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Gift from Hil Part 2 - 2014-12-30
A Gift from Hil - 2014-12-28
There was A LOT of turkey. - 2014-12-04
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1:22 p.m. - 2013-03-27
Making Room at the Table for Everyone

I was upstairs earlier talking with Mick about the cases before the Supreme Court right now and was venting my frustration. "For Pete's sake! It's 2013 and we still have to even discuss this? Basic civil rights! How is this difficult?" I interrupted myself, "Then again we're still having crap like 'legitimate rape' and fighting back against the bullying extremists who are chipping away at Roe v Wade. GAH!" I shook my head and snorted. "Gay marriage? It's not gay marriage! It's not special or different, some kind of 'extra' only queers are privy to. It's not anything more than what you and I already have! How? How in 2013 can something as basic as all of our citizens having the same rights and privileges and the same protection under the law be in any way arguable?" I did the Rumplestiltskin dance (turning in little circles stomping my feet and waving my fists in the air). I swung back to face Mick and said, "This is why we don't have flying cars you know. It's 2013 and we're still too stupid and mean to deserve them."

Yeah, perhaps it sounds silly and cartoonish, but Mick understood. He knew exactly what I meant.

Our generation grew up in a sea of change and with the expectation of a better future. We had Apollo lunchboxes and went to elementary schools named for Neil Armstrong. Dr King gave his 'I Have a Dream' speech the year I was born. During our growing up years we had moon landings and the invention of the Pill. We were here when the Ivy League went co-ed. We witnessed the end of the Viet Nam War and understood it was the people who made it happen. People who took to the streets and demanded the government do our will and bring our soldiers home. We had the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Ground was continually broken, boundaries expanded. Our TV shows were 'All in the Family', 'Chico and the Man', 'Good Times', and the PBS series 'Cosmos' by Carl Sagan. We watched 'Roots' and didn't think it at all crazy that the same actor who was Kunta Kinte, LeVar Burton, ended up playing the chief engineer on the Enterprise. To us the future was all about forward progress, inclusion, growth. Scientific discovery went hand-in-hand with social awareness. It was simply a given- the more we learned the better we as a species behaved.

Not exactly working, is it?

I know I never expected the pushback by the Luddites. I never planned on the Religious Right, the Reagan Revolution, and horrors like Prop 8, Rush Limbaugh, and Fox News. These anti-progress, backwards looking culture warriors battling to bring back some mythical time that actually never was, as though by beating back science and social decency they can somehow own the power to ensure their flinching fear of a world where White Uneducated Christian Males no longer call all the shots doesn't ever, ever happen. The power grab by the fearful and the stupidly angry mean people came as quite the shock to this girl. Wasn't part of my idea of what the world would be like in the myth-y year of 2013.

So I danced my rage dance this morning. Hurt and angry and fricken disappointed in humanity. To me the path to the future is obvious and welcome. We get smarter so of course we get nicer. We strive for cures. To physical ills and societal ones! The equation that the rising tide lifts ALL boats is as basic to me as 2 + 2 = 4. If I work to make your life better mine is better too. It's axiomatic. Inarguable. I do not lose when others catch up; we join hands and go forward together.

Naive? I don't think so. It's not like I don't know how bad Life can get. I've been beaten, homeless, raped, denied food and any hope of physical and emotional safety. I've had a gun shoved in my face more than once. My elder son was kidnapped by Christian extremists and only saved from being gone forever because one member of the Bryan Texas New Life Pentecostal Church chickened out. My younger son was bounced around and finally expelled from public school because of narrow-minded district policy which had made no provisions for the autistic. The cruelty of my life's circumstance made me timid and beat me down sometimes, but I never stopped believing that good is possible. That redemption and progress and love come from opening one's mind and heart and hands. Not ever.

So to me that there's even a question about civil, basic, decent fairness for all is outrageous. The idea this fight needs to be fought at all makes me crazy. How can any of us be so small? So narrow? So denying of the obvious truth? When has an open door denied anyone else? When has a helping hand cost someone?

How in 2013 can we still be screaming for unlimited access to killing machines yet also be screaming for exclusions and limitations on love?

Answers? Anyone? Please?


Confused and wondering, ~LA

The theme song to my life:


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