T-Minus 8 days Until The Beginning Of The Trump Presidency (LGBT Recognition)

Donald Trump will be sworn in in a little over a week.  As we ponder that panic, let's look back at a few episodes from the past 8 years - all with the understanding that Trump would never/could never be able to accomplish any of it.

After the panic, we should ponder what we're losing.

November 16, 2016:

From the White House press office press release announcing the most recent Presidential Medal Of Freedom recipients:

Ellen DeGeneres is an award-winning comedian who has hosted her popular daytime talk show, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, since 2003 with her trademarked humor, humility, and optimism. In 2003 Ellen lent her voice to a forgetful but unforgettable little fish named Dory in Finding Nemo. She reprised her role again in 2016 with the hugely successful Finding Dory. Ellen also hosted the Academy Awards twice, in 2007 and 2014. In 1997, after coming out herself, DeGeneres made TV history when her character on Ellen revealed she was a lesbian. In her work and in her life, she has been a passionate advocate for equality and fairness.

And at the ceremony he said:

Ellen DeGeneres has a way of making you laugh about something rather than at someone. Except when I danced on her show -- she laughed at me. (Laughter.) But that’s okay.

It's easy to forget now, when we’ve come so far, where now marriage is equal under the law -- just how much courage was required for Ellen to come out on the most public of stages almost 20 years ago. Just how important it was not just to the LGBT community, but for all of us to see somebody so full of kindness and light, somebody we liked so much, somebody who could be our neighbor or our colleague or our sister challenge our own assumptions, remind us that we have more in common than we realize, push our country in the direction of justice.

What an incredible burden that was to bear. To risk your career like that. People don’t do that very often. And then to have the hopes of millions on your shoulders. But it's like Ellen says: We all want a tortilla chip that can support the weight of guacamole. Which really makes no sense to me, but I thought would brighten the mood, because I was getting kind of choked up. (Laughter.) And she did pay a price -- we don’t remember this. I hadn’t remembered it. She did, for a pretty long stretch of time -- even in Hollywood.

And yet, today, every day, in every way, Ellen counters what too often divides us with the countless things that bind us together -- inspires us to be better, one joke, one dance at a time.

And yet Governor Mike Pence, the little handed pussy grabber's choice for Vice President, has had something different to say on the matter. From Time:

In 2006, as head of the Republican Study Committee, a group of the 100 most-conservative House members, Pence rose in support of a constitutional amendment that would have defined marriage as between a man and a woman. Citing a Harvard researcher, Pence said in his speech, “societal collapse was always brought about following an advent of the deterioration of marriage and family.” Pence also called being gay a choice and said keeping gays from marrying was not discrimination, but an enforcement of “God’s idea.”

Well, isn't that special -  now it's time to ponder, yet again, all we'll be losing.