Sundays to many of us represent a day for worship, a day for family and a day for love. Since May 18, 2003, every Sunday has meant something different for me and my family. The six-year anniversary this May marks the day when I heard my father was killed.

My dad, Fred Windmeyer, was walking the family dog in our north Topeka, Kan., neighborhood that Sunday afternoon. He was just around the corner from our home by an elementary school when a drunk driver hit him. The drunk driver was 21 years old and four times the legal limit of alcohol. Witnesses estimate that the driver was going 70 miles per hour on a residential road when he topped the hill, crossed over the median and struck my father with a Chevrolet pickup truck. The young man did not stop the vehicle and instead ran off to hide at his home in the woods.

There are so many things wrong with what happened that Sunday. No family should ever have to face the loss of a loved one due to a drunk driver. My dad always told me that life was unfair and he was right. There is nothing fair about what happens to victims of drunk driving and their families.

My dad was a hard worker. He was a farmer and never went to college. I never would have imagined this, but my relationship with my dad grew stronger as a result of my coming out and being open and honest with him. He often joked that he wanted to adopt my partner Tom so he could be legally part of our family. Of course, I convinced him that was probably not the best option and it would be weird for my partner to be my legal brother. It was his sentiment that truly counted.

This weekend I presented at the 19th Annual GLSEN Boston Conference. My friend and I ran a workshop that we'd done before titled, "Queer History." It is, if I do say so myself, a really fun workshop. At the end of this post I'll copy 10 or so of the events, and you can see if you can guess when they occurred.

But this post is actually about conferences in general, both attending at presenting at them. I love presenting at conferences, and I strongly encourage everyone to present if they are at all interested. It doesn't have to be an LGBT conferences - there are a lot of climate change things happening with Copenhagen coming up, and pretty much any topic you're interested in has a conference happening somewhere.

Attending conferences is one thing - it's more than just going to learn things. It's about being around a community of people who are all involved enough in an issue to want to attend and interested enough in what other people have to say to do more than just read a book or website about the issue. And being a presenter is a really cool experience. People go to your workshop because they think what you have to say is valuable. And it is!

In our queer history workshop it's really neat to hear things like "OH! I just saw Milk, so I know when that happened!" or "Oh my gosh, I never knew that many people had died from AIDS" or "I knew about Stonewall and I love going to pride, but I never knew that June was pride month because of Stonewall. That's really cool!"

Click "read more" in the bottom right of this post to read the rest!

Fraternities and sororities. Greek life. Thinking about this seems to make a lot of people in the LGBT community cringe. However, that is not the case for everyone, and hopefully it is becoming the case for less and less people. At my school, the last president of Interfraternity Council was openly gay. Part of his story can be found in the book BROTHERHOOD: Gay Life in College Fraternities. This book, put out by Lambda 10, which is a part of Campus Pride, is one of three Greek themed books that they have. The others are Out on Fraternity Row: Personal Accounts of Being Gay in a College Fraternity and Secret Sisters: Stories of Being Lesbian & Bisexual in a College Sorority. They are all filled with very interesting stores and can be found here.

At my university, we have a program called SpeakOUT - basically a LGBTQA speakers bureau. We go up and tell our coming out stories then answer questions for the audience. It's really a great experience, and I love answering the questions - no matter how ridiculous some of them might be.

We have allies on our panels, and sometimes they get really silly questions. But one that I love the most is this - "What do I have to do to become an ally?"

Dear New Hampshire,

You're welcome to join the party any time.

Love,
Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont and Iowa

So, today's post is slightly selfish of me, but it raises to me an interesting possible debate.

Every year my organization holds a Drag Show, with 100% of our profits going to benefit the AIDS Resource Center of Ohio. It brings in over a thousand dollars, and it's our most popular event of the year. We fly in a notable drag queen to emcee for us, and then we have acts from numerous local talents, students, and our E-Board members, with a finale of everyone in our organization with the testicular fortitude to jump up on stage with us. Well the strangest thing happened this year... somehow I ended up on the E-Board. Crap. I have to do a number...

OK, so my first fear in this is "Oh my God I am not getting up on stage, I have huge calves that no dress can hide, I can't dance, I'm gonna look like a fool! And I'm going to do all this in a dress?!" And my second thought is "Oh my God, what number should I do? I could rock some old school Janet... ooh or what about the Yeah Yeah Yeahs? Oh, I've got it! Coin Operated Boy! Shit, I don't have a boy to BE coin operated! Oh my God, what am I doing for choreography?" (The spaz session continues, but I'll spare you the rest.)

So being me I've been talking everyone's ear off about this prospect, and met with some surprising results. First, I've been told I'd make a good drag queen... which I'm still unsure if that's a compliment or an insult. I've been told it'll be funny... sometimes that's just the message I get when I tell someone and they immediately guffaw. But I've also been told that drag is gross, and disgusting. Or creepy. Or "wrong". Um, what? I'm dressing up to put on a show to raise money for AIDS research and treatment. Lots of people do it. Birds do it, bees do it, heck even educated fleas do it (Oh my God maybe I should do THAT song!). What's wrong with drag?

On Saturday April 25th, 2009 I got to spend the day at Trinity College in Hartford, CT. The group of students I met with are in the beginning stages of forming a state-wide coalition of college/university LGBTQIA student organizations. I was amazed with the ideas they were coming up with; why there was a need, how the organization how run, and what the coalition would do, etc.

The organizers of the meeting, Crystal Nieves & Nicolette Laume, did an amazing job of contacting all of the student groups from around the state to come on Saturday. Though they did not get the turnout there were expecting – I reminded them it is not quantity, it is the quality of those who are there and want to do the work. I know with time the coalition that they have started with grow into something wonderful.

I pledged Campus Pride’s support for them. So as they grow larger and need advisement we will stand beside them and help them grow. One of the students was a high school student currently and heard what was happening here in CT. So as he is heading off to college in Massachusetts in the fall he wants to create the same thing there. This will be very exciting.

~~~

During our conversations that day someone asked “Why do we call ‘grassroots organizing’ grassroots?” I had to stop and think for a bit, then I came up with this analogy (all you plant people will link this one):

It's been a busy time for Campus Pride! We have just finished another Stop The Hate Train the Trainer program this past weekend and to date have trained nearly 1200 students, faculty and staff over the last eight years on bias and hate crime prevention at colleges and universities.

Stop The Hate (http://www.stophate.org) is an educational initiative of Campus Pride. The training prepares campuses to prevent bias and hate crimes and the curriculum delves into twelve learning modules ranging from victim support to the attraction of hate to offender motivations and typologies. The training was actually hosted at University of Wisconsin Osh Kosh where we had in attendance area UW campuses. Each of the new trainers will serve as active, visible resource advocates and implement a series of six anti-hate crime prevention efforts over the next year.

Become a Stop The Hate trainer for your campus. Learn more about the program online at StopHate.org!

This past weekend, I was able to attend Out for Work’s 2009 West Coast Regional OUT for Work LGBTQA College Student Career Conference. It was an amazing experience. It was the first time they had done a regional conference, and I was glad to be apart of it. They have a huge national conference in September every year, however, for me it is hard to get to DC and it was after the first week of school so I did not know what my schedule would be like.

While this conference was on a much smaller scale, it still had a lot to offer for those of you who can more easily get to Los Angeles over DC. It had workshops, keynote speakers, celebrities, panel discussions, a resume workshop and a career fair. With Lockheed Martin as the National Presenting Partner, we got to hear a lot from them, but also from others including Ernst & Young, Human Rights Campaign, Sodexo, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Raytheon, BP, and The Williams Institute. All of the sponsors of the conference can be found on the conference website.

During the conference I got to talk to Nick Verreos from Project Runway Season 2 and Carey Sherrell from the Apprentice season 6, as well as Donna Rose who I feel is a celebrity as a trandgender activist.

So, I've been under a rock and didn't know much about the whole Miss USA debacle until recently. Color me surprised when I found out it involved Perez Hilton, the diva blogger that has made a name for himself out of drawing obscenities on pictures of celebrities in MS Paint, asking a serious question.

If you're like me and live under rocks, here's a lowdown of what happened at the Miss USA pageant. Miss California, or Carrie Prejean, went up to the podium during the Questions round of the pageant and drew Perez Hilton as her questioner. A video of what happened after the jump.