Behold Florida State Senator Eleanor Sobel! Isn’t she beautiful?! (She reminds me a little of Jill from Desperate Housewives of New York. Maybe it’s that she actually is a Jewish New Yorker. Regardless, I’m so glad to call her a Floridian today! Are any Floridians actually from Florida anyway? I’m a Mississippian by birth. Don’t choke! It’s OK. I escaped.)

She has introduced Florida Senate Bill 1642, a Domestic Partnership Bill to ensure that we Gay, Lesbian, Bi and so forths can visit each other in the hospital and legally do such basic things as blink in each other’s presence. I am eternally gratefully to her for having the courage and conviction (balls) to suggest to the old Baptist white guys who keep her company in the Florida Legislature that the queers are, in fact real people who vote and pay taxes and raise kids who will grow up to vote and pay taxes, and who might actually account for 15% of the state’s population (Gasp! Cough! Choke!) and so should probably be guaranteed the full set of Floridian human rights instead of the 3/5 set currently offered. (Yikes! You read right! I did just go there. I figure I can get away with it since I have bi-racial children. My friend Carol who is married to an Indian man refers to it as getting the “bigot pass.”)

Senator Sobel, forgive my digressions. This should be about you. We love you. We thank you. We pray to the Kennedys for you. (Read my past blogs. It’s a big deal – I promise.) We think of you when we register our children in schools that don’t recognize them as siblings. We think of you when one of us goes to a doctor to get meds for the other who isn’t covered under the health policy provided by the employer of the first. (I didn’t mention, did I ?, that the employer is the good old U.S. of A.) We think of you, Senator Sobel. We think of you; and we thank everything benevolent for you.

Senator Sobel, please be in touch if we can do anything for you.