The other day, my Dad asked me what I thought Jesus’s message was after I complained about my brother’s everyone-is-ungodly-but-him approach to theology. I answered without having to even think about it: “That everyone is equal and everyone is a child of God, but some people don’t understand that, so you have to keep on fighting ’cause it’s what Jesus would do.” It was the first time anyone in my family had ever asked me what I thought about religion or God, instead of telling me what they thought I should believe. What struck me the most was the respect inherit in asking instead of telling. It’s such a small act, really, to ask instead of tell, yet it was most definitely a profound moment in my relationship with my Dad.
I’ve never had much of a relationship with my Dad. Growing up, when he wasn’t at work, he was emotionally distant. After a lifetime of him never really being there, it seemed normal to me to act as if he wasn’t. It was only after moving halfway across the country that Dad and I actually began talking to each other and getting to know each other as people. What I’ve learned is that my Dad and I share a lot in common, most of all our ponderous nature.
The entire issue that had caused me to call my parents in the first place started when my brother compared gay people to dogs and said that they were not the children of God. I wrote him to tell him that he was wrong and that I didn’t want to hear his hate speech anymore. This conversation eventually culminated with my having to call the police for harassment after being told that, as a lesbian, I deserved capital punishment. What could’ve ended disastrously opened up lines of communication between my Dad and I and caused us to have a more honest relationship. In fact, Dad said he was going to speak with my brother about the things he had said in the name of God because my brother called himself a preacher, but wasn’t even acting Christian.
What is Christian is to respect other people for who they are and to embrace diversity. What is Christian is to fight for equality, no matter how threatening your opponent might seem. Accept other people for who they are. Don’t tell them they deserve to die or that they’re going to hell or deserve any sort harmful thing to rain down upon them. All of us have to live on this planet together, so we’d might as well get along.
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
Recently, I read an editorial which stated that to repeal the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy would “undermine America.” Although I could easily say that hyperbolic, homophobic editorials promoting hatred and murder of fellow human beings is a far worse threat than openly gay men and women in the military, I think it is more important to focus on the language chosen. Undermine? To allow openly gay people to serve in our country’s military would cause a secret attack leading to the dissolution of America? Really?
Of course, this editorial’s problem was not with openly gay people in the military, but gays in general. Calling DADT a “ban” on gays in the military, the editorialist asked “wouldn’t it be simple[r] just to disband our military and invite our enemies to come on in?” This fails to comprehend that gays are already in the military, and always have been. In fact, soldiers in some of the most vital positions as Arabic translators in the latest wars have been dishonorably discharged when it came out that they were gay. Without enough translators, how can a military sufficiently interact with people half-way around the world?
Oh, I know. Call them all “enemies” and shoot civilians to kill? After all, that mentality had no lasting effects on the psyches of Vietnam veterans. If you don’t know what the dark-skinned man in front of you is saying, how are you to know if he is asking if you know the time or if he is verbally flipping you the bird?
A January 27, 2010 Washington Post article estimated that there are at least 66,000 gays serving in the United States military, or about 2% of all military personnel. An October 2009 Huffington Post article stated that almost 13,000 gay men and women have been discharged, including more than 400 in 2009 alone.
Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell hurts everyone. It creates a sense of shame within gay military and prevents young people from pursuing military careers in which they may have otherwise excelled. Worse, it feeds those who would hate by justifying their homophobic beliefs as the majority view or as even acceptable. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is discrimination, and it is shameful. If it were discrimination by any other name, it would not be allowed. No one should be forced to ride on the back of the bus, or the Humvee.
Gay soldiers, and soldiers merely suspected of being gay, are being killed in Afghanistan and in San Diego. Where is the legal protection for diversity within the military? An estimated 66,000 gays and lesbians are currently serving in the American military. How many more must be murdered by their fellow servicemen and –women before change happens and murder and discrimination are no longer accepted by those we call so brave to fight in our names?
Last night in class, a classmate said, in comparing our modern lives to the Victorians, that religion doesn’t mean anything to us. Uh, say what?
Religion doesn’t mean anything to our society today? Are you kidding me? How is it humanly possible to not realize that religion is a major factor in US politics and life?
When I marched in DC for marriage equality, the counter-protest signs said god hates fags. They didn’t say “I have a personal problem when two men smash each other’s colons excitedly,” no matter if that’s the true sentiment and god is just the label placed upon their hate.
At the county fair back home, a c of c woman set up an extremely disturbing (traumatizing) booth about abortion because the baby Jesus told her to repopulate the earth.
Growing up, my parents and Sunday school justified war by saying that there’s war in the Bible and there will continue to be war until the end of times, until the final battle between good and evil.
My classmate may think religion has nothing to do with her life, but religion affects it nevertheless. If she were pregnant and wanted an abortion, whether or not she could get one would be dictated mostly by the local religious toleration of it because the general populace controls the laws. If she were gay, it’s religious groups leading both the pro- and anti-gay marriage/gay adoption debates. (Of course, she’d probably be like her best friend, whom is bi and told me last spring that California didn’t matter because she could marry in Connecticut and that it didn’t affect her. This level of selfishness caused me to just stare speechlessly.)
Everything. Everything is or once was dictated by religion. If she’d ever hung around any type of fundamentalists, she’d understand the exact level of control religion can–and does–have. In Arkansas, everything is controlled by religion, no matter how informal this control is. Morals control whether or not counties sell alcohol. It was only last year that a state lottery to benefit scholarships was voted in, after decades of attempts and religious fights against it. In Arkansas, Family Council, a conversative Christian lobbying group, has the power to pull out thousands with emails, phone calls, and letters telling people how to vote and what to be against for Jesus. Every election, they analyze every single politician up for election in the state and ask them questions like their stances on abortion, gay rights, and other hot-topic issues, along with listing their religion and how many children they have, just so voters can see that they’re good, Christian, family people. Had I been selected for the Equality Ride, I would’ve been traveling all over the country to private universities with anti-GLBT stances to talk with students and community members about how the baby Jesus loves everyone. Why? Because the Equality Ride understands that change begins with religious groups, and it’s religious groups both leading the gay pride parades and holding up the pitchforks against them.
In order to be an educated person, we should be able to see how our society functions. Religion is important. Even if you never set foot inside a church or read any sort of holy text, religion still has an influence on your life, whether you like it or not. Overlooking this portion of human life is to overlook a huge chunk of history and the human existence.
This weekend, I attended the National Equality March in Washington, DC. On the way there, we drove through New York City’s Bronx. On the George Washington Bridge, I looked out and saw the Manhattan skyline in the distance and recognized immediately the Empire State Building. Growing up in Arkansas, New York City is so far away, it might as well be another planet. I’ve seen photos of New York City my entire life, but here I was, looking at the Empire State Building with my own eyes. And I stared. Meanwhile, Miley Cyrus’s “Party in the USA” came on the radio, and it seemed like the most perfect moment ever. I actually started dancing in the backseat to Miley Cyrus.
Just the night before, I had been discussing regional differences with Sister Susan after watching a movie called The End of the Line, which was supposed to take place in Arkansas, but I felt reflected nothing about the Arkansas I knew. As it would turn out, a lot of what I experienced the weekend would be a lesson in regional differences.
As I told Sister Susan, that movie’s Arkansas is not my Arkansas. Their Arkansas has no morals: they curse, drink, and generally Act Trashy. There was no reference to the baby Jesus or church or anything. Not even the old people act the way I was taught to act, the way any Dignified person acted in Arkansas.
I often find myself pondering regional differences since coming to CT. See, there’s this girl I know from Ohio. I’m not going to lie–she aggravates me to no end. Why does she aggravate me? Because she likes to say she’s from the South (SHE IS NOT SHE IS NOT SHE IS NOT *throws things*), but then she doesn’t act like anyone from the South (she grew up in a family of atheists! GASP. She didn’t even know who Abraham was in our religion class last fall! Can I just say I rest my case that HELL NO is she from the South? I rest my case). She grew up on a farm, so I feel like we should have a lot in common (I was in 4-H my entire childhood), but I was taught that people that act like her are pieces of trash. She thinks you can’t have a good time without drinking. She talks about all these beer games I’d never heard of before meeting her. When she was telling me how she was going back for Thanksgiving and Christmas last year, she said her family would be drunk the whole time anyway, so it was all good. My family? My family has lead the anti-alcohol campaign in my home county twice now, winning both times. You have to drive 34 miles on mountain roads to get alcohol because my county is dry, as are all the counties around it.
But it’s not just alcohol that made me feel like this movie isn’t like my Arkansas, or why I have a problem judging my classmate as a drunkard piece of trash. It’s the way the women are dressed. I remember mom once throwing something at CMT when I was about nine and some woman came on the screen. She threw something at the screen and yelled that she was a slut–but she didn’t say slut, because slut is a Bad Word in mom’s vocabulary. Skank? I don’t really remember. I think it started with an s, though, and I was told when I quickly repeated my new word to my friends at school that it wasn’t a curse word. At any rate, this lady had interrupted mom’s Grand Old Opry or gospel singing or whatnot with her commercial, and I still have no idea who that woman was, but mom wasn’t happy with that blonde woman dressed in the teal business suit laying in a suggestive come-hither pose on our screen.
Because, you see, it’s about morals. My mom always talked about how there’s different kinds of poor. My mom and the cousins that lived next door to her growing up (etc) were poor, but they weren’t trashy. Both families were very religious (Baptist). My granddaddy lead singing in church a lot. Once, mom told me when she was a toddler, she threw the Bible on the floor in church in a tantrum, and granddaddy took her outside and spanked her and told her not to ever throw a Bible on the floor again, and she didn’t. (In fact, ever since hearing this story, I feel oddly guilty if I drop a Bible, as if I were the one spanked for it.) Both families had a high emphasis on education. When my granny was in school, she went all twelve grades, which was unusual for a girl at the time. Not only that, she graduated top of her class with only one B her entire life. Unfortunately, this was during the Depression, so she couldn’t afford college, even though she desperately wanted to be a nurse. My mom fulfilled my granny’s dreams for her, though, by graduating college and becoming a teacher and a librarian. One of my cousins also became a teacher–one of the best in the district, everyone said, until the day she died within a month of being diagnosed with brain cancer two years ago. It was her death that really inspired me to reevaluate my life and apply to grad schools.
This is the world I know, of Jesus and overachieving, and it not mattering that you have any money because the library’s free and pinto beans are cheap and every summer, we only eat what we grow and what we find at the farmer’s market anyway. I know a world of being taught to be morally pure for Jesus, and overachieving and not desecrating one’s body because your mind and your soul are all you have for sure in this life. I was told over and over by my granny that “they” can take away everything you own, but they can’t take your mind or your soul, so you need to learn all you can and make the best life for yourself that you can through the powers of education–education achieved by not destroying your body or your mind through sins like drugs and alcohol.
This is the world I know, and I was taught that poor people who acted the way my classmate does (though, she is obviously rich)–drinking, partying, being lazy, etc–are trash that I should not associate with.
So, I’m from the whole entire world that my classmate doesn’t even know exists, and she wants to say she’s from the South? No. Just no. Likewise, another guy in a class this year told me he’s from the Midwest (dunno where) and said it’s pretty much the same thing as the South. No. It’s not.
This trip to DC taught me that no matter where I go, I will always be a Southerner, for better or worse. As a Southerner, I was taught to be polite and care about the welfare of total strangers and to give in to a certain extent to keep the peace. At the same time, I also bear witness to generations of hate and disparity, and I say no more. I was raised by Celtic tempers in a historically militaristic society. I grew up in a society that wants to oppress others just because they can, and I grew up putting up with it because that’s the way life was, while watching the adults in my family not tolerate oppression directed towards themselves. (This is a fancy way of saying my mother is a bulldog and can be slightly terrifying and regularly humiliated me throughout childhood by being quite willing to verbally maul anyone that pissed her off in the least. On an upscale, when my seventh grade advanced English teacher wanted me to write my SS# on my spelling test and I, instead, wrote that it was “none of her bees wax,” and when I was, consequently, called to her desk and asked if my mother would approve of my talking to her that way, I quite confidently said “yes,” and took my seat.)
I write all this having had quite a tiff with some of the campus GLBT group that were my travel companions. It’s a long, dramatic, stupid story that ends with me telling the president to go fuck herself over the phone and hanging up on her, then ditching the entire group and taking off on the DC metro by myself. At one point, no one would answer their phones, so I took the metro to the airport and was standing in the Delta line waiting to buy a ticket to Hartford when I got a voicemail from one of them. By the time I had reconnected that night with the group, those riding in the same car as me had apparently forgiven the others for what they did, but I was still ready to throw the Quaker peace testimony out the window and punch someone in the face, I was so mad. I remembered then, of course, that when people in New England get mad, they don’t really mean it, or it doesn’t mean they hate you and want you to die. I, as a Southerner, am quite capable of remaining mad as hell for 150 years, thank you very much. I’ve been taught to be polite and keep the peace–up to a point. After that point, I become like a cat and never, ever forget what you did to piss me off so much, and may or may not regularly seek vengeance upon you. I’ve learned that I can tell I am nearing this point when I start speaking with more and more of a Southern accent. When I reach this point, I try to reevaluate the situation and calm down. This time, however, I passed the point of reevaluation and went into full-out rage and listened as my accent became thicker and thicker. Now, it seems all other parties involved are completely blind to the entire thing, while I continue with the memory of how angry they made me and my own disinterest in taking their shit, because, as a Southerner, I’ve already taken so much shit. As I walked around DC, I recognized the ordinary oppression I’m so used to in Arkansas, that I hardly ever experience in New England. None of my travel mates mentioned any of this, and looked at me strangely when I griped about a jerk of a Capitol policeman who ordered me around just because he could. As I was crossing the street at the mall going towards the WWII Memorial, a crazy guy in an ice cream truck playing creepy ice cream slasher tunes yelled at me that equal rights was horseshit and something about “Communist.”
The idea with all of it is to cause fear, to cause me to yield and be afraid of them and respect them through my fear, to obey. What they don’t understand, though, is that my brother is a Klannist, so anything they do seems like child’s play to me. I will not yield or be made to be afraid, and anyone that thinks otherwise is greatly mistaken. As a Southerner, I have a history different from anyone from any other region of the country, a history of being known for slavery, civil rights, hatred, and hospitality. No matter what other regions might have in common, like agriculture and a love of country music, it is not the same and it will never be, and I will not be made to be afraid because I have seen true hatred in my own home that they cannot even imagine.
Today begins the festivities at the National Equality March in Washington, DC. It’s expected to be the biggest march for GLBT equality yet, with a turn-out of hundreds of thousands of people. Originally, my poster was going to say “Connecticut is for lovers,” but now, after watching this video and remembering that Westboro Baptist Church plans to protest the march and the gala with President Obama, I’ve decided, instead, to create a poster that reads “Love thy neighbor as thyself”–in rainbow colors, of course. I hope I get to march right past Westboro where they can read my sign. Didn’t my Lord deliver Daniel? Huzzah.
The announcement of this on facebook created a stir on the National Equality March’s page, with people around the country calling everyone in Tennessee and the South bigots and rednecks, with additional comments dissing the overwhelming Christianity of the region. As someone who grew up in the South and someone, especially, who lives in New England now, it angers me when people make generalizations about everyone in the South. This happens twice a week in one of my classes this semester in a class that’s not even about the South, slavery, Civil War, civil rights (etc, etc). It’s a class about using legal documents in historical research. Period.
I’m gay, and I’m a Southerner. I’m a gay Southerner, and my mother still loves me. I’m a gay Southerner, and I’m still a Christian. I’m a Christian, and I don’t use god to hate people. I’m a Southerner, and I’m probably more liberal than you. I’m a Southerner, and my ancestors owned slaves, and at least one was a gen-u-ine plantation owner, but that’s not my fault. I’m a Southerner, and my ancestors were influential in their towns before the Civil War, but doesn’t make my family anything more than poor today and it doesn’t make those who would be so bigoted today see me as anything more than a dyke.
I’m a Southerner, and I’m also a historian, and the knowledge of my regional history and the history of my family, as well as things in my own lifetime, motivate me to love instead of hate. The inequities I’ve experienced, seen, and learned about motivate me to not be afraid when I try to enact change around me. How much more can anyone possibly do that hasn’t already been done?
Southerners posted that billboard, and it will be Southerners who regroup from this act of vandalism. Until you have lived in the South and lived with the inequality around you every day, you will not understand the dynamics of the South. Until you learn to see that not everyone who lives in one region of the country is stupid, ignorant, hateful, Republican, Christian (or even religious), straight, or white/black, you will forever be some idiotic outsider pointing your finger and calling people you don’t even know names.
Throughout the United States, GLBT students face expulsion at many private universities. The Equality Ride aims to open up the lines of communication to change this.
When I tell people that I have applied to be an Equality Rider, the two most frequent responses are to tell me how awesome that is and to tell me how hard that would be. In the interview for it today, one of the questions was what were my concerns about the ride. To me, it’s not about fear. If I feared anything, it would be violence acted against me by those at the university or in the community. Yet, even this concern seems minimal. To me, doing what I feel is right is what is most important of all, and this goes beyond any concern for myself. In Matthew, Jesus said to not worry about our lives–about food, or drink, or bodily concerns, because life is so much more than even these most basic things and god will provide. Take no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. By putting my own comfort level and potentially my personal safety at risk for justice, I find myself closer to Jesus and my soul alleviated. I have every confidence that everything will work out well in the end.
After having written our mother to tattle inform her what sort of people Big Brother (as he shall be known from now on) has apparently befriended, she wrote me back to tell me to “Just quit reading his stupid editorials. I scan them to see what they’re about then quit reading. They’re not worth it.”
If I close my eyes, will he disappear? If I turn my head, will his hate speech stop? I replied, saying simply “Ignoring his hate speech isn’t going to make it go away.”
Speak out against hate speech. If you won’t, who will? Silence is equated with acceptance. Show the world you will not accept hate.
Today, I read the editorial of a small-town newspaper. This time, the editor managed todeny the Holocaust, support white supremacy, make a racist statement towards Obama, make another general racist statement, bash the GLBT community, mock lesbians in specific a second time, make an anti-Semitic comment, and label television, radio, and teen magazines as evil.
Wow. Where does one even start with that? He should get a ribbon just for the insurmountable level of hatred in one article. After much cursing with a ftm Jewish friend over it all, I still find myself unsure of what exactly to say except to just scream–maybe not even profanities, but to just scream.
Behind the screams, I wonder where his hatred began. Where did he learn to hate? In discussing this with my friend, he suggested that the way someone was raised decided who someone hated and the level of this hatred. But what if the aforementioned hateful prick was the brother of someone who protested for peace and justice in the world? What if the sister of a evangelical fundamentalist hell-and-brimstone preacher was a Quaker who wanted to dedicate her life to helping others? How could one family produce such radically different offspring? Also, if they sold tickets to Thanksgiving dinner, would anyone show for the epic battle of the millennia? (Hey, you have to think of these things in a commercialistic society.)
What determines whether someone will decide to hate or to love his or her fellow man? I think the way one is raised most definitely has something to do with it. If your parents are hateful, you will be raised hearing their beliefs. If you’re raised in a culture in which everyone you’re exposed to hates the same people as your family, it stands to reason that you will be more likely to adopt the hatreds of the people around you than to go against all that you have known. In my examinations of human nature, I’ve found that people often go for what’s easiest. But why is hating others easiest, and, if hate is easiest, why would someone ever choose what is easy?
Yes, that editor is my brother. I once asked my mother where he learned to be so hateful and she transferred blame onto the public school district. Yet, I attended public school until seventh grade, and I am the polar opposite of my brother. If I were to ask the public school district in question, the finger-pointing would only continue to everyone but ourselves. I think all hate can be boiled down to fear, ignorance, and insecurity. After all, if one’s hatred continues to oppress another group into the position of second-class citizenry, that person can feel somehow superior. When things go wrong in his or her own life, the hateful person can try to assure him- or herself that at least s/he’s still better than x. But, is s/he, really? If someone’s entire existence revolves upon the hatred and oppression of others, how can this person ever be at all superior in quality? Worse yet is when such a hateful person is a preacher and spreads his/her hatreds upon a greater population through a position of influence or power. A religious group gives the hateful person a place to act out disparities to create women as a lesser sex dependent upon men or to limit other races joining a group, such as the Mormons did until the 1970s.
A quote from my brother’s editorial:
Why are homosexual groups allowed to go into public schools to entice your children into experimenting with their lifestyle and why are you labeled a ‘homophobe’ for objecting to it? Thankfully, we live in an area where there doesn’t occur–but folks, it’s closer than you think and the wolf will be on the door someday. Be vigilant and watch what your children are being exposed to. Turn off the TV every chance you get. The same goes for the radio.
I’m sorry, but people interested in fucking your children are called “pedophiles,” and they’re usually straight white males. Also, please spare me the Biblical imagery of the devil (“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.” – 1 Peter 5:8). I’m afraid the “wolf” idea goes back to Little Red Riding Hood. Congratulations for getting that mixed up with the Bible, though. As for turning off the tv, I would agree–most especially for your own children, as they’re in dire need of literacy.
Why is lesbianism become the ‘in’ thing for so many young girls today? The sodomite deathstyle is revolting. Whatever happened to the days when one could look at Romans Chapter 1 and see that it is forbidden?
Yes, you see, because everyone wants to be a persecuted minority. Also, thank you for quoting Romans 1, which refers not to loving gay relationships, but pagan orgies. Thank you for not taking that completely out-of-context. Also, sodomy is a very vague word most successfully translated to refer to bestiality, so thank you for also not taking that out of context, either. Also, I’m pretty sure anyone with eyes can “look” at Romans 1. Just saying.
Why are those standing up for white rights branded ‘white supremacists’ and ‘racists’ while others are always called civil rights activists regardless of how blatantly hateful behave? [sic] I really don’t like listening to anyone gripe about their rights, but really, what is the difference?
The difference is that civil rights are for everyone, you idiot. The difference is that civil rights activists don’t emphasize one race over another because doing this is racist, as you so wonderfully demonstrated by your ignorance.
The other day, my Dad asked me what I thought Jesus’s message was after I complained about my brother’s everyone-is-ungodly-but-him approach to theology. I answered without having to even think about it: “That everyone is equal and everyone is a child of God, but some people don’t understand that, so you have to keep on fighting ’cause it’s what Jesus would do.” It was the first time anyone in my family had ever asked me what I thought about religion or God, instead of telling me what they thought I should believe. What struck me the most was the respect inherit in asking instead of telling. It’s such a small act, really, to ask instead of tell, yet it was most definitely a profound moment in my relationship with my Dad.
Last night in class, a classmate said, in comparing our modern lives to the Victorians, that religion doesn’t mean anything to us. Uh, say what? 
Today, I read the editorial of a small-town newspaper. This time, the editor managed todeny the Holocaust, support white supremacy, make a racist statement towards Obama, make another general racist statement, bash the GLBT community, mock lesbians in specific a second time, make an anti-Semitic comment, and label television, radio, and teen magazines as evil.
Recent Comments