Well b-low me down

Daggone! Enough of y’all meandered over to the Bloggies website to vote this thing in as best glbt weblog!

I would like also to thank whichever mysterious nominator(s) tossed my well-worn baseball cap into the ring in the first place, and whichever Bloggie finalist-winnowing committee people plucked this blog out of the pile and brought it to wider attention as a finalist.  For most of us, publishing a blog with any sense of mission and regularity is a labor of love, receiving little or no fiscal compensation.  The quality of the community the blog helps to collect is our daily bread, and recognitions like these are our butter.  My plate runneth over.

I’d like to give a respectful bow to the other Bloggies best glbt weblog finalist blogs, Queerly Complex, Lesbifriends, Naked Blog, and Aussielicious (way NSFW! unless you work at Babeland or Good Vibes! Suitable For Major Winkie Viewage is what that puppy is! Plus general madcap Aussie fun!).  Now if you visit this link to a YouTube plea by Lesbifriends‘ author and feel regret about not voting for her blog because she’s so spunky, I can only offer condolences, since the whole shebang’s done this year.  But she makes a good point: we pretty much are all different, and are all mutual supporters, at the largest level.

As with The Lesbian Lifestyle’s annual blog awards (this year’s “Lezzys” will be announced Wednesday night , 9-11pm EDT, on The Lesbian Lounge podcast), it’s an enormous honor at all to be considered for special recognition among my peers.  I feel strongly that all us queer folk and our allies online value one another’s presence,  despite or maybe even because of the infinitesimal hair-splitting and incessant in-fighting that we can engage in over the political struggles that mean so much to us.  I’m so very glad we’re out there, being out, here.

Does Lesbian Dad represent queer folks online generally?  Oh hell no.

Without even skipping a beat I could list a half-dozen other blogs which I think serve or represent LGBT people and interests far, far better than this one. Here are the ones that spring instantly to mind:

• Pam’s House Blend
• Bilerico
• Mombian
• The New Civil Rights Movement
• Box Turtle Bulletin
• Joe. My. God.

See? Didn’t even work at that. Mostly because most of them are in the LD sidebar.  They’re all huge, either group-authored or ridiculously hard-working single-author-authored; they all have deservedly wide audiences and provide a daily digest of critical news and analysis for a good many of us. Go to any of their blogrolls and you’ll find a ton more.

Then there are gobs of great culture (mostly pop) blogs, also big and must-reads for many — for us gals, AfterEllen, Dorothy Surrenders, AutoStraddle, and Grace the Spot, for instance.  Countless other writers do an amazing job of sketching out their individual queer lives in personal narrative blogs like this one; I read a ton of them, mostly the parenting ones of old friends or folks who’ve become friends thanks to the internet (there’s a humungous, if sometimes not utterly updated *cough* list of lesbian family blogs at LesbianFamily.org).  A lot are in my rolling “Featured” blog roll over in the LD sidebar, along with hetero ally friends from the blogosphere. I wish I had time to discover and read more.

One of the best things about awards dealies like the Bloggies is that they can enable new readers to connect to new clumps of blog community.  So I want to extend a hearty welcome to those  among you who meandered over here to answer the question, “Who is this Lesbian Dad anyways? Never heard of him. Her.”  If you hang around and check it out, you’ll quickly find that this is no general interest LGBT blog. It represents just one slice of LGBT community: mine.  And those like me, whoever they may be.  On our behalves I’ve jumped feet-first into some political battles and issues, but then I’ve spent a good long time by the side of the pool (or wherever one jumps feet first) towling off and recovering, thanks to my advanced years and tender sensibilities. I write predominantly about my parenting experience, but many other topics shoot off from around that.

Like with us queer folks, we’re basically a ton of other things in addition to being queer folks.  With queer parents, we’re even a ton of other things in addition to queer parents.  Or even genderqueer parents.  Living on the West Coast.  Running around with white skin- and middle class-privilege.  Trying hard to pay attention, and spread the wealth of love.