Hello Sweet Readers!
Recently I have been hearing a phrase on several television shows and it got me thinking what it meant. Upon doing some research I learned that I wasn’t the only one, many gay people don’t really know what it means either. What is the phrase? I’m a friend of Dorothy.
Many believe it originated because of the movie The Wizard Of Oz and the very effeminate character of the cowardly lion who makes the comment “we are friends of Dorothy”. (Perhaps L. Frank Baum, the author of The Wizard Of Oz, was secretly homosexual or bisexual or a closet gay supporter and put that line in his movie as a little message to gays worldwide. ?) Judy Garland became a great gay icon and on the day of her death gays worldwide committed suicide and the riot at the Stonewall bar in New York took place. But this was not the origin of the phrase, the phrase was in use at least a decade before the book the movie was based on was written.
So when was the phrase originally created? Back during the time around WWll it was illegal in the United States to be homosexual so gays had to be careful when seeking out other gays to socialize with. A woman named Dorothy Parker was a prominent New York humorist and an active gay supporter. She penned many phrases that are still in use today by gays. She wrote the phrase “a friend of Dorothy” meaning a gay man and it was adopted by gay men in the military as a way to find other gays without being discovered. Gay men and women serving in the military in WWll were in service and traveled world wide potentially spreading the phrase everywhere through oral history. It’s at all possible that the phrase was transferred in origin from Dorothy Parker to Judy Garland because Judy was a universally-known movie icon and an even-larger celebrity.
In the early 1980’s, the Navel Investigative Service became aware that gay men sometimes referred to themselves as “friends of Dorothy” and became convinced that there was an actual woman named Dorothy who was the leader of a large homosexual group of military personnel. Being unaware of the history or origin of the phrase they conducted a massive search for the woman, hoping to convince her to disclose the names of her gay military friends.
According to Wikipedia there is another meaning to the phrase. “Being a friend of Dorothy also is meant to say that you are on a quest to find a man. As Dorothy was on her quest to find the “wizard”. Men asking others if they were a friend of Dorothy’s were asking “are you in search of a man.”
Beginning in the late 1980’s many gay men and women who frequented cruises would approach the staff of the cruiseline and request activities geared toward the gay passengers. Not wanting to openly advertize these events, they referred to them as “A Meeting of The Friends Of Dorothy”. These events became so popular that many cruice lines have added one activity nightly. Recently there are even entire cruises that are publicized and booked solely for gays and their supporters.
Well, the true origin of the phrase may never be completely agreed upon, but one thing is clear, the true friends of Dorothy are alive and well and going strong!
Until Next Week, Dear Ones, Love & Many Hugz! Leeza
Hello Sweet Readers!
Standing on my front porch, in the total darkness, in winds gusting to 50mph, clutched onto one of the support posts, is NOT how I expected to be spending my quiet Sunday evening. Yet, there I was. Sunday night we were hit with a severe wind storm, as I’m sure most of you were, and we lost our electricity. We opted to go out and sit on the front porch and patiently wait to see if it was only off temporarily and get out of the hot house.
The wind was blowing pretty good and things were flying around and the porch was shaking with the extremely intense gusts. Suddenly there was a very strong gust and the porch seemed to lift up and slam down and we decided, hot or not, the house was a safer place to be right then. No sooner had we all got back in the house than we heard a large cracking noise and one of our sheets of roofing flew off of our porch and then each gust of wind seemed to be shaking the house.
My husband went out side to investigate and found that one of our support posts was pulled loose and raising and slamming back down each time the wind gusted and that a cross beam had snapped in two. The important thing now was to get it fixed and in as quick a fashion as possible. So, while my son held down the support beam and I clutched onto the post my husband ran to get hammers and nails and pieces of wood. We worked as quickly as possible in the still gusting winds to get the beam supported on all sides by the wood and the post nailed back down to the porch. Crisis averted, we then had a little time to take a deep breath and thank God.
Sometimes when things happen we don’t see the full picture as it will unfold and reveal itself at a later time, all we can see is what’s happening right then and wonder why it had to happen. I’m not talking about the roof, I’m talking about my son and his not being able to return to college this semester. Several events have happened over the past year and health issues have occurred and so my son decided because of them he should transfer to a college closer to home and be close if something happened and he was needed in a hurry. He decided on a college about sixty miles away from home instead of returning to Marshall that is almost three hundred. The goal was to get him enrolled and back at school in the fall, but certain events happened and he was unable to do so, leaving us wondering why and how we were going to make this possible.
He had to quit his job when he came home because he was a security guard on campus and since he was no longer a student he could not keep that job. He came home and for reasons I won’t go into, has not been able to get a job. Money at home is tight and we live, like so many others, wondering if each paycheck will cover all the bills. Stress levels are high and sometimes tempers between him and his father flare. His father rants about how he hasn’t gotten a job and is not contributing anything to the household budget yet is living here and eating food that his father is buying. Yet, he has spent most of what he had left in the bank to buy food and things that he needs, yet his father doesn’t see that, he just wants to complain and act like he is the only one trying. He had to take a cut in pay and get a job closer to home because of health issues and driving at night. In order to compensate he has been taking odd jobs and works most mornings before he goes to work painting or some other light construction. Since we have only one vehicle, this makes things a little tough when he takes the car all morning and then has it at work all afternoon and evening. My son asked him, “How am I supposed to get a job when you have the car all day long every day?” To which my husband replied, “Well, your mother can take me to whatever job I have scheduled and then come home and take you to work, then come back at 2 and get me and take me home to get ready for work and take me to work, then come back and get you from work, then come and get me at 11.” I’m thinking, sounds like a lot of up and down my stairs, in and out of the car and driving. In other words, spend most of my day driving in the car shuttling one or the other of them somewhere or another to or from a job. Fun for me. NOT.
So, in all this, I am praying and asking God “Why?” has he chosen not to help my son get the last year of his education out of the way. Why is a child that has worked for this very thing so hard all his life and who has studied so hard and looked forward to this since he was in kindergarten, suddenly been reduced to sitting at home with his mother and unable to reach his goal? Not ever thinking that God is always in control and that he puts us where we are for a reason. I came to that conclusion after my son calmly said, “I have always believed that I am right where I am supposed to be and God saw that this is where I would be needed right now.”
Humbly, I prayed and thanked God for his wisdom and in his timing and I laid my son at his feet and told him, “Your will Lord, YOUR will.” I don’t normally preach to you and I am truly sorry if I have offended anyone with this weeks column, but I always pray before I write each article and tell God that he has to help me to write this because I alone are not capable of doing it. And he has never failed me yet. Sometimes I sit down at my computer without a single idea in my head and just begin to let my mind wander and my fingers start typing in things on my keyboard and suddenly a subject pops into my head or an article catches my attention and the thoughts just begin to flood into my head and down my arms to my fingertips and up onto my screen.
So you see, my Dear Ones, I can’t always take the credit for what appears in this column, but I can take the credit for the love and heart that goes into it each week. Thank you for taking the time to read my wild ramblings and scattered thoughts.
Hello Sweet Readers!
Is anybody but me fed up with the political ads flooding our televisions, radios, newspapers, and e-mails? I don’t have any problem with the ones that talk about the candidates’ accomplishments or their stand on the issues. The ones that really annoy me are the ones that try to discredit their opponent and test our intelligence, acting like we are mindless idiots who will believe anything we hear or read. Unfortunately, there are some who don’t research things and find the whole truth. Instead, they take someone else’s word for what happened or what was said.
Richard, my son, commented the other day, saying that if ads are going to say “my opponent did such and such, or my opponent did this and it’s not right,” then they need to say, “This is what I did, or this is how I would handle the issue.”
Politicians are very quick at pointing the finger and saying “what you did was wrong,” but very slow at saying, “this is what I will do instead.” Isn’t this the way we all sometimes are? We see something wrong, but we don’t step up to say, “I will do something about it.” We all know that diversity is a wonderful thing. Individuality is the key to finding who we really are. In our community, diversity needs to be put aside, and unity needs to replace it. Yes, I said our community, I feel like I am a part of the LGBT community, even though I am straight, because I have accepted you as my family, and you have embraced me. So this is our problem, not just yours.
I understand there are different sections of the community: we have the leathers, the bears, the twinks, the bisexuals, the Transgendered, the transvestites, the drag queens and kings. These are things easily understood and they differentiate between us. I don’t understand why one group doesn’t accept the others as a part of the same community? Why do some leathers hate bears? Why aren’t bisexuals accepted in some communities as being part of the gay world? Why do some members of the same lifestyle not accept others of the same lifestyle? For example, why don’t some bears accept other bears? Aren’t you both into the same things?
What does this have to do with politics and the coming elections? Let me tell you, we need to find which candidate(s) will best support the issues and desires of the gay community and then pull together to get them elected. Put aside our differences and focus on what makes us all the same as human beings with hopes and dreams and wishes for our great nation to once again rise up and be a powerful contender in the world community. Each of us is a small part of a larger community that is a small part of an even larger community which is a small part of the world community. In some way, the things we do and say have a ripple effect on the rest of the world. One voice isn’t much, nor well heard in the great choir of the universe, but if we add it to hundreds and thousands and millions of other voices, it can be heard around the world.
Be that one small voice that joins with others to make our nation and our world a much better, more tolerant place to live in and thrive. Be the beginning domino of a great chain that falls in a wave of change. Stand up and be counted!
Until next week, dear ones,
Love & Hugs! – Leeza
