The new Santa Cruz PFLAG
For many years there was a chapter of PFLAG in Santa Cruz, but then some of the movers and shakers moved on (or shook off?) to other things, and so for some years there wasn't. However, now it's just starting up again, including a proclamation from the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors, a Holiday/Kick-off Party last month on a night when I was already going to another party, and then Tuesday night I went to the first meeting of the new Santa Cruz PFLAG.
It was at the First Congregational Church up the hill from me by UCSC. I found it a little disorienting that it was held in the room where I've sometimes gone to meetings of the local English Country Dancing group, but I was interested to see that Israeli folk dancing was going on in another room at the church at the same time as the PFLAG meeting (as the Israeli folk dancing is weekly and PFLAG monthly, maybe I'll pay the former a visit soon as well). Somewhere around 30-40 people showed up for the first meeting, and there also were a lot of nice cookies and other snacks and drinks. :-)
First we divided into five discussion groups, and it was interesting to me that the other people in my group seemed to be either LGBT-activist UCSC students, or parents of older-than-I-am LGBT children. One woman in my group had been the founder of the original Santa Cruz PFLAG in 1991, one of her sons having come out back in 1971, and she was just a total blast to be around. I was also kind of amused by another woman (definitely most of the people there were women) who said that although she did have one son she had always wondered about, mostly she was there because she had just moved to Santa Cruz and wanted to meet people.
The second half of the meeting was a speech and question-and-answer session with Reverend Deborah Johnson, a local civil rights leader/activist who I've enjoyed hearing speak at many protest marches and other gatherings. She talked about her own coming-out experiences as a young black girl in a family of ministers in Los Angeles, and her subsequent life and work, and was just riveting.
The next meeting will be on Valentines Day, with an equal-marriage-rights emphasis and featuring the First Congregational Church's own Reverend Cordelia Strandskov, who describes herself on her blog as "a crafty femme minister living in a redwood forest".
Now where did I put my PFLAG Canada button?
It was at the First Congregational Church up the hill from me by UCSC. I found it a little disorienting that it was held in the room where I've sometimes gone to meetings of the local English Country Dancing group, but I was interested to see that Israeli folk dancing was going on in another room at the church at the same time as the PFLAG meeting (as the Israeli folk dancing is weekly and PFLAG monthly, maybe I'll pay the former a visit soon as well). Somewhere around 30-40 people showed up for the first meeting, and there also were a lot of nice cookies and other snacks and drinks. :-)
First we divided into five discussion groups, and it was interesting to me that the other people in my group seemed to be either LGBT-activist UCSC students, or parents of older-than-I-am LGBT children. One woman in my group had been the founder of the original Santa Cruz PFLAG in 1991, one of her sons having come out back in 1971, and she was just a total blast to be around. I was also kind of amused by another woman (definitely most of the people there were women) who said that although she did have one son she had always wondered about, mostly she was there because she had just moved to Santa Cruz and wanted to meet people.
The second half of the meeting was a speech and question-and-answer session with Reverend Deborah Johnson, a local civil rights leader/activist who I've enjoyed hearing speak at many protest marches and other gatherings. She talked about her own coming-out experiences as a young black girl in a family of ministers in Los Angeles, and her subsequent life and work, and was just riveting.
The next meeting will be on Valentines Day, with an equal-marriage-rights emphasis and featuring the First Congregational Church's own Reverend Cordelia Strandskov, who describes herself on her blog as "a crafty femme minister living in a redwood forest".
Now where did I put my PFLAG Canada button?