Another catastrophe hits the Gulf Coast. A veritable ecosystems-destroying, this-region-will-never-be-the-same-again, absolute disaster. And all most of us can do is watch and wait with stress in our chests, sadness in our hearts, and lots of anger.
This is what collateral damage looks like.
There is so much to say, so much yet to unfold, and no way to comprehend it all. Not now. This is one for the books.
Both sides of my family are conservative and working class. Throughout the years, many an anti-liberal, anti-intellectual, anti-Democratic-candidate email forward has landed unwelcome in my inbox. I try to keep the peace sometimes, but I resent when others feel complete freedom to make their views known to me while I’m told to just delete the email if I disagree. That makes no sense. After some years and a few in-depth and passionate email debates, I managed to be removed from people’s group lists, and I don’t much receive the stuff anymore. Occasionally, though, my mother will receive one so egregious that she passes it on to me, as misery does love company. Here is one she recently sent over to me, with my commentary following.
You Might Be a Redneck….a different take
We have enjoyed the redneck jokes for years. It’s time to take a reflective look at the core beliefs of a culture that values home, family, country and God. If I had to stand before a dozen terrorists who threaten my life, I’d choose a half dozen or so rednecks to back me up. Tire irons, squirrel guns and grit — that’s what rednecks are made of. I hope I am one of those. If you feel the same, pass this on to your redneck friends. Ya’ll know who ya’ll are.
You might be a redneck if:
1. It never occurred to you to be offended by the phrase, ‘One nation, under God.’
2. You’ve never protested about seeing the 10 Commandments posted in public places.
3. You still say ‘ Christmas’ instead of ‘Winter Festival.’
4. You bow your head when someone prays.
5. You stand and place your hand over your heart when they play the National Anthem.
6. You treat our armed forces veterans with great respect, and always have.
7. You’ve never burned an American flag, nor intend to.
8. You know what you believe and you aren’t afraid to say so, no matter who is listening.
9. You respect your elders and raised your kids to do the same.
10. You’d give your last dollar to a friend.
If you got this email from me, it is because I believe that you, like me, have just enough Red Neck in you to have the same beliefs as those talked about in this email.
God Bless the USA !
Keep the fire burning, redneck friend.
IF YOU DON’T STAND BEHIND OUR TROOPS FEEL FREE TO STAND IN FRONT OF THEM
IN GOD WE TRUST
_______________________________________________________
Let’s deconstruct this, shall we? (You know what I mean.)
_______________________________________________________
1. It never occurred to you to be offended by the phrase, ‘One nation, under God.’
…because rednecks believe that our country’s founders were escaping religious freedom and coming to America to establish a religious state? The phrase “under God” was added to the pledge of allegiance on June 14, 1954. Three days later, on June 17, freely elected president of Guatemala Jacobo Arbenz was overthrown in a coup orchestrated by our very own CIA. See, Arbenz’s proposed land reforms in his country would have threatened the operations of the United Fruit Company, which had close ties to the White House and the CIA. The phrase ‘under God’ offends me not just because it conflates religion with government, but because if we are going to amend the Pledge, it should more accurately/less hypocritically be changed to ‘one nation, under corporations, divisible, with liberty and justice for some.’ I suppose that the true lesson here is that rednecks value their country, but not similar rights for others in other countries.
2. You’ve never protested about seeing the 10 Commandments posted in public places.
I’d rather people just followed the ten commandments than self-righteously prop them up for public view. Newsflash: Not all U.S. citizens are Christian, and the authors of the Constitution were careful to separate church and state. You obey a higher law? Fine, but 1) You probably don’t and 2) Display it on your own property (the one you don’t share with the rest of your state and country).
3. You still say ‘ Christmas’ instead of ‘Winter Festival.’
Talk about being offended by nothing. I assume that what the author meant to say is that as a redneck, you still say “Merry Christmas” rather than “Happy Holidays,” or you still call it “Christmas break” rather than “Winter break.” First of all, it takes a lot of sensitivity to be offended by the increasing popularity of an all-inclusive description or well-wish. Furthermore, you get to say whatever you want, and telling someone “Merry Christmas” is neither against the law nor will it bring a lawsuit upon you. If businesses decide to post banners that say “Happy Holidays,” it is because they do not wish to exclude a portion of their paying customers who do not celebrate Christmas. So shut up. Calling public school vacations “winter break” is smart. Not all U.S. citizens who pay taxes are Christian, so in summation, get the fuck over yourself.
4. You bow your head when someone prays.
You’re right, I refuse to bow my head 100% of the time. And I get it: rednecks are Christian and like to demonize, ostracize or criticize those who aren’t. And I will bow my head out of respect, depending on what the prayer is for.
5. You stand and place your hand over your heart when they play the National Anthem.
Okay, I get this, too. Rednecks are patriots. They love their country because it is godly and pure and disdain the rest of the world.
6. You treat our armed forces veterans with great respect, and always have.
Isn’t this becoming a bit redundant? Rednecks: you apparently believe that being pro-war equates with being pro-soldier, and that being anti-war means being anti-soldier, but motives for military service are evidence of character-some veterans are assholes, and some are awesome. Some join the armed forces to kill people-that I can’t respect. Some join with the intention of protecting freedom, and that I can though I think it a misguided motive. Some join because it was their best option to live a comfortable life-that I can respect while frustrated by a government and an economic system that preserves a reliable underclass to be “bodies on the ground.” I understand that those who are sent into wars are leaving home and loved ones, and that much sadness, pain and loneliness is endured as a result even if they do come home alive. It’s tragic, as is all sadness, pain, loneliness and loss.
7. You’ve never burned an American flag, nor intend to.
Burning an American flag is a form of free speech protected by the U.S. Constitution’s first amendment. Yes, you read that right–the first amendment. What’s incredible to me, though, is when the desecration of a symbol is seen as more despicable and disgusting than the destruction of human life–whether it’s burning a flag, tearing out pages of the Bible, burning the Koran, or publishing a portrayal of Mohammed. Destruction of spirit, flesh and bone is what should truly be maddening. We are the only animal that kills itself so well. What’s also incredible is that many Americans can passively accept that the American flag, as a symbol of the American country (citizens and government), ONLY represents goodness, and therefore its destruction is always a negative. However, as a symbol of such a varied landscape, it represents not only glory and freedom. The truth is that most people who choose to exercise their right to burn the flag do so to protest the ills (bad things) perpetrated by our country, such as the documented and confirmed instances of active disregard for human rights and democracy, both at home and abroad-and in that case burning the flag is an act of righteousness. Careful that you’re not using the flag as a blindfold.
8. You know what you believe and you aren’t afraid to say so, no matter who is listening.
…and no matter what the facts are, or better yet, what the truth is.
9. You respect your elders and raised your kids to do the same.
It is healthy to question authority. It was authority that oversaw the fields, authority that legally sanctioned wife-beating, authority that taught the youth to call people ‘niggers.’ It is authority that sells corrupt military action and puts people in jail for growing pot. It is authority that suspended a Louisiana child from school for telling his classmate his mom is a lesbian. It was authority that beat and gassed the marchers in Selma. It was authority that made me walk all the way around the outside of the school to get from point A to point B because if I were to take the direct route through the hallway I would disrupt classes in session. In our culture, increased age does not necessarily correspond with increased wisdom. If it did, it wouldn’t then be the young forces that so often have been behind the most momentous social progress of our history. Respect should be given by everyone, but it must be earned by everyone.
10. You’d give your last dollar to a friend.
What, are you putting it in her G-string?
If you got this email from me, it is because I believe that you, like me, have just enough Red Neck in you to have the same beliefs as those talked about in this email.
God Bless the USA !
Keep the fire burning, redneck friend.
IF YOU DON’T STAND BEHIND OUR TROOPS FEEL FREE TO STAND IN FRONT OF THEM
So because I’m opposed to war, I should be killed? I’m not following your logic. So far, your modern wars are not proving themselves to protect me or my freedom, and this affront is greatest to those who have trusted our nation’s military not to put them in harm’s way for no good reason. Your support for wasted military action is the ultimate disregard for our troops and the civilians who shall be killed.
IN GOD WE TRUST
So let me get this straight. From what I gather, your GOD drinks bud light, hates fags and Arabs and Muslims (or terrorists), flies the American flag (and the rebel flag) at HIS/HER place. GOD takes no issue with racism, economic injustice, or Americans’ obsession with materialism, money, war, sex as a weapon and Hummers. S/HE has no problem with environmental degradation (it’s not like S/HE created this world or anything). S/HE looks the other way when the U.S. government makes it decisions for short-term economic and political gain, rather than to remain in line with justice and a higher righteousness.
I appreciate your attempt to reclaim the word ‘redneck’ like gay people did with the word you used to throw at them before you beat them up. Tire irons, squirrel guns, and grit. Are you going after terrorists, or uppity Negroes? Get off of your high horse and come back down to Earth.
For real: This piece of work insults the intellect. It attempts to categorize as superior a group of by definition reactionary, ignorant and prejudiced people who base their supposed superiority on selfish, questionable, hypocritical and flawed arguments. The injustice is not that rednecks are misunderstood. It is that they misunderstand so much. (And do not even think you get to claim the word “y’all.” That is efficient, gender-inclusive language.) Thanks for reading, y’all.
I love beer and sometimes I take pictures of my drinks. In honor of St. Paddy’s Day, here are some of my favorites.
Too often intellectualism has been treated as the mark of a schizophrenic–of someone whose thought processes are divorced from reality. But also too often have intellectuals refrained from truly translating their theory into practice, supporting the anti-intellectual’s case by default.
I often express the more poetic side of my nature in my free time, but somehow have never seriously considered doing so more fully in my life. Monday morning arrives and I arise to subject myself all over again to the emotionally abusive grind. The analytical part of me, however obnoxiously and to my dismay, continues to writhe up from its oppressed innards to my mind’s surface. It shoots out of my searching piercing haunting eyes as my unceasing ruminations on society and nature push me ever further on my life’s parabola-not toward a schizophrenic theoretics but toward a different sort of mental illness-a more general madness (or is this sanity?)–an increasingly anxious malaise.
All of the apparent and persistently espoused logic that made my mother insist on my going to law school (the same logic that made me refuse to go to law school) continues to propel me down a path of learning and questioning to formulate solutions to whatever problems I ponder. When I was a kid, I’d lie awake at night trying to figure out how the world could be saved (seriously). Fortunately, the bigger picture doesn’t keep me up at night anymore; I’ve learned to focus on a smaller locus of control. At the end of every question, I found that love and education were always the answers, and so I have arrived at certain beliefs in solutions and am willing to commit a lifetime to contributing toward their pursuit. That is all that saves me from giving up on everything that surrounds me.
I grew up in a slightly shady part of South Baton Rouge, and my knowledge of North Baton Rouge extended to the intersection of N. Foster and Gus Young where I attended Greenville Elementary for five years. EBRPSS’s desegregation plan had me on a school bus for about 2½-3 hours per day, taking me from a majority black neighborhood in the Burbank/Gardere area to the larger majority black area where Greenville Elementary sits. From first through fifth grade, prior to attending McKinley Middle and Baton Rouge High, I sat in Gifted/Talented classrooms full of mostly white and Asian students. At recess, there were sometimes memorable playground interactions and incidents between the “gifted” kids and the “regular” ones that served as lessons, especially when I would report them to my mom in the evenings after school. She was vehement in her reminders to her young daughter that I was no better than any of the other students in my school, or anyone else. I was in my twenties before I realized the extent of North Baton Rouge and learned that the oft-joked about intersection of Airline & Plank wasn’t a true intersection at all.
Because my job has me working with schools strewn across the northern half of my hometown, I often find myself making new connections between my city and my perception of it as I travel down old roads, past old houses, for the first time. I reflect on how a decades-long desegregation case failed to fix our schools. I reflect on what I know needs to be done to get good teachers in every school. I reflect on all I am ignorant of that needs to happen. I reflect on how, in that revolutionized system, I would do whatever it took to be worthy enough to gain a teaching position. And if I were not good enough, I would respect that, too.
For those on the outside, our low-income youth are often viewed as a faceless, nameless lot, devoid of individuality or talent. That perception is a lie. It reduces them to a mass-produced stereotyped shell that in no way encompasses the vitality and potential that lies therein. Too many people still call the problems of poverty ‘insurmountable’-those people are ignorant. There is hard proof to the contrary; the problems are surmountable indeed. Without condemning families and communities that have had to struggle historically and presently to get by, we need to expand the attractive life choices available to these kids.
Disenfranchisement comes in many forms. Education has been perverted in our culture, so that it not only keeps disenfranchised our low-income youth, but it disenfranchises an entire generation of capable, educated adults who see few options to live comfortably while thoughtfully, diligently and positively shaping our society’s culture. Most see no benefit to being an educator of students in pre-K to 12th grades and so take alternate routes into supposedly lucrative careers of medicine, law, or business; intellectual careers in higher ed; or, at a loss, stick to the service industry or state jobs. Or, like me, they work in education but outside of the classroom. ‘Educators,’ currently, are too often nothing of the sort. It is the fundamental problem in our educational system and general society, and, if fixed, would be revolutionarily liberating from the collective mental slavery that binds us and drives some of us to a limiting but functional madness. Education is the passing of culture. By how much we value these fundamental shapers of our shared reality, we make our own choice. If most people don’t do their job, people are inconvenienced. If teachers don’t do their job, our society will degenerate into increased chaos and move that much closer to its collapse. So instead of considering the artistry and analytics within me as opposing forces, I’ve finally realized (thanks to the CEO of Netflix) that creativity and discipline are both integral to balanced growth. I can consciously move on with positive passion and healthy doses of both, as the battle within me has ceased.
In Super Bowl XLIV, it was the first time the winning team had lost their last three regular season games. It was the first time a team kicked an onside kick prior to the 4th quarter. It was the first time a kicker made three field goals longer than 40 yards. It was only the second time a team came back from a ten-point deficit to win it. It was the first time the Saints won the Super Bowl, after 43 years of franchise existence.
Sunday night was everything we wanted. We wanted to win, but if it wasn’t to be we at least wanted a good, close game — anything but an embarrassing blowout. The Colts were heavy favorites. We Saints fans had been bombarded all season and especially during the two weeks leading up to the big game with reasons why the Colts were the superlative team, the dominant team, the most likely championship team. We knew the Saints could be that team, though, because we’d been watching them all season. We had already witnessed many seeming miracles that made us believe. Yet, despite the exciting wins and impressive stats, the Saints were given only a begrudging respect — the historically losing franchise represents, after all, a city and state that put the ‘fun’ in ‘dysfunctional, corrupt and backward,’ and many commentators and football fans were just waiting for them to blow it, waiting for the curtain to be pulled back, waiting for the child to point at the naked emperor and announce the obvious for all to finally see. Many were just plain hating on the Saints.
Well, think again or suck it. Our low-ranked defense proved itself in a stunning redemption and our offense played both subtly and incredibly well. Brees completed 32 of 39 passes to finish the game with 288 passing yards. After Colston dropped that first perfectly placed pass, he realized he didn’t want to let that happen again. Special teams shocked everyone with their onside kick to open up the third quarter, and the offense took it home like they knew they had to after those unsuccessful running plays cost us a TD in the second quarter. Shockey caught a touchdown pass after having had to sit out due to injury and watch his team lose the last three games of the regular season, and of course Port Allen’s own Tracy Porter swooped into the end zone with an intercepted ball in one hand and the other raised, pumping in the air in jubilant, celebratory fashion. Our defense closed it out by shutting down the Colts in their red zone when they went for it on 4th. (Colts were #2 in the league for scoring inside the red zone, but the Saints were #2 in the league for defending the red zone. And the Saints won.)
Prior to the game, the commentators commented their commentary that no team had ever had a 3-game losing streak at the end of the regular season and gone on to win the big game. Oh, and they were first-timers at the Super Bowl, so that made a Saints victory less likely. (Only 4 out of 19 teams making their initial Super Bowl appearance have won against their more experienced competitors. Well, now it’s 5 out of 20.) Our coaching staff knew to save its best players for when it really counted. Our coaching staff knew that focus, practice and preparation would give the Saints the edge and ability to win, and refused to accept that a loss this time around would prepare the team for a better chance later on — nope, the future is NOW, and it feels damn good.
And look: a championship football team is by no means an appropriate or sufficient metaphor for a city that still has within it so many struggles. But beyond the raised money and revenue jolt, this Saints season has united our region, and the Saints fans and Louisiana natives all around the world. The team knows it is an important emblem of the city, and it’s heartening that New Orleans is in the international news for such a joyous reason. The Saints refused to pay mind to the naysayers — instead they were visionary and hardworking and saw that they could make history by coming in off a losing streak, coming in as a first-time Super Bowl team, coming in as the freaking New Orleans Saints and becoming National Champions in Super Bowl XLIV. The Colts did not lose the game; the Saints won it. Destiny isn’t fairy dust or a god playing chess. Destiny is the intersection of vision, effort, cooperation, confidence and execution. It’s buoyed by the collective positive thinking of fans in Louisiana and around the world who know, love and appreciate New Orleans for what it is. This win doesn’t fix nearly any problems, but it shows us that the past does not have to control the present. We can and must break out of old chains to claim and create an improved reality. New Orleans may be a queen city that overshadows BR, the rest of the state, and the whole Gulf Coast region, but thank goodness for her and the Saints that represent all of us. Hallelujah, laissez les bon temps, and WHO DAT SAY DEY GONNA BEAT DEM SAINTS???!!! Happy Mardi Gras y’all!
Below are some links for posterity and your viewing pleasure.
Onside kick “game changer” “gutsiest call in Super Bowl history” to open second half
Tracy Porter’s interception & touchdown run
Drew Brees w/ son after win (video & pics). (I love Drew Brees so, so, SO much.)
Drew Brees on Letterman 2/8/10 (Humble, charming, endearing, and THE BEST QUARTERBACK IN THE LEAGUE)
Drew Brees more accurate than an Olympic archer? Fun analysis.
In honor of this holiday, I am presenting some of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s own words. He was a truth teller and an activist in the best sense possible, not just on behalf of civil rights but for race relations, peace, and economic justice. I ♥ him. Here he speaks for himself:
“As I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they asked, and rightly so, “What about Vietnam?” They asked if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today: my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.”
“I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin…the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”
“True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring.”
“Let us go out with a divine dissatisfaction.
Let us be dissatisfied until America will no longer have a high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds.
Let us be dissatisfied until the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort from the inner city of poverty and despair shall be crushed by the battering rams of the forces of justice.
Let us be dissatisfied until those who live on the outskirts of hope are brought into the metropolis of daily security.
Let us be dissatisfied until slums are cast into the junk heaps of history, and every family will live in a decent, sanitary home.
Let us be dissatisfied until the dark yesterdays of segregated schools will be transformed into bright tomorrows of quality integrated education.
Let us be dissatisfied until integration is not seen as a problem but as an opportunity to participate in the beauty of diversity.
Let us be dissatisfied until men and women, however black they may be, will be judged on the basis of the content of their character, not on the basis of the color of their skin. Let us be dissatisfied.
Let us be dissatisfied until every state capitol will be housed by a governor who will do justly, who will love mercy, and who will walk humbly with his God.
Let us be dissatisfied until from every city hall, justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.
Let us be dissatisfied until that day when the lion and the lamb shall lie down together, and every man will sit under his own vine and fig tree, and none shall be afraid.
Let us be dissatisfied, and men will recognize that out of one blood God made all men to dwell upon the face of the earth.
Let us be dissatisfied until that day when nobody will shout, “White Power!” when nobody will shout, “Black Power!” but everybody will talk about God’s power and human power…
Let us realize that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
Killing was an act of contact. It was messy and spawned existential questions along with real, visible, grotesque pain and suffering. People started thinking of ways to keep the blood off their hands while still being winning participants in power plays of exhilarating life and horrifying death. People started using stones in mobs of collective, oppressive insanity. Later they used their eyes, fixating on degraded humans fighting to the death, being crucified or burning at the stake. Eventually they brought picnic blankets to protect their legs and their food from the ants, watching the human animal swing from a tree branch while being set on fire. Other eyes used more than distance to separate themselves from the spectacle-they looked through lenses, pieces of glass, capturing reality while removing themselves from it. Swords were attached to guns, but then the guns began to exist alone in hand as a finger pull and sore shoulder coincided with two explosions–one cause, one effect. That sore shoulder was too bothersome, though, as was the rightful risk of combat, so they found ways to play God from the heavens, a modern new testament to humanity’s destructive consistency. These same vehicles that delivered bombs to foreign lands brought the lands’ resources to us, accompanied by too easily ignored accounts of the murders that afforded us our entitled comforts. The distance between killer and casualty widened, the two repelled by the excuses of accepting accessories to a crime that does pay, but that lost contact has not quelled those same questions as we daily and absentmindedly cup purified water and wash the blood off our hands.
I was a super hero
In a comic book city
Donned a costume of glasses and bright blazers
And fought with human strength
Supplied by a supply of drugs
And pride
I wore a crown of defeat every night
Driving toward comic book towers
Brightly lit, banked against an ominously colored sky
At home,
I curled up in the curved dome of my head
Suckered to sleep by a perpetual power shortage
And wine
I awoke to a graphic reality
Among quickly unsterilized walls
Dug frantically for my philosophy
Amidst the rubble of my mind’s
Crumbled theoretical walls
And closed my eyes oh-so-tightly
Against the nightmare.
My letter to the editor was published in BR’s Advocate on Friday, Nov. 20, and was the latest in a chain of letters discussing gay rights and discrimination. Here are the links below to the first few letters, and the link & text of my response. Thanks to everyone for the positive response!
Letter: Reader sees lack of tolerance in BR
Ms. Laura Jones – September 29th, 2009 - Letter #1
It’s no mystery to me why educated adults are leaving the Baton Rouge area in greater numbers than any other part of the state. As reporter Stephen Ward notes, it’s not economic. It’s a simple matter of tolerance, or in our case, lack thereof.
Letter: Tolerance and common sense
Mr. R. Glynn Kelly – October 14th, 2009 - Letter #2
The letter to the editor, on Sept. 29, written by a self-professed lesbian Baton Rouge educator was a real eye-opener for me. Apparently educated people are leaving Baton Rouge in droves because of a lack of tolerance. I have to admit that I was unaware of this problem.
Letter: Line was drawn; letter crossed it
Mr. Kevin Serrin – October 27th, 2009 - Letter #3
A letter to the editor on Oct. 14, written by a local area resident of Irish heritage, is a sad example of the intolerance and lack of understanding that many area residents and elected officials feel toward this city’s sizable gay and lesbian population.
Letter: Homosexuals seek special rights
Mr. R. Glynn Kelly – November 7th, 2009 - Letter #4
A letter to the editor on Oct. 27, written by a local area homosexual resident, Kevin Serrin, as a rebuttal to me, is a sad example of the modern-day definition of “intolerance,” which says, “If you don’t cater to me and my ilk, then you are intolerant.”
Letter: Gay rights are not special rights
Ms. Rebecca Marchiafava – November 20th, 2009 - Letter #5
I am writing to address some assertions made by R. Glenn Kelly in a letter to the editor published Nov. 7. In this letter, Kelly dismissed discrimination against gays as essentially non-existent. This view is incorrect and governed by emotion and, frankly, indicates a lack of critical thinking about the issue.
Mr. Kelly argues that gay citizens are seeking special rights. This assertion is absolutely false. Example: after centuries of shameful and legislated discrimination, anti-miscegenation laws were declared unconstitutional in 1967. Every single Southern state maintained these laws until that point when they were forced to repeal them. Was an interracial couple seeking special rights when they argued for the right to marry? No. All citizens were granted that right, whether or not they chose to exercise it.
Gay-rights proponents, regardless of their personal sexual orientation, are not advocating special rights. Rather, they are protesting the injustice of present discriminatory laws or actions that currently limit the ability of members of a minority population to: be granted equal civil rights within a marital union, discuss their home life at work, serve in the military, attend a prom with a significant other, hold hands with that significant other in public without fearing physical or verbal attack — the list goes on.
Arguing that these are special rights is as absurd as arguing that women were granted special voting rights in 1920, but, be assured, people vehemently espoused that argument. Personal discomfort or disgust aside, homosexuality is a part of human nature and human society. Ignoring that truth is a sign of blind bigotry, which can only result from faulty logic. It is this type of prejudice that causes the arc of history to take as painfully long as it does to bend toward justice.
Last, Kelly argues that gay rights would trample on the rights of others who don’t want to work with or who fear the ‘influence’ of homosexuals on their children. Sorry, but in the end, the right to be prejudiced does not trump others’ civil rights. You don’t have to like it, but civil rights legislation historically corresponds with the philosophy that humanity should transcend narrow-minded and destructive beliefs, and we will continue down that path.
As for me, I hesitate to bring children into a world that is still so populated with close-minded individuals. However, as those people are a natural part of society, I guess I just have to live with it — even if it disgusts and offends me. It’s just unfortunate that so much vitriol be directed toward, simply, love.
Rebecca Marchiafava, board member
Baton Rouge Progressive Network
Baton Rouge
*Find out more about the Baton Rouge Progressive Network (BRPN) at www.brpnonline.org and on Facebook.
I was an adult before I ever saw a shooting star that I can remember. Incidental, walking back to my dorm at the end of a Saturday night. Winter. In a group, who knows what was being said or what language was being spoken and with what other accent. Missing a boyfriend, a love, hands in jacket pockets, bored by conversation and eyes turned upward. Ephemeral to my eyes, an end to a long journey-my feet kept moving, going down the steps that led us under the train tracks to more steps that allowed us up on the other side. Five years later, in a lake in northern Alabama at night–summer, then, but the night breeze was cool. I started closed off but warmed up in the water. Kisses and wine-stained lips and teeth, eyes went upward again and not just one but two or three, I alone saw them, maybe he was looking at me. When we moved up on the dock he was then the one looking up, and I down and around. Two, maybe three, and eyes couldn’t see. Six years before, at Tipitina’s uptown after a rain, quiet color all around with streetlights and stage lights and Doug Martsch’s fingers hitting the strings, plucking, picking, the vibrating music following right behind on heels of its own. Four years later, Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlins in that branded art district, an intersection in nothingness, a newly constructed counterculture pocket with the occasional story sitting obscure but preserved in cracked amber age. A ruby stage of earthen clarity behind a foreground sea of darkness and silence wrapped up in velvet sound…Three months later, dancing jubilantly to the Little Ones in Manchester, Tennessee as the sun drifted around the corner; an hour later, lying on the benign blades of grass at the foot of the multicolored ferris wheel, joyous breath and peace and beauty and love inside and out. One year later, same place, dancing in the misting rain and in glowing adornment with the stage at a distance later cut in half, by then standing in a huddle like penguins, our blankets and towels off of the ground and on our backs and a jacket’s dondante in our ears recounting an epic life of its own. Three months earlier, arms around me and hands on me while my fingers stroked the black and white keys, a strange rebirth into a mad world of crashing and twisted connection, disturbing and glorious. Six years before riding in a red car in the quiet early morning pitch dark listening to a white album (mind on the blink), hearing a heart beat closely and a train’s shriek in the distance. The next summer, I stood in sand with computer generated waves in the background, dress swirling and stars lighting up like traveling Christmas lights with my laughter, and five years afterward standing at the banks of a swollen and mighty river with an orange slice moon suspended above and lights shimmering on her black mercurial ripples as our strong and vulnerable bodies stand on vulnerable land, drunken shouts–intended disruptions–breezing past us in the wind as we drink in her power in peaceful lapping; nature’s bodies communing with little ole me during the origin of it all, how beautiful is that.