Marie Cartier

Long Beach, California – 2018 Pride! by Marie Cartier

Photos by the author unless otherwise indicated

Last year I published a photo essay with pictures of Long Beach, CA’s Pride week-end. You can see last year’s photo essay here. I also published a photo essay of the Los Angeles Resist March from last year here.

It feels more important than ever to re-member/ re-attach ourselves to the normality of resistance, freedom, solidarity, courage and joy. I hope the pictures here help you FAR family to re-member your activist selves and re-invigorate them if they are in need of it. I know mine was before the past week-end. Here are photos from the Long Beach Dyke March on Friday night, and the Long Beach Gay Pride parade on Sunday morning.

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Bible Study Back in the White House after 100 Years – And… They Still Hate Gays and Women! by Marie Cartier

So, I am perusing my twitter feed and I come across this headline:

White House Bible Study Led by Pastor Who Is Anti-Gay, Anti-Women and Anti-Catholic

The opening paragraphs read like my LGBTQ+ religious studies nightmare:

“The first Bible study group held for the U.S. Cabinet in at least 100 years is led by a pastor who believes homosexuality is ‘illegitimate,’ who doesn’t believe women should preach and has described Catholicism as a ‘false’ religion.

Ten members of the Cabinet, including Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, sponsor the study group, which holds meetings lasting between one hour and 90 minutes every Wednesday, according to BBC News. It unfolds at a location in Washington, D.C., that is kept secret for security reasons.

Its leader is Ralph Drollinger, a pastor and president of Capitol Ministries: an organization which aims to ‘evangelize elected officials and lead them toward maturity in Christ.’”

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Another Gay Bar Closes – Paradise Lost by Marie Cartier

It’s where I went when I wanted to be around other gay people when John Kerry debated George Bush in 2004 for the presidency. I had just moved to Long Beach from Los Angeles and I was still figuring out the city. I didn’t have access to the debate on my TV at home, and I needed to see it. The bartender turned it on for me and we all gathered around and watched. By we all, I mean the gay men and lesbians who frequented that corner café and bar.

I remember laughing so hard that day when someone in the bar said what I still love as a quote, “John Kerry: Bring complete sentences back to the White House.”

Later when I met my girlfriend, who would become my wife, we were living a few blocks apart and in the middle of those few blocks was The Paradise Café. We didn’t have access to the lesbian TV series smash The L-Word. We often went to the Paradise and guilted them into turning it on. We’d sit at the bar with French fries, which to this day I think are the best fries in Long Beach, and watch The L-Word, chiding a lot of gay men around us that they needed to watch to and catch up on this “amazing show!!”

It was where I went, where tons of us went after gay marriage was declared legal in California. I went in with a friend of mine, Carolyn Weathers, who is the cover girl on my book, Baby, You Are My Religion: Women, Gay Bars, and Theology Before Stonewall (BYAMR).

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Activism Helps You Heal: #RESIST #NeverAgain by Marie Cartier

Here we are, as I write this, a week after the horrible shooting of 17 students and teachers in Parkland, Florida. And the beginnings of a new student led movement: #NeverAgain—never another school massacre like what happened in Florida.

Today, one week after this horrific event, you had massive student walk-outs all over the country to protest the government’s refusal to do anything substantive about it. Here are images of student protests.

One of the out spoken survivors of the Parkland shootings, Emma Gonazlez, has turned into a spokeswoman/teen, for the movement, fueled by her fiery speech the day after the shootings.

She has continued to speak out as have the other students.

And the movement grows.

I am a college teacher, a college teacher in two public universities. I teach students one to four years older than the students at Parkland. Last week at one of the public schools I teach at there was an active shooter warning that turned into a hoax. I have in the past been on lock down because an active shooter was on campus. This is a very real problem for me.

Today I heard the president of the United States suggest that the solution to the every growing problem of gun violence is to arm teachers or other school officials with weapons. As a black belt in karate, I have had gun training and gun safety as part of my training and it is part of my self-defense resume. I had to learn it. What I can tell you about owning a gun (which I don’t) is that having a gun is not the same as knowing how to us one. I know how to disarm someone, if I am lucky and the fight goes in my favor. Anyone with any experience in self-defense will tell you that the quickest way to escalate a situation is to introduce a gun into the situation.

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Photo Report from the 2nd Women’s March, January 20, 2018 by Marie Cartier

You can see my photo report from the last Women’s March 2017 here.

And you can see more of my photos from this 2018 march here, here, and here.

Please enjoy these radical feminist images from 2018! Yours in the struggle FAR family!

All photos by Marie Cartier

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Putting “Winter Solstice” in your “Happy Holidays!” Greeting by Marie Cartier

When you read this dear FAR family, it will be December 22, the day after the winter Solstice. Winter Solstice is the shortest day of the year, and marks the beginning of winter.

I am Catholic, a board member of the Ministry for Gay and Lesbian Catholics. And I have practiced various forms of meditation since I was in high school through yoga and martial arts.

But I am also a witch, ordained in the Temple of Isis/ Fellowship of Isis and circle with various other Goddess groups, especially Circle of Aradia in Southern California. When I think of the winter holidays, yes, I think of Christmas and New Year’s, but I definitely also think of winter Solstice. Continue reading “Putting “Winter Solstice” in your “Happy Holidays!” Greeting by Marie Cartier”

Thanksgiving, Pies and Remaking Tradition by Marie Cartier

Dear FAR readers—you will be reading this blog the day after Thanksgiving, which is one of my favorite holidays. It didn’t used to be—but it is now.

Over twenty years ago, I remade this holiday for myself. At that time I was in my late thirties and was just coming out of almost a decade of healing from a very rough childhood. I spent a lot of time in those early recovery years yearning for some kind of magical “family” I thought “everyone” had. Once I really opened up about my story, however, I realized everyone doesn’t have any one thing. We all have something different—and everyone has a story.

I decided to create a ritual—I didn’t intend for it to turn into a tradition, but it did. Continue reading “Thanksgiving, Pies and Remaking Tradition by Marie Cartier”

#MeToo or Why I Didn’t Make a Film in Film School by Marie Cartier

I needed to check out a camera for an assignment. I was in the small equipment room looking at equipment I clearly did not know how to use yet. But, I was required to check out a camera and start. I was excited to begin.

I turned around to ask a question of the guy who helped us check out equipment. I was surprised, and then stunned to see him close the door behind him. I don’t know if he locked it, but he stood in front of it, blocking my exit, and asked me, “How bad do you want that camera?”

I was a radical lesbian separatist who wore “ACT-UP FIGHT AIDS” T-shirts regularly to school. I stared at him and said the first thing that came to my mind, “I am not the person you want to do this to. Trust me.” We stared at each other. He laughed and slowly moved away from the door. I left, with the camera (I think), I finished that assignment and somehow passed the camera class. What I do know for sure is that I never checked out a camera again, and somehow convinced myself that the “equipment” part of film making was somehow too technical for me.

I had come out to LA from Colorado and was extremely proud to get into one of the best theater and film schools in the US. However, I was completely not “used to” the level of casual and cruel sexism women in the industry were subjected to. There was an unwritten code that if you wanted to make it as a woman—well, you better toughen up and get used to what the industry looked like for women. Continue reading “#MeToo or Why I Didn’t Make a Film in Film School by Marie Cartier”

Hillary Clinton, What Happened and What Happens Now? by Marie Cartier

“In the past, for reasons I try to explain, I’ve often felt I had to be careful in public, like I was up on a wire without a net. Now I’m letting my guard down.” —Hillary Rodham Clinton, from the introduction of What Happened

I just finished reading Secretary Hillary Clinton’s new book, What Happened. It is currently Number One on Amazon, outselling even Stephen King’s It and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale at this moment. Put another way- hardcover sales of the book are the highest for any non-fiction book in the past five years.

I’ve written several times during the past year regarding Hillary Clinton and the election of 2016. About the real meaning of “sanctity of life”—living a full life and voting for a candidate who believed in that for everyone, including women’s right to choose and also about the process of those trying to silence her/ shame her/ not listen to her and how she refused to be silenced.

Devastated after the election I wrote a post here on FAR. And months afterward, I wrote how many of us were not “over it” and were not “ready to play nice.” We, along with Secretary Clinton, are not “ready to play nice” still. And probably will not ever be. We may be willing to (as I will speak of later) lead with love and kindness—but that is different from “playing nice.”

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A Total Eclipse of My Heart by Marie Cartier

Kim and I with our hosts and new family friends

I’ve known for years and years that on my wife’s, Kim, bucket list was to see a total eclipse of the sun. She began over a year ago researching weather conditions and making reservations, researching camera equipment, buying the special eclipse lens so that she could shoot the sun.

By the time we left on our road trip to visit first our tribe of sister family in the Midwest at an annual gathering, and then to visit various friends, she had four reservations for the eclipse viewing—all in different states. She patiently explained to me (again) that she would be checking weather conditions and “chasing” the eclipse if need be. I understood, because as I said, I’d heard about the eclipse for a while (lol). I knew we’d be making friends with the NASA weather page which I checked continuously for the last two weeks. I would put in the different locations where Kim had made reservations over six months ago, cities near the center line of totality: Illinois, Nebraska, Missouri…then there were cloud predictions in all of those states and it seemed she should have stayed on the west coast and gone to Oregon or Wyoming. Continue reading “A Total Eclipse of My Heart by Marie Cartier”