Happy New Year to everyone! Hope your holidays were wonderful and full of good times with family and friends.

It is now time to get down to the business of a brand new year, 2009. Lets all start out with hope in our hearts that this will be a big and prosperous year for PFLAG/KC.

For our first program this year we are pleased to have back with us on Sunday, January 11, 2009, at 3:00 p.m. Passages of Kansas City. Tirelessly run by our own Paul Di George.

Passages is the only Youth program in Kansas City solely dedicated to providing lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning youth a safe and hate-free environment.  Passages provides a social model with others of like minds to share, experience and collaborate about their lives and those of their peers.

Through educational programs and activities, Passages creates social support networks that nurture and develop healthy and empowered LGBT youth.  These programs form a foundation of vital resources that help create a positive self-identity.  Youth become more competent to add to, and build a community of the future.

This is such an important resource for our LGBT youth. Please come out and listen to this program on Sunday and find out how you may be able to help. Something as simple as donating canned goods to there pantry means so much! Come out and hear this program. It will touch your heart.

See you there!

Dear PFLAG Family,

December brought our annual Holiday potluck luncheon which was well attended. Thank you to all of the members who brought and organized the food. We had several new people attend and I am thankful to everyone who made them feel welcome. Please remember that with the unpredictable weather, we may need to cancel a meeting. A notice will be posted on the website or you can contact any Board member.

Occasionally, our second Sunday meeting is preempted by the Church's schedule. This is a year that Easter falls on the second Sunday. Our April meeting will be held on the third Sunday. Future reminders will be noted in the newsletter as well.

I hope that all of you had wonderful Holiday Celebrations and are looking forward to a happy and prosperous New Year!

January will bring representatives from Passages youth group. If you have an idea for a program or speaker, please contact any Board member.

I look forward to seeing all of you at the January meeting.

Thank you for all that you do within our organization and our community as a whole!

Randy

When hate crimes comes up for a vote in 2009, will those of us who are standing up against the Prop 8 haters come out against those who would kill this bill? We must. We must stand up. We must never forget that even as we focus on the right to marry and the economic and spiritual benefits that it brings, we have a duty to protect our entire community's right to live without fear of being attacked for who we are. And we have a duty to stand up in this fight, and win it, because passing hate crimes legislation ten years after Matthew Shepard's death is a step toward marriage and every other community goal.

And like a spiral staircase, each step upward is a step in full circle: back to facing our enemies, back to the same set of falsehoods that every campaign against us uses, back to the same slanders, the same tired old bigoted players. But I do believe that we are climbing upward, even though we have not yet achieved so many of our goals. More Americans support marriage than ever before, and even in California, Prop 8 succeeded by far less than another anti-marriage initiative just eight years ago. Young people, LGBT or not, overwhelmingly believe in our rights, and are increasingly fighting for them. Employers are treating our families equally; faith communities are embracing us. Although we find ourselves facing the same people again and again, I truly believe that with each year that passes, we do so from higher ground.

But we cannot reach the top if we do not keep the heat on the other side, calling them to task. We cannot reach the top if we do not invest the same energy, time, and even anger into federal laws and policies that we have invested in fighting Proposition 8.

I know that especially after losing California, it is difficult to imagine how working on hate crimes, or an inclusive ENDA, or family benefits, or fair federal workplace policies, is going to move the ball forward for marriage. But it's clear to me that this is our path—upward and around, steadily and surely. It's clear to the right wing, which is why they try to block every measure that would help our community at all.

Martin Luther King once said that faith is taking the first step when you don't see the whole staircase. Many of you took that first step in speaking out against Proposition 8, or volunteering for Barack Obama, or coming out. Our equality—in our families, in our workplaces, and in our communities—is that staircase. It is linked together, and one measure follows from the next.

In this holiday season, we too, the LGBT community, are linked together with one future, one path, and one monumental task: to fight hate with truth. That is the next step that we will take together.

Happy holidays, and a happy new year.

Warmly,