May 2023 - My Two Lives

What one backlash took away, another backlash gave back

May 23, 2023

On 19 May, I wrote about the fact that the LA Dodgers revoked their invite of the Los Angeles chapter of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to Dodgers’ Pride Night events on 16 June and rescinded the award they were going to give the “Sisters” for their work within the community. It turns out that there was a huge response to the team’s decision, and yesterday the team did a 180° turn and re-invited them to the Pride Night event and will give them their reward after all.

The change was pointed out to me by someone on Counter Social, who posted a link to the story from ABC7 News in San Francisco. Their story includes this tweet from the Dodgers which includes this graphic.

LA Dodgers 22 May 2023 statement on reinviting the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to Pride Night

I’m glad the Dodgers changed their mind about including the “Sisters” in their Pride Night festivities, but they shouldn’t have been disinvited in the first place. Especially when so much of the initial complaining came from people outside of the state that don’t support the in the first place anyway like Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL).

You can read the story on the ABC7 News website, and the LA Daily News has an article on it worth reading as well. The LA Times, my favorite media resource on Dodgers news, has a great article on it, but it’s behind their paywall so you may not be able to read it.

LA Dodgers cave to “Christian” backlash against LGBTQ+ Pride Night

May 19, 2023

Yesterday I learned there was some bad news for LGBTQ+ fans of the LA Dodgers. News came out that the team was revoking their invite of The Los Angeles chapter of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence to participate in the annual LGBTQ+ Pride Night celebration and canceling the award the group was to receive for their work done in the community (per USA Today).

Why were they changing their mind? A group of conservative Catholics said the charity group was “anti-Catholic.” Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), who probably doesn’t support the team in the first place, joined the chorus suggesting the Dodgers were unfriendly to the church. Interestingly, I can’t find this announcement on the LA Dodgers’ website, and the folks at Dodgers Nation didn’t cover it either.

The backlash was swift. The “Sisters” said they are going to keep serving the community, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California said they won’t participate in the event. The Los Angeles LGBTQ Center revoked their invitation to participate in Pride Night, saying

Buckling to pressure from out-of-state, right-wing fundamentalists, the Dodgers caved to a religious minority that is perpetuating a false narrative about LGBTQ+ people.

They went further and suggested the team either reconsider their decision against the “Sisters” or cancel Pride Night completely.

We call on the Dodgers to reconsider their decision, honor the Sisters, and bring the true spirit of Pride back to Dodgers Stadium. If the decision is not reversed, we strongly encourage the Dodgers to cancel Pride Night. Any organization that turns its back on LGBTQ+ people at this damning and dangerous inflection point in our nation’s history should not be hoisting a rainbow flag or hosting a ‘Pride Night.’

It’s disappointing that this comes from the team that broke the color barrier in major league baseball when they signed Jackie Robinson, an event that was just celebrated by the team a little over a month ago.

I grew up being a fan of the Amazing Mets, but as a high school student in 1976, I became an LA Dodgers fan. After moving to Boston in 1989, people asked me why I didn’t root for the Red Sox, but I told them I was sticking with my Bois en Bleu. When the Dodgers signed serial hater and unindicted sexual predator Trevor Bauer for the 2022 season, I boycotted my team, saying that Bauer shouldn’t be allowed to wear the same uniform as Jackie Robinson and Sandy Koufax. I started paying attention to the Dodgers again as the postseason approached and was called a bandwagon fan but I explained that I had taken a stand for women Dodger fans.

I have to feel it’s appropriate that two innings after Freddie Freeman hit a grand slam for his 300th career home run, the Cardinals scored 7 runs, including two home runs, to put the game out of reach. I’d say Karma showed Freddie some love but made sure folks knew she wasn’t happy with the team’s ownership.

When I heard about the latest idiotic move by the front office, I told a friend that it’s making it hard for me to support my Bois en Blue. As of this writing, Pride Night is still on the LA Dodgers’ promotional calendar, although you have to look for it because it doesn’t show up on the team’s game schedule.

The LA Dodgers 2023 Pride night on their Schedule and Promotion & Giveaway pages

I’m pulling back on my support of my Dodgers, and unless things change, I’ll find a way to join the protest for Pride Night even if I am about 3,000 miles away. I’m sick of so-called “Christians*” and their hate forcing folks to turn their back on LGBTQ+ folks, essentially giving us the middle finger. It’s time for us to fight back, and if we get in trouble for it, Let it be “good trouble” that makes a difference and not just clutching at pearls.

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*Aren’t Christians supposed to be welcoming and showing God’s love instead of making us want to do anything but be a part of their community?

I have pretty being busy lately

May 15, 2023

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I haven’t posted anything here in quite a while, but that hasn’t meant I haven’t been doing anything. After getting new web hosting from Namecheap, I moved My Two Lives to a different product within the Namecheap family. The new product allows hosting for not only My Two Lives but also my Second Life store, Nanci’s Naughties, and due to having way too much on my plate, I just got Nanci’s Naughties back up this week.

Sports!

Some people know of my love for tenpin bowling, but I haven’t visited a bowling center since I was in Guam with the Air Force in 1987. Being on a fixed income makes visiting a bowling center in Boston difficult financially, so in March I decided to see what options are available for virtual bowling in Second Life. I found the Bergson Bowling System, which does more than let me bowl inworld. It also lets people lay out lanes for their own use.

Rather than just setting up a lane for myself, I created a bowling center anyone could use. It’s the Pride Lanes Bowling Center, and you can find out more about it at PrideLanesSL.online. Pride Lanes has a tent at this year’s Second Pride, and I’m working on some merch that will connect Nanci’s Naughties, Pride Lanes, Second Pride, and global LGBTQ+ life. Once it’s available I’ll announce it over on the Nanci’s Naughties website.

I’m making music again

When I bought my Squire Stratocaster back in 2020, I knew I wanted to work on an original song I got the idea for in a practice room at the Longy School of Music back in 1996. It started as a cool riff with a soul gospel feel, and it became a whole bluesy song in late 1999, but it’s more of a guitar song than a keyboard song, so it just got tucked away in my proverbial drawer. When I got my Strat, I knew I wanted to develop the song, and last year I started working on a demo for the song. The demo still isn’t finished because I never get enough time for playing my guitar, but now that I’m getting things off my plate I hope to get back to working on that soon.

Early this year I was thinking of a Christian rock song I wrote in the early naughts. As an ex-vangelical I won’t use the lyrics anymore, but I love the music I came up with for it, so I’m going to put together a demo on BandLab. I’ll publish the song on BandLab for someone to write new lyrics for and use. Of course, there’s not enough time in the day to do everything, and my brain can play the guitar a hell of a lot better than my fingers can, so it’s another song that’s going to be a work in progress for a while.

Et cetera

There are many things going on in my life that I won’t talk about here, and with warmer weather arriving in Boston I hope to spend more time outside this summer, even if it’s just out on my porch. Yes, I’m a big old homebody, so I tend to stick around Château Hardin unless I have to make groceries, run an errand or five, or go the medico folks. But that works pretty well for me since I’m also a huge night owl, and I’m usually going to bed when the morning news folks are getting up. There are also days when I’ve kicked myself because the sun is going down as I’m going to bed, but the only problem there is that by the time I get up I’ve missed most of the daytime.

I’m going to leave you with a meme posted by someone last year on a social media platform I used to use. It’s something I need to remind myself of every now and then, and I’m not the only one who needs it.