If life for Michigan's LGBT community were based on legislation, you would think we were at a stand still. No rights, no equality, no recognition. We might as well all be single, homeless, childless and unemployed.
But somehow, that's not what we see when we look at snippets of our state's LGBT lives. And for the vast majority of us, being without loved ones and a job and a place to live simply isn't an option we consider.
Yes, there are still youth who get kicked out of their homes for coming out to their parents. There are trans people fired from their jobs for announcing their intentions to transition. There are broken-up couples fighting over assets and custody, and still-together couples fighting to see each other in the hospital.
But just look at this week's Between The Lines.
David Custer of Flint has just put out his own cookbook and line of mixes, Boy Gourmet. No one is telling him he can't succeed because he's gay – least of all David himself.
Kim Tucker has no way to make the state, the city of Ann Arbor or her daughter's school recognize both her and her partner as parents. But did this make her stop being a mom, purchasing a home with her partner and sending 10-year-old Taylor to class every day? Of course not. She goes on with life, fights for protective legislation for her family and hopes for the best.
Frank Vaca keeps abreast of LGBT issues and events with voracity not often matched. Michigan Pride plans and raises money for an event held in the heart of our state's capital, where anyone in the area can see LGBT people being proud of who they are. Barbara Troy of Pleasant Ridge is debuting a film she wrote and directed about a lesbian couple, despite either stigma or her fight against breast cancer.
All around us, people are living their lives as though they have all the rights and freedoms they could ever want. They don't do it because there's nothing to fight for, but because life can't be put on hold while we wait for legislators to decide when it's time to give us what we deserve.
In this issue, we celebrate "home" as what you make it. It's not the garden you plume or the parties you throw or the furniture you bedeck it with, but the homes we build for ourselves in Michigan, a state with virtually no rights for LGBT people.
If it's true that home is where the heart is, than our lives as openly LGBT people with families and jobs and love invested in this state are our homes. It doesn't matter what the laws say. We'll fight to change them, not just through lobbying and advocacy and political donations, but also by continuing to create our homes and our lives as we want them to be, without fear or apology.
Life doesn't and shouldn't stop and wait for laws to change in our favor; instead, our honest, open, beautiful lives will change the laws.
