Capturing Your Love

Outing America

Written by: Ali Rothlizzi Photos by: Name

E

ver wonder where it is safe to travel if you are an LGBT family? Where will you be accepted? Where can you all have fun? Back in college, in perhaps a mixture of our arrogant bravado and euphoric naivety my wife and I drove around for years in what became known as our “Dykemobile.” It was a black 1997 Jeep Cherokee Laredo that we surrounded with pro gay, pro woman, proud liberal bumper stickers flying a rainbow flag from the antennae. (We were able to buy it used from a very conservative older lawyer brother, so...) We wound up filling our arm rest and glove compartment with the encouraging notes left on our windshield and collected only a couple stories of negative or disapproving stories for our efforts. We traveled

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all around the north east from Virginia to Canada and felt this afforded us a realistically grounded perspective of public reaction to our life as out lesbians simply from the daily experience. It was overwhelmingly positive despite taking place during the W. Bush years! Then we had kids. I remember being chastised by an older lesbian who lived in our building for that car once it was fitted with a baby seat. “Irresponsible” she called us. And “reckless.” I felt for her but chalked it up to her being born in a different time. One I was thankful for but no longer enslaved to. It’s a different world now. The choices we make affect our kids in a way that my wife and I were slow to realize, and now slower to shake. We are proud of our family and long to connect with the world, but there are places in this country we are

Connextions Magazine

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Nice Life

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May 2017