In These Troubled Times It's Hard Enough

Yeah yeah yeah....Chick Fil-A.  Much ado about chicken.  In case you haven’t heard, it’s not about the chicken.  It’s also not about sex.

After a sadly heated exchange last week, and other friends and relatives who posted...”whoot whoot we support Chick Fil-A” posts, I wanted so badly to say something...WRITE something SO profound that they (or perhaps YOU) would consider another view.  Just for a moment.

I finally decided to challenge those who feel strongly (generally backed with Biblical rationale) that homosexuality is WRONG (bold, uppercase, exclamation highlighted by a curse from the Almighty)!  Yes, I challenge you, DARE YOU to talk to a gay.  Yep, find yourself one of those gays and talk to them.  To him.  To her.  You know you know one.  A friend (well, maybe not a good friend since they know how you feel about them), a coworker.  A relative.  Pull them aside and ask them when they decided to be gay.  Ask them about their “lifestyle” choice.  Why do they choose to be gay?  Or, if you want a more productive conversation, perhaps ask them when they knew they were gay.  When they knew they were different.  Ask them what “coming out” meant to them.  How hard was it?  Ask them about the first time they fell in love.

I hope that, for some of you, putting a face and a story on your stand against same-sex marriage may help you to see these people as they are....as people not issues. Not a lifestyle choice. Real people just like you and me who love and want to BE loved. Some of them are jerks.  Just like the rest of us.  They, like us, are human.

Many, dare I say most. of you are absolutely unable to have that conversation.  If that is the case, for whatever reason, please try and read this blog.  I will warn you that it was written by a gay man striving to help his friends, people who call him their friends yet don’t think he should have the same rights as others, to understand his feelings on the issues.  To understand why pumping your fists at the long lines at  Chick Fil-A on the first of August was crushing.  He does not discuss sex.

 If you get through THAT, read the follow up linked at the end of the first blog and see that people DID understand.  They reconsidered, against all odds, their previous stance.  There is even a man of the cloth who opened his mind and his heart.

Please.  Please. PLEASE try and read it.  No one will know.  Your best friend won’t know.  Your husband.  Your wife. Your drinking buddies at the bar.  Your priest won’t know you read it.  You don’t need to comment to my blog.  In fact, I don’t WANT you to comment, unless something you read has profoundly changed the way you think on this issue.  Comment to tell me that something in your conversation or in reading what Wayne (who I don’t know) wrote has changed your HEART and made you think how “smiling to wound is its own punishment".  Any thing else will be deleted because, frankly, there’s just no point.

WE HAVE NO SECRETS

I was tagged by Miss Monica, challenged to confess seven personality quirks.....I had problem whittling them down to seven:

1. I am totally intolerant of bullies in any form. I was picked on in school, often by girls who were my “friends”. Psychoanalyzing myself, I’m sure that this is the reason I feel so strongly about Proposition 8….I see bullies in big gangs throwing lots of money to force others to comply with their way of thinking. I hate that!

2. I’m a lazy learner….a B student who learned just enough to get by but not so much to take the fun out of it. I still do it. I love to learn, I'm just not particularly thorough. I read the first few paragraphs of newspaper articles. I read the owners manual of an appliance or electronic devise just until I can make it work….then I spent forever fighting with whatever it is to figure out why it keeps doing that! Maybe if I read the whole manual…….

3. I once wanted to be a vet assistant. I never really wanted to be a vet because I didn’t think I could perform surgery but I wanted to help. I also thought I wanted to be a pharmacist after working with the hospital drug pusher when I was a Candy Striper. Would I have been able to tackle the school work required of either (see #2 above)? Maybe not. I also considered being a private detective. I wanted to do surveillance but not the cheater kind. I didn’t want to carry a gun and be Magnum but I wanted to do the investigating. I love Google. I wanted to track down missing people and information. Oh, and like Monica, I would have been an awesome backup singer. My voice isn’t good enough to hold its own but I think I have something to offer as a do-wop girl.

4. I probably got married too young. By attaching myself to another human being when I was barely out of high school, I didn’t give my chance to explore myself. I’ve not made time to maintain close friends because I thought it was important to make my marriage a priority. This is a good plan but I suspect better practiced when outside relationships have also been fostered. I am comfortable doing things by myself when necessary but I would have more adventures if I had a friend or two to share them when my spouse had no interest. I do miss having buddies. These were my decisions made happily but I sometimes wonder who I would have been left to my own devices. Maybe I'd have enough people to tag with this challenge...

5. Liver & Onions tops my guilty pleasures list. Actually, I feel guilty only because my family is horrified by the smell. When I would go to Santa Cruz to visit my folks, we’d head to Shopper’s Corner where my mommy would buy calves liver, thickly sliced. I occasionally get to eat it at a diner or when the family leaves me to myself on a Saturday when I can keep the door open to air out the house.

6. Storms intrigue me, which won’t surprise anyone who reads my blog. I love the power of wind and rain. I have this fantasy about being at ground zero during a hurricane or a tsunami. I KNOW it’s foolish. I KNOW it’s crazy. I'd love to lash myself to a tree like they did on Gilligan's Island. In my fantasy, I have a crappy disposable camera, because even when tempting fate I wouldn’t want to ruin my good camera …. I have written my name on the camera. When that big wave comes in (because, in my fantasy, a tidal wave is really an enormous wave rather than the surge we’ve learned it is), I am standing at the shore, camera at the ready, getting that last really awesome picture just before being consumed. Someday, when that camera is unearthed by archaeologists, they will hold me in awe. “Not sure who she was but she got an awesome picture of the big one”.

7. My favorite rockers were Elton John (he doesn’t like girls much) and Billy Joel (he has issues but is a great storyteller) but the guy that I think is hot? David Cassidy? Nope. Gene Simmons? Nope and yuk (sorry Sandi). Meatloaf….yep, Marvin Lee Aday…Meatloaf. I have NO earthly clue why that big sweaty guy can make me tingle….he’s not sexy as much as sexual. Oh come on…have you ever seen him do “Paradise by the Dashboard Lights” on stage with Karla DeVito? Maybe it was the flashbacks to the steamy window wrestling matches …… I don’t know but, dang…..”Stop right now…before you go any further….”

ONWARD CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS

This morning, we awoke to the promise of hope .... a change in the color scheme of our government. Then we read deeper into the election results and were sad when we realized that a part of our population would still not be able to stand in their house of worship, with their friends and family and commit to the one they love by getting married. They will still be together. They will raise their children with love and kindness, as they have done all along. They will call themselves Family in spite of the vote. But separate is not equal.

This morning another group smiled. They polished the little chrome fish they have stuck on their car. On Sunday, they will greet their friends in worship. They will sing songs of praise for they will know the sanctity of their "traditional" marriage, even the second and third marriages, has been preserved. They have won another round against the evil homosexuals. And they shall call themselves Christian.

To those directly affected by the passage of Proposition 8, I’m sorry. Sorry we couldn’t do more - we couldn’t do enough to fight the inaccuracies placed before the voters. My family will continue to support your right to marry and someday, you will. We have a new president. It is a historic time. We shall overcome.

THE LOVERS THE DREAMERS AND ME

As we left the polling place this morning, having dumped an appropriate amount of black ink on the NO box for Proposition 8, a big fat juicy rainbow hangs in the sky. Nice ... very prophetic. Glo is in the driver's seat and says "Ha! Take THAT Mormons". Gotta love teenagers!

ISN'T IT IRONIC....DON'T YOU THINK?

It was mentioned recently that an acquaintance, a professional black man, is decidedly on the side of God and in full support of Proposition 8. This was not really a surprise since he flies the Christian flag on his car and all other quadrants. I couldn't help but see it as odd, though, since "his people" had been treated so poorly in the not-so-distant past.

Last night on the drive home, I had sudden recall - his wife is as white as he is black. Not so long ago, he would have been lynched. It too was deemed "against nature". Ironic or simply hypocritical?

LOVE AND MARRIAGE

If you are voting Yes on Proposition 8, this blog is not for you. The version of Christianity to which you subscribe is different from mine. Your church that "hates the sin, not the sinner" and promotes marriage for some but not for others, is not one I can understand. At this point, you can move along.

For those of you who are uneasy...unsure... not comfortable with Proposition 8, because deep down, you don't feel right about placing a barrier placed between certain people, I hope you will consider a NO vote. I hope you will recognize the inequality. I hope you will see the parallels between these barriers and the ones that forced black people to sit in the back of the bus and those that prevented women from voting.

You don't need to approve. You don't have to be comfortable or tolerant. You don't have to because it does not involve you. It does not affect you. How can it be wrong to marry the person you love and raise a family in love? Really...how can it be a bad thing? How can we prevent it?

P.S. Thanks to Joe over at Eureka POZ for pointing out the WRITE TO MARRY opportunity. There are a bunch of great blog posts listed if you click on the logo.