I read an amazing post last week: Take My Arm, My Love by Portly Dyke on Shakesville. She uses an ABC News report on homosexual PDA as a jumping off point, and the post is about how she and her partner change their romantic behavior depending on the environment they're in - even down to the basic intimate act of holding hands.

Holding my boyfriend's hand is one of my most valued simple pleasures. It's so casual, and yet it connects us. I treasure it, truly. I can't actually imagine having to curtail or even think about hand holding. And yet it makes perfect sense to me that gay and lesbian couples frequently find themselves in that situation. Which makes me so sad and frustrated.

I found this part of the post, where PD challenges a dear friend, really interesting:

...I issued her and her husband a challenge (and I'll issue the same challenge to any straight coupled allies here who want to raise their awareness of LBGTQ issues):

Spend an entire week pretending that you're not a couple. Don't write a check from a joint bank account. Hide all the photographs in your home and office which would identify you as a couple. Take off your wedding rings. Touch each other, and talk to each other, in public, in ways that could only be interpreted as you being "friends". Refer to yourself only in the singular "I", never in the "we". When you go to work on Monday, if you spent time together on the weekend, include only information which would indicate that you went somewhere with a friend, rather than your life-mate. If someone comes to stay with you, sleep in separate beds. Go intentionally into the closet as a couple. For a week.

They took my challenge.

Can you imagine? I would have just conceded immediately. I would fail right at taking the office picture down. It just makes me too happy to part with it. Her friends didn't make it either.

When we love someone, we hold their hand.

Check out this post on Mad Organica: More Talks, More Basics. This mother has to speak to her daughter about a sexual molestation case happening in her other daughter's school - though thankfully not to anyone in her family. As the younger girl struggles to understand and learn, mother and daughter hold hands.

When I walked Mina home yesterday, when it was just she and I alone holding hands shuffling along the cracked and uneven sidewalks of our neighborhood, I asked her if her school had talked about what had happened over at the middle school. She said no. She said she was glad it didn't happen at her school. She said, "I wish it had happened to another --" she stopped, "I wish it hadn't happened at all."

When we need to speak to someone's heart, we hold their hand.

And finally, a post from Lysa at Proverbs 31 Ministries: Still Holding Hands. A beautiful sunset takes her back to the vows and prayers of her wedding day:

Something about that sunset love letter from God the other night made my breath catch in my throat. For I suddenly remembered that wedding day prayer. And I must admit I felt convicted.

Somehow in the craziness of life's schedule, I couldn't remember the last time we just took time to hold hands and talk about us. Not our teenager's choices, or the broken down car, or why there are so many weeds this year, or how did your meeting go today, or did you return that video back to the store... not that kind of conversation. No, I mean the kind of conversation that seems harder and harder to find time for in the midst of life.

When we take vows with someone, we hold their hand.

It is my fervent wish and hope that this most simple of pleasures, this most important and meaningful and heartful gesture, is someday something everyone can do anywhere without fear.

~

Contributing editor Liz Rizzo also blogs at Everyday Goddess.