This is my first blog post

Well, let’s see what this looks like! My son, Nik, has helped me get this blog started.  I am posting a picture from my first time participating in a Gay Pride Parade.  I marched with the Gay Father’s Association of Seattle (GFAS) in the Seattle Pride Parade.  It was the most thrilling and meaningful thing I have ever done and ever felt.  Stephen Schlott, a long-time member of GFAS snapped this picture of me as we filled balloons with helium to give to kids along the parade route.  Mike Macklin, also a GFAS member, kissed me at one point in the parade, right in the middle of the parade route, and I will forever remember that.  You see, I was taught that two men kissing was a sin next to murder.  Mike also had been brought up as a Mormon, and he knew full well all that I had been through in coming out, because he, too, had been through it.  We weren’t in love, or dating, and we had just become friends in talking as we filled the balloons before the parade.  He told me of his BYU experiences, of hearing, in person, the infamous “Little Factory” speech by Boyd K. Packer.  His adult son and fiancee came by before the parade started and greeted us, helped us continue filling balloons.  When we as humans allow our fellow-humans to be themselves, instead of trying to mould them into what we think they should be, we will see Divinity.  Heavenly Father loves balloons.