The need for advice.

I'm old enough that my morning routine is pretty much a function of habit.   

When I don't have an early morning meeting, I wake up about 30 minutes before I need to do anything.  I sort of half-doze for a few minutes before reaching over to my phone.  I think about my day for a few minutes, and then as I blink the sleep from my eyes, I check my email.  For the most part, I'm deleting stuff from Groupon and Amazon, and then looking and considering fundraising requests, change.org petitions, and the occasional email notification about this site.

This morning, I woke to an interesting email from the Human Rights Campaign, a well known gay rights lobbying organization.  This morning, they announced that as part of their "Campaign for YOUth," they are soliciting advice from GLBT adults to GLBT youth.


I'm really excited that the need for this kind of connection is out in the universe.  The HRC is doing some good work, but I think the focus of the two projects is different. 

First, the advice here is being filtered through the lens of a dad.  I think dads give different kinds of advice than uncles, sponsors, mentors, and moms.  We have a different perspective, and that's the perspective I want to bring to the blog. 

Second, A Father's Pride focuses on gay male youth.  It doesn't focus on lesbians or gay women, or trans*folk, or genderqueer people.  This is because I'm a gay male, and (so far as I know), so are my two gay sons. I simply don't feel qualified to bring a dad's perspective to these populations.  At the end of the day, I hope that these insights are useful to youth in general, but I know that there is a specific emphasis and a specific focus.

I hope that both A Father's Pride and HRC's Campaign for YOUth is successful, because the more solid advice we can give to youth, the better their lives will be.