Corn Muffins and LGBT Rights

I was having a reluctant-parent moment yesterday.

I had volunteered to help my son’s preschool class make corn muffins for their Thanksgiving “feast,” but the teachers had scheduled it smack dab in the middle of his three-hour session, leaving me with time on either side, not worth driving home, but too long to linger. As if that wasn’t enough, I found out Friday that I was not only supposed to help them make the muffins, but to provide all the ingredients, bowls, and spoons, then drive the batter home to bake. I didn’t really mind, as I do love to bake with my son, but was feeling grumbly about the last-minuteness of it all and the fact that I couldn’t get any blogging done.

I nevertheless packed up a box full of flour, cornmeal, bowls, and other essentials, dropped off my son, and managed to pop over to the supermarket for a couple of items before going back to break down a simple recipe into 20 steps so each child could contribute something. (The eggs were very well beaten.)

Along the way, I reflected that although I was losing my usual quality blogging time, I was in fact doing something that gets right at the heart of why I’m writing this blog in the first place—being a visible presence to support my son and providing a positive example of an LGBT parent. I thought of this again later when I read Deb Price’s column in the Detroit News about Craig Covey, the first openly gay mayor in Michigan. Covey won his initial election to the Ferndale City Council by heeding a friend’s advice to become active in the community, joining or helping with various commissions and societies around town. Now Ferndale is about 15 percent gay, Price reports, and last year “passed a gay rights ordinance 65 percent to 35 percent on the third try.” Covey’s take on it? “Instead of separating (into a gay ghetto) or demanding our rights, we are achieving what we wanted, neighbor by neighbor.”

And corn muffin by corn muffin.