We're Here, We're Queer, We're Family and We're Not Going Away
Passing Through Generations Trying To Find Life and Love In A Death Culture
My little town, Lakeview, was right in the heart of what was America’s second most populous city, so growing up there wasn’t at all like the picture we get of life in small town America. My grandfather, Rudolph Levin, settled there with his wife and 9 children near the old shul on Patterson Street between Addison and Waveland, just off Broadway in the 1880’s. Many of the same elements still existed when I was young, in terms of stores on the main drag where people congregated, bustling intersections and owners and clerks knowing what people were coming for, often having it ready for them when they got to the counter. Everybody on the blocks knew each other and watched out for the kids playing in the streets. We had big block parties every year on Roscoe Street with all kinds of little street fairs and holiday celebrations and the Pride Parade originally coming down Broadway, until it got too big for the narrow street and was moved to the wider Halsted Street.
After the mostly wood frame center city was deliberately torched in 1871 by the developers who later built “State Street, that Great Street” and the “Miracle Mile” of Michigan Avenue on the ashes, Chicago became the first megalopolis built according to a plan by the architects Louis Sullivan, William Adler and Daniel Burnham, elements of which are still used around the world. The fact is that it is much cheaper to destroy the building with fire than to demolish it properly with a crew, so even when I was young, it was common for old factories and warehouses to go up in flames. People would wink and say that it got hit by “Jewish Lightning” and it was always , “Yah, right, it was Mrs. O’leary’s cow” in jest, talking about the great fire.
For me, the most important aspect of the plan was the maintenance of adequate green space for the people, without packing them in like sardines, like in the eastern cities. Tucson, with it’s scorching dry heat, wisely sprawls on a grid with wide residential streets and lots of vacant space in the central city, most of it undeveloped. Even downtown , in the middle of the week, there’s no heavy foot or vehicle traffic, with office and government buildings well spaced and big plazas dotting the downtown area.
Most of the Lake Michigan shore is parks and beaches. Lincoln Park was right down the street from us , with a sea wall on the lake shore at Barry Avenue through the tunnel and a tunnel at Roscoe Street opening up on Belmont Harbor. For me, the lakefront was my escape from my dysfunctional family. I could walk or bicycle all the way to the Lake county or to Indiana, along the shore. A short train ride took us to camping in the Indiana Dunes on the southern shore of Lake Michigan.
I really have to admit that I was the cause of most of the dysfunction, with all the temper tantrums and rage that go with forcing a kid into an unnatural gender role because of what they’re packing in their pants. My parents were both hitters, but not excessively so until I got big enough to fight back and then my aunt stepped in before we hurt each other very badly. Dad got to trying to hurt me and i busted a couple of his bones defending myself. We were estranged for many years but my father was wise enough to be sure that we were friends when he died last summer. I can’t say the same for most of the rest of the family.
The landlocked boundaries of the city are ringed with forest and prairie preserves at the ends of many bus lines and there were big parks with giant oaks and other trees the parks were built around, like Portage on the NW side and Marquette on the SW side, scattered all over the city , which was cantonized into mostly segregated little towns like Lakeview with extended families living in big houses or flat buildings. Lakeview was the only neighborhood in town fully integrated racially, culturally and economically, with the wealthy living closer to the lake. Some kids at Nettlehorst had holes in their shoes and some got dropped off in limousines. We walked the few blocks from Barry and Roscoe to the school situated between Aldine and Melrose, even when it was pouring down rain or snowing. We had good shoes and foul weather gear. My parents called us “Middle Middle Class” , living in the first block off the lake.
I started life at 512 W. Barry in my maternal grandfather, Erwin Kaufman’s home, living in the coach house over the garage with my parents, brother and two dogs, “Tuffy” and “Shicker” , at my Grandpa Erwin and Grandma Belle Levin Kaufman’s house, along with their Weimeraner, “Fuzzer” , my aunt, uncle, their two kids, mutt “Suzie” on the second floor and Dr. Leonard Graivier (Google him) , his wife and at least two kids and most likely a mutt of their own in the basement. One of my earliest childhood traumas was when Shicker ran away. It’s gone now, replaced with condos. We moved into the 533 Roscoe Apt. 3 during the summer of 1957 , right before my sister Betty was born. This house is similar to Grandpa Erwin’s house, but it’s on a corner. Our house had a big driveway into it.
Dad bought the building , built in 1917, the year Lakeview was annexed, from the Raskins, who lived in #2, with his attorney, Allen Meyer, for $36, 000 in about 1962. I remember we lived in the first floor, the Raskin’s daughter’s family vacated already when Kennedy was killed in 1963. The Meyers moved into #2 and #3 was rented to Jim and Elizabeth Martin, a disbarred lawyer dying from emphysema and a high school art teacher who taught at Wells High School in the middle of the war zone around the Cabrini-Green projects. Irish Catholics, they had at least six kids, but only four moved in with them. I just discovered that 533 W. Roscoe #2 is on the market right now for $551, 000. #3 sold when the Martins moved out in about 1975 for $90, 000.
The Levin family was ultra orthodox and the Kaufman family was secular and non-practicing. When we were very young while my great-grandfather was alive, the house was kept kosher for his sake. When he died, my grandfather threw out all the extra dishes, but the younger generations joined Reform congregations instead of becoming completely non-practicing. My generation felt we had become too assimilated and insisted on bringing back a lot of ritual and prayer that had been discarded. Grandpa Erwin and his brother-in-law, Max Loewenberg were an Architecture & Engineering team involved with construction of Temple Sholom, built with stone quarried near Jerusalem which was where I received my religious education from Louis Binstock , a prominent anti-Zionist and Omnist rabbi who preached interfaith worship and celebration.
The Levin clan gathered on Barry avenue on Saturdays, often for backyard barbeques and the Wasserberg family of Alan and Florence Singer Wasserberg, lived on Greenleaf Avenue, just east of Sheridan Road in West Rogers Park, gathered on Sundays in a house similar to this one, but we would usually do brunch or dinner somewhere like Ashkenaz , a famous Rogers Park deli and just hang around the house. This house is similar , with the front porch and stone steps.
Enough of my family and hometown . Meet some of the families I work with in the struggle for queer equality, sharing their media and attending local events on behalf of the Human Rights Campaign, but first let me share some about my favorite nieces who are not on the front lines of the struggle for #TransRightsAreHumanRights, but just living the best versions of themselves as they possibly can in the Houston area.
I met Ana Cecilia Rodriguez through her transgender daughter , Josie Marie Sicheri Rodríguez are two muy hermosa and fiery latin women with a lust for living , who wear their hearts on their sleeves, both badly disappointed in love quite a few times. We met several years ago in a support group when Josie was 15 or 16. This is how Auntie Tommie got so close to them, with calls from mama whining about lovers and daughter and Josie chats whining about mama and lovers.
Full inclusion support groups with minor members, like Breanna Spiteri Philips , owner of Trans People and the Allies Who Support Them , prefer that minors bring their parents with them. I insist on it if the minor is messaging me, because of my stalkers and the false accusations against me. The lockdown put a pretty good end to all the exploitative men in their lives, with them focusing on themselves, each other and their fur babies. Ana and I have talked about possibly buying a house together or renting me a room, when she’s put enough money away. Josie is currently living with a platonic friend, working and going to school, so with the tensions of living in close quarters gone, they’ve been out in the world living life loving living together lately.
This morning, the far and away most vocal and visible mama bear, Debi Jackson who works with HRC , but also has her own organization, Gender, Inc. , announced that her grandmother had passed away with this message:
Got a text today letting me know my grandma has died. I won't be invited to her funeral. Estrangement is funny that way.She was a longtime National Geographic subscriber and was so proud when she got her mail one day and saw Avery looking back at her from the cover. She was so proud and excited, in fact, that she called my parents to let them know. That's when my relationship with them ended.
She lived north of Seattle, so a month later when we went up there for Avery's book launch, she had the chance to finally meet my kids in person. I caught the moment she first saw them and wrapped them in a big hug, and it's one of my favorite photos of all time.
Goodbye, Grandma. I love you.
Blocked at Facebook, I sent this condolence message to her privately:
Good morning, Debi. I wanted to extend my sincere condolences to you and your family on the passage of your grandmother and offer the prayer that your parents are touched by the hand of the same loving god that touched yours before they pass over. For all his mishegoss, my dad had the good sense to make sure we were friends when he went last summer. Blocked as usual, or i would have commented on your post.
Debi, a tiny little bundle of powerfully determined mother love, was raised in a strict Southern Baptist congregation. Based in Kansas City, Mo. , she’s been all over the map since well before the NG story came out, fighting in courtrooms and legislative chambers for her transgender daughter’s human rights and the rights of transgender children in all the states. Gender , Inc. is selling institutional gender sensitivity training when she can fit it in with all her legal advocacy work and in your face lobbying she’s been doing with the repugnant legislators. She has done all of this in the face of incredible hostility from her family, her church, her neighbors and armed and inbred religious fanatics from all over the country.
She’s so old school Southern Baptist, she never curses and we constantly tease her about that, telling her what a catharsis it is to scream “Fuck this shit!” into the wind at the top of her lungs. Things have been so stressful for her this spring, fighting off hate bills everywhere (Gov. DeSantis signed the sports ban bill yesterday), that she’s finally letting some “F” bombs go in her postings, but I doubt she’s said it out loud yet in anybody’s presence. I don’t recall the specifics, but she posted this a few years ago in response to some move the Trump administration had just made, threatening trans kids.
Here’s a picture of the whole family from the story in this link. I haven’t read the story yet, but I’m pretty that’s the house across the street from the Westboro Baptist Church where a number of LGBTQIA+ families have been demonstrating, against their hate, doing stuff like the Jacksons are doing, or same sex parents chaperoning their kids’ lemonade stands.
conservative-mom-in-missouri-shares-her-hopes-and-dreams-for-her-transgender-daughter
What’s funny is that I have no clue what Mr. Jackson’s name is and I couldn’t find it in any of these articles, with him being referred to as Debi’s husband. She doesn’t say his name often enough for it to have sunk in to my head and i don’t know what her son’s name is either, with all the media attention focused on her and Avery. Avery’s declaration about how wonderful it was not to have to pretend to be a boy any more resonated right through my circle of boomer friends in early to middle stages of transition. After so many years of consciously suppressing innate feminine behavior, the day I stopped and went for a walk around the neighborhood, i felt a weight lift from my spirit like no epiphany I had ever had or have had since.
Avery’s dad said something that every parent of kids who are the least bit “gender creative” needs to take to heart. He realized that his choice was between having a living transgender daughter or a dead cisgender son. Like any true man of faith would do, he choose the difficult life path for himself over the potentially fatal one for his child.
I want to quickly wrap with a few links about the history of PFLAG and some of the more prominent mama bears well worth reading who have, like the Jacksons, fought fiercely for their childrens’ rights, most of them from conservative Christians families. . The only papa bear I know prefers that I don’t tag him.
Kai Shappley got death threats after she testified to the Texas Legislature during the last session. Like, Debi in Missouri and Kansas, her mom Kimberly Shappley , has been leading the struggle for transgender rights in Texas. Amber Briggle , also in Texas, but with a transgender son, shared this message from Jamie Brueshoff about
Rainbow Washing from there yesterday. Amber posted this exercise video video at facebook with this caption this morning:
”Strong body = strong mind. 13 sandbell thrusters for the 13 anti trans bills we killed here in Texas, protecting my 13 year old son. . (I may or may not have imagined this sandbell to be a few state senators...) . #txlege #ProtectTransKids”
Vanessa V. Nichols, a single mom trying to raise a transgender son in Florida, fled to Costa Rica last year and posted this from there yesterday:
If you ever ask “WhY DoEs tHErE NeEd to bE A pRidE MoNtH?!”Governor Ron DeSantis.
That’s why. He’s why.
Signing a bill into law on the first day or Pride Month discriminating against trans
people.Amongst a million other reasons, Governor DeSantis is why.
One of the comments on this video said this song was been played at most black family reunions since it came out. Let’s all pray together that the transphobic violence that has already cost at least 27 lives in 2021 terrorizing the Black and Latin communities is healed this year and people of all cultures embrace the entire spectrum of sexuality and gender expression in their families.
We are all one human family . We need to love all , hating none, in peace , love, unity and respect. There’s no other way out of here alive.
Celebrate Diversity! Happy Pride Month.
Thanks for reading
Happy Day
Peace