Carnival of Bent Attractions

Welcome to February’s installment of the Carnival of Bent Attractions. We appreciate you stopping by Queercents and hope you’ll take a moment to poke around our site. Queercents is a personal finance blog written by and for the LGBT community. We offer tips and epiphanies about money… packaged and posted daily from a queer perspective.

In keeping with the theme of Queercents, we’ll introduce each Carnival submission with a money spin. This month’s posts include a poem, interviews, personal essays, and some L Word humor flanking the usual rants about religion and politics. So here goes…

If we were passing out $100 bills for the best submission, my choice would go to Brandon Peele at Generative Transformation for his essay entitled: Sexuality and Identity. Here’s a snippet to entice you to click over and read in its entirety:

“My identity was formed in reaction to my environment in that I fashioned it to reflect the values of society. The parts of my persona which are unsociable, at least in the Midwest, aka gayness, I repressed and attacked. I opportuned to be the funniest, most sexually active and deviant, most criminally creative person in the room. Many people were hurt by this identity, not the least of which is myself. In my case, understanding sex and sexuality has helped me greatly understand much of my past and may indeed prove fruitful to understanding yours.”

Unfortunately, we’re not giving away cash prizes, but hopefully Brandon will accept our kudos as readers gain something from his thoughtful essay.

Okay, moving on to politics and religion:

But first find your handy currency converter as we move from US Dollars to Great Britain Pounds with a submission from Diary of a Goldfish entitled: For He Loved Him as He Loved His Own Soul. This post (from across the pond) explains and opposes the UK Catholic adoption agencies’ position against the Equality Act 2006 — agencies say they’ll close rather than serve gay adoptive parents.

Closer to home, we see how money makes the world go around… at least when it comes to politics. Bloggernista brings us a video clip entitled: Frank Slams Gay Republican Hypocrisy. Rep. Barney Frank says that even though the Republicans claim to be advancing LGBT equality within the GOP, they are voting for, contributing money to and generally enabling those who demonize the LGBT community. Money will continue to do the talking when it comes to politics.

From the writer at Labradorite we have: WTF Annie’s Mailbox? This post explores why gay couples are lobbying so hard for marriage equality and not just civil unions. There are many financial implications apparent in this topic and it’s been written about a number of times at Queercents if you’re interested in reading more.

Experts agree that the key to a good financial plan is proper organization and record-keeping. Documentation falls into this category. For the transgender community, often times this presents a challenge. Jay Sennett from his self-titled blog submits a post called: The Mis/Documented Blues.

He writes, “As a transsexual, I had lived for more than ten years with seemingly contradictory documentation. (Birth certificate and driver’s license did not match. A crime in most states! Furthermore, stating a gender moniker on insurance forms other than the one on the birth certificate, a crime! Doing so on a job application, a crime!) So I’ve broken the law innumerable times because the governments that be decided I should be mis/documented.”

This is a nice segue into the Queercents interview with Jamison Green where we asked him to get personal about money and share his thoughts about financial issues impacting the trans community at large. A quick disclaimer… Marti Abernathey was kind enough to submit this post for the Carnival just so you know that we’re not tooting our own horn.

We will take one liberty though and point you to another Queercents interview that we conducted with Maria Angeline, the Carnival’s Ãœber-mistress (as dubbed by Dana at Mombian). Maria’s response to our Ten Money Questions was both candid and touching and you’ll see a different side exposed than what you might gather from her posts at Daily Dose of Queer.

This brings us to some lighter reading as the Carnival winds down. With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, maybe it’s time to put our love of money aside for a moment and consider more pure pursuits. Ron Hudson submitted a lovely St. Valentine’s Day poem written by Janina, a guest writer at his blog.

He also submitted an entertaining personal essay about eating in roadside diners called: I Shoulda-orta had a Tomato Juice. Read the post to understand the title and remember… there’s nothing like spending $3.99 for some sunny-side up and a slice of Americana. A bargain we all can appreciate here at Queercents.

And finally, we’ll end with my favorite Sunday night past-time and the only reason that I continue to spend money on my cable subscription: The L Word. Dana at Mombian merges the lovely ladies with thoughts from The W’s recent state of the union address with If The L Word Characters Ran the Government.

Well, that’s a wrap for February. Next month’s Carnival of Bent Attractions will be hosted at Viviane’s Sex Carnival. You can submit posts here through March 1st.

In the meantime, enjoy the selection above and we hope you visit Queercents again soon!