I am not a crier. Not because I don't have a soul or because I don't care; I just don't cry. I have shed more tears in the last few weeks than, perhaps, I have in my entire lifetime and all because I don't understand. I don't understand how someone can think that my desires are disgusting, when my desire to love a woman is the purest desire that I possess; I don't understand how someone can think that I am incapable of being a loving mother only because I am incapable of loving a man; I don't understand how someone can think that a person as sweet and as honorable as I am could destroy a blessed union; and I don't understand why someone thinks that I am unworthy of whatever it is we are fighting over.
I strive, diligently, to live my life with empathy; to see things from different perspectives; to appreciate where other people are coming from. I can often find some way to succeed at the task, but the last few weeks have been different. No matter how hard I try to provide understanding and compassion towards the anti-gay rights movement, I am having an unfathomable time finding the means to do so. I don't understand their point of view and I don't feel compassionate to where they're coming from. If I am honest with myself I feel marginalized, fearful, annoyed, repulsive, patronized, and most of all I feel invisible.
I am not an idea or a notion of what homosexuality is; I am a homosexual. I am not a painting of two fat girls naked in a castle hallway or an eXplicit movie of two skinny girls faking it in a bed; I am an actual lesbian that has sex with other lesbians. (OK, they're not all lesbians, but you get my point.) I am a real live lesbian. If you supported the passing of proposition eight, then you supported the marginalization of my real life. It's not just a conception that, out there in the world, two girls could possibly fall in love, want to get married, and potentially start a family; it's exactly what I want my life to look like.
I refuse to believe that we live in a world where we intentionally limit the people around us. Perhaps I place too much faith in humanity, but I believe that no matter how scared someone might feel, we care about one another. I don't believe that what people are scared of... is me. I think that if we were to remove the idealistic blindfold, the obstruction that is making this fight more about an idea than a person, we'd have the footing to create change. Homosexuality isn't an idea and it's about time that we removed the blinders that say that it is.
P.S. Did you know that in the 4th century Christians practiced the union of "adelphopoiesis", which literally translates into "brother-making", and was the tradition of religiously uniting two people of the same-sex?
3 comments:
well said, stephanie, well said indeed.
back to the 4th century!
I'm sorry GLBT rights have been on such a roller-coasting ride for so long. We're lucky in Canada. But you are not alone in feeling frustrated and hurt.
Last night I came home to find my wife crying, because she'd talked to her mother back south. She said my in-law got really abusive and even threatened to have someone come and kill me to keep her daughter from living in sin. What a nice sentiment, huh? And she is one of the cool and educated people in my birth-country. She's actually a pretty decent person---I do like her when she's not being so unreasonable and unfair and hurtful. It really messes up my wife that she can't---and probably never will---get any respect or good wishes from her parents. And it makes me sad and mad and paranoid.
But we must keep our sanity and our hope so we can stand until we're granted the rights any heterosexual holds regardless of whether they are good or bad people, in freedom or in jail. E has been collecting a list of all the criminals who have murdered people and still got married while serving life-long sentences. They still had their write to conjugal visits, they still exercised their right to conceive children during those visits, and are even trying to appeal to the courts so they can be released and become full-time parents or mothers. Seriously, after having killed eight people they still have all those rights we don't? It's hard to wrap a mind around that, isn't it? But hang in there. You are not invisible. You are not alone.
*hugs*
Eek! Substitute "They still had their write to conjugal visits" for "They still had their right to conjugal visits." Sometimes I'm so ESL.
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