Ada Milenkovic Brown

When I was a microbiology grad student in 1976, I had this friend in law school. Whenever he opened his mouth in class, the other students laughed at him, because he looked male and he sounded female. There were other things about him too, that seemed biologically in between. It was clear to me then, as a biologist and friend, that when society divides up people very stringently into male and female, some people are left out in the cold. It was certainly quite clear to him too, because he attempted suicide.

About 1 in 2000 people don’t fit comfortably into either gender category. Some have the DNA of a male and their bodies are female. Some appear to have a female body in childhood, but look male as an adult, as well as, some individuals are born with a mixture of male and female body parts.

If males and females are only supposed to marry each other, as the proposed Amendment One insists, who should these people marry? No matter which gender they picked, they would be in a same gender relationship.

I bring this up because of those voters who believe that being gay is a matter of moral choice outlawed by the Bible, not a matter of biology. Yet people exist for whom marriage, biologically, is a same sex relationship no matter who they choose. So why can’t it be, that for gay people and other LGBT people, that who they are attracted to and how they self-identify is also biological?

I am a Christian. I am called to love God and love my neighbor. That tenet of my faith never changes. But when you look through the Bible, people’s understanding of how to do that does change. That’s one reason Jesus and the Pharisees had major issues with each other. And, for example, if you track what the Bible and the Bible-related religions say about divorce through time, there’s some radical changes from Genesis (no) to Deuteronomy (yes) to the Gospels (no) to Modern Evangelical Christianity (heck, yeah).

And given the fact that gay people exist, if gays can’t get married, and you have a problem with same sex relationships, what would you say that gay people *should* do? There’s only two options:

1) Do you insist that gay people should never have sex ever?
Do you think that’s realistic? Do you think that’s fair? Do you think that’s possible for you?

Or

2) Gay people should marry someone they are only pretending to be attracted to.
Would you want to live like that? Would you want to be the other person in that marriage?

I can’t see how these options are loving to my gay neighbors. And that is why I am against Amendment One.

I don't get Groundhog's Day. Six weeks from now is Mar 15, which is five days before the vernal equinox. If we have six more weeks of winter, then spring would start almost a week early. So how is that the long winter alternative?

Something amazing happened last weekend at IllogiCon in Raleigh, NC. The publisher of Bull Spec Magazine, Samuel Montgomery-Blinn gave a session called The Best of 2011. He named my story, Nadirah Sends Her Love, which appeared in the Feb issue of Crossed Genres, as one of the best spec fiction short stories of 2011 and recommended it for award consideration.

Now, there have been a number of wondrous short spec fictional stories published in 2011 by some mighty fine writers. And I don't know how far my story will get in the standings. But just getting to this point is huge. I'm still walking around in a daze about it.

This comes right after reading a really good review from Abyss & Apex of River, the anthology edited by Alma Alexander, which just came out and which has one of my stories (Vodnik Laughter) in it.

It's starting to make me feel like I can actually do this writer thing.

I will be on two panels at IllogiCon this weekend:
LARPing and RPGs (M). Friday, 3:00 PM, Washington
Getting Started as a New Writer. Saturday, 4:00 PM, Lincoln

River, the Anthology edited by Alma Alexander, is now available here for preorders: http://www.darkquestbooks.com/store/product-info.php?pid109.html

It contains my story, Vodnik Laughter, as well as great stories by other great writers (and I've read other stories by some of these people, so I can tell you it's true).

Yesterday we drove to what North Carolinans call The Triangle to attend fellow NC Codexian James Maxey's wedding. (You may know him as the author of some really exciting spec fiction books such his Dragon Age series and his new series coming up which starts with Greatshadow and Hush.)

Spouse and I decided we'd take advantage of the excursion to check out the Rembrandt exhibit at the NC Museum of Art. I figured we had all the time in the world, since the wedding wasn't till 8 pm.

The exhibit was well worth seeing, because, hey it's Rembrandt, the Shakespeare of painting. It is amazing what that man could do considering almost everything he painted was the same color, brown. Like Shakespeare, scholars have gone back and forth regarding whether Rembrandt had painted certain pictures or that they were actually by someone else. In one case, they decided that a different artist had painted it because . . . it was multicolored.

I couldn't help thinking about the irony that the Rembrandt tooth-whitening system is named after a guy who painted everything brown.

We left the museum around 5 pm. Even given rush hour in Raleigh, we had plenty of time to get to the wedding venue in Hillsborough, 30 minutes away.

That is, if the wedding was at 8 pm. Which I was becoming more and more unsure of, the closer we got to Hillsborough. See, I've problems in the last few years with getting dates and times right. I misread things. I showed up at a friend's funeral a day late. Stuff like that. So now I was worried. I didn't have the invitation with me. What if I'd gotten it wrong?

So we drove to our hotel, which was where the out of town guests were staying. I asked the clerk if she knew when the wedding was. She gave me a copy of the handout for the wedding party. It said wedding 4pm-10pm. Oh crud.

Spouse and I threw on our dress-up clothes and headed for the venue. He said he knew approximately where it was. And then promptly went the wrong direction on the interstate. We got that figured out and pulled up at the venue at 6:40 pm. We couldn't find a building with lots of cars around it, so we didn't know where to go. We saw a woman walking outside and asked her where the reception was, because we figured we'd long missed the wedding. She was the bride's mother and said, "On no, you haven't missed it, the wedding's at 8 pm." Then the bride came out, not yet in her wedding dress, and laughed when I related the saga of the last few hours. She said, "It must be something about writers."

At the wedding James and the bride read vows they'd written to each other. Then he read a poem he'd written for the occasion. And, of course, they danced together for the first time as a married couple at the reception at 11:11pm on 11/11/11.

At the reception James also talked to me and the other writers invited (NC Codexian spec fiction writers, Gray Rinehart, Edmund Schubert, Suzanne Warr, and Rick Fisher) about how it felt that his bride had written better vows than he had. Because writers angst about stuff like that. I pointed out that he hadn't asked us to critique his vows ahead of time.

Only the next day I realized that I could have told him a wedding is an emotionally intense experience. And some people react to that kind of experience by becoming less adept at communication. And other people become better more adept.

The contract signed, I can now report publicly that my horror story, "Abaddon, Foul Angel of the Abyss", has been sold to STUPEFYING STORIES.

When you live along a much traveled road, occasionally some stranger's drama will impinge on your life - - -

Found a crime scene when I went out to get the paper this morning: Forty-two $1 lottery tickets strewn across the bank of the ditch in front of our property. Because of the gambling connection, I felt a little of that CSI Vegas glitz. But seeing as this is CSI *Winterville*, the actual crime was littering . . . and creating a public nuisance. (If you spent your formative years in the Sixties, you would recognize that last as a reference to Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant".)

The alleged perp was either driving home or to a friend's house, based on the evidence. To get to a restaurant, bar, club, you'd have to drive the other direction.

The tickets were time stamped for 10:07 pm last night for a one time drawing which was also last night. I figure, because it's a round number, our gambler bought $50 worth of tickets. I don't see the tickets flying out the window accidentally because said gambler opened a car window to get some air. Surely the tickets would have been kept in a secure location, pocket, purse, just in case one of them won.

So the only reason for the tickets to be on the ground, was that the perp learned they were of no value, most likely because the winning number had just been called out on the radio. Possibly the perp pulled over to see if they had the winning number. Did our gambler throw them out the window in disgust, or to celebrate having the winning ticket?

Losing seems more likely, because of the odds. And if it were me, not that it would be because I think gambling is a waste of my money, I'd have held on to the tickets till I got home to make sure I didn't throw the wrong one away.

In any case, Mr. or Ms. Gambler, just because you had a bad evening doesn't mean you have to add to our Hurricane Irene cleanup. Although I guess I should be thankful you didn't do a hit and run take out of our mailbox, which happens to us about once a year

Here is my schedule for Renovation aka WorldCon in Reno:

Fri Aug 19
9 am Codex Breakfast Toucan Charlie's (Atlantis)

10 am Broad Universe Rapid Fire Reading Reno-Spark's Convention Center Room A15
(I am near the end of the line up and will be reading if time permits.)



See you at the Con!

What I should have posted last week but didn't get around to: Finished the Clarion West Write a thon after having revised three short stories and a three chapter chunk of my novel, Fairytale Hell.