I promised I would try to do a better job of this. I tried. May not be better, but here it is, anyway.
So now same-sex marriages are legal in the state that has Boston. I can't spell it, so let's just agree to call it Mass.
I live in Silicon Valley, which is close to San Francisco, which has a large same-sex population. It also has a large population of different sexes.
You know, I was thinking about same sex marriage and I can see how people would get upset by it. It's sort of like saying "the milkman isn't going to come anymore, you have to go to the grocery store." Or even, "You can't get Scooter Pies anymore because the Tastycake company is going out of business." And to some people it's like, "We don't believe in your God so we're doing what we want."
Even worse, to some people it's: "We believe in the same God, and we're still doing this, because he said it's OK."
It's a big change for people who were brought up thinking the world works the way it does because all the good people believe the same things. Then you go and find out some people believe different things about the world. Like knocking down the WTC was really a big US/Israeli conspiracy. Like birth control should be illegal. Like the Bible isn't a historical accounting. Like Jim Henson didn't die of a flesh-eating bacterial infection. Like Jesus is God, or isn't God. Like one of the kings of Ethiopia was the second coming of Christ and we should smoke as much weed as we can. Like light can be slowed to the speed of a bicycle. Like if you go fast enough, you get there before you left.
And you think--what's with you people? Lots of people are thinking this right now: WHAT'S WITH YOU PEOPLE?
In fact, a lot of people who believe in diversity are thinking: WHAT'S WITH YOU PEOPLE, when really, at its root, the definition of diversity is a "what's with me is different than what's with you" sort of thing.
And then there are a whole lot of people who don't believe in diversity; who sort of believe in democracy, which would indicate that everyone should get a vote and things should happen as a result of the vote, which means in general, the majority rules. The majority not being the minority, will be thinking the same way. This is democracy. It has prevailed where other systems, like totaliarianism, or communism have failed. So like Darwin would say, it's survived because it was best equipped to survive. Kind of the way Ford beat Packard and Studebaker.
Like Westinghouse beat Frigidaire and Amana.
So now you have people saying: "why couldn't YOU people just stay in the closet? What are we going to tell our children?" the way people did back before immigrants and slaves in the United States were considered people. Back then, the majority worried, too. The whole world was going to collapse. "If God had wanted us together, he wouldn't have made us different," I heard someone say on the radio, yesterday.
The whole free world seems to revolve around a person's individual right to be outraged in public. And I'm thinking that's not a right. It's neither a God-given right, nor guaranteed by the constitution of the United States, where I live.
"I am outraged," seems to be the cry of people who aren't getting what they want, the theory being corrections should be made to rectify the outrage, and if I'm not big enough for you, consider God. Of course, things are rarely so simple. De-outraging one person outrages another. And so on.
Could it be we simply don't have the right to outrage? Could it be we have the requirement to be accepting? Could it be what outrages us strikes God in an entirely different way?
How many times will you hear today, "I don't have to take this shit," from someone? But what if they do? What if each of us has the God-given right to take THIS from someone else? To accept things because they are.
What if God's grand plan is not that some master religion homogenizes humanity in one big charismatically facist swipe, but rather, that we realize that having people see things differently gives us the sort of perspective people have when they've seen the world, compared to the perspective people have when they've never left Lincoln, Nebraska? That humankind's quest is to find God, and that he's not going to appear one day under the exact same rock we've been looking under for the past 2000 (or 12,000) years.
You know--in some countries they arrange marriages. I wrote an essay about this on E2 and was immediately assaulted by people who had been involved in arranged marriages and felt they were good, couldn't I get my puny western mind around that? They came to love their arranged spouses. It was the way it was. They expected it from childhood and when it happened everything about it was wonderful.
I had to accept it. I didn't have the right to be "outraged" that American citizens were being told whom they could and could not marry by their parents--which by the way--is kind of the way it is in some places in America where arranged marriages are not explicitly practiced, too. I was brought up in a "you will know your true love when you find him/her" culture. Emphasis on the "FIND" part. The whole FINDING is what love story movies are made of. It's the essence of romance. It's "right", right?
But not for a lot of people. It just isn't. I have no right to an opinion on that subject. If I was "outraged" by arranged marriages, it would be ludicrous. Fifty percent of the human population of the earth practices it. Not only would my outrage be misplaced, it would be a worthless waste of energy.
Now same sex marriages are happening. I was brought up in a religion which has gone on record as saying that's an "abomination" and an "affront against God". And we all know that insulting GOD is probably the worst thing a physical creature can do. Face it, when Lucifer insulted God, God invented Hell and tossed him there and changed his name to Satan. And Lucifer was an Archangel. We're just humans. Imagine what kind of hell is reserved for HUMANs who insult God.
So there's all this outrage. People are afraid. Sure, we're open minded. Just not where lots of things are concerned.
Consider this:
Right now in America any two people with complimentary genitals can pull up to the Church of Elvis Chapel drive-through window in Las Vegas and get married without getting out of the car. They can get divorced the next day, but if they stay married by Elvis, and one of them dies, the other one will be considered "next of kin" and so will be admitted to the hospital room of the dying partner. Household funds become communal. The house won't be taken away from the other if one croaks. There are rights.
Now you have some same-sex couple that's been together for 20 years and one dies. The other one has no rights to be with the dying person, despite his/her God-given love.
God. Do you hear me when I pray? Honestly. Does the Pope really have the hot line? Does Billy Graham have a nice fluffy bed waiting for him in the guest house of eternal grace?
Did you ever once say any of those things were true?
I didn't think so.
What has become of us as a people that we wish such sorrow upon others in the name of keeping the milkman visiting our houses? What does it matter to we who are not in same-sex marriages that others are? What will we tell our children? -- How about that some kids who would otherwise have no parents, have two parents of the same sex--and that in our society that happens. How about that just because your mother was a crack whore and your father was a business man from Dallas just visiting Portland for a convention--that you deserve to have two loving parents, anyway? That it's better to be adopted by two people who love you than to grow up in a state-run home and released into society at 18 years old to fend for yourself? How about we just act like it's the way it is--because it is--instead of pretending it's not, like we do now?
How about we just act like we care about the fact that what we do and think--or don't do--hurts people? And that we should just stop hurting people in the name of keeping things the way they are?
You realize, of course, we're playing with fire. Of all the things in the world that have caused trouble, this is the worst--people fighting change.
The whole civil war in the US was fought because of this. An agrarian society that relied on slave labor for its economy fought for stability in the face of an industrial society that began to rely more heavily on machines. Values drifted. A war started between people who were more the same than different.
I posit we're more the same than different. This is another change. Resistance is not only futile, it hurts people. With the hindsight of 100 years we'll be wondering why we thought twice about it.
Because thinking you have the right to hurt people because God is on your side is wrong. Believing you alone have the right to interpret his teachings is wrong. Believing you're better than the most lowly, commonest, least of your brothers, is wrong.
I learned about Jesus as a child, and I remember he said that. I remember that I am not chosen. I am not superior. It's my personal job to take care of everything. I am a steward of your earth. Whatsoever I do to the least of your children, I do to you. I remember what you told me, God.
Could it be, perhaps, that it's the responsibility of the majority, after the big decisions have been made, to care for the minority--not because it's democracy, but because it's the definition of morality?
If it was my daughter, I'd be spending a lot of money on flowers.
Dear Lord do you hear me when I pray?
I knew you did.