All Are Welcome

I took the above photo at the Good Life Cafe in Mendocino, California in 2017.

I had never been to Mendocino before. I needed to visit the town because it’s the location of the Kashaya Sky, one of the four queendoms in The Queendoms Series.

Mendocino is a tiny beautiful coastal town on the bluffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It’s often foggy, but on the day I visited it was all blue skies and spectacular views.

Here are some pictures I took of the view from the Mendocino Headlands.

The town – it’s a village, really – is so small that there are no traffic signals, and at the end of many of the lanes, you can see the ocean.

Recently, I was reading Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s blog. Her post entitled Speaking Out struck a chord with me.

Rusch, who is white, wrote about how her stand on current events has caused some of her Patreon supporters to cancel their subscriptions. They can do this, of course, which Rusch acknowledges; but she also took the time to examine her own reaction – how she felt about speaking up and then having a few of her readers choose to withdraw their support in this manner.

I think she was also speaking as to what responsibility there is - if any - to be more transparent about who we are as writers and as citizens at this particular moment in time.

Like Rusch, I am a fiction writer. And since The Queendoms Series is about multicultural romances between gay men in a future matriarchy that is largely post-racial, my view until now has been that it should be obvious what I stand for. It’s not like you need to analyze my stories with a fine-tooth comb to try to figure out what I believe.

But I was wrong about that. This – the time of George Floyd’s murder, Black Lives Matter, protests and marches – this is the time to speak up.

I support Black Lives Matter and all civil protestors who call for equal rights and equal treatment under the law for persons of all races, ethnicities, ages, sexual orientations, and gender identities.

And as I post this – news is breaking that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in favor of workplace protections for LGBTQ persons. It’s a win for LGBTQ people and for all of us in this society.

This blog – like my work – is about valuing the humanity in all of us.

And like the sign in the Kashaya Sky says - all are welcome. ;-)