146. pensée

Earlier today I got the following e-blast from John Helmberger of Minnesota for Marriage:

General Mills Declares War on Marriage

The Green Giant, Lucky Charms, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Kix, and Trix have all declared war on Marriage.

General Mills has made billions of dollars in marketing these cereals to parents of young children, and they have just declared War on Marriage here in Minnesota.

In what could go down as one of the stupidest PR decisions of all time, General Mills has pro-actively inserted themselves into a divisive social issue that flies in the face of their very business model.

A survey last year by the Alliance Defense Fund found that 63% of Americans with children living at home believe that marriage is ONLY the union of one man and one woman. Those are the very customers that General Mills has just insulted!

Aren’t you just sick and tired of big corporations ignoring your wishes to pander to special interests? It’s actions like those taken by General Mills that sometimes help me understand the whole “Occupy” philosophy against corporations that have lost touch with the people who have made them wealthy.

Just because General Mills is doing exactly the opposite of the very thing conservative groups have been doing doing recently (i.e., big corporations pandering to special interests and investing money in order to oppose the constitutional amendment), it means General Mills has declared nuclear war on apple pie and puppy dogs?

And, because it’s right on the tip of my tongue, lest I be accused of just throwing the word “bigot” around too flippantly, here is the definition from the Merriam Webster dictionary:

A person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especiallly : one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance.

It is not hateful or intolerant for those of us on the “anti-amendment” side to call out those who want to deny equal treatment of GLBT couples and individuals (in stark opposition to the provisions afforded to citizens in Section 1 of the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution) on their prejudiced and discriminatory rhetoric and tactics.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Head over to Project 515 if there’s any doubt in your mind how GLBT citizens (not to mention non-traditional families) are being treated unequally under current Minnesota and Federal law.

To those on the other side…

We hear your concern and your fear, and we understand that this is an important issue to you. We’re trying to listen, and we want to respect you as much as we can. Most of all, we hope for as amicable an outcome as possible for both sides so that we can, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, come together, “with malice toward none, with charity for all … to bind up the nation’s wounds.”

Because, just as in 1865 after the end of the American Civil War, we do despise each other right now. There are gaping wounds, and we in the GLBT community have been deeply hurt by how we’ve been treated. But we have to move forward if we’re going to grow up as a nation. We got past slavery, we got past women’s rights, we got past racism and inter-racial marriage. We can get past this.

However, this is also an issue that is important to us as your fellow tax-paying, law-abiding citizens, and the fact that you’re terrified of change doesn’t give you the right to treat us like second class citizens because we happen to be attracted to members of the same sex.

We don’t want to destroy your marriages, your families or your homes. You heterosexuals seem to be doing a fine job of that on your own. We are a nation of immigrants whose diversity makes us stronger, and we want to strengthen marriage and family in our country by affirming it for everyone.

We don’t want to force you to accept us, because ultimately we can’t change your mind for you, but we hope that you will eventually come to see us as your neighbors and not as a threat.

We don’t want to recruit your children into the ranks of the homosexual army (or whatever it is that you’re worried will happen in public schools if same-sex marriage is legalized), but we do want GLBT teens and kids to feel accepted and safe in schools and their homes to be who they know in their hearts that they are.

We don’t want to force churches to perform same sex marriage ceremonies, because who wants to celebrate their love and commitment in a place filled with hatred and animosity towards them? (There are plenty of places that do want us and our money, and we’ll go there, thanks very much.)

As one who grew up gay in a conservative religious home and spent years denying and fighting against who I was, I don’t want another teen to live with the pain and anguish that comes with thinking that you’re an abomination to God, that you’ll have to choose between living free or losing your family, community and God; and that you’ll go to hell for the sin of loving someone of the same sex as you.

Most of all, we want you to stop being afraid, because you’re missing out on so many opportunities for rich relationships with co-workers, with friends, and with your children and family members.

145. imponderable

Then to Silvia let us sing,
That Silvia is excelling;
She excels each mortal thing
Upon the dull earth dwelling;
To her let us garlands bring.
— William Shakespeare (1564-1616), from Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act IV, Scene 2

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Finally went to see Prometheus yesterday afternoon. My biggest complaint was that the siren/scream sound heard so prominently in the trailer was nowhere in the actual film itself. All that buildup, all that hype, and then nothing to show for it. It would be as if Frodo and Sam went to Mordor, then lost the ring half way through the first Lord of the Rings movie and the other two movies turned into an extended version of Braveheart. And really—who wouldn’t follow Viggo Mortensen into just about any situation?

A secondary complaint (no worries, no spoilers here) was that, aside from Noomi Rapace, the characters in Prometheus were so poorly developed and the plot a shambles, combined with vaguely and sometimes not-so-vaguely religious imagery, that it just left much to be desired. However, I’m going to wait to give my final verdict until seeing the director’s cut. Conflicts arose without much justification or context to the overall story arc, and potentially important elements were often dropped and forgotten about. There is, however, a particularly horrific scene involving a… well, I won’t give it away, but you either know what I’m talking about if you’ve seen it or will know what I’m talking about when you see it.

A good chunk of the film is devoted to oblique discussions of the purpose of our origin and creation. One character asks, “How far would you be willing to go to get your answers?” It’s a question with a lot of potential, but unfortunately the film does a fine job of asking the question and then not even attempting to answer it. It’s almost as though they heard Tommy Lee Jones next door in Men in Black III saying to Will Smith: “Don’t ask questions you don’t want to know the answer to.” According to Ridley Scott and the screenwriters, asking questions leads to being infected, burned, eaten alive, impaled, bludgeoned, crushed, blown up, and generally losing everything and everyone you ever held dear.

What bothered me most about the film (aside from the whole panspermia premise) was the characters’ naive assumption that the beings who created them had benevolent intentions at all. It bothers me in the same way that it does when Christians assume that God is on their side, that he loves them and has their best interest in mind, or that a blessed afterlife lies beyond death for those who said the magic prayer for Jesus to forgive their hideous sins (that exist only because he said that they do—rather like a doctor telling you that you’re sick and need this expensive medication that only he can give you).

It reminded me of that scene at the end of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, where (SPOILERS) the being that they believe to be God turns out to be nothing more than a demon that Spock’s half-brother wanted to reach thinking it was God, when the whole scenario was merely a ruse to trick them into bringing the demon a ship. Even C.S. Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity that God could potentially be something malevolent:

What seems to us good may therefore not be good in His eyes, and what seems to us evil may not be evil. On the other hand, if God’s moral judgement differs from ours so that our ‘black’ may be His ‘white’, we can mean nothing by calling Him good; for to say ‘God is good’, while asserting that His is wholly other than ours, is really only to say ‘God is we know not what’. And an utterly unknown quality in God cannot give us moral grounds for loving or obeying Him. If He is not (in our sense) ‘good’ we shall obey, if at all, only through fear—and should be equally ready to obey an omnipotent Fiend.

And if the Bible is true, with all of the senseless rules, doctrines and prohibitions, how could God be anything  but maleficent? After all, not many (if any) of the Biblical laws do anything good for humanity. They merely serve to perpetuate unquestioning belief in the existence of God.

– “Why give 10% of my income to the church?”
– “Because the Bible says so.”
– “But… why?”
– “Because the Bible says so.”

Part of the reason I find it difficult to get really invested in anything (or anyone) is that both things and people have the tendency to disappoint, so I’m always waiting for the big let-down.

As a child I never grew up believing in magic. My parents didn’t raise my sisters and me to believe in Santa Claus either, the Easter Bunny, or even the Tooth Fairy. The only real “magic” was the miracles that God worked, but I never actually witnessed a miracle myself, and the miracles I heard about seemed to have natural explanations.

When I was about eight, our church pastor and his family were in a deadly winter driving accident. I don’t remember if they hit a patch of ice or something, but one of his sons was killed. Where was God then? If our pastor was such a good man, why did things like that happen to him? Before that, God seemed so all-powerful, like he was portrayed in the Bible—at least the version of the Bible that was age-appropriate for us. After that accident, God seemed smaller, in the way that your parents look once you figure out that they’re just adults and not the superheroes you thought they were.

Last night I was listening to Gerald Finzi’s song cycle Let Us Garlands Bring. The stanza at the top of the page is from that cycle, and it made me think how difficult it is for me to worship anything—especially potential romantic partners—when I’m waiting to find out how it (he) will disappoint.

144. natch

On April 15, 1912, the RMS Titanic hit an iceberg while en route from Southampton in England to New York City. I don’t need to say much about the disaster. There are documentaries and movies enough on the subject. The most poignant aspect for me about this story is the breakdown of survivors and those who died. The majority of the victims were men, as men were expected to give up their seats on the lifeboats for the women and children. 1,387 men died in the water that night.

The greatest number of casualties were, not surprisingly, amongst the third class passengers, of which there were 706 altogether. 84% (387 of 462) of male and 54% (89 of 165) of female steerage passengers perished. 66% (52 of 79) of their children didn’t make it either. The second class didn’t fare much better. Of the 168 men, 154 (92%) were lost. The second class women were luckier: of 93, only 13 (14%) died. Amazingly, all of the children in second class survived.

In first class, the men bore the heaviest toll, with 66% (118 of 175) never making it to New York City. Still, that’s significantly less than the lower two classes. Of the 144 women aboard in first class, only 4 (3%) died; and of the 6 children, only 1 didn’t make it.

That’s a lot of numbers, but those numbers speak volumes in terms of the human loss of life, of the drama of that story and of the terror and hopelessness that these people went to their deaths with. These were 1,514 individuals with their own unique stories, loves and losses that died in the water that night. Doubtless some of them died believing that their merciful God would save them or at least accept their souls into heaven—probably the greatest and cruelest tragedy of all.

It also speaks to the subjective standards by which human lives were weighed. Your chances of survival on the Titanic that night were predetermined by how much you paid for your ticket, and therefore how valuable you were based on your class. Steerage passengers were corralled below decks like animals and had little access to the lifeboats.

This brings me to my topic for today, which is a familiar topic for many who follow this blog: the religious opposition to gay marriage.

Today the ironically named conservative group Minnesota for Marriage posted a new “marriage minute” which addresses the question: “I have heard people talk about same-sex marriage interfering with ‘Religious liberty’ principles. What does that mean?”

This is probably the most popular argument from religious conservatives—that if marriage is redefined as genderless it will result in the persecution of religious individuals and groups. Churches that refuse to perform same-sex marriages will lose their tax-exempt status (which I and many others don’t think they should have anyway). Christians who speak out against same-sex marriage or gay rights will be thrown in jail. Christian businesses that refuse to, for example, print wedding invitations for same-sex couples will be fined or lose the business altogether. Basically… GAYPOCALYPSE!!

This is one of the loudest talking points for conservatives. They have the nerve and audacity to cling to the Constitution in order to protect their right to discriminate—laws never intended to enshrine religious discrimination or prejudice. Quite the opposite. As a cartoon on the website Slap Upside the Head reads, “Not being able to treat gays as second-class citizens makes me a second-class citizen!” ThinkProgress had a great article about this a few months ago titled “Inside NOM’s Strategy: Use ‘Religious Liberty’ As A Catalyzing Red Herring.” In it, they quote from a memo that included the following passage:

We have learned how to make the coercive pressures on religious people and institutions an issue in the United States. We will use this knowledge to raise the profile of government attacks on the liberties of religious people and institutions in Europe, both for internal domestic consumption in Europe and to halt the movement towards gay marriage worldwide. Our goal is to problematize the oppression of Christians and other traditional faith communities in the European mind.

So yet again, conservatives are resorting to fearmongering and post hoc reasoning in order to scare the Faithful into the voting booth in November. At the risk of invoking Godwin’s law, this is precisely how Hitler was able to gain support in Germany: by manufacturing a threat (in this case, that the Jews were responsible for Germany’s financial woes) in order to rally the people to his side. And as we know now, it worked quite effectively. Here we have groups like NOM and Minnesota for Marriage doing exactly the same thing in response to the “crisis” of the looming threat of gay marriage.

Why shouldn’t a business that refuses a gay couple for no other reason than their bigoted religious beliefs be sued? True, a business has the right to serve whoever they want to serve; and in Maryland, special provisions were put in place guaranteeing that this sort of thing wouldn’t happen. And frankly, we gays should boycott businesses that are not GLBT-friendly. However, at the risk of evoking an overused trope, there was also a time when it was acceptable for businesses to refuse to serve black patrons. As time went on, those businesses were pressured into change not by the government but by public opinion that came to view such behavior as prejudiced.

I say this a lot, but there is no reason other than homophobia bolstered by religious dogma for the GLBT community to be treated differently than the rest of hetero land. Their “scientific” studies are being discredited left and right. The medical and psychological communities haven’t been able to find anything wrong with gays. At what point do we just say “Enough!” to these people? We hear their fear, but we’re doing nobody a service by accommodating this nonsense.

Religious liberty ends where it senselessly tramples on the civil rights and liberties of citizens, and stands in the way of the inalienable Rights of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

143. levigate

Tonight I just feel like bitching, friends. Sorry for the break in usual programming. I’m just suddenly incredibly sad and discouraged. Time for anti-depressants and major therapy, because this isn’t working.

As many of you know, I’ve been following through on my resolve to end my single status this year because I’m tired of complaining about being single, and so is everyone else in my life. So I’ve been going on more dates, which has ended in my being crushed over and over again.

This past week I’ve been emailing with a guy from OkCupid who messaged me expressing interest. From what we were saying we seemed to have a lot in common and similar goals in what we were looking for. He had a busy week, as did I, and this weekend he had a wedding to go so we set a date for Tuesday evening to meet. We’ve been emailing back and forth in the meantime, sharing a more but not too much in the event that.

Tonight I got an email from him saying that he’d read through my blog (I’d shared the address with him yesterday) and didn’t think that we’d be a good match. I emailed back a little while ago asking if there was any particular reason, because I’m genuinely interested in what about me doesn’t work for people, or if there’s something that I do that makes getting to know me or seeing potential in us as a couple prohibitive. You can’t fix what you’re doing wrong if you don’t know what you’re doing wrong.

He emailed back just now to say that from what he read he thinks that there’s too much still to work through about Seth, that I seem angry about it, and that it’s not fair to him to be dating him while that ghost is still hanging around. Which is a valid point, which is why I really need to go through therapy (only problem being that I’m fucking broke, uninsured, and can’t afford that kind of treatment).

He also accused me of being ageist, which is probably also valid. But why am I so terrified of being single at 29? Because I’m 29 and I’ve never been in a serious relationship. Period. Because I already don’t see myself as valuable. I’m already terrified that nobody wants me as a person, that there’s nothing intrinsically worthwhile about me, that I’m an oddity that no one knows what to do with, and that I’m damaged goods. And I’m terrified of the future, because experience has taught me thus far that everyone only sees me as a friend or a fuck buddy, and nobody wants me as a partner. I’m the fucking best friend who sees everyone else married off and happy. I’m a trope.

As I was driving home, I thought a little more about it. Why am I terrified of being single at 29? Because I’ve never felt loved in my entire life, and every day that goes by the hope that I’ll ever learn to love someone gets dimmer and dimmer. I never felt loved by my parents growing up, and there was really no one else in my early life who I had close relationships with besides my family. My younger sister and I were homeschooled until the 10th grade so our world was incredibly insular.

My parents have pointed out all of the things that they did that showed their love for me: things like coming to pick me up in sub-zero weather when my car died on 35W in the middle of the night, coming to all of my shows (even the ones they didn’t like), and not rejecting me when they found out I was gay. But those things don’t communicate love for me. They’re just nice things you do for each other because that’s how we evolved as a social primate species. Otherwise the world would go to hell pretty quickly.

People say that I need to let them love me. Truth is, I don’t know what love feels like. My personality is so fractured from the different people I have to be in different settings that I don’t even know who it is that they’re trying to love. Love for me is like the affection that you feel for a pet.

In the end, I can’t deny that his assessment is valid. He’s right. I’m a toxic mess, and it’s wrong to inflict that on someone. I don’t blame him for running for the hills, and it’s my own goddamned fault for over-sharing. I shouldn’t have shown him my blog right away, not until he got to know me better. Lesson learned. And maybe I do deal with things too publicly, which isn’t fair to people who don’t know that they’re being discussed out in the open like this. It’s one thing for me to do with that with my own life: it’s another to do it with someone else’s.

And he’s right about Seth. To quote the ever-prescient Fiona Apple, “I can’t help you out while she’s still around” (I know). I just don’t know how to get him out of my system 100%. I let him in on the fool’s hope that he could love me and he couldn’t. It was so easy falling in love, but how do you fall out of love? And that’s what always happens, I guess. Did I even truly love him, or was it just me wanting the idea of him?

It’s not that I’m disappointed that I was turned down, or that I was even attached since we’d never even met. It’s more that this possibility went to sod before it even had a chance to seed; that it always goes like this; that guys get interested and then decide that I’m a mess they don’t want to clean up (Paper Bag).

So what am I looking for? Someone to rescue me, I guess, because I haven’t a fucking clue how to save myself.