Thanks to Veterans, Straight Allies, and Olbermann

Some days you just wake up full of gratitude.

A special thank you to our veterans today for bravely shouldering the burdens of inhuman brutality to ensure our safety. You inspire us to keep fighting for the rights you so valiantly promote and defend. We owe it to you to pressure our elected officials to preserve your legacy of noble heroism by treating our current warriors with dignity and forthright intention.

Another thank you to warriors of a different brand, our straight allies in the culture wars. Out of all this Prop 8 filth, I've been able to draw solace from a couple of things:

Number one, the 4-point margin by which it passed pales in comparison to the 22-point lead by which its equivalent Prop 22 passed eight years ago. Polls indicate that people tend to support our side the younger they are, so perhaps eight years of old prejudice died in between now and then, or maybe even hard hearts softened.

Number two, my straight allies make me so proud. I have macho straight guy friends and girly girl straight lady friends who all called me and texted me on election day so excited to tell me they had voted no on 8. Each one made me want to cry with gratitude. The only connection these people have to the prop is a firmly held belief that they want to live in a world that is equal--where people like me, their friend, get to have the same things they enjoy. It's the ultimate gesture of generous sharing of your toys. I have gay friends I had to flog to go down to the "No on 8" campaign office to make phone calls with me (though I will admit that at first I was just as complacent as most) while my straight friends were taking all my lawn signs and proudly displaying them in their hetero suburban yards.

A thank you to one straight ally in particular: Keith Olbermann. I've got Rachel Maddow fever so bad over here that sometimes I forget to mention our other friend over at MSNBC. Keith last night on Countdown devoted a segment of his show to Prop 8, and he got it so right on. He even made a Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam reference, hooray! Video below.

KEITH
Finally tonight as promised, a Special Comment on the passage, last week, of Proposition Eight in California, which rescinded the right of same-sex couples to marry, and tilted the balance on this issue, from coast to coast.

Some parameters, as preface. This isn't about yelling, and this isn't about politics, and this isn't really just about Prop-8. And I don't have a personal investment in this: I'm not gay, I had to strain to think of one member of even my very extended family who is, I have no personal stories of close friends or colleagues fighting the prejudice that still pervades their lives.
And yet to me this vote is horrible. Horrible. Because this isn't about yelling, and this isn't about politics. This is about the human heart, and if that sounds corny, so be it.

If you voted for this Proposition or support those who did or the sentiment they expressed, I have some questions, because, truly, I do not understand. Why does this matter to you? What is it to you? In a time of impermanence and fly-by-night relationships, these people over here want the same chance at permanence and happiness that is your option. They don't want to deny you yours. They don't want to take anything away from you. They want what you want—a chance to be a little less alone in the world.

Only now you are saying to them—no. You can't have it on these terms. Maybe something similar. If they behave. If they don't cause too much trouble. You'll even give them all the same legal rights—even as you're taking away the legal right, which they already had. A world around them, still anchored in love and marriage, and you are saying, no, you can't marry. What if somebody passed a law that said you couldn't marry?

I keep hearing this term "re-defining" marriage. If this country hadn't re-defined marriage, black people still couldn't marry white people. Sixteen states had laws on the books which made that illegal in 1967. 1967.

The parents of the President-Elect of the United States couldn't have married in nearly one third of the states of the country their son grew up to lead. But it's worse than that. If this country had not "re-defined" marriage, some black people still couldn't marry black people. It is one of the most overlooked and cruelest parts of our sad story of slavery. Marriages were not legally recognized, if the people were slaves. Since slaves were property, they could not legally be husband and wife, or mother and child. Their marriage vows were different: not "Until Death, Do You Part," but "Until Death or Distance, Do You Part." Marriages among slaves were not legally recognized.

You know, just like marriages today in California are not legally recognized, if the people are gay.

And uncountable in our history are the number of men and women, forced by society into marrying the opposite sex, in sham marriages, or marriages of convenience, or just marriages of not knowing, centuries of men and women who have lived their lives in shame and unhappiness, and who have, through a lie to themselves or others, broken countless other lives, of spouses and children, all because we said a man couldn't marry another man, or a woman couldn't marry another woman. The sanctity of marriage.

How many marriages like that have there been and how on earth do they increase the "sanctity" of marriage rather than render the term, meaningless?

What is this, to you? Nobody is asking you to embrace their expression of love. But don't you, as human beings, have to embrace... that love? The world is barren enough.

It is stacked against love, and against hope, and against those very few and precious emotions that enable us to go forward. Your marriage only stands a 50-50 chance of lasting, no matter how much you feel and how hard you work.

And here are people overjoyed at the prospect of just that chance, and that work, just for the hope of having that feeling. With so much hate in the world, with so much meaningless division, and people pitted against people for no good reason, this is what your religion tells you to do? With your experience of life and this world and all its sadnesses, this is what your conscience tells you to do?

With your knowledge that life, with endless vigor, seems to tilt the playing field on which we all live, in favor of unhappiness and hate... this is what your heart tells you to do? You want to sanctify marriage? You want to honor your God and the universal love you believe he represents? Then Spread happiness—this tiny, symbolic, semantical grain of happiness—share it with all those who seek it. Quote me anything from your religious leader or book of choice telling you to stand against this. And then tell me how you can believe both that statement and another statement, another one which reads only "do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

You are asked now, by your country, and perhaps by your creator, to stand on one side or another. You are asked now to stand, not on a question of politics, not on a question of religion, not on a question of gay or straight. You are asked now to stand, on a question of love. All you need do is stand, and let the tiny ember of love meet its own fate.

You don't have to help it, you don't have it applaud it, you don't have to fight for it. Just don't put it out. Just don't extinguish it. Because while it may at first look like that love is between two people you don't know and you don't understand and maybe you don't even want to know. It is, in fact, the ember of your love, for your fellow person just because this is the only world we have. And the other guy counts, too.

This is the second time in ten days I find myself concluding by turning to, of all things, the closing plea for mercy by Clarence Darrow in a murder trial.

But what he said, fits what is really at the heart of this:

"I was reading last night of the aspiration of the old Persian poet, Omar-Khayyam," he told the judge. It appealed to me as the highest that I can vision. I wish it was in my heart, and I wish it was in the hearts of all: So I be written in the Book of Love; I do not care about that Book above. Erase my name, or write it as you will, So I be written in the Book of Love."

Lesbian Politics: political awareness and the historical continuum

All lesbians inherit a political history. This history is unique in that lesbians acquire it at birth, yet their parents usually do not teach it to them.This history extends back farther than the origins of all the major religions, and yet it is at the same time untraceable.There are no documents chronicling our passages through time.The global nature of our sisterhood precludes a comprehensive accounting for all our composite actions throughout the millennia.



Unlike the majority of communities, we have neither unifying texts nor common rituals; ours is a community not borne out of shared cultural traditions but rather out of the disparate obstacles that we all eventually encounter.We have conquered a variety of these obstacles in many places via hard-fought battles--many of the hardest of which have been waged in the last century. How do we know how valiantly the warriors of these recent engagements have fought? For the first time in our history, we have victors, and their names are etched in the public record--in our governing documents.

Pillars of the lesbian community are emerging as pillars of the community at large, and it is these triumphs that inspire my most positive beliefs in civic duty, fueling the urgency I feel to stay educated about my local-to-global position in time. I am blessed to have been born in Los Angeles, where I see women like Sheila Kuehl and Shelley Freeman forging proudly out inroads into public service. These women inherited our political history, but unlike ours, theirs had no Sheila Kuehls and Shelley Freemans--and look what they have been able to do in spite of that handicap. In their lifetimes, they opened doors where eons of lesbians had encountered overwhelming resistance.

This history--of which Kuehl and Freeman are contributing authors and in which all lesbians share--leads undeniably to more struggles. 222 years of American lesbians have yet to achieve the full rights first proffered to "mankind" in our oldest articles of confederation. Women--not just lesbians, but all women--have yet to enjoy a full 100 years of American enfranchisement. In the course of less than a century, and for the first time ever in lesbian history, our warriors have won us the freedom to assemble together in public for change.

So why do I not see more of us assembling?

At CSW Pride last year, I discovered my local Stonewall Young Democrats chapter. I eagerly joined for the dual attractive prospects of (a) informed political discussion and (b) hot politically savvy females.I found the former in abundance but found to my horror that I was the group's sole lesbian member.

I know there are women out there more passionately politically active than I, but what is everyone else's excuse? Why do I not see more lesbians actively engaged, interested, and participating in today's history-making? That we exist among all the world's many cultures affords us the most propitious opportunity to examine the matters affecting us with insights informed by nearly unlimited combinations of backgrounds and experiences.

So where is our dialogue?

I have been given the privilege of contributing to this blog with posts political in nature. I hope to foster a learned discussion, and in so doing I will aim to steer readers to a variety of sources. For those without an active interest or strong opinion, I hope to show that investigating the issues takes less effort than one might think.Engaging is often enraging, but we can use our frustrations to strengthen our resolves.

All lesbians inherit a political history, and thus, all lesbians are inherently political; how we handle this inheritance should be openly debated often.It is our duty to recognize our power and responsibility, to teach ourselves the issues, and to function as leaders on behalf of the lesbians who will follow us and inherit the history we are in the process of making.