Hi everyone, we’re on hiatus for a bit! Our next season will be focused on queer spirituality, broadly defined. Thank you to everyone who made Season 2 such a success and so much fun, from our brilliant guests to all of you, who have listened and passed these episodes along. It’s great to hear your feedback.

Find us!Website/Substack: http://www.queereverything.comYouTube: Queer Everything's channelSocials: Visit our LinkTree

I'm excited to be on today with two longtime friends. They met in medical school in Beirut and have been together for 18 years. I jokingly call their story the worst one night stand ever– because 18 years, two countries, several cities, and two children later, they’re still going strong. Their story is beautiful, and it has it all – from years of one having no idea that the other was pursuing them, to long distance before they could be together, making hard decisions about love and career, navigating family and the world, and finally where they are now, bringing up their two little boys, starting with an adoption call that changed their lives forever.

I was 35 when I met a long-term gay woman couple for the first time, in which the women were significantly older than me. It brought to mind an Adrienne Rich quote about the consequences of invisibility and lack of modeling. It goes: “When those who have the power to name and to socially construct reality choose not to see you or hear you...when someone with the authority of a teacher, say, describes the world and you are not in it, there is a moment of psychic disequilibrium, as if you looked in the mirror and saw nothing. It takes some strength of soul--and not just individual strength, but collective understanding--to resist this void, this non-being, into which you are thrust, and to stand up, demanding to be seen and heard.”

As those who’ve been listening to the podcast know, part of this project is to offer our stories to people like us and to the world. We are here. And it is my pleasure and privilege to be able to share about who we are.

Find us!Website/Substack: http://www.queereverything.comYouTube: Queer Everything's channelSocials: Visit our LinkTree

In this episode, I continue my conversation with Mx. Yaffa, a queer, indigenous, displaced Palestinian person who currently serves as the executive director of the Muslim Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity.

In this episode, we talk more about the challenging and necessary work that they do with queer muslims and Palestinians. I am struck by Yaffa’s commitment to doing work that is really hard. You may recall the efforts earlier this year by a conservative coalition of American Muslim groups to ally themselves with right-wing efforts in the US to target queer and trans people. LGBT people face homophobia and transphobia everywhere right now, and Muslim LGBT people often face the double-bind of transphobia and homophobia in their home communities, and Islamophobia in the queer community and the world at large. Community spaces are more important than ever right now.

Yaffa also has a collection of poetry called Blood Orange, which just dropped on November 16th. She tells the story of how she was inspired to write it in this episode as well. All profits from the collection go to supporting queer and trans Palestinian work on the ground and elsewhere, so please consider getting yourself a copy– links in the show notes.

Buy a copy of Blood Orange!

Follow Yaffa on Instagram at @yaffasutopia

Follow MASGD on Instagram at @themasgd and sign up for their newsletter here.

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