Son of Timatollah

By cultivated nature, I am not one to put things in black and white terms. Perhaps by inclination initially, but also by years of pointed practice, I've developed the habit of looking for commonalities, for points to be shared, for the 99.99% overlap in all our lives rather than the 0.01% differences.

(I know my GOP and righter-wing friends may find that hard to believe, but I also believe in the political utility of demoralizing the opposition—a tactic some of you share—so I'm not beyond portraying your wrongheadedness in extreme terms every so often, even as I try very hard not to forget that we're all in this together, are the same in almost every sense, and ask, almost beg, you to come to your senses and get on the better side of things.)

But on this matter of same-sex relationships, I've about lost my patience with my less than understanding friends who persist in supporting having the state deny my love and me and those like us what are rights given to us by God—yes, by the Creator of this Universe—by the simple fact that we were born into this world, that we are breathing.

That is the right to be considered married by our communities, as represented legitimately and legally in our governments at all levels.

The November 2008 election results in Arizona, California, and Florida hit me like a ton of bricks. I have become so numb since that I could watch what happened in Maine this past November without getting depressed, which is, in its own way, sad.

To have my rights—and this is where I am as sure as I have ever been about anything: these are my rights—voted on by my fellow citizens is insulting and demeaning. It shows a degree of suspicion of gay people as citizens, as humans, that is simply not justified.

The concerns raised by those who oppose recognizing the full human rights of LGBT people are not real.

• Recruiting: The idea that gay people are out there trying to convince children to be gay is a fantasy that opponents of recognizing gay rights whip out all the time, without one iota of evidence for its reality. Currently, there's no settled understanding about why some of us are gay. Clearly we're a small proportion of the populace.
  
  My own thinking is that being gay is an expression of human nature with both genetic and developmental components that manifests itself once societies achieve a certain lack of survival stress (so that whatever genetic factors are involved become expressed). I figure it's likely that nothing anyone does except wiping out the modern world and sending us back to the caves will change some small number of LGBT people showing up in the world on a recurring basis. I'm skeptical that there's any one factor that can be identified to put the kibosh on that nature expressing itself, or that would lead someone who's not gay to become gay.
  
  When it comes to conversion, the fraction of straight people who are actively trying to turn gay people straight is probably larger than the fraction of gay people who are actively trying to turn straight people gay. And it's those same ones who are active in trying to get gay people not to be gay who go around claiming that gay people are trying to recruit straight people.


• The gay predator: Most child molesters are straight, with a family connection to the victim. The ones who are gay are almost always closet cases. Instead of worrying about out gay people preying on your children, you ought to be worried about the insecure ones who pretend to be straight: The preist. The Boy Scout leader. The Sunday School teacher. The Republican state representative, Governor, Congressman, Senator.
  
  If the closet persists, that exploitative element will persist with it, because it's harder to grow emotionally into an adult relationship with another adult when the larger world treats same-sex adult relationships as something to be devalued relative to straight relationships.


• Lack of monogamy: My own thinking is that this has more to do with whether one has an XY chromosome pair or an XX pair (part of that 0.01%), with plenty of statistical variation regardless. Look: Men, by and large, are horndogs, and straight marriage doesn't change that, only its expression. Those straight marriages are not uniform in how that expression is achieved: There are plenty of married men at titty bars whose wives could care less, and I'd be very suspect if you could show that that group is any less good husbands or good fathers in the long run than the group that never looks at another woman besides their wife. The supposed ideal family promoted by the opponents of recognizing gay rights may be achieved by a few, but it is neither as broadly nor deeply a part of the lives of married straight people as those opponents fantasize. It seems pretty obvious that if it were, there wouldn't be so many divorces.
  
  And, yes, gay men, like straight men, are wired such that more and different seems better, and they might just be in a position to realize fantasies based on those ideas more often than straight men can find indulgent female partners to do so. That doesn't mean that the couple is any less committed to each other than it does for the straight couple, whether they are married or not.


• Sleaziness: Again, the idea that all straight people, married or not, are only doing it in the missionary position is just a bunch of bunk. Merle sang that "we don't make a party out of loving," but just about any decent sized city (and lots of smaller ones, too) has commercial outlets to spice up the love life of straight couples, from Victoria's Secret at the mall to any number of coyly-named free-standing outlets like "Indulgences" or "Fantasies" or "The Love Shop."
  
  But if gay people add a little kink to their sex lives, then it's supposedly sleazy. This is a face-value double standard that displays who's got the power in this world: it's okay for straight people, but sleazy when gay people do it.


• It's not really love: This is the one that irritates me the most. To tell me that what I feel for the man I love is not really love is just disconnected from what is.
  
  Do not tell me that it's not love when I lay in bed next to him at night, feel my foot touch his, and feel my entire body just unwind. Do not tell me it's not love when we fall asleep holding hands on the couch. Do not tell me that it's not love when we take care of each other when we are sick, when we do our best to take care of our own and each other's families. Do not tell me that it's not love when we do little things for each other that we never tell each other about. Do not tell me it's not love, when one of my few fears is something happening to take him out of my life.
  
  Do not tell me it's not really love.
  
  Do not tell me what I am feeling.
  
  When I tell you that I love him, do not tell me that I don't feel that way. When your child tells you that she or he loves someone of the same sex, do not tell then that they don't, that it's a phase they'll grow out of, that no child of yours could ever feel that way. Believe this report as surely you believe the sun comes up in the morning, for it is just as real, just as natural, just as much a part of the way this Universe works as your or my breathing is. As your or my kissing the one we love is.
  
  Do not tell me that this is not love.

To those of you who continue to want to prevent our governments from recognizing my rights: I understand that this involves some recalibration on your part. I understand this is not what you've always believed. I understand this way of thinking bumps up against what you believe your faiths require of you. I'd ask that you look at ways people thought about relationships between folks of different colors once, and how somehow their faiths survived the change of thinking about whether that was allowed or not. (Some may never have changed their attitude about mixed-race relationships, and to those I can only extend my deepest sadness.)

Please, give this some reflection and thought.

The love Mack and I have for each other is just as real as what you and the one you love have for each other. Just as real. Just as natural. Just as human. Just as blessed. Just as Divine.

Our expressing that love and having it recognized by our governments takes nothing away from you, does not threaten your children, has no impact on whether they are more or less likely to be gay (even as it changes the likelihood that should your child be gay, she or he may express that openly and be more likely to be happy).

As we move forward, please give our love not begrudged recognition as some kind of exception ("well, you two are okay since you're our friends, but the rest of those faggots better watch out"), but give us, all of us same-sex couples now and to come, your blessing with full and open hearts.

Open your heart and see what is real, not your imaginings, not your fears. See the love.

Love's got everything to do with it: Our love as individuals for each other, and our love for other people, regardless of who they love.

Please help us secure the recognition of our rights. If you can't do that, at least please stop helping those who oppose our securing what is rightfully ours. Those rights are ours: I am sure about that. Are you so sure that they're not?

Labels: gay, gay marriage, gay rights, lgbt, marriage, rights, same-sex marriage

Greetings one and all from the McKinley/Wilson household. We are observing an almost-completely non-traditional Christmas this year, as we are traveling tomorrow, Christmas Day, to Mack's folks' in Hooker, Oklahoma. We fly to Amarillo via Houston, then rent a vehicle to drive up to the OK panhandle. We fly back home this coming Tuesday.

Mack's mom has Alzheimer's, so this is not going to be one of those fun trips. But it will be a good trip to make, nonetheless. He saw his folks last summer, but I haven't seen 'em since August a year ago. No one is getting any younger in this world.

Since we're traveling on Christmas, we haven't done anything Christmas-motivated around here except send out cards. We don't have a tree; we didn't get decorations down from the attic to put up outside or around the house. I was afraid we'd be depressed about it, but it's gone pretty good so far. Tonight we're having a nice dinner (ham, sweet potatoes, salad, and rolls), opening our Christmas cards (have only opened a few so far), and exchanging stocking stuffers (no stockings). Maybe it's good to scale back every so often.

If you've been looking for updates here, you haven't been finding anything. I'll admit it: I've spent more time on Facebook than I have here: Little updates on my life, arguing with people about health care reform, following the updates of people ranging from my childhood to current students and colleagues. But it doesn't lend itself to longer-form writing (even with its "Notes" feature), so I don't want to let this go.

So, with luck there'll be more updates here: More pics (I'm behind on those), more commentary, and more overall updates.

Labels: 2009, christmas, facebook, merry, update