170 Is 'Coming Out' Still a Thing?

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CORRECTION:

Toast mistakenly associated “Prop 8” with Hawaii in this episode, but it was actually associated with California!

In 1998, Toast was still living in Hawaii and volunteering with the campaign to support marriage equality, which lost in an election put before Hawaii’s voters; that whole thing is known as Hawaii’s Constitutional Amendment 2.

So then, what’s Prop 8?

Prop 8 was a similar vote put before California’s voters in 2008, who also voted against marriage equality at the time.

So when did marriage equality become accepted across the country?

It happened during the final years of the 8-year Obama administration which was from 2009-2017.

“On June 26, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down all state bans on same-sex marriage, legalized it in all fifty states, and required states to honor out-of-state same-sex marriage licenses in the case Obergefell v. Hodges.”

And, all this stuff is just a teeny part of the always-and-still-continuing evolution of human rights and respect.

You’re part of it, now, too.

As of this writing – 2023 – a state of emergency for LGBTQ+ Americans is in effect according to the Human Rights Campaign, the largest organization advocating for LGBTQ+ rights in America.

You know we generally keep this podcast show thingamajig on the light and fun side, but we do want to make sure you’re aware that these are perilous times.

Steady On.

Other show notes, in bullet points:

Toast shares how she was raised as an Evangelical Christian & how she came out
Siena shares how she was raised Catholic, attended an all-girls Catholic school, had many gay uncles and aunties in her family & how she came out
AOL and dial-up internet
Siena had a “boy crazy” phase that featured being a big fan of Menudo (the Puerto Rican boy band), spent a day with them, and we have a photo of her with a young Ricky Martin to prove it. But we’re not posting it here. Yet. Who knows? Maybe someday we’ll post it somewhere.
approval of non-heterosexuality in the Christian Bible
the progression of human rights across generations
needing to re-learn what reality is when you discover you’re gay after having been raised in the Evangelical Christian world