Hey! Sunny here. Check out my site and feel free to contact me. You'll find links to my resume, research, digital artwork, and much more. If you'd like me to create something for you, such as a website, CG animation, an LED-lit sign, etc. just ask and we can work something out - my rates are very reasonable. Please visit my company website, Seashore Design for more information and to view my work.
I'm very much a Romantic at heart: "marked by the imaginative or emotional appeal of what is heroic, adventurous, remote, mysterious, or idealized; marked by expressions of love or affection."
Belfast Pride
Saturday, June 10, 2023
Pride was extra special this year because it was hosted by Belfast Area High School. Attending BAHS as a teen was a very challenging time in my life. I was bullied every day for being gay. I started the school's first Gay-Straight Alliance, but school leadership shut it down. I was later suspended for wearing homemade pride t-shirts. Due to these experiences I became committed to LGBT rights activism, which you can read more about here.
Times have changed. 20 years later, BAHS's Gender and Sexuality Alliance is hosting Belfast Pride. I flew in from California to be here. I recreated the t-shirt that got me suspended in high school. My family, friends, and 300 people marched with us. The whole downtown turned out to cheer us on. Teenage me never would have dreamed we'd come this far and I'm so grateful I was here to see it. It was an incredibly healing experience for me.
There was a time when I didn't believe it would ever get better. Conditions for LGBT people only get better by fighting for our rights and building communities, laying the foundation for future generations. Thank you BAHS GSA, COOP, and everyone else who helped put this year's pride together.
"The true meaning of life is to plant trees under whose shade you do not expect to sit." -Nelson Henderson
Today the U.S. Supreme Court made the most significant ruling in favor of LGBT people arguably since Lawrence v. Texas (2003). More important even than marriage equality U.S. v. Windsor (2013) and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), the Court ruled in a 6-3 decision that the 1964 Civil Rights Act extends to sexual orientation and gender identity. Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia will go down in the history books as perhaps the largest leap forward in securing civil rights for LGBT Americans.
Prior to this decision, LGBT people could still be fired in most states for no other reason than how they were born. Now we are all protected in every state and within the federal government. This ruling sets the stage for extending protections far beyond employment discrimination. In 2005 I helped pass Maine's non-discrimination bill which added sexual orientation and gender identity to the Maine Human Rights Act. When we wrote that law, it went a step further than Bostock by including protections in education, public accommodation, housing, and credit. We must ensure the Court's ruling is expanded to these areas of life and beyond. Hate crime and hate speech laws still need more work. We must pass the Equality Act and finalize the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. We must reject right-to-discriminate laws disguised as "religious freedom."
Our country is at a watershed moment like no other in its history. Black Lives Matter #blacklivesmatter has formed a second civil rights movement for blacks and racial minorities, one that could have long-lasting power to implement change at the fundamental levels of our society. In the middle of a global pandemic and the worst unemployment rates since the Great Depression, Americans are desperately looking for true leadership and a new path forward. I don't know what the second half of 2020 holds, but we have a vision, albeit one with a rocky start, of racial justice, expansive non-discrimination policies, universal healthcare, and a changing of the guard both at the highest levels of government and within our local communities.
Earth Day 2020
Wednesday, April 22, 2020
"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
"The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
"Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
"The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
"It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."
-Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994
30 Years in the Making
Monday, November 11, 2019
Who knew a two-minute car commercial could portray such a moving story about the love between two women.
You Need to Calm Down
Wednesday, June 19, 2019
Happy Pride!
Equality Act
Friday, March 15, 2019
Nancy Pelosi has just introduced the Equality Act to protect LGBT people at the federal level. In more than half the states it is still legal to fire someone for being gay, to refuse a transgender person business at a restaurant, and to discriminate in numerous other ways such as housing, credit, and education.
As a teen in 2005 I testified before Maine's Judiciary to pass the anti-discrimination law, which successfully added sexual orientation and gender identity to the Maine Human Rights Act. As a victim of hate crimes, hate violence, and anti-LGBT discrimination, I know firsthand the importance of this law and why it is absolutely necessary to end discrimination and exterminate hate in this country.
Please contact your legislators and encourage them to support the Equality Act! Text EQUALITY ACT to 472472.
Baby Shark Poms
Monday, January 21, 2019
Some Baby Shark Poms for the New Year ^-^
Look to the Western Sky
Monday, June 26, 2017
I've been living in California for a month now and I've been enjoying it very much. The first few weeks were very busy getting a California driver's license and registering my car (which is from here), finding a good gym membership, and taking care of all those other little details. I've been volunteering with the San Diego Zoo and I just started a cool new job in horticulture.
My timing was good - Orange County Pride kicked off last week and they had a fully loaded schedule culminating in the all-night Laguna Beach Party. I've made lots of new friends and I'm looking forward to meeting more!
To be honest, I miss my family and the poms a lot, as well as my friends in Maine and Louisiana. Home is always where the heart is (so maybe I can get them to move out here, hehe). It was a difficult decision to leave, but a big part of me feels like I belong here. I often felt like a square peg in a round hole when I lived in Maine. SoCal values align much better with my own - health conscious people, environmental protection, and science and tech everywhere, not to mention it's so much easier to be a vegetarian here. And no snow! Each region of SoCal has its own subculture, but I'm quickly adapting to life in the OC.
Torrey Pines Gliderport in La Jolla, San Diego
Caribbean 2017
March 9, 2017
I'm currently in the Caribbean with my family and a friend for a 12-night cruise on Royal Caribbean. I created a public Google Photos Album that I will update throughout my trip. We'll be stopping in for adventures on five different islands throughout the Caribbean and I've got my Canon DSLR, GoPro, 360 Cam, and some other cameras to record everything.
Only a few days before the tragedy in Orlando, my home town of Belfast, Maine celebrated its first Pride event. As a teen, bullied daily for being gay, I never would have imagined Belfast having a Pride celebration, much less that I'd be marching with my company, athenahealth #gaythenista #athenaculture. I am looking forward to Southern Maine Pride and Bangor Pride this month as well.
Unfortunately the recent events in Orlando remind us that there is still a great deal of hate in the world and we must come together as a community if we ever hope to heal. Our community can't just be limited to LGBT people and our allies - it must also embrace the faith community, Muslims included. We cannot allow ourselves to become further divided by new fears and prejudice.
In the coming weeks, vigils will continue across the world to remember those we lost. The events in Orlando could occur anywhere and so it's critical that we present a message of peace and inclusion. Working together and understanding our differences helps us recognize we all share so much more in common. We must listen to one another and keep an ongoing dialogue. It is the only path forward if we hope to see an end to unrest and violence.
#weareorlando
He drew a circle that shut me out-
Heretic , rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle and took him in.
Hey! Sunny here. Check out my site and feel free to contact me. You'll find links to my resume, research, digital artwork, and much more. If you'd like me to create something for you, such as a website, CG animation, an LED-lit sign, etc. just ask and we can work something out - my rates are very reasonable. Please visit my company website, Seashore Design for more information and to view my work.
email
Instagram
@AncientDNA
YouTube
DeviantArt
