So here I am in a theater full of people, and I wanted to stand up and say, by a show of hands who supported Proposition 8 on Tuesday? I wanted to just see the face of my enemy. It all strikes me of the small mindedness of the conservative movement in this country.
I watched John McCain conceded the election on Tuesday night to a sea of white faces. Similar to the sea of white faces at the Republican National Convention in September. Reportedly there were a scant 34 African Americans at the Republican Convention in Minneapolis. WOW... what does that say about the grand old party???
Anyway, I find myself repeatedly returning to this one question. When did the country I love, turn into this place of I'm right and you're absolutely wrong because I have the one and only truth? This is an utterly stunning development to me. I have written before about how I understand the draw towards the black and white simplicity of fundamentalist religion and it's easy answers and my preference for the complexity of a Technicolor world of no clear right and wrong answers. But what really and truly scares me is how can you possibly have a dialogue that begins with the other party believing that they are absolutely and completely right? How do you get anywhere?
Just look at our foreign policy of the past 8 years, it was executed with exactly this perspective. Of course John McCain finds meeting with our enemies without precondition, because he believes as most Republicans do, that he is the only one with the correct answer to the problem what ever it is. W felt that way too, that's why invading Iraq wasn't hinging on WMDs for him, that whole rouse was to get the public behind it. W just plain thought he was right.
And so it is with Queer marriage. The conservative religions think they have the only true marriage, one man and one woman. Well you know what, maybe they do, in their religion, but we are talking about CIVIL RIGHTS, before the law of the land which is supposed to be blind to race, creed, color, religion, sexual orientation or any thing else. If it is blind, then my faith that tells me that the God I worship is about relationship and we model that relationship with God by being in relationship with each other as humans, doesn't have time to worry about whether I am in a relationship with a man or a woman, God only cares that I am in some sort of relationship that ultimately points my eyes to God, is equally valid before the law and should be recognized. I'm not and I would venture to say, the Queer Community is not, asking the Roman Catholic Church to marry us, though there are certainly Queer Catholics that would like that. What we are asking for however, is all of the CIVIL RIGHTS and RESPONSIBILITIES before the law that are afforded to heterosexual couples.
Let's just think for a moment. Queer couples can adopt children, in fact I'm a father. What does it teach my heterosexual daughter that her father cannot marry the man he loves? It teaches her that her father is somehow less of a citizen. Of course I will tell her differently. And that is exactly what I would expect someone raising their child as a Roman Catholic would teach them about Queer Marriage, that in their belief system that doesn't fit. It's not unlike what I remember about evolution when I was a boy. When it was taught in my school, I asked my pastor what that meant with regard to creation, and gee he taught me. This idea that we have to teach exactly the same thing and believe exactly the same thing is so saddening.
Anyway... that's probably enough for today. Hang on folks, there is likely to be many more posts about this as we travel this road to re-obtaining our rights.
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