Civil Rights and Right Wingers

Something struck me as odd today and no it wasn't a cross-eyed midget with anger management issues. As I sat watching Logo (the MTV produced all homo, all the time station) and reading John Milton's "Paradise Lost" I couldn't help but get a little angry and a little sad at the state of affairs today. Something is seriously rotten in our State of Denmark.

There were two shows specifically that set me off on this little musing: the first, "First Comes Love", and the second, its name I now forget, was about Civil Unions in Boston, Massachusetts. Both shows, about the legal right for same-sex couples to marry (the latter filmed in Canada), in combination with "Paradise Lost", resonated most hard core. To begin the beguine, "First Comes Love," staring the comedian, Scott Thompson, takes a couple and, in two weeks, puts together a wedding that normally takes anyone else months to plan -- and all for free (so long as you don't mind having cameras in your face the entire time). They pay for EVERYTHING: rings, reception, vacation -- it can be a little commercial since they have to get in all the requisite product placements for the business and shit they use. But anyway, while the wedding planner and her minions slave away, Thompson spends the bulk of his time with the couple, engaging them in various tests to make sure they really do deserve to be married (my favorite episodes is "Dan and Mischa" -- they go shopping then have combine their items and pare it all down till they have only 50 Loonies worth of goods -- yes, I said Loonies. I can anyone take an economic crisis seriously with that name for their currency? "The Loony's down today").

Anywho.

In the second thing, the one in Boston, it followed two couples through the initial introduction and subsequent failure of the bill, and the second time around when it passed and they could file their intentions legally at the courthouse, a few days later getting issued their license.

Now, as we all know, unfortunately, we don't live in Canada -- which is starting to look like a better and better place to move after grad school (or for my doctorate) -- and that state after state in the US has consequently passed amendments to their state constitutions definitively defining marriage as that between one MAN and one WOMAN -- and not one Homo and another Homo. In the former presentation, an argument was put forth by a "Baptist Christian" with blue hair and a Trench Coat Mafia ensemble that homosexuality, quoting Leviticus (no man shall lie with another man like they would a woman), is wrong -- and disgusting. And he's right. It does say that in Leviticus. And when I think about it, it IS disgusting lying with a man, but at the same time ... feels so gooooooood; so right -- so I just don't think about it, simple as that (but seriously folks, think about the mechanics of sex, any kind of sex. When it comes right down to it, sex is not the most PG thing in the world, nor is it clean. Who showers after sex? Come on, fess up. Right. We all do. Unless you're seriously disgusting and just pull on your clothes and head off to work, the smell of sex and candy flavored lube oozing off you).

I'm wondering fall afield. But, to get back to my point about selectively reading/interpreting the bible, that kid just proves the point I'm trying to make. Like him, I could easily get on my high horse and start in on how moronic people are in believing in an invisible man spending his days and nights coming up with a plan into which we all fit and then making sure we all follow it -- I won't even point out the fact that these self-same morons use religion to bolster their inherent feelings of loss and isolation in the vastness of the universe in order to feel like they're important -- nor will I belabor the obvious that, much like the current administration, these morons have allowed others to use dogma in a power grab over our thoughts and feelings, effectively steering us onto a narrow-minded path into servitude of those with the acuity to manipulate us. No. I won't do that. Because I respect those morons -- in my own way. Where I cannot imagine spending my life in deprivation hoping that, because I abstained from pleasure and devoted my life, in servitude, to an ideology, in the hopes of EARNING my just rewards in the after life, these folks can (or at least try to until human nature gets the best of them and they end up screwing around with alter boys -- ahem -- I apologize to my fellow Catholics).

I, however, am of the opinion that, living morally and ethically, is all that can be asked of me. I don't go out hurting others just because I can. I wouldn't want others to do that to me. The Golden Rule, which was tacked above my sixth grade teachers chalkboard, is what I live by: "Do Unto Others as You Would Have Them Do Unto You." I ask no more and no less of my fellow humans. However, there's a caveat, by that dictum then, theoretically, just about anything is fair game -- rape, murder, theft, arson, etc. etc. But, in order for that to be true, one must be willing to accept the same -- that they may be raped by a stolen baseball bat that's been set on fire and then clubbed to death with it. Frankly, I don't want that, so I don't do it. Yes, it's polemical, but hey, fuck you.

Still reading?

Aretha Franklin wasn't just singing about equality in her now famous song, "RESPECT." Oh wait. Yes, she was. But she was also making a statement about how we should approach our peers -- with respect for them, for their opinions, and for their decisions -- even if we don't agree with them. Someone famous, and I'm kicking myself for not knowing who, said, and I paraphrase, that even though he may not agree with a person's opinion, he will fight to the death for their right to it. Maybe I'm wrong in my thought processes, but I started trying to poke holes in or run rings around the logic that drives the Right Wing's arguments against Civil Unions/Same-Sex Marriage.

First, blacks were treated as inferior. A host of arguments were made, the least of which being that they were genetically inferior to whites -- how they came up with this is beyond me. However, as the times changed and the Civil Rights movement forced this idiotic country to stop being so fucking bigoted, segregation fell, Affirmative Action (whether or not you believe it's necessary today is your own opinion) came in -- things began to change. Now, I'll be the first to admit that, relatively speaking, there is still a huge equality gap between blacks and whites. But, I like to think, that eventually even that will disappear as our ever-increasingly PC country ages and the Baby Boomers die the fuck off.

In this instance, people standing up to injustice and taking their lumps in the name of their future children, started moving the US, in a legal sense, into action -- recognizing inter-racial marriage, the equality of all mankind, etc. etc. But these changes took time and they came at a great cost -- how many martyrs does it take to screw in the light bulb of reason?

Anyway, lest I belabor the obvious -- the same shit's going on with the current, though seemingly less organized, Civil Rights movement in the gay community. However, unlike the 60s, at the height of that C.R.M., it is seemingly less organized today. It was an era of expanding consciousnesses via drug use; a time in which free love was promoted, and not just of the carnal kind. In retrospect, it was a time that, perhaps for me, has become romanticized. Everything was so much simpler back then -- Vietnam War, bad. Nixon, bad. Squares, bad. Prudes, bad. It was the dying out of an old way of living and the birth of one based solely on a more open and respectful way of living in harmony with the world and with each other. It was a time of immense idealism. And like all idealism, was crushed brutally in the late 70s into the 80s with Reaganomics and Members Only jackets.

The free-loving hippies of the 60s and early 70s, in the face of increasing crime rates, the spread of a then unknown disease (the HIV), money grabs, etc. tuned into selfish, isolated and neurotic paranoiac conservative dolts. Maybe it was the amount of blow they did in the late 70s or all the acid they dropped in the 60s, but something burnt out in them and they gave in to the Man. They became the Man. And in doing so, eradicated their capability to be self-reflexive. They were no longer able to see the larger picture and thus, saddled us with the fall out of their idiotic decisions. And what's worse, they gave birth to narrow-minded assholes who missed all the good times and grew up knowing only the turning inwards of idealism -- and now they're running government, taking over for their parents (ahem, Bush, ahem).

As so many comedians have pointed out of late, I'd like to second the fact that, at the age of 22, have now seen a Dick, a Bush, and a Collen in the White House -- but at least Powell had the moral rectitude to get the fuck out when Dick, with his hand up Bush's ass, wanted him to lie to the US about Iraq.

Damnit! It's so hard to focus on what I want to say when there's just so much fucking shit going on in politics today. And not just in politics, but in the social consciousness of the US. Two wars are raging right now -- one unjust one in Iraq (we'll destroy the fuck out of them because that turbaned mother fucker may have gotten help from them, but not the U.A.E. who we know DID help him -- oh no, we'll let THEM pay US to protect OUR fucking ports! What the fuck!?) and a second, much more incideous yet intangible one, inside our own borders.

We're in the middle of a generational and cultural war, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. It's a fight, tooth and nail, to the death -- the fate of our future and our children's future at stake.