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.
