I'm Glad It Was Written...

Once in a while you come across something that, as a writer, you'd wish you'd written yourself. You wish it not out of envy so much as it reflects exactly what you feel. I discovered a blog today written by Arthur Silber called Once Upon A Time. In today's post he has an essay called, "We Are Not Freaks" discussing how it feels to be gay or lesbian in our society.

I agree with Mr. Silber. Unless you are gay, you cannot fathom what it feels like to be gay in our culture, not fully. Inadvertently, many who are sympathetic participate in the same "freak" show mentality that is the debate over gay civil-rights. He hit the nail on the head exactly. I am not an object that you can put on display and say, "Here's a gay man, who calls himself married. What should we do about this and how should it be discussed?" I'm a real person, with feelings and a real stake in the debate that rages on.

While society debates whether I, as a gay man, should have certain civil rights or not, meanwhile I don't have any. While Christianists harp on and on about what they believe and their moral principles, I have to live daily with the fact that if my partner were rushed to hospital, I may not be able to see him. Christianists feel that their religion is being trampled on. I don't see how my existence and my ability to have the same rights and responsibilities they have can prevent them from the practice of their particular brand of worship. They can still believe what they believe, attend the church they attend and spout the same hateful bigotry that passes for loving scripture. They can hate me all they want, but why do they get a say on how I live my life and what rights I have? What makes their religious beliefs more important than mine? My church believes that any couple relationship is a sacred and private matter between that couple. To say they cannot legally be a couple is based on gender violates my church's beliefs. So why is a Christianist church's beliefs more important than mine. Why do they have a bigger voice in public policy than mine?

Once any person's real civil rights have been trampled on, then all of us in our society suffer. ALL of us suffer. The current presidential campaign by former Governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, who happens to be Mormon, is a fascinating example of this. Mr. Romney thinks that because he has proved himself to be the true social conservative Republican candidate he is a shoo in for winning the presidency. Because his current stance on same-sex marriage and abortion issues coincide so closely with evangelical Christians, Mr. Romney thinks he will automatically garner their support. Unfortunately for former Governor Romney, most evangelical Christians view the Mormon church as an evil cult. Evil cults are tolerated about as much, and in some cases less so, than gays or lesbians. He is learning fast, if he hasn't learned already, that projecting your own narrow points of view based on religion onto a democratic society makes for a sticky mess.

So, let's say someday, evangelical Christianity becomes the church of state for the USA, then what? Well, laws could be passed to imprison not only gays, lesbians and women who have abortions, but practicing Mormons, Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses and many other groups not falling under approved evangelical guidelines. We also get into the problem of which brand of evangelical Christianity is the right one. Many of these groups believe that dancing and listening to popular music is okay under certain guidelines while other believe it is incredibly evil in any form. Many believe that images and symbols of Christ are not to be tolerated as it violates the 4th of Moses' ten commandment. Look at what his commandment says: Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. So what happens to those Christians who have the sympol on their cars? Do they get imprisoned too?

While I was traveling this summer I visited the House of Terror in Budapest, Hungary. This is a holocaust museum that is housed in the actual building that Nazis and later communists used for torturing and murdering those who were deemed dissidents and undesirables. One startling thing I learned is that those who began this governmental office of terror and interrogation were themselves tortured and murdered under the very program they created. The communists took over and began using the same horrible procedures on their Nazi forbears.

Starting down the path of discrimination only leads to more discrimination. You never know which person will be the one in power or the one discriminated against. All I can say is stop it!! Me living my life does not hurt yours in any way. Enacting restrictions on gay and lesbian people or any other minority will never make them go away. It hasn't done it in all the thousands of years of history of the human family.

Thank you Mr. Silber for your essay. I hope many read it and get a small glimpse of how I feel. We are not freaks.

America the Fearful

In a way, I'm glad my Dad died before he could see what is happening to his beloved country. He fought in World War II and very much believed in America and its Constitution. He believed that the freedoms of speech and press were all important. He thought the flag burning debate was silly. While he thought the act of burning the American flag in protest was abhorrent, he felt it was the right of every American to do so if they wished to. He knew that being an American isn't easy. You must protect what people say even if what they say is not what you want to hear.

That's why I get so mad at politicians when they say that if you criticize the president, debate the Iraq war or express the wish to have our troops come home you are emboldening the enemy. I could care less what the enemy thinks. If we are so scared of what the enemies of our country are going to think, then they've already won. Few people realize that terrorism is only successful when people are terrorized. Nothing actually has to happen like a bomb or a plane crashing into a building. If people do what they want just by them laying down a threat, then they've succeeded as a terrorist. One of the greatest journalists of our time (this was back when journalists investigated and reported the news instead of just repeating what people, read White House, tell them), Edward R. Murrow, said, "No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are his accomplices."

I was in London just a few months after the tube (what they call their subway) and bus bombings in 2005. I expected the tube trains to be empty and everyone in London very fearful. The reality was, while people were wary, they went about their business as usual. Passengers are reminded constantly over the subway station PA systems and by public service posters to watch for any unattended bags or suspicious behavior but the trains were as crowded as they've always been. I myself discovered a backpack that sat by itself in one of the stations. I alerted a policeman and as it turned out the owner had wandered away for a moment to get a candy bar out of a vending machine and had stopped to talk to a friend. Once the police were satisfied that the bag belonged to someone and was quite harmless, they thanked me for being alert and everyone went about their business. In the U.S. it would have been breathlessly reported on a CNN breaking news bulletin and I probably would have been interviewed by Diane Sawyer. The British, like most Europeans, are very pragmatic about security and safety. They want it just as much as we do, but they also know that there are bad people in the world who will do violent things. You can take precautions and do your best to prevent violence from happening but you still have to live your life.

During that 2005 trip to England, I was invited to a dinner party at the home of a British friend of mine. Being the only American, I was surrounded by mostly British and a few attendees from other European countries. They all questioned me about what Americans really think is happening in Iraq and how in the world did we put a president like George W. Bush into office. I assured them that while Bush won the last election it was only by a slim margin. I also told them that the war in Iraq was increasingly unpopular and becoming more so. They seemed to visualize Americans as overtly religious and paranoid. It was hard but I think I persuaded them that most Americans are just like them, wanting safety, and security and that not all Americans fall into political extremes. I also told them that, for Americans, being attacked on our own soil was a new and very disturbing thing. Terrorist attacks were something that happened in other countries. One party goer quipped, "Well, I guess America had to grow up some time."

But have we really grown? Daily I hear about how some politicians feel we shouldn't debate the president's foreign policy. The so-called journalists lets the White House repeat the old saw of how we should trust them, allow them to spy on other Americans without a warrant or oversight, and torture suspected terrorist so that we can get unreliable information from them. They want us to continue to condone secret interrogation prisons, and holding people without charge for years in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. We're losing our freedoms daily in this country. Hopefully the newly elected Democratic congress will provide some oversight and staunch the bleeding away of civil liberties. We need to openly debate and criticize our leaders actions because they are servants of the American people, and not the other way round. Hopefully we'll become a real democratic republic again and not give in to terror. Still, I'm glad that Dad can't see what a fearful, freedom compromising, world-bully that our country is becoming. It would break his heart.

Citizen Second-Class

I have to stop myself from getting too negative when I read the news. I read stories like this and I wonder if I'll ever be a full citizen in this country. People everywhere seem hell-bent on ensuring that I remain a second class citizen. They argue over rights/liberties that don't affect them. Whenever talking-heads of the media debate same-sex marriage or equal protection under the law for gay citizens I almost never hear real questions that need to be asked. Many on the right say they need to "defend marriage". My question is, defend it from what? After our wedding a few years ago I checked in with our next door neighbors, a heterosexual couple. I asked them if our getting married affected their marriage in any way? They said absolutely not. I asked them if same-sex marriage had been legal in the USA at the time of their wedding, would they have had second thoughts about getting married themselves? Their replied again, absolutely not. There have been no divorces among the neighbors that we know since our wedding. In fact, the son of one couple down the street married last summer. He married in Paris to a French woman. I don't know, maybe he felt he needed to get married in France because the proximity to us would be detrimental to his own relationship? I doubt it.

This young man's French marriage is valid in America, yet our Canadian marriage is not. Most people, I think, don't understand that it's not just a piece of paper. Legal, civil marriage comes with rights and responsibilities. If my spouse (heaven forbid!) fell ill and rushed to the hospital, I have no right to see him. We pay more taxes because we have to file as single people. A 50% inheritance tax would be imposed because we are not related by marriage. Involvement in a law-suit by one of us, means that the other could be compelled to testify against him. And the list goes on and on. Over 1000 rights and responsibilities come with marriage. You can learn more about the issue here.

Leaving all the legal, civil rights and religious stuff aside for a moment, I would love to hear a journalist ask the rabid Christian-right spokespeople: How does this issue affect you personally besides being against your religious beliefs? After all, those of us truly affected live in your neighborhoods now, our children learn in the same schools as yours, and we shop along side you in the grocery store every day. A civil marriage contracts between two people and nobody else. I would certainly never tell the neighbor couple next door that they should not be able to see each other in the hospital or provide health insurance benefits for the other because I don't like their relationship. That idea is ludicrous!

Meanwhile convicted felons marry and I can't. Britney Spears marries in Las Vegas on a lark for 55 hours and then dissolves it. Donald Trump can get married once, twice even three times. Newt Gingrich, the former congressman and "Family Values" Republican gets married, announces divorce to his first wife while she undergoes cancer treatment in hospital, marries again only to divorce his second wife and remarry a third time to a woman rumored to be his lover in an on-going extra-marital affair. Yeah, making me a second-class citizen is very important so we can "defend" the "sacred" institution of marriage.