For me, considering going through the adoption process as an adult is about having the right to configure my family the way that’s best for me—a right we should all have.
The word adoption is synonymous with babies and expectant parents, joy and dreams come true. For most, it’s about families becoming complete and children becoming a permanent part of a legally recognized household.
My story is more complicated.
Recently, I found myself in the atypical and unexpected position of discussing adult adoption with the woman who became my roommate two-and-a-half years ago when I desperately needed a safe place to collapse and recover from a lifetime of trauma. We were strangers who became fast family; she was the perfect big sister and, after understandable initial trepidation about opening her home to a stranger, her extended family and friends have become my family and friends.
Last year my childhood stocking hung on the fireplace and there were gifts under the tree for me—the first time I’ve had a family Christmas since my adopted mother decided I was gay and told me not to come home for the holidays in December 2011.
It hadn’t always been that way. Growing up, my adoptive parents would tell me the bedtime story about how I was wanted, desperately, for the ten years they waited for me. They loved me before they even knew me. While I still believe the sentiment to be true, I have learned over the past 38 years that loving someone does not a healthy environment or nurturing relationship make.
It’s also become clear to me that the caregiving contract between parents and children hardly ends at age 18—especially at a time when we are watching our social safety net be dismantled piece by piece—and it flows in two directions. Unless you are in a family with wealth and security spanning generations, concern about whether the kids will be able to land a good enough job (or jobs, let’s be frank) to support themselves and whether parents and grandparents will have enough in their retirement for their elder care has only increased over the past few decades. (snip-go read it, it’s great info)
The daughter of Democratic VP nominee Tim Walz didn’t start posting until after the 2024 election—and she’s starting to become a leading young political voice.
Hope Walz had no intention of becoming a social media sensation when she first whipped out her phone to shoot a video with her brother, Gus. A few months ago, the Walz siblings—children of former Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz—were headed back to their home state of Minnesota. Their father and his running mate, then-Vice President Kamala Harris, had just lost the 2024 presidential election. And Hope Walz wanted to post an update.
From the front seat of a car, the pair described what it was like to drive without a Secret Service detail for the first time in months.
“We’re finally free,” Gus said from the driver’s seat.
“I would not describe it like that,” Hope replied. “It is a little weird, but it does feel freeing.”
“We’re going to be okay everyone,” she added, before posting the video to TikTok.
After spending months on the campaign trail with her dad, and watching Donald Trump and JD Vance clinch the White House, Walz was ready to return to her everyday life in Montana, where she’d settled after graduating college in 2023. Instead, the video she posted in the aftermath of the election quickly amassed more than 400,000 views. And her next video, breaking down her post-election thoughts, garnered 1 million. Now, Walz is navigating her newfound public platform while trying to map out a future career in public service—a decision inspired by her time on the campaign. (snip-go read the rest of this one, too!)
December 27, 1914 The International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR), an inter-religious peace group, was founded in Cambridge, England. “The International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR) is an international spiritually based movement composed of people who commit themselves to active nonviolence as a way of life and as a means of transformation – personal, social, economic and political.” “Your goal is, in my opinion, the only reasonable one and to make it prevail is of vital importance.” –Albert Einstein, in a letter to the FOR Read more
December 27, 1971 Vietnam Veterans Against the War staged a peace protest at historic Betsy Ross House, Philadelphia.
December 27, 2002 North Korea ordered U.N. nuclear inspectors to leave the country and said it would restart the Yongbyon plutonium Plant to meet the fuel needs of its nuclear power reactor. The plant had been shut down and sealed by the U.N. in 1994 in exchange for shipments of fuel oil. When it was discovered that the North Korean had been pursuing a uranium-based weapons program, the U.S. and Japan, South Korea and the European Union suspended the fuel shipments.
December 27, 2002 1500 people gathered in Tel Aviv, Israel, the protest the Israeli military occupation of land beyond the 1948 borders of the country. With the slogans “End the Occupation” and “No to Racism,” and dressed mostly in black, they used a variety of means – drumming, singing, art installations, giving away olives and olive oil – to express their frustration and anger over the ongoing occupation. Alternative Ten commandments at demonstration in Tel Aviv, Israel The Coalition of Women for Peace also showed a movie, Jenin, Jenin, which had been banned for public showing, in defiance of police orders to stop the projector. Shown on a large outdoor screen, it was a narrative about the actions of the Israeli army the previous Spring in the occupied West Bank town of Jenin.
green bean casserole cupcakes today! (Some readers may not know or recall that I mentioned that green bean casserole cupcakes would be a fine thing, so I planned to make some. I didn’t get to it until today, but I did it! Just going to show pics and give an outline of their creation here, but I can expand upon the recipe if anyone cares for it. 🙂
So, last month, I was on Burr Deming’s blog, where he’d made a less-than-positive remark about green bean casserole. Being me, I couldn’t resist stating how much I enjoy it, and that I was thinking of doing it as cupcakes this year.
Well, what sounded like the right thing to do as to that was to use toasted cornbread crumbs seasoned with sage and whatever else you want; I used herbs to mimic poultry seasoning, with extra sage because I especially enjoy it. I mixed in some crushed french-fried onions (your choice of brand) and a T. of melted butter, thinking I’d make the crust similarly to cracker-crumb crusts. I lined (tried to line!) cupcake cups with the crust, trying to get it all the way up the sides, but it only went a part of the way; these crumbs are a bit heavy.
I baked the crusts for 10 min. at 350. Meanwhile, I made the mushroom sauce (I like to make my own so I can control fat and salt for myself) and since it would be ridiculous to try to layer these, I added the green beans right to the sauce.
After 15 min. (they didn’t look quite ready at 10,) I pulled the crusts and let them rest until cooled. Then I loaded the casserole, then put on the onions. Back into the 350 degree oven for 20 minutes. Then I turned the oven off, gave them 10 more because they looked as if they could use the time.
So, I think I could have baked the crusts 5-8 minutes more before filling. These aren’t truly cupcakes; the sides didn’t hold, though about a 1/4 inch in they were edible the way one eats a cupcake. Flavor-wise, if you enjoy holiday food flavors, holy cow they are awesome. Not tooting my horn, rather tooting the food’s horn. I may layer in seasoned cornbread crumbs in my casserole next year!
(Before trying to peel the paper off. And, yes, it’s on the kid’s old Poke’mon plate; it’s the perfect size for me.)
(Cupcake cup off; ready to eat. I ate the outside bits with a fork, then picked up the interior, and ate it like a cupcake. Mmm!)
tRump’s illegal military war crime actions / tRump’s gift to the oil companies that paid him prior / This is a war crime and illegal / tRump trying to get other countries resources for his own profits / tRump grifts and seeking bribes
It has nothing to do with US national security and all the minerals / traffic rights to make ships pay / and the “rare earth” metals that tRump wants a piece of. It is about profit. Hugs
The paying tribute and bribes to tRump and his slush funds is so anti what the US should and used to stand for. It is the very thing the founding fathers were most against. The courts have gutted the holding of tRump to account but the emoluments cause is what this was designed to stop. Ask yourself if Biden / Obama / Clinton had been so blatant in demanding bribes would you tRump cult supporters be OK with it still? Hugs
The appeals court told her to have it completely wrapped up by the first week of January and this is not doing that. I expect more to happen fast with this. She ignored the appeals court order to please tRump.
“There was blood everywhere, screams, people crying, people who couldn’t take it and were urinating and vomiting on themselves,” the college student from Venezuela who sought U.S. asylum, said. “Four guards grabbed me, and they beat me until I bled until the point of agony. They knocked our faces against the wall. That was when they broke one of my teeth.”
Mr. Miller’s belief that seven decades of immigration has produced millions of people who take more than they give — an assertion that has been refuted by years of economic data — is at the heart of the Trump administration’s campaign to restrict immigration and deport immigrants already in the country.
tRump trying to hold on to power illegally / Jan 6th insurrectionists / trying to change the history everyone seen live / Scamming / Using the US treasury & taxpayer funds to pay off tRump cult members.
The U.S. Air Force will provide Jan. 6 rioter Ashli Babbitt with military funeral honors, reversing a Biden-era decision that denied her family’s request, according to a legal group that has represented her family.
In June 2025, the Pentagon agreed to pay the Babbitt family a $5 million “wrongful death” settlement. Below, see the latest from Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who is himself reportedly suing the DOJ for $100 million.
Gay Pride Day on June 28, 1975 in downtown Minneapolis. Credit: Minnesota Historical Society/John Hustad Papers/Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies/University of Minnesota
It was likely one of the last pieces of city policy passed that winter, just before the New Year, a parting gift from a progressive city council.
On December 30, 1975, Minneapolis became the first city to adopt a trans-inclusive LGBTQ+ non-discrimination ordinance. Fifty years later, the United States still lacks similar protections on a federal level.
Minneapolis was special in that the right people were there at the right time, said Seth Goodspeed, director of development and communications at OutFront Minnesota, the state’s largest LGBTQ+ rights organization.
“Minneapolis, since the early ’70s, has really been a leader in the gay rights movement,” he said. “That comes out of a lot of the student organizing at the University of Minnesota in the late ’60s.”
It was home to Jack Baker and Michael McConnell, two men who, in 1971, figured out how to legally marry, the first recorded same-sex marriage in history. It was also the stomping ground of Steve Endean, who founded the nation’s largest LGBTQ+ rights organization, the Human Rights Campaign.
Endean started lobbying a city alderman, Earl Netwal, in 1973 to pass a gay rights ordinance. His timing was just right. In 1974 progressives won the mayoral race and the city council. That year they voted 10-0 to ban discrimination on the basis of “sexual preference.”
The next year, Tim Campbell, a local activist and publisher of the GLC Voice in Minneapolis, penned a trans-inclusive policy.
“I think it was a pendulum,” Goodspeed said. “The pendulum was sort of swinging back toward a more conservative mayor and a conservative city council.” (snip)
…
“You’re able to say, ‘We passed this two years ago, last year, in the past five years, and nothing’s really changed, there is no boogeyman under the bed,’” he said. “We’ve had these protections since the 1970s and all these fears that they might have … just never came to fruition.”
The public spaces in Nantes, a city along the Loire River in the west of France, might at first glance seem just like those in any other part of Europe. Across the city, there are numerous bike lanes, bustling fresh produce markets and pretty, historic squares.
But on closer inspection, there are signs of a profound attempt to make the city, its facilities and its built environment a more equitable place for women.
Hundreds of streets now bear the names of women, including Joséphine Baker, Frida Kahlo and Clémence Lefeuvre — the little-known creator of local specialty beurre blanc sauce. School yards, once dominated by soccer pitches, have been remodeled to incorporate spaces for calm and creativity. Stations for breastfeeding have been built in the city center to improve maternal comfort and visibly counter stigma. Free tampon dispensers have been installed in libraries, gyms and all kinds of other municipal buildings.
The new Boulevard Gisèle Halimi, named after the feminist lawyer (1927-2020), is located in the Prairie-au-Duc district on the Île de Nantes. Credit: Patrick Garcon / Nantes Métropole.
These initiatives form part of mayor Johanna Rolland’s bold plan to make Nantes, which is home to around 700,000 people and is the sixth largest city in France, a ville non-sexiste, or non-sexist city. From redesigning public areas to reallocating spending and inaugurating France’s leading center to counter gender-based violence, Nantes is trailblazing the way to safer, less discriminatory urban life.
“We couldn’t wait for change anymore, we had to take action,” says Mahaut Bertu, the deputy mayor of Nantes in charge of equality, the fight against discrimination and the non-sexist city project. “Femicides continue every year. Women suffer harassment every day. [To make change], we had to take a hold of the problem ourselves.”
Shortly after taking power in 2014, Rolland and her team set about carrying out research and compiling statistics on the extent of inequality in Nantes, since at that point limited information existed.
The findings of the research, which included income, violence and public spaces, were striking. Analysis found, for example, that of the 3,000 streets in Nantes, fewer than four percent of them were named after women compared with more than 36 percent bearing men’s names. More broadly, it found that, in 2014, 58 percent of women aged 15 to 64 were employed, compared to 63 percent of men. And women represented 70 percent of the so-called “working poor” — those in employment but below the poverty line.
From that understanding, city authorities went about introducing women-centered policy and ramping up investment. One of the most pressing issues was responding to gender-based violence.
In France, 99 percent of women have been victims of a sexist comment or act at least once in their lives, according to the French High Council for Equality, an independent advisory body. “Far from declining, sexism is becoming entrenched, even increasing,” its 2024 report concluded.
In November 2019, following years of consultation with residents, women’s rights groups and nonprofits, the city opened Citad’elles, a shelter for women victims of violence that provides free, centralized support 24/7 — something that to this day does not exist anywhere else in France. (snip)
…
This year, a pilot study is taking place in four of the schools to assess the impact of the new playgrounds. Fischer’s team is also working with school employees to help promote fairer use of the spaces.
At the same time, Nantes has an initiative to fight “period poverty” and to help reduce the costly burden of women’s sanitary products.
And, I saw a comment on the YT page under the video that leads me to believe he will drop another set tonight (Wed., 12/24.) So, there may be a Merry Josh Johnson post on Christmas morning!
A little tougher than much of what I usually post, though I always enjoy Evan Hurst’s work personally, and highly recommend everyone to do so, as well. Anyway, this is share worthy.
I had a whole other thing to finish writing for y’all this week, a Christmas/holiday post about the kinds of awful conservative Christians whose faith is based on God building a wall around heaven to keep out those they view as irredeemable sinners — you know, LGBTQ+ people, women who think freely, people who aren’t Nazis. I’ll finish writing it next week, or something.
But right now I am too busy laughing at this story Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal published and promoted on its socials this week:
screengrab, WSJ tweet 12/17/25
I did not know what I wanted for Christmas — you know, besides for every ICE agent in the country to stub their toe — but now I know that what my heart desires most is to witness a Religious Right meltdown over RUPERT MURDOCH’S WALL STREET JOURNALpublishing the story of “Chad, Brad and Thad couldn’t figure out how to make Chad’s mid-century modern go with Thad’s medieval sex swing and Brad’s collection of giant English settees. But they did it, and it’s FABULOUS.”
And praise Jesus, for Santa has brought it to me!
Y’all, sometimes the Moral High Ground is a very serious newsletter about serious subjects. Other times it is just about laughing at these motherfuckers and their small, sad brains and fears and prejudices and general status as the planet’s biggest losers. On December 19, 2025, as we head into the heaviest part of the holiday week, the Moral High Ground is the second thing.
The article is super fun, if you like real estate/interior design features, especially ones that are super-gay. Chad, Brad and Thad are actually David Gobberdiel, Ryan Tungate, and Michael Cowell, and they have a fabulous 4,000-square-foot duplex in Northalsted in Chicago. The Wall Street Journal helpfully explains terms for its readers who might not know:
The throuple, which is a committed romantic or sexual relationship between three people, took things slow at first.
David and Ryan didn’t live with Michael at first. (They were the original couple, as is often the case with throuples, two become three.) But then blah blah blah pandemic Michael didn’t leave, etc.
But $1.71 million later, they had a house, all three of ‘em!
The end result really is gorgeous, and despite how the WSJ helpfully explains certain things for people, it treats all of it is completely jejune, which is AS IT SHOULD BE. If Chad, Brad and Thad are happy, who the fuck should care?
For instance:
Real-estate agents are noticing more throuples and polycules buying homes together, often with everyone’s name on the deed. “Monogamy in this economy?” says Kathy “Kiki” Sloan, an employing broker with Property Dominator in Denver.
A polycule is bigger than a throuple, it’s more like a rhombus on top of a Venn diagram on top of a buncha wingdings. See? I am helpful like the Wall Street Journal, which explains it like this:
Designers are taking note, creating homes that balance privacy and togetherness for throuples and polycules, a group of people involved in consensual, interconnected, non-monogamous relationships.
Just as I said.
Anyway, the WSJ explains how Dane, Blaine and Shane spent $405,000 — must be nice, guys — to interior design their place up all-fancy-like and in a way that incorporated all their styles. “Designing for a couple is tricky enough. Add a third partner, and it is like a high-stakes game of design Tetris.” Did WSJ have to go with that exact visual? Oh hell yeah they did, and I recommend themfor a Pulitzer, or at the very least a FIFA Pulitzer.
Also they have a 96” x 96” mattress. For all the Tetris.
So as I was saying, the article is great, but what I really wanted to see was the religious right meltdown. While there’s not much yet in the way of organized hate groups or right-wing podcasters bitching, there’s some good clean fun from Twitter, like this weenus who writes for the right-wing Western Journal, who provided the headline for today’s newsletter:
Hahahahahahahahahahahaha, I am so happy right now.
That tweet has one reply, which simply says:
AT@j2tiger
@Josh_Manning@WSJ Three people can’t sodomize each other simultaneously. Someone’s gotta be at the end of the train. Learn math.
4:43 PM · Dec 18, 2025
LEARN MATH.
I am dying laughing.
Queerty found some loser on Facebook whining that “Why do publications like the WSJ prominently run stories about fringe subjects?” and “How many of your readers actually have a problem with their design tastes conflicting in their ‘throuple’?” As we are always discussing here, the Main Character Syndrome of these assholes is immense, the way they think their totally boring lives should be the center of attention in every story.
They found another who bellyached, “Everybody understands that this post is about promoting the far-left agenda, not about design tastes, right?” And here they thought Trump had made that illegal!
And it just gets more fun from there.
Oh no, not a rebuke!
Poor Jordan also whined in the comments that “It is shameful to normalize and celebrate what is degeneracy in the eyes of God. You should repent.” Boo hoo.
Now meet “Butthurt,” who is, well, butthurt:
Sorry, “Butthurt,” but there’s just not as much demand in the interior design journalism space for full-length features on Southern Baptist Becky who found the cutest “As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD” wallpaper to go with their “Bless this mess!” dish towels.
Oh, the fundamentalists and Nazis of Twitter are losing it.
“It’s way past pride month for this crap,” whined “Grover Dill.” So … he wouldn’t bitch had they published this in June? Please advise.
This person writes about with about as much fluency as the president:
Catronwalk@catalewalk
@WSJ a “throuple”!!!?! This is “immorality” “blasphemy” personified as stated in scripture! Trash. Makes you feel magnanimous WSJ!?!?!?
1:54 PM · Dec 17, 2025
4 Likes
MAKES YOU FEEL MAGNANIMOUS WSJ!?!?!?
(By the way, not gonna go down a theological rabbithole here, but there is no Bible verse that says throuples are bad. In fact — IN FUCKING FACT — the Bible is absolutely full of polygamous arrangements. It’s just that most of them involve men having multiple wives and concubines. I’d argue that today’s throuples and polycules are far more nurturing, loving and egalitarian. Of course, the religious right hates things that are nurturing, loving and egalitarian.)
This jerkoff either asked AI or a thesaurus to write their comment:
A flagship paper treating interior design friction by a socially marginal polyamorous throuple ‘feature-worthy’ reveals metastatic cultural rot, and an abdication of moral and editorial restraint.
Forsooth and herewith!
This person is very upset because WHAT ABOUT TRADITIONAL-HETEROSEXUAL-PENIS-IN-VAGINA-THROUPLINGS?
Leonardo Danger@300aacblackout
@WSJ Now do a feel-good story about two women and one guy. Oh wait, you would never do that because gay is best.
4:30 PM · Dec 17, 2025
1 Like
Would Leonardo cry so much if WSJ had written an article about a white fundamentalist Christian man with a bunch of underage sister-wives? Just curious.
Finally, this guy is just repulsed, I tell you, repulsed, with British spellings!
John DiCarlo@JohnDicarlo20
@WSJ This article is a new low for the WSJ. Promoting deviant sexual behaviour. Welcome to the bottom of the slippery slope. I am repulsed, and I can see why you turned off the comments on your digital paper. I am disgusted.
1:17 PM · Dec 17, 2025
8 Likes
Oh, bless their hearts.
What’s fun about this is that these people are genuinely upset, and they think they’re upset about something that matters. They think there’s a God in the sky who actually is as small-minded as they are, a God who would truly be upset about Kevin, Devin and Tevin living in whatever kind of joyful matrimony they all choose to as consenting adults.
As usual, these people are creating God in their own tiny, hateful loser image, and you can tell, because of how God has all the same fears and insecurities they have.
Let’s not forget jealousy either.
Because again, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob’s house is faaaaabulous.
Ain’t ONE heterosexually-yoked fundamentalist Christian couple on earth whose tacky-ass McMansion in the suburbs looks that good.
And they know it.
What if these guys are also happier than every heterosexually-yoked fundamentalist Christian couple on earth?
Oh fuuuuuuuck.
Hope all your weeks are merry merry, whatever you are or are not celebrating at the moment!
Scottie's Playtime 