Smrt Lernins

Why is the world filled with things that suck?

I give you, for example, some things that suck [with some non-sucking things to cancel out a little of the badness]:

• The Tennessee Senate: Sucks. [This church in Kentucky does not suck]

[Note: Delaware also does not suck]

• Texas and Oklahoma: Both Suck. [Planned Parenthood does not suck, however, so consider donating to them or to your local non-CPC women's clinic -- I'm a big fan of the Feminist Women's Health Center, so you oughta donate to them, too]
• Crazy wives/mothers of cop-killing “sovereign citizens”: Suck. [No, there's nothing to cancel out this amount of suck.]
• The “Ladies Against Feminism”: Suck. [However, No Longer Quivering doesn't suck.]
• LZ Granderson: Sucks. [And if you need to know why, read this and this -- Shakespeare's Sister and Pigtail Pals don't suck.]

I’ll now go back to my regularly scheduled reading of BBC articles about the Assize of Nuisance and conditions of privies in medieval London, ’cause that shit stinks a little less than a lot of the above.

Today, I’m wearing purple to raise awareness of anti-gay bullying. I’m not wearing purple for my kids, though. Gay or straight, my children are growing up in a home where they know that they and the people they love will be accepted. They know their parents will not tolerate–or perpetuate–homophobic bullying.

It’s your kids I’m wearing purple for today. You, over there…the one who believes that being gay is a choice, that being gay is a sin, that being gay is going to send your child or someone else’s to hell. You, in whose home a gay child will grow up being too afraid to share who he* really is, who will hide his true self out of fear of losing your love, who will hurt or kill himself because he doesn’t believe it will ever get better.

Your child is the one I’m wearing purple for today.

If you suspect, or know, your child is gay, here’s a few simple things you can do:

Don’t try to beat the gay out of him.
Don’t try to pray the gay out of him.
Don’t send him away to be reprogrammed.
Don’t try to have him committed.
Don’t ignore bullying at school because “boys will be boys.”
Don’t ignore bullying because it will “toughen him up.”
Don’t bully him.
Don’t mock him.
Don’t ridicule him.
Don’t try to “make a man out of him.”
Don’t tell him he’s a sinner.
Don’t tell him he’s going to hell.
Don’t tell him his love is less than yours.
Don’t tell him his love is wrong.
Don’t tell him he is wrong.
Don’t tell him he is unloved.
Don’t tell him he is unworthy of being loved.
LOVE HIM.

If you can’t do the things on that list, if you cannot love your child and treat him like a human being of equal worth, with equal rights, perfectly created by God to be exactly who he is, then for God’s sake and your child’s, send him to me. I’ll open my doors to him, because I’d rather have him safe and cared-for here than abused and bullied to the point of hurting himself there. Or…or…won’t you try letting go of your hate and your fear and your ignorance, embracing your LGBTQ child, telling him how much you love him, that he is cherished in your home, that you will keep him safe and will never, ever, ever perpetuate bigotry, hate, or homophobia.

Can’t you do that? Can’t you wear purple in your own heart for YOUR child and the children of others?

*I say “he” in this post because the tragic bullying-related teen suicides in the media lately have all been among seemingly-cisgendered males who either self-identified as gay or were labeled gay by others, but for those of you with lesbian daughters, for those of you with transgendered children, for those of you with bisexual or genderqueer children, please apply the same rules.

It’s National Coming Out Day! Today is the start of a new opportunity to help our LGBTQ family and friends feel supported and encouraged. Today, we can each make a commitment to create a safe space for our children to be who they are, not who we, someone else, or the world tells them they should be. We can make a promise to our children that it gets better and mean it. We can work to make those changes that will provide our children with equal rights, equal protection, and equal opportunity under the law, no matter who they love.

This weekend, I took my kids to the 40th Atlanta Pride Festival and Parade. I’d really wanted to get the kids down there last year, but Patchfire and crew bailed on me, and I wasn’t ready to brave the crowds with Babypie being so young. This year, however, we set off on our own on a grand educational field trip to the Pride celebrations.

Since I can’t let anything be just about fun (ask Captain Science; he’ll be happy to tell you that) and because I wasn’t precisely sure what to expect at the festivities, I got some conversations going before leaving and on the trip down to the parade. Captain Science and I talked about what he might see at the parade, about why Pride was celebrated, about what certain words means and what certain causes were about (like repealing DADT). We talked about how some words were originally derogatory (like “dyke” and “queer”), but have been reclaimed by the people who were once called those words — I related it to how people used “geek” or “nerd” as an insult for smart people, but now more smart people are saying, “You know what? I am a geek and proud of it!” We talked a lot about love and how it’s never a bad thing; if it’s a bad thing, then it isn’t love.

On the drive down, we talked about power and enfranchisement/disenfranchisement over U.S. history — that right now, straight people have all the rights and gay people only have some of them; if you go back 50 years, white people have all the rights and black people only had some of them; if you go back 100 years, men had all the rights and women only had some of them. We took it further back and talked about political/social power all the way back to the feudal system–when one person (the king) had all the power and nobody else had any unless the king said so–and how change in how many people have power is happening faster. We talked about ways in which more people having a part of the power is good and ways it might be bad. Tank shouted out that it could be bad because they might not do what you want them to do. Smart boy! We talked about what you do when people you share power with don’t agree with you. Captain Science was so engaged in the conversation.

At the parade, we stood next to a young man and woman who took Babypie’s picture (she was in the back carrier, wearing rainbow Babylegs and waving a Pride flag) and to an older man wearing a neck brace, who overheard me saying “at least it isn’t a coconut” when someone from a float threw bags of potato chips at us and asked if I was from New Orleans. It turned out that he’d moved from New Orleans 25 years ago to be with the man who is still his partner. Both couples helped the kids catch beads and candy and colorful bracelets. We got t-shirts and a neat rainbow bandanna that I wore for the rest of the day. Captain Science’s favorite float was one with the Peanuts characters dancing on it. Tank liked the marching band best. I loved the PFLAG groups, the men dressed as colorful fairies with giant Carnival-style wings, and especially the band of angels, who stood briefly and symbolically in front of the small group of loud homophobic “Christian” protesters with their hate-filled signs (a group that necessitated another conversation with Captain Science). The barrier they created between the hate of the protesters and the love of the parade attendees was more than merely physical.

After the parade, we got swept up in the moving crowd and walked down to the festival. So many people, happy and dressed in rainbows! Couples and families and big groups of friends, every age, every race, all of them beautiful. Tank was complimented on his shirt (which said “Hellooo Gorgeous!”) and Babypie received all manner of comments on her cuteness and fierceness (she was faux-slapping at people in the line for the ATM, which amused the guys next to us to no end). One young man praised Captain Science for carrying the big bag full of our stuff. Another stopped us, smiled, and said, “It starts here with tolerance, young ones.” We were given stickers and candy, Tank’s fondness for trifolding brochures was indulged at multiple booths, I bought a “Repeal Don’t Ask Tell” shirt and renewed my Human Rights Campaign sponsorship, we donated a dollar here and there to a few groups, and we split a delicious rainbow-frosted cupcakes. Tank was surprised when he saw a woman whose upper body was painted in a rainbow (in lieu of an actual fabric top) and said, “Mama! She’s nekkid!” though he did agree with me that they were just ninnies (the word we use with the babies for breasts) and not really that big a deal. We came home tired and with bags full of Pride swag.

I do think that young man is correct: it does start right there with tolerance. My kids are growing up knowing that whether they are gay or straight or anything else, there’s a place in our family and a place in this world for them. They won’t have to be remembered on some future October 20th, because they are loved and they know their family won’t allow anyone to bully them for their sexual orientation or any other reason. More importantly, they aren’t being raised to view being gay (or bisexual or transgendered) as wrong or weird; it’s just another way to be. They can’t conceive of a reason why gay people should have fewer rights than straight people. I hope that by the time my kids are grown that the world will reflect that same set of beliefs.

I’m pretty lucky.

I’m a white, heterosexual, middle class woman. My gender identity is the same as my biological sex. I hold a postgraduate degree. In short, with the exception of sexism and the occasional prejudice against Southern accents, I go through my life free of discrimination. It’s pretty easy to be white, straight, and middle class in the U.S. Patchfire likes to call me “Apple Pi,” because my life (while quirky, hence “pi” rather than “pie”) appears to be the all-American ideal of suburban normalcy.

I don’t make assumptions about my children’s gender or sexual identification, however. I don’t know who they will grow up to be. I don’t know who they’ll love. I can, however, do my best to create a world where they will be treated as equals no matter who they are. I can fight for their right to marry whomever they love, to raise children, to get a job wherever they are qualified to work, regardless of whether a church thinks that’s “right” with God. Even if my kids all grow up straight and cisgendered, I would still fight for the rights of your kids, because no mother’s child should be denied the right to love, to have a family, and to just live his/her life, simply because someone else believes in a literal and bigoted version of a book written 2000+ years ago. ETA: I was linked to this lovely video made by a young man who has suffered through and overcome some of the very bigotry I’m talking about.

This morning, I woke up to a post on the WTM forums about whether or not the ENDA, a law that would prohibit workplace/hiring discrimination against gay/transgendered people, threatens “religious freedom”. Really, you guys? I’m flabbergasted that the very notion of gays being treated equally under the law, at least where employment is concerned, is that threatening to you. Apart from the fact that the law specifically exempts religious employers, do people really believe that gays are conspiring to take over the churches*? Are people really still buying into the ludicrous notion of a Gay Agenda?

I don’t understand how you can think of yourself as a good person while campaigning for another human being to have fewer rights than you. It’s so inhuman to treat someone else as less human. It’s unpatriotic to want to steal the rights from another citizen, rights that you so carelessly enjoy, because you don’t like the cut of their jib or who they love. The absolute gall of thinking your religious beliefs trump someone else’s basic human rights, let alone actively working to deny those rights, is one huge reason why I’ve drifted further and further from identifying w/ any of the primary religious groups in this country. Is this what Christ would have wanted? I seriously doubt it.

To that end, I’m a member/sponsor of the Human Rights Campaign, which fights for equality for all people — straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, cisgendered, transgendered. These issues include, among many others, the right to marry, to have biological children without legal threat, to adopt, to be employed without fear of termination based on sexual/gender idendification, to serve in the military without fear of discharge based on sexual/gender identification, and to be free from hate crimes. I will also soon (I pick a new organization for donation each quarter) be sponsoring the Southern Poverty Law Center, which works against hate groups of all ilks.

Bigotry and discrimination is just plain stupid. I’d like my kids to grow up in a world that isn’t stupid, thanks.

*Perhaps they think that because anti-choice pharmacists could infiltrate pro-choice dispensaries and then stand in their “religious freedom” to refuse to dispense the very medications they were hired to dispense. Funny how bigots think everyone as small-minded as they.