John Selig is an activist for equal­ity and jus­tice. He and his hus­band — Rodolfo — life in Dal­las. John pro­duces a widely-followed and acclaimed pod­cast called Out­spo­ken. You can hookup with John on Face­book or at his per­sonal web­site, John Selig Outspoken.

Warn­ing, John is on a tear! (but I have good rea­son to be). I am send­ing this to you because you really do mat­ter to me.

Today has been an extremely dif­fi­cult day, per­haps the worst I have suf­fered in many years. I was part of a lay-off from my job back in Novem­ber and this is far worse than that.

This morn­ing I received ter­ri­ble news from Nathaniel (my son for those of you who don’t know him) who lives in Nova Sco­tia. The Globe and Mail, a major news­pa­per in Canada, was report­ing that gay cou­ples such as Rodolfo and myself who lived in a state or coun­try that didn’t sup­port same-sex mar­riage were no longer going to be con­sid­ered legally mar­ried in Canada which essen­tially dis­solved Rodolfo’s and my mar­riage. We will be cel­e­brat­ing our eighth anniver­sary on April 17th. [1]

To say that I was dev­as­tated is a huge under­state­ment. I spent the day get­ting out paper­work focus­ing on my job search while I worked hard to hold back tears.

Late this after­noon, I received a much more reas­sur­ing email Major LGBT and other Orga­ni­za­tions (includ­ing Free­dom to Marry, NCLR — The National Cen­ter for Les­bian Rights, GLAD – Gay & Les­bian Advo­cates & Defend­ers, Lambda Legal and The ACLU (Amer­i­can Civil Lib­er­ties Union). [2]

Dan Sav­age wrote a superb col­umn for The Stranger, a news­pa­per in Seat­tle where he serves as edi­tor, writes his nation­ally acclaimed sex-advise col­umn and records his excel­lent pod­cast. Dan’s col­umn was picked up by the Huff­in­g­ton Post and it out­lines his accu­mu­la­tion of infor­ma­tion on this news story through­out today. Dan is an excel­lent writer, speaker ad pod­caster and a per­sonal hero of mine. His lan­guage is salty for those of you read­ing this who might be offended, be fore­warned. By the way Dan and his hus­band Terry started the It Get’s Bet­ter Project aimed at keep­ing LGBT youth from killing them­selves. Thou­sands of peo­ple have recorded mes­sages includ­ing many celebri­ties, sports heroes and even Pres­i­dent Obama have recorded mes­sages. [3]

 Here are my take­aways from this hor­ri­ble day:

1. I am tired of being treated like a third-class per­son. Rodolfo and I deserve the same rights as all other Americans.
2. I am tired and dis­gusted by the hate that con­tin­ues against us. I am par­tic­u­larly dis­gusted by the hate­ful com­ments from the Repub­li­can con­tenders for their pres­i­den­tial can­di­dacy. I am dis­gusted that main­stream Repub­li­cans and more lib­er­ally minded reli­gious lead­ers aren’t call­ing them on their hate speech in the media. My father and his fam­ily fled Nazi Ger­man in 1935 as Jews as oth­ers stood by and did nothing.
3. I am tired and dis­gusted by the fact that Rodolfo and I, who have been together for 10 years as of last month are denied over 1,140 fed­eral rights that legally mar­ried het­ero­sex­ual cou­ples have. Mar­riage needs to be rec­og­nized on the fed­eral level and the Defense of Mar­riage Act needs to be over­turned. It is not a state issue. No reli­gion will or should be forced to accept same-sex mar­riage but mar­riage is a state recog­ni­tion as far as rights are con­cerned. Reli­gions should have no say in any­thing other than whether they will accept the mar­riages in their faith.
4. I am tired of hav­ing to devote so much of my life to hav­ing to be an activist to obtain the same rights as other Amer­i­cans take for granted. I would much rather enjoy my time with Rodolfo, read, take pho­tographs, do my pod­cast, watch TV, social­ize with friends, etc. I have been a gay activist for since com­ing out 22 years ago. It is exhaust­ing and I have had enough.
5. This after­noon my son, Nathaniel, told me that I have fought hard for over two decades and that I should let oth­ers take my place, that I have done more than my fair share. I told him that I know many peo­ple whom have been in this fight for over 50 years whom have done far more than I have.
6. Unfor­tu­nately, I can­not sit back and I can­not stop. If I do that I will be pow­er­less and this effort requires ever hand on deck – every LGBT per­son, every sup­port­ing friend, every fam­ily mem­ber, every co-worker, every car­ing per­son and every voter that sup­ports us. We can­not win this bat­tle alone.
7. I was dev­as­tated today by this hor­ri­fy­ing news that blind-sided me and once again made me real­ize just how vul­ner­a­ble Rodolfo and I are, how eas­ily any gained ground won can be instantly eroded.
8. I real­ized just how easy it is for us to lose rights that we have won and how lit­tle those in power really care about us.
9. Think of how each of you would have felt if you found out that your mar­riage to your spouse whom you legally mar­ried in the U.S. or else­where was imme­di­ately dis­solved and mean­ing­less. At the moment Rodolfo and my mar­riage isn’t rec­og­nized in Texas but we are legally mar­ried in Canada and in any coun­try or state in the U.S. that rec­og­nizes same-sex mar­riage. How would you be feel­ing right now if this hap­pened to you?
10. I am thank­ful for my won­der­ful hus­band, Rodolfo Arredondo who is the love of my life. I am thank­ful for my son Nathaniel (the rais­ing of Nathaniel is the great­est achieve­ment in my life; noth­ing else comes even close). I am thank­ful for my daughter-in-law Doris who make Nathaniel so very happy and is a world-class mom. We are thank­ful for our grand­son, Cameron, whom I wish we could see far more often. I am thank­ful for my amaz­ing friends and the many peo­ple whom I know that make my life so much richer.
11. I know peo­ple get tired of hear­ing me in per­son or read­ing my emails and arti­cles or hear­ing my pod­cast com­ments about LGBT rights. I get tired of talk­ing and writ­ing about them. I get tired of hear­ing me. But then I read about the lat­est teen sui­cide or another gay kid bul­lied or kicked out onto the street.
1. There was another teen sui­cide reported in today’s Huff­in­g­ton Post by a 19-year old teen film­maker who filmed a video for the It Gets Bet­ter Project just a month ago. Eric James Borges was phys­i­cally, men­tally, emo­tion­ally and ver­bally assaulted on a day-to-day basis through­out his ado­les­cence and young-adulthood. He claimed that his mother per­formed an exor­cism on him in an effort to “cure” her son of his homo­sex­u­al­ity before even­tu­ally kick­ing him out.
2. I hear of kids being beaten up in school and nobody does any­thing to help them (I have appeared in press con­fer­ences with some of these kids and watched them tell their sto­ries with tears stream­ing down their faces). It isn’t just another research sta­tis­tic; these are real lives being destroyed. Far too many edu­ca­tors and far too many par­ents just don’t care and just don’t do some­thing about it until it is too late if at all.
3. vI hear that 20%- 40% of home­less youth are LGBT kids who have been kicked out of their homes just because they are gay and nobody seems to care. It is esti­mated that there are between 1.6 mil­lion and 2.8 mil­lion home­less young peo­ple in the United States. Remem­ber, between 20% to 40% of these home­less kids are gay. Esti­mates of the per­cent of gay peo­ple in the coun­try range between 2% — 10% with 10% prob­a­bly too high. The largest home­less shel­ter in the coun­try is the Ali For­nay Cen­ter run by Carl Sicil­iano who is another per­sonal hero of min and was a guest on my John Selig Out­spo­ken pod­cast. The Ali For­nay Cen­ter has beds for 120 LGBT kids and that is the largest such cen­ter in the coun­try. Many home­less shel­ters won’t take in LGBT youth or make it so uncom­fort­able that the kids won’t stay at many cen­ters because reli­gious fun­da­men­tal­ists run them and they make demands of peo­ple stay­ing at their cen­ters that are anti-gay. Carl sites a recent study that kids with deeply reli­gious par­ents are 400% more likely to be thrown out onto the streets than other kids.
4. I hear that object­ing to hate speech from pul­pits through­out the coun­try is inter­fer­ing with reli­gious free­dom when such com­ments about African Amer­i­cans, Lati­nos, Asians, Jews, women, Roman Catholics and oth­ers from the same pul­pits would not be tol­er­ated. Of course com­ments against Mus­lims still seem to be okay (but that is another rant for another time … one that I also feel strongly about). I don’t deserve equal rights if I am not will­ing to stand up for those of oth­ers deal­ing with hate.
5. And today I hear that my mar­riage to Rodolfo, the per­son who is my life part­ner, who is always there for me in the good times and the bad, who makes sac­ri­fices for me every­day, who puts up with my sick sense of humor, who watches me make an ass of myself far too often but who still loves me any­way that our mar­riage no longer exists and that we don’t matter.

I am tired and per­haps I shouldn’t bother with this. The Office is on NBC right now and Project Run­way All Stars will be on Life­time in less than an hour. I am in the mid­dle of a Robin Cooks lat­est med­ical thriller and I have another pod­cast episode wait­ing to be edited. But I can­not ignore what hap­pened today and each of you is impor­tant enough for me to share this with you. If Rodolfo and I and many mil­lions like us stand any chance of liv­ing a life with the same rights as other Amer­i­cans we will not be able to achieve this alone we will need the help of friends and family.

Thanks for being there and thanks for putting up with me. Obvi­ously, I am still hurt­ing. Feel free to share this with oth­ers. Rodolfo and I can’t do it alone.