the Positivity Blog

I stumbled across this blog today written by Henrik Edberg and I think it has some pretty great positivity ideas used in different ways... And he uses quotes which I love :)

Check out this post titled Gandhi's Top 10 Fundamentals for Changing the World.

Different Families and Homophobic Bullying

I recently attended a talk at my local town hall about different families. It was was part of National LGBT history month (here is the UK) and National LGBT fostering and adoption week. I was pretty excited to have such a talk in our area of London which is not very alternative or affluent.

 

All in all I found the talk a bit of a let down but did learn about Stonewall's Different Families campaign. We watched part of film made to educate UK teachers on how to work with children who come from non-traditional families. It is to help teachers combat bullying and homophobia in schools from a young age. It was refreshing to hear teachers speak of how they never assume that a child has a mother and a father at home and that family units come in all shapes and sizes. I also liked that one teacher spoke about using the word "gay" in class, essentially normalizing the term, the fact that same sex couples exist, and that children may come from families with two moms, two dads, or more parents. Of course this is made as a teaching tool and reality probably doesn't look as positive but it does give me faith that schools are moving towards the right direction. It is so important that children and young people who identify as LGBT or have LGBT parents have a safe and supportive environment for learning.

A Positive Attitude and Affirmations (Beginner)

A few months ago a good friend introduced me to the concept of affirmations- and affirmation is anything that you do or say. There are positive and negative affirmations and in order to help yourself achieve your goals and be as happy as possible you need to change the way you speak to yourself. An example would be instead of saying "I'll never learn a new language it's too difficult" you would constantly reinforce the message "I am learning a new language." By saying and thinking positive affirmations you are opening a door within yourself and taking the first step towards your goals. The idea is that by constantly pushing the negative thoughts quickly away and replacing with a positive affirmation you reprogram the way you think and recondition yourself on the whole.

My friend gave me the book "Experience Your Good Now!" by Louise Hay and recently I've been spending time reaching parts and listening to the CD that came along with it. Although I have tried to put affirmations into practice from time to time over the past months, last night I decided to give a true go.

Immigration Equality panel in London

I recently attended a panel on binational couples and LGBT asylum seekers put on by Immigration Equality and Interlaw Diversity Forum here in London. The panel consisted of Andrew Landau from Immigration Equality, Andrew Sullivan who is a well known blogger, columnist, and author who writes on a variety of political issues and is part of binational couple, Helena Wray from Middlesex university and expert on family migration law in the UK, and S. Chelvan who is a barrister who fights for LGBT asylum seekers.

I was interested to see who would attend and possibly meet other couples in similar circumstances. There were quite a few couples, some people on their own and possibly also part of a binational couple, and several lawyers. We didn't do any networking or meet anyone but that is at least partially my fault as I felt pretty sad by the end seeing so many couples effected by this and listening to the speakers.

I really enjoyed listening to Andrew Sullivan and have been reading his blog since the panel. He has an inspiring story of fighting for his rights and ultimately winning. He also taught me about the ban on people who are HIV+ or have AIDS immigrating to the USA which was in effect until 2010. I was shocked and disgusted to find this out. Andrew is an excellent speaker and a great advocate for LGBT rights and is active in social and political issues in general. Watch how Andrew felt about attending the Immigration Equality Panel.

United by Love, Divided by Law

Out4Immigration is a organization dedicated to equal rights for LGBT couples in term of immigration to the United States. On Valentine's day they started a visual campaign via Tumblr for binational couples to post a picture or video to share their story and essentially put a face to this issue. There is not a lot of awareness around this issue so it's terribly important that there is a greater awareness about the inequalities around LGBT immigration rights.

So far there are only a few pictures and videos but I hope that people will add to it as more people find out about the campaign. Please have a look!

United by Love, Divided by Law



And here's our contribution!

LGBT immigration rights

As I wrote about a few months ago in my post titled  Binational, I wanted to look a bit further into the subject. In this post I want to explore what rights LGBT binational couples actually have at the moment and what legislation effects this.

I found a few good websites and organizations dedicated to immigration equality for the LGBT community which provides some good information for ways to try to stay or immigrate to the USA to be with their partner. Unfortunately as same-sex couples are not recognized as of yet so those immigration rights and avenues are the same as any single person wishing to immigrate to the states. Your options are basically to study, come as a tourist (but you would have to be able to prove you have good reasons to go back to your home country and having and American partner doesn't help that much), or to find a job which would sponsor you. The first two options are temporary and provide little assistance in supporting yourself and your family. Finding work in the US and convincing them to sponsor you is another can of worms that is not very easy to navigate. Of course there is also the option to enter into the green card diversity lottery every year.. but millions apply for the 50,000 spots given out annually and it really is like winning a lottery.