Until the day before, I had worked on the top floor of the World Financial Center in New York City, and every morning walked the passageway from the World Trade Center train station to my building. It was pure coincidence I had changed business groups then, but it felt like a message, even to my agnostic soul.

Shortly thereafter, I sat down with my partner of 10 years and asked if she wanted to start a family. I knew her answer, for she had always wanted children, but until then, my career had been my priority. On September 11, however, a heightened sense of fleeting possibilities motivated me to carpe ovum.

Today, our son has just started kindergarten, and I have a different perspective on the debate swirling around Sarah Palin and her parenting decisions than I might have had otherwise. Much as I may disagree with the choices she has made, I respect her right to make them for herself and her family. I’ve seen firsthand the pettiness of mothers criticising each other’s parenting, and I cannot condone it.

I also respect her choice to be not only a working mother, but one who manages a high-powered career while some of her children are still young.

As a parent with only one child, part of me wonders how she can do it with five – but I’ve learned not to underestimate mothers. During the Beijing Olympics, just days before Palin’s nomination, a bevy of mothers with young children earned medals, including U.S. swimmer Dara Torres, several members of the U.S. softball and soccer teams, and a number of athletes from other countries, competing in rowing, kayaking, and gymnastics, among other sports. Clearly motherhood is no barrier to high achievement.

Despite all she represents in terms of the capabilities of modern mothers, however, Palin falls short for me in several ways. First and foremost is her conservative track record on LGBT and reproductive rights. If she won’t recognize my right to form a family when and how I want, or give us the same rights as others, she’s not getting my vote. It’s one thing to make decisions for her own family, but quite another when she starts to make them for mine.

I’ll leave aside for the moment the various arguments about how much falsehood or hypocrisy was in Palin’s statements of her political achievements. Others have dissected them in more detail than I can do here. Even if her assertions were all true (which I doubt), her candidacy still bothers me for another reason.

The McCain team seems to view the vice presidency as training for the presidency. As McCain advisor Charlie Black said about Palin after her speech at the Republican National Convention, “She’s going to learn national security at the foot of the master for the next four years.” Yes, the vice presidency is by definition a secondary role, but one that requires stepping up to the top spot at a moment’s notice.

Barack Obama chose in Joe Biden someone who could do so, a politician broadly equal in stature. One can’t say the same about McCain and Palin. They remind me of a very traditional married couple where, although the woman may be strong, her primary role is to support her husband’s career. If he is incapacitated, her prospects of managing on her own are slim.
Which brings us back to September 11. Should McCain not make it through the next four years, I do not want to risk having our country’s security run by someone who still has the training wheels on. My son–and all our children–deserve better than that.

Even if McCain remains in office, I do not want the future of my son and my country entrusted to someone who defines himself by the war he fought, someone whose campaign logo evokes the star and gold stripe of a naval admiral (a rank he never even held). Both McCain and Obama say their ultimate goal is peace, but I question whether someone self-defined by war will get us there.

September 11 helped guide me along the path to becoming a parent. In this week of remembrance for our country, then, when my son also happens to be starting his first year of school, both national security and motherhood are much on my mind. Although the McCain-Palin campaign is playing up both of these themes, I remain one mother unconvinced that their ticket is right for my family or our nation.

Our challenge now is not to underestimate this national newcomer, this “average hockey mom.” She is energizing the conservative base and making a serious bid for swing voters. Her hockey-mom toughness is real, even if her foreign-policy experience is weak.

Palin erred, however, when she belittled Obama’s time as a community organizer. What is a PTA mom, after all, but a community organizer? Those of us who don’t agree with the McCain-Palin solutions for our country will talk with our friends and neighbors, volunteer at our local Obama headquarters, and get out the vote.

We will put Obama stickers on our strollers and minivans, and pass them out, yes, even at hockey practice. I have no doubt many lesbian moms will be part of this effort, for we are used to fighting for our families and our beliefs. Just call us pit bulls in Chapstick.
Dana Rudolph is the founder and publisher of Mombian (www.mombian.com), a blog and resource directory for LGBT parents. She also writes a regular column on LGBT parenting for several LGBT newspapers around the country. Her column exploring the intersection of politics and parenting will appear every other Thursday at 365gay.com.

In New York, it will be marked near Ground Zero with four minutes of silence and the somber reading of the names of those who died that day. Both Barack Obama and John McCain will put away their political differences for a joint appearance at the ceremony.

It will be held at Zuccotti Park, a block away from the former World Trade Center site. Last year was the first time the memorial was held at the park and not Ground Zero, because of construction safety concerns.

A similar observance will be held at the Pentagon

The total GLBT number of deaths may never be known. Not all of the victims were ‘out’.

But the list of those who were out is crosses all strata of American life: from Mark Bingham, the ad agency owner who joined his fellow passengers on United Flight 93 to take on the terrorists, to Mychal Judge, the gay Catholic priest who died while giving the last rites to a fallen fireman at the World Trade Center, to a gay couple on their way home.

For those who seek to harm the gay community, it was an opportunity to score points. Fundamentalist preacher Jerry Falwell attempted to blame gays for the terrorist attack.

For the families of those who died, however, it was a glaring example of the inequity facing people in same-sex relationships.

Scapegoating

As families attempted to cope with tragedy of 9/11, fundamentalist Christian minister Jerry Falwell blamed gays and pro choice advocates for the devastating terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Speaking on the religious television program 700 Club, Falwell said, “The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say ‘you helped this happen’.”

He later apologized, but other conservative Christians jumped on the blame bandwagon. A coalition of evangelical Christian leaders, including Focus on the Family head James Dobson released a statement saying “the results of the recent days are a reflection of the crumbling foundation of America. It is time to reflect and repent.”

However, there were gays and lesbians who showed heroism in the midst of horror, and these are who we remember today.

Here is a tribute to just a few of the openly gay people who died in the Sept. 11 attacks.

Mark Bingham

In a tragic way, Mark Bingham spent much of his life preparing for what happened to him on Sept. 11. As he boarded United Flight 93, Bingham carried with him a sense of confidence and competitiveness and the deep friendship of those close to him.

Mark Bingham

Mark Bingham, all 6 feet, 5 inches of him, loved a lot of things: food and wine shared with good company, discussions on politics, travel to foreign lands and laughing with friends. He built his public relations firm into one of the most respected small agencies in America with offices in San Francisco and New York.

Rugby was also a big part of his life. He was a sophomore on Cal State’s 1991 national championship team – the squad that started a string of 11 consecutive national titles.

Bingham never strayed from a fight. He played to win, always using the skills he learned in college rugby.

September 11, he used those same skills to protect a nation.

As the flight was taken over by terrorists, Bingham and a few other courageous men fought back. The burly Bingham used his cell phone to call his mother and tell her the plane was being hijacked and that he loved her.

Moments later the plane crashed into a Pennsylvania farm field.

Transcripts from the flight recorder indicated that the terrorists had intended to crash the plane into the U.S. Capitol building.

Mychal Judge

A leader in Dignity, the organization of gay Catholics, a priest, and a chaplain for the New York Fire Department, Mychal Judge was killed during the collapse of the towers while giving the last rites to a dying firefighter.

Mychal Judge

The firemen loved him. He had an encyclopedic memory for their family members’ names, birthdays, and passions; he frequently gave them whimsical presents. Once, after visiting President Clinton in Washington, he handed out cocktail napkins emblazoned with the presidential seal. He’d managed to stuff dozens of them into his habit before leaving the White House.

Back in the early 1980s, Judge was one of the first members of the clergy to minister to young gay men with AIDS, officiating at their funeral Masses and consoling their partners and family members. He opened the doors of St. Francis of Assisi Church when Dignity needed a home for its AIDS ministry, and he later ran an aids program at St. Francis.

In 2000, he marched in the first gay-inclusive St. Patrick’s Day parade, which his friend Brendan Fay, a gay activist, organized in Queens.

Within minutes of the attack on the first tower of the World Trade Center, Father Mike was on the scene. When the tower collapsed, trapping firefighters, he went through the debris giving comfort to the dying.

As he gave the Last Rites to one firefighter, the second tower fell on top of him.

Gay Family Dies Together

Daniel Brandhorst 42, and his partner, 33-year-old Ronald Gamboaa, were flying home to Los Angeles with their 3-year-old son David Brandhorst, when terrorists commandeered the United Airlines jet they were on shortly after it left Boston’s Logan Airport.

Brandhorst was a lawyer with PricewaterhouseCoopers in Los Angeles. Gamboaa, who was originally from Louisville, Ky, managed an L.A.- area Gap store. The couple had recently bought a home in the Hollywood Hills area.

Names of the lost

A gay British man also perished on flight 175.

Graham Berkeley, 37, a product management director for software company Compuware, had been scheduled to fly from his home in Boston to a conference in Los Angeles.

On board the other plane which hit the skyscrapers was 41-year-old Jeffrey Collman, a 41-year-old flight attendant. Also on board was lesbian Carol Flyzik.

The first officer on American flight 77, which slammed into the Pentagon, was David Charlebois, a member of the gay pilots association. Also on that flight was Joe Ferguson, a 39-year-old worker for the National Geographic Society.

At The Twin Towers

Renee Barrett, injured in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center died of her injuries several weeks later in Cornell-Presbyterian Hospital.

Barrett was a member of MCC New York. She left behind her life partner Enez Cooper and her 18-year-old son, Eddie, who lived with them.

Barrett was an employee of Cantor Fitzgerald, and was in Tower One at the time of the attacks. Though critically burned, she escaped the building just prior to its collapse.

41-year-old John Keohane was at work near the World Trade Center when the planes hit. He was killed by falling debris.

At The Pentagon

Sheila Hein, 51, a civilian Army employee who worked as a management analyst, died when a hijacked American Airlines jet slammed into the Pentagon. When rescue workers found Hein’s remains, she was wearing a gold band that her life partner Peggy Neff had given her.

Recognizing Gay Partners

Neff was later awarded $557,390 for the loss of her partner of 18 years by Kenneth Feinberg, special master of the federal government’s 9/11 Compensation Fund. It is believed to be the first federal government recognition of a same-sex couple.

The decision was criticized by Republicans who pointed to the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibits Washington from recognizing gay unions.

Neff was not eligible for state aid from the state of Virginia where the couple lived and owned a home.

For the families of those killed in New York it was a different story.

A New York state law providing workers’ compensation benefits to the families of victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center was passed and included 22 lesbian and gay survivors. Spokespeople for gay groups that assisted these surviors have said that since then, other family members of gay victims have come forward unoffically.

The tragedy also resulted in the American Red Cross establishing guidelines that provided help for gay domestic partners. It later extended the guidelines to provide the same disaster relief assistance that spouses receive for any disaster.

Read 365gay’s story on the continuing struggle of gay emergency responders who worked at the World Trade Center site.

For a more full list of other LGBT people lost on Sept. 11, click here.

“My partner and I were kind of slow on the uptake that morning, so we were flipping a coin for who was gonna drive,” Giebfried remembers.

Giebfried lost the coin toss and she and her partner, Jennifer Beckham, went to a local breakfast place for oatmeal. As they quietly ate, neither woman had any idea that within an hour, they would get a call on their radio that would put them at the center of one of the greatest tragedies in our nation’s history.

Giebfried and her partner rose above the call of duty that day.

At the World Trade Center site, they repeatedly put themselves in harm’s way as they moved people to safety, triaged wounds and calmed people’s fears.

Rev. Bonnie Giebfried

Twice, Giebfried was buried under falling rubble and managed to find her way out.

At one point, Giebfried gave her helmet away to a woman as she helped her out of the lobby of the South Tower.

“It was a horror movie scene,” Giebfried recalls. “Everything was burning.”

By the time she left Manhattan that morning, Giebfried had sustained multiple injuries and suffered three asthma attacks. More importantly to her, though, she had done her job.

Seven years later, Giebfried is still living with the physical effects of that morning. She has been diagnosed with 26 medical conditions, including post-traumatic stress disorder, reactive airway disease, arthritis, vertigo and “WTC Cough.” Her thumb, wrist and arm have been reconstructed.

“I’ll never be without medications now because of the injuries and the diseases I have acquired from doing my job,” Giebfried says.

Giebfried’s situation is not uncommon. Seventy percent of the approximately 40,000 emergency responders present on 9/11 suffer from illnesses derived from their service at Ground Zero, according to John Feal, founder and president of the Fealgood Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to spreading awareness about the health effects of 9/11 on first responders.

Next page: No health insurance, no job

This makes me angry.

Because we all remember the expression on George W.’s face when he found out what had happened – while reading My Pet Goat.

Did they forget that Republicans were in office when this happened?