Gay Rights or, UN, I Am Disappoint.

Article here-ish.

So, bizarrely, and worryingly enough, the UN have decided that being anything in the GBLT rainbow (the phrase you love to hate) is now punishable by death. Okay, maybe that's an exaggeration. What they've actually done is thrown out a bill saying that it's not okay to execute someone for being GBLT.
This is a Bad Thing, and should be recognised universally as such. Really.
I mean, what the fuck. When did this happen? When did this action become okay?
It's essentially along the same lines and justification as if you executed someone because of their creed or colour- it's not a choice, or a 'life decision'. Who the hell would choose to be something that faces so much prosecution, even in the world today? It's like the atrocities carried out against such people in the past (and we're talking proper people, with faces, like Alan Turing and Oscar Wilde) just never happened.
I mean, I'm lucky, I'm a middle-class white girl with a good education, and I'm straight. I'm pretty much safe from any gay-hate, right? Wrong. My best friend, the one who means the world to me, is gay. About fifty per cent, maybe more, of my friends identify somewhere on the GBL scale. The thought that I could lose them to something like this makes my blood run cold. It's not fair. If nothing else, it raises the question 'can you be executed for the crime of being straight?'- I mean, it's the same sort of thing right? If you can be executed for your gender identity or sexuality, who says it has to be a queer gender identity or sexuality? My 'safe' identity as a straight female could be as unsafe as my bestie's identity as a gay male.
So what can we do?
Fight. We can fight. While it is unlikely that in my tiny corner of the world, this law is going to become a problem (NZ was the first country in the world to legalise gay marriage and gay adoption) we still need to show support for queer people in other countries where it is likely to become a problem. It feels like one step forward two steps back, and it's not fair.

In other news, I started to knit a jumper. Hopefully it won't be completely fail.

Tears In The Rain

I like the rain. There, I said it. It's the best weather. When its sunny, it's either too cold, and the sun is right in your eyes, or its too hot, and you feel like the sun's personal goal is to melt you into a blob of sticky goo. When its windy, it's too cold, it makes biking a chore, and grit gets in your eyes. Cloudy days are nothing days, the elemental equivalent of a fat-day in shapeless jogging bottoms. The thing about rain is that it is what you make it- it fits round you and your mood like an old lover or favourite jumper.

Rain is cosy when its dark inside and warm inside. It keeps watch while you're curled up on the couch with a good book, movie, crafting, the cat, my laptop, a cup of tea. It makes me think of cinnamon and fruit-bread. Its the old-but-loved comfort blanket.
Rain is soothing when I'm in bed reading by the glow of a lamp, and I can hear it drumming on the corrugated-iron roof like thousands of tiny feet, and the cat is curled up on my dressing-gown or somehow taking up all my quilt despite being about a tenth my size. It's the purr of the cat, the hot drink.
Rain is homely waking up in the morning when I don't have to get up with the alarm and hearing it beat a tattoo, smelling coffee and hearing Mine Papa play Stuart and Marconie on the internet radio downstairs. It's undemanding homework and lazy lunch with the folks.
Rain is beautiful when I'm out at night and the car head-lights pick out the rain in front of them like thousands of tiny jewels. Its whispered words in a cocoon of music and petrol-smell.
Rain is cheery when I can smell the hot tarmac cooling on a warm day, and it colours in the gravel one tiny point at a time. Its eating an ice-lolly after a long hot day.
Rain is persistent, standing in the rain waiting for the bus, and I can see the rain blowing up the hill, and I can feel it soaking through my jeans but my feet are warm and dry inside a pair of Gran's knitted socks and Doc Marten's. Its getting on the bus and finding the seat with the heater under it.
Rain is coming in from the outside, glasses steamed so I can't see, hair dripping, and taking off my wet things to change into pajamas, and drinking tea. Its the Chelsea bun Mum bought for you.
Rain is seasonal: long bouts of rain in winter where its deliciously miserable for days, and I wear my dressing-gown over my clothes and toast in front of the heat-pump with the cat. The weather finally breaks in summer and soaks through thin cotton and dampens the parched ground. In spring when the rain feels fresh and makes the world lush. In autumn when the leaves are stirred to a russet mush by the damp and misty mornings smell like wood-smoke, moisture clinging to hair and clothing. Its memories and sensations, never the same twice, tumbling around you and caught on your skin.