up to get Anna something as she pulled out the pictures from his file, a collection of studio shots from somewhere. I came back to the table with my future son spread out for me to see for the first time. Being in the delivery room when Anna was born gave me a front row seat for the birth process and showed me more than any health class movie ever could. I wasn’t sure what to expect, as I was worried about what he might look like due to the drug issue and some other health issues (now resolved). What I saw was a young boy with a smile that could light up a room. He has blonde hair, so of course he looks bald in all the photos but he had bright eyes and a killer smile.
The social worker called Anna over and asked her if she wanted to see her little brother. Anna pored over the pictures and after a moment pointed at one and said, “I like that one!”

We agreed.

We will meet him soon, a supervised visit with the social worker and the foster family. After that, we can meet as often as our schedules will allow. Placement will take awhile, but the social worker has promised to pull some strings and favors in the hopes of getting Eli here before summer is over. The transition won’t be abrupt, rather it will be some visits and perhaps some overnights before the big day. This is a good thing as we the time to play a big game of chess with our house, shuffling furniture around to make a room for Eli. Thankfully we kept most of Anna’s baby stuff, and it is gender neutral, so we’re good to go with his new room. Anna is transitioning out of the little baby girl stuff so we’ll flip it over to him to create his new space. We have a pretty big “to do” list in anticipation of his arrival, and we’re okay with that, as we want to make sure that this guy has all the best in his new life. Fate dealt him a crappy hand at birth, but we’re about to change that and offer him a loving home forever.

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Becoming a Parent



This was a posting from last year on my Live Journal account; I thought it might be good to share here…

Three years ago this weekend, Tod and I were ready to head west to Chicago and soak up some Bear Pride. We had just begun the whole adoption process and for the past several months had been working on “getting ready” (whatever that means) for a new life in our lives. We had told our parents, our friends, and our coworkers, and were busily attending to the myriad of details that go into adoption. There was much prep in the way of paperwork. Our home study would be held two months later, but we were still busy getting it all put together.

We were going to head out to Chicago with some buds, but in the end decided to stay home here in Jackson for the long weekend. We ended up nesting pretty much the entire three days, doing what we thought we should be doing to get our house and lives ready for this yet unknown little one. We cleaned and organized the house, purging ourselves of a lot of shit… both physical and mental. We had told ourselves that if we did have a kid we’d still be able to do all the wild and fascinating things we did as D.I.N.K.s and maintain our absolutely fabulous lifestyle. Our trip to NYC back in April had us walking the streets of the metropolis evaluating what we could and couldn’t do with a kid.
Central Park, yes, The Eagle, NO. (edit: Central Park with a kid is amazing, see the Alice post from April).

This was both a resignation to the fact that we were becoming parents and the realization that life didn’t end if we didn’t go to Chicago. I think we actually felt better by not going, and pooling our efforts/energy into getting ready for our future child and the grueling home study two months later. We had no idea what to expect, so this time helped ease these fears.

However, this year is different. We’re going to Chicago and Bear Pride (edit: we actually didn’t do much with the Bears, instead we were grill-masters at Jay and Brian’s BBQ), and we can’t wait. Tod’s parents are conveniently located on the way to Chicago on the way out of MI on 94. “Hey, here’s that grandkid you wanted! See you in three days!” While we stayed home three years ago pining about what it would be like to be parents, this year we are pining to get out of Dodge, drop the kid and become BETTER parents for having time away from our little princess.

When I worked at YMCA Camp Storer here in Jackson County (it’s a Toledo YMCA camp in Napoleon, MI) we had a saying for the summer camp kids that NEVER wanted to go home, “how can we miss you if you never go away?”

Same is true with Miss Anna. While it will be hard to leave her, it will be delightful to come back to her refreshed and ready to parent through the summer. Three years ago we had no idea. Now we know.
Wish us luck.

Saturday, May 16, 2009

Great video, but you have to wait for the pay off


I saw this on CMT this morning and it had me laughing my head off and crying like a little bitch at the end.

It's probably safe for work, but there are some racey bits in it FYI.

I love country music, especially when it doesn't take itself too seriously.

http://www.cmt.com/videos/rodney-carrington/374156/if-im-the-only-one.jhtml?id=501683

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

An open letter to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad




May 12, 2009


An Open Letter to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad


Thank you so much for releasing Roxana Saberi this week. I know that it must be very hard for you to do this, seeing as you don’t really honor womanhood in your country. But I have a suggestion for you. In order to save face, we’ll send you Carrie Prejean (Miss California) as a trade.

Sure, Roxana was an alleged enemy of the state, but Carrie is against opposite marriage, just like you! She can be your new cover girl for your insane policing and killing of Gays in Iran. Of course, you’ll have to do something about her naked pictures, but I think that as soon as she is photographed at an execution of an Iranian homosexual, the country will forgive any indescretions she may have done in her past.

Oh sure you’ll have to work out that whole Christian/Muslim issue, but Carrie is sooooooo understanding about other people and their beliefs that this really shouldn’t be an issue and I am certain you two will be BFFs in no time.

So how about it Mahmoud?

And now for something completely different: Tilt Shift



I first became aware of tilt shift photography when I watched Olivo Barbieri’s short film “Site Specific.” He flew over major cities and landmarks in a helicopter filming the populous below. The end result is a magical view that casts the appearance of everything being in miniature. It’s as if you are looking at a massive model train set.

When I first watched it, I thought that he had indeed made replicas of all these cities in some artistic fit of obsessive compulsive disorder. But after a few moments of research on the internets, I realized that it was all a trick, a lovely, hypnotic, amazing trick.

I have experimented with this as an application, and I love the results. I have created a photoset on our Flickr account that highlights some of the efforts. Please to enjoy.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/mcmillen-oakley/sets/72157617947183431/

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Equality State?


Did you get married in an "Equality State?" If so, these folks want to hear from you.


http://www.pamshouseblend.com/diary/10792/if-you-married-in-an-equality-state

Send em your pics! We are.

Monday, May 4, 2009

Farewell to a Friend

(Gary with two kids, I have no idea who they are)



This is a copy of my part of Gary's memorial service today at JCC:

This has been such a tough couple of weeks for the theater community. First the death of Gary, and then the death of Bea Arthur this past week. Both were remarkable men. Bea is considered by many to be a Gay Icon. Gary, a Gay eyesore.

The Citizen Patriot article that was published a few days after Gary’s death said that he was a “Caring” person. And yes, caring was in quotations. Gary was indeed a caring person, when he wanted to be. I remember my first trip to Chicago with the Humanities Department. Maria Sayers had worked very hard to put the trip together for the department, organizing students (and we all know what a chore that can be) wrangling with the hotels, and booking the train.

What thanks does she get?

A lovely bottle of Boone’s Farm Strawberry Rot Gut Ripple from Gary, as apparently, he “cared” enough to send the very best. Can you put a price on friendship? Yes, it’s around $3. Now to Maria’s defense, she didn’t say a word, but I do have a picture of her and Ann Green holding up the bottle. Well, pictures speak a thousand words…

Maria, in her genteel and caring manner tried to pass the bottle off to the local homeless guys at the station, but all of them were like, “uh no thanks lady, I’m good!” and quickly moved on.
She was left with no choice but to stash the bottle behind one of the trash cans on the platform before boarding the train. I do believe that were she to try and board a train or plane these days with that offending vintage, she would probably be tasered by a TSA agent.
It is rumored that the station agent is still using the bottle to clean the toilets.

Flash forward a few years later and I am having Lasik surgery to correct my vision. I confided with a few of my colleagues about how scared I was with this surgery. The success rate is pretty high, but there is always that nagging doubt in the back of your mind. Gary was one of those folks who I shared my concern with. I told him that Helen Keller and I shared a birthday, but I wasn’t ready to totally lose my sight. He patted my shoulder in a “caring” way and told me that he would cast me in the “Miracle Worker” should things go wrong. Thankfully things turned out okay, and I returned to work the following Monday to a note in my mailbox. I opened the letter, and it appeared that Katherine Hepburn and Michael J. Foxx had penned this letter while on a roller coaster. The script was all over the page and the letters were doubled and tripled to create the illusion of fuzziness.
The note said: Thomas! I hope your eyes are fine!
It was signed Gary. Yeah, he was “caring” alright.


I was in Ann Arbor one day with Tod, and we passed a bookstore and saw a book of Shakespearian insults on the clearance table. Apparently, the market for such a book has a very small audience, hence the low clearance price. I thought for a moment standing on Main Street, who would most benefit from this book? I thought about our own Dr. J, Dr. Geri Jacobs, seeing as she teaches Shakespeare but I realized that in my almost ten years of teaching at JCC, I have never once heard a scornful or hateful word come out of her mouth. Even at our departmental meeting which can be quite lively. Now, she is very soft spoken, and I do have a hearing impairment, so who knows. So the default person to hoist the book on was Gary. I sent it to him in an envelope with the instructions of “DO NO HARM” and the very next day the phone messages started…

I am sorry for anyone else who may have had to endure these phone insults as I know he probably had a hit list of folks here on campus and god knows where else.

And then Wilder was born. It just warmed my heart, as Gary and I became new Dads about a year apart. But with Gary, it always reminds me of my favorite bible character, Methuselah. It took me right back to Sunday school. Dear Wildy… as some of you may know, he goes to day care with my daughter Anna. The day care lady has already ruled out Anna and Wilder getting married as she couldn’t figure out how to fit Wilder St. Michael Wetzel Righettini and Anna Laura McMillen Oakley on the wedding invitation.
But yes, Gary cared very deeply for his son Wilder, but I think that he was secretly a little disappointed that Wilder wasn’t Bat Boy when he was born.

Or was he????


Gary, you brought much joy into our lives. Sometimes when you entered a room, sometimes when you left the stage. We will miss your antics and general silliness. I hope you are up there in Strawberry Fields with John and George, I can only imagine the fun you’re having. God bless

Sunday, May 3, 2009

A response to my blog entry on home schooling

This is part of a discussion that I have been having since I posted about home schooling and Christian Education on April 23rd. Doris made a comment that began this discussion and I asked her if I could share her comments. She obliged. As she states, brevity is not her strong point. Grab a cup of coffee and read her thoughts and own personal experiences.

Tom,
I have some thoughts and experiences I'd like to share with you on homeschooling.
You're absolutely right in that homeschooling can be very poorly done, but that is not always the case. I live in South Carolina, and our public school system is, well, suspect. We decided to home school our first two children, and in retrospect I know that it was a good idea. I have a bachelor's degree in sociology and my husband is a mechanical/design engineering graduate of Georgia Tech. There is a long legacy of educators in my family. From the time my kids were able to sit up by themselves we were educating them. All parents do. The question is, of course, what are you teaching your kids? We kept providing interesting, relevant, age/stage appropriate information to them throughout the early school years. We used packaged curriculum as a guideline, to keep scope and sequence formulas mostly. We also got out into the community and did real life active learning.
Our town has an active home school association which is much better than what you describe in your blog post. We had PE days at the YMCA where the kids got instruction from the trained staff, not just free-play. We had home school group days once a week where certain parents with specific skills or knowledge provided specialized classes in foreign language, lab sciences, art, and mathematics beyond the basics. My daughter took a French class for three years at the elementary grade level, and when she went to public school in the 9th grade was well equipped to take the French class taught there. (Granted, this is South Carolina, so I'm not sure how good the public school class was.) My daughter is an intelligent, outgoing, well rounded person who has been able since her early teens to carry on meaningful conversations with adults as well as her age peers. She attended the public high school, graduated in 2007, and is now finishing her sophomore year at a prestigious private college in the state. She continues to qualify for the state's highest level of scholarship-based financial aid.
My son will graduate from high school next month. He started public school in the 6th grade because he had developed an uncooperative attitude at home. I realized I could not teach him if he was not willing to be taught. He desperately wanted to attend middle school. I knew he had no clue what he was asking for, and would hate it, but I didn't argue with him because his mind was made up. I was right on all counts, but he survived and learned a lot about himself. I'm not sure how much academic content he learned those three years, but he definitely got an education. It took him a while longer to adapt, but he's a bit socially retarded anyway. (I say that in a technical, psychological sense, not to personally demean him in any way.) He seems to have gotten his act together, and within the last year and a half has excelled in his school work. He recently earned his Eagle Scout rank in Boy Scouting. We received word this week that he has been accepted at the college of his choice.
You say that in your experience, home schooled kids are socially retarded. My daughter is in no way socially retarded, nor has she ever been. My son is somewhat socially retarded, but he has always been. His social retardation has much more to do with his bio-psychological state than any experience or lack of experience. The family has worked with him to help as much as possible, and as I say, he is improving. Maturity has as much to do with that as anything, I think. His older sister has been a great help to him as well. Though I have no way to prove it, I strongly believe that keeping him out of the public school system throughout his elementary school years was most beneficial. Had he been in a classroom he would no doubt have been medicated earlier and more heavily than he is. He would have been negatively labeled by the educrats and stigmatized by his peers. His progress in school would have been irrevocably hampered.
You may wonder how I came to this conclusion. I have current experience. I mentioned at the beginning of this (ever lengthening) missive that I home schooled my first two children. When these kids were 7 and 9 years old, we adopted a newborn baby boy. A year later we adopted another child, a year-old little girl. In addition to our older kids, we have two children who are now 11-year-old fifth graders. These children have been in the public school system since pre-school. Our little boy, whom I refer to as “Sproing” on my blog, is in many ways much like his older brother. He has issues with socially appropriate behavior and has, since second grade, been a troublesome child in the classroom. He has been a troublesome child at home for longer than that. I see things happening at school that distress me. Because of his behavior and academic performance (generally poor) the teachers and administrators have largely given up on him. There are a few notable exceptions, but by and large he has little chance of being treated fairly. As a family we are doing everything we know how in order to help this little guy get his behavior under control. He has been receiving professional care for years. As he moves into puberty it is getting worse. We are struggling to help him. The school system has been helpful in the most marginal sense, primarily through those few sainted individuals who seem to really care about him as a person. It is quite an adventure. And while I have no way of knowing for sure, from the patterns I see in the way our school system deals with this little guy, I suspect our oldest son would never have attained the academic and social success he has if he’d been in the school system in elementary school. I also think that another year or two at home would have done him a world of good, but as I said, he made that impossible.
And now a word about art: I found particularly interesting what you had to say about your experience with home schooled students’ lack of art education. I minored in art in college, and though I did not incorporate art in my lesson plans as much as I could have, my kids were not totally ignorant about art and famous artists, both musical and visual. (We didn’t do much at all with performing arts.) Interestingly enough, both of these children are specializing in art now. This semester my daughter was accepted in the Bachelor of Fine Arts program at her school. She has been a declared art major from the beginning of her college career, and plans to seek an MFA degree as soon as she earns her bachelor’s degree. My son has been accepted into the graphic arts program at one of the Art Institutes here in the Southeast, and will be working toward a fully accredited bachelor’s degree program when he starts school in the fall. Though I attribute much of their interest and ability in art to their exposure to art education at the public school, I must admit that as a family we emphasize and encourage artistic expression. I am sad, both for you and your students, that this has not been your experience with the home schooled.
Alas, I have rambled on for too long. Brevity is not my specialty. I merely wanted to defend homeschooling as a viable educational option, and to give you a different perspective from what seems to have been your experience. Thank you for allowing me to do so.
I am ever so grateful that Ur-Spo directed me to your space in the blogosphere. I look forward to reading more about your very interesting life! Congratulations, too, on the blessed adoption of your adorable daughter. I am extremely pleased that you and your husband are able to provide such a loving, welcoming home for her. May your family be ever blessed.
Sincerely,
Doris (“Java”)
Blog: my life or something like it @
http://javajones-mylife.blogspot.com/

Friday, May 1, 2009

An open letter of apology to Mylie Cyrus


Dear Miley,
I take it all back. I apologize for hoping that you are either dead or unpopular by the time Anna is old enough to care. I apologize for secretly praying for your music to just go away. I apologize for making fun of you and your Dad in Vanity Fair (but um, the pics are kind of creepy, Annie Lebovitz or not). I apologize for snickering at the tacky merchandising machine you have become. Hannah Montana snack cakes? Really? I apologize for wishing that your jet crashes into the Jonas Brother’s jet over Salt Lake City. I apologize for suggesting that you should hang out with Lindsay Lohan more.
You’ve got the Religious Right on your ass now, and they are some tough beasts to tame. Thanks for your support of Gay Marriage, really.

Honestly.

Truly.

It means a lot to me to hear that come from you as the gays have been some of your harshest critics (me included). Your twittering with Perez (thank God it wasn’t Paris) Hilton have got you in some hot water with the American Family Association. They’ll probably call for a boycott of you and your shows and music, but don’t worry. They still have a fatwa out on your boss Disney and you can see that it doesn’t really do much.

Anyone under 30 (well, maybe everyone but Miss California) knows that times are changing and views on LGBT issues are basically becoming non-issues. It’s a new time we’re living in, a time where the younger voices will have more power and exposure than they are probably used to. Keep up the good work, and don’t let the bullies at the AFA scare you.
We’ve got your back now Miley and we wish you well.

Tom

The press release from the AFA:
Miley Cyrus said what?
“Hannah Montana” star Miley Cyrus recently made statements supporting gay marriage.
Her comments were in response to a question posed to Miss California Carrie Prejean in the April 19 Miss USA Pageant. Homosexual celeblogger Perez Hilton was the pageant judge who asked Prejean her opinion of same-sex marriage, to which she responded that marriage should be between a man and a woman. Outraged by her response, Hilton began blasting the beauty queen and asked for celebrities to share their thoughts on gay marriage.
Miley Cyrus responded to Hilton through her Twitter.com account with the following comments:
• “Everyone deserves to love and be loved and most importantly smile.”
• “Jesus loves you and your partner and wants you to know how much he cares! That’s like a daddy not loving his lil boy cuz he’s gay and that is wrong and very sad!
• “Like I said everyone deserves to be happy.”
• “God’s greatest commandment is to love. And judging is not loving.”
• “I am a Christian and I love you - gay or not - because you are no different than anyone else! We are all God’s children.”
Such statements will send the wrong message to our children who are influenced by this teenage megastar. Parents need to realize that Cyrus is not the positive role model she was once thought to be.
Take Action
Send Miley Cyrus a letter stating that you do not approve of her comments.
Clearly she is confused and does not understand the Bible. Please pray for the Lord to open her eyes to the truth.
Check out the articles below for a better understanding of this controversial issue.
“Natural law” approach to the issue of same-sex marriage
A Biblical approach to the issue of same-sex marriage
Sincerely,
Monica Cole, Director
OneMillionMoms.com