​Today is a big day.  

In observance of Veterans Day, at the launch of Transgender Awareness Week, and coming to you one week before Transgender Day of Remembrance, I want to observe the gravity of the month of November for the LGBT+ community in this blog.

Today, as we show gratitude and appreciation for those who have fought bravely for our liberties and freedoms, we must also remember that many service members do not have adequate access to the support they need and deserve; both LGBT+ and cis-straight veterans.

In this blog, I will bring up several of the hurdles and pitfalls that keep these veterans and soldiers silent, in the closet, or stealth throughout their service, and afterward. 

And for those of you in this situation, we’d like to provide some resources to give you that support and make sure you’re heard.

Up until the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DA;DT) in the U.S. military, there was minimal information on the specific concerns that LGBT+ service members faced. 

In 2010, The Williams Institute of UCLA released a report on the estimated number of lesbian, gay, and bisexual men and women in the military.  

It showed that they comprised roughly 2.2% of all military personnel. 

In 2014 UCLA released a new report stating there were over 150,000 active transgender individuals in the armed forces.

While this data shed some light on the existence of LGBT+ military personnel, it obviously could not account for closeted individuals. Despite having the opportunity to serve openly, many military personnel did not, and still do not feel safe to come out within today’s military culture. 

​Older LGBT+ veterans face further difficulties when it comes to their discharge status. 

Since 1993, more than 13,000 individuals were discharged due to Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. 
.
Individuals discharged for homosexuality were discharged with a "less than honorably" status that can be difficult to dispute. 

A less than honorable discharge effectively bars these individuals from receiving veterans benefits, cost them government positions, and comes with a burden of shame. 

Discharge statuses can be now can reviewed and changed to honorable for DA;DT reasons, but that process is untimely and demands a fair bit of paperwork. So many LGBT+ veterans have lived with their lower statuses for so long that their lives have been significantly set back by it and no correction will be enough to recover that lost time, effort, social position, and money.

​Organizations are working to support LGBT+ veterans in various areas, such as AVER (American Veterans for Equal Rights), but what is needed most is broad wide-sweeping changes to the cultural approaches the military takes to protect, advocate for, and empower military personnel - both during and after serving.  

The best thing an ally can do, however, is to listen and then respond with support by boosting the stories of LGBT+ veterans issues.  Donate to media organizations like GLAAD, the Personal Stories Project, and other organizations that seek to signal boost veterans, and contribute to the financial health of the organizations we recommend below:

Lane is the Facilitator of the newly formed Bisexual / Pansexual group Bitter / Sweet.  She's spent most of her life counseling troubled youth and the LGBT+ community.  She's recently married her husband and experiences the same Bi-erasure she is supporting you with now.  Join her group! ​

Sorry for the click-bait.  It's not the food kind.  But, this is important so keep reading! 

​You’ve probably heard the term “cookie” thrown around while browsing the Internet. Recently, there’s been a big change to these “cookies.”  And that change is vital to your net-safety. 

When you go to a website, a new European Law called GDPR now requires companies to inform you that it uses these "cookies"to track some of the things you do on their site (and afterward).

So we’re going to briefly discuss in this blog, what a cookie is when they can infringe on your privacy and then we’ll show you how to avoid the dangerous ones.  

​ The term originated as a “computer nerd” expression describing a set of data that is sent from a site’s server to your computer, and that comes back unchanged, called a “magic cookie.”

Technically speaking, the cookies saved to your web browser create a dictionary of all kinds of information related to you; what you’ve browsed and information that helps web pages give you a better experience on their sites. Websites use cookies for all kinds of things, and not all of them are bad.  Indeed marketers use them to make website advertising a kinder place for you.

But, you can think of cookies as a collection of membership cards.

When you navigate to a site, it provides you a cookie that says “I’ve been here and am interested in these things.”  The sites then request them back from your browser to verify who you are, what you’re on the site for and then they custom-tailor their information for you based on the cookies you have.

​For example...
When you log in to your bank’s website, the site will “start a session” for you and that session is tracked with a cookie. This cookie cannot be accessed by other websites, but when you log into your bank again, there's no need to provide a password because the cookie already "verified" you.  This cookie is helpful.

But when you browse a shopping website and click on an item, many shopping websites will track that item in a “recently viewed” area of the shopping site by giving you a cookie that tracks what items you’ve viewed. This one could be used to out you.

After leaving that shopping site, you may also notice that same item shows up in an advertisement on another website because it requested your “Amazon Products” cookie. That’s where things start to feel a little unsettling for most people.

Frankly speaking, No. There's not really an easy way.

But there are two ways if you're willing to do it. (If not, skip to what you can do to prevent cookies).

1. "View Page Info" 
​In Firefox, you can see if a website is using cookies by right-clicking any inactive part of a web page (for example, away from all the links and pictures) and select “View Page Info.” 

This provides a dizzying amount of information. We’ll likely discuss this view in a later 201 blog, but at least some of it will probably make sense to you. 

If you look under the “Security” tab, you’ll find things like the website identity, how many times your browser thinks you’ve visited the site, and whether it uses cookies or not. 

At this point, you can clear the cookies just for the site you’re on if you want. This is a "reasonably" simple way to see if cookies are in use on the site you’re looking at, but it's really not ley-person friendly.

2. The Storage Inspector
You can also see all of the cookies your browser has recorded in Firefox using SHIFT-F9 to bring up the “Storage Inspector.” From there, you’ll see a menu on the left for different ways the site can store information. One of those is “Cookies.” If you expand and highlight the site you’re interested in, the grid will then contain all the cookies that are currently active for the site.

What you're probably going to be most interested in are the “Name” and “Value” fields.

Clicking on a cookie record will bring up the details, but to get a good look at a cookie, you have to expand the “Data” window on the right side of the SHIFT-F9 window.

For Example:  Using the Wikipedia Cookie Page
Just to give you a little taste of what you might find, I tried the Wikipedia cookie page. And, guess what? 

It saved the location I’m browsing the page from in a cookie called “GeoIP.”

Why does Wikipedia need to know where I am to provide the information I requested??? 

See how this works? Imagine if you’ve been doing personal research at the library, and you log in to a site you’re using. That site may put your location data in a cookie. Some cookies stick around – so later another website you visit can capture that cookie. So, now, two websites can figure out that you’ve visited this other site from the library.

1 - Clear Your Cookies!
Make it a regular practice to clear your cookies before you move onto or away from sites you don’t want people to know you’re on. 

This does delete helpful cookies like session logins but we feel it’s worth the inconvenience.

2 - Use Private Browsing Modes
Another approach is to use the incognito mode available in most browsers when doing personal research on LGBTQ+ related things.  Be sure to start a new incognito session every time you want to go to a new page (easier said than done). 

To do this, you can copy the link you want to go to next by right-clicking on the link and selecting something like “Copy Link Address.” After you’ve copied the link, you can close your incognito session and start a new one.  Then copy that link in the new incognito session. 

This prevents the sites from talking to each other through your browser.

Here’s more information on how to view and delete cookies on the top used browsers:

1. How do I see and control cookies in my web browser?
2. More on the Firefox Storage Inspector.
3. Get to know how different cookies work using this awesome Infographic!

The “View Page Info” feature in Firefox is relatively unique to that browser and can really help you just get to know some of the basic things that are going on when you browse websites – knowledge is power :)

Hi, there!

I'm Erin, the Weekly Digest - and if you choose to volunteer - Volunteer Coordinator here at RESCQU.NET!

In lieu of a regular blog post this week, I feel like it’s important we discuss something that is happening at the beginning of next month: voting.

These days, everyone is talking about voting as "why you should vote." The language of “motivation” going around seems to assume that people don’t vote because they're lazy or they don’t care.

What about those of us who find voting extremely difficult for other reasons?

I have anxiety. Really bad anxiety. Especially in highly charged crowds.

So, the polls seem VERY scary to me.

It’s so much more than just getting off of the couch and waiting in line to me. The idea alone nauseates me and makes my muscles twitch.

There are millions of other reasons one may not be willing or able to vote from anxiety to active voter suppression.  If you’re closeted or have any reason whatsoever that you are afraid or hesitant to vote, we want you to know that that feeling is valid, but workarounds have to be found.

​But I am lucky enough to live in a state that allows me to mail in my ballot every year. Not everyone has that resource, and if they do, they're often not aware it exists.  

This blog provides you the resources needed to work around your hurdles & cast that vote!

This below state voting database includes 3 pieces of information for each state: 

1. The link to the state's voting page to receive information for and register to vote! 
2. Can you vote by mail? 
3. Can you vote online?

Though I'd mentioned anxiety as a hurdle of mine, it's certainly not the only or most prominent hurdle.

​Many people work on election day and cannot take time off due to financial restraints.

​​If this applies to you, you can visit Vote411.org and enter your address to see if your employer is legally required to give you paid time off to vote on election day. Every area varies a little in their terms, so make sure that you're looking at the correct precinct that you’ll be voting in!

Last, and the certainly scariest of the hurdles, is the blatant voter suppression tactics that are running amok all over the country.

I'm not going to expand on all of them, simply because it is a hot topic right now and there are a lot of people who are saying it better than I can right now.  For more information head over to this New York Times article that discusses themost recent tactics in the "age of Trump".  

Knowing about these tactics is vital to getting your vote cast, but if you find yourself oppressed, you find people telling you your vote doesn't matter, or you are physically barred from voting,  here's the number 1 thing you can get that will fight this: 

Every state is required to inform the federal government how they plan to educate their citizens on the issues most prominently displayed during the voting process. 

Some of them are easy, like Colorado which provides a "bluebook" or voter information ballot mailed to every home and provided online.

Other states put it in harder to reach spots, but they can ALL be found on the federal registry.  

1. Go to to this link at the state legislator's site.
2. Scroll down to your state and check the section it's in.
3. and it tells you where the state must have the information.
4. then search google for "[state] [voter information source]"
5. and it will be within the first 5 links! 

We're also going to leave one last tool for your toolbox to make sure you can get around any hurdle you have to voting.  The internet.  

More spectifically, the internet has deemed your vote important, so they've created a wikipedia specifically for your local, state, and federal elections over at Ballotpedia.org.  

This site has literally everything you need ot know about the candidates, policies and more.  all you have to do is navigate to the local page you're interested in, hit search, and read! 

​https://ballotpedia.org/Main_Page

​Erin is the volunteer with the largest tenure here at RESCQU.NET because it allows her to keep connected with the LGBT+ community.  As a bi woman who is soon to be getting married to her future husband she feels deeply for the community and wants to keep that connection.  So she works to train our volunteers, welcome our new community members, and keep the wheels turning.

Identity is complicated.  Many identities are difficult to describe such as gender, some are worked at for years like in occupational identities, and others are provided to you by the world around you as is the case for race..  

During our #IdentityTourism week we would like to provide an easier way to explain identity for friends, family, and others in a simple and easy Info-graphic! 

If you're in the Colorado or Wyoming area join us for our #IdentityTourism Event on the 14th at Lair of abraxas!Learn more or register here! 

Click image to view larger on Imgur