Come Out, Come Out, Wherever You Are

     As the cold and winds settle in, more and more Canada geese depart for warmer climes. The hummers have wisely gotten out of here already. The grackles have all departed and that makes me a bit sad. I've enjoyed them immensely this year. The red winged blackbird, friend to grackles, showed up the other day alone. I felt badly for him. Probably worse than he felt for himself. Birds can and do have bird friends as well as bird enemies. I am not anthropomorphizing here. Bernd Heinrich has observed something akin to friendship among the ravens. 

     Other animals, like people, can also demonstrate something that looks very much like prejudice to my human eyes. My dog has long hated shih tzu dogs, going so far as to attempt to attack one during an obedience class. [I quickly squashed her action]. Conversely, she has been delirious with happiness upon meeting a husky. She shares some common ancestry with the huskies. Something inside her recognizes similar and different I am sure.

     It was probably some kind of evolutionary imperative that caused animals to band together, first into exclusionary tribes and much later into mixed flocks. It is not the individual that is sacrosanct. It is the species that must thrive. Modern humans tend to flock with those who have similar characteristics. Is it one of the phobias that cause this? (Homophobia, xenophobia...). I think it is the comfort that goes with recognition. If we are the insiders, then we cannot be cast out.

     Saturday October 11, 2014 was National Coming Out Day. As a bisexual atheist, I have experienced coming out on a personal and a media level. When a photographer caught a shot of me and a [now ex-] lover smooching in front of City Hall, I was at first a bit leery. That picture did make the paper. Nothing much happened because of it in my personal life. By time I had a soundbite on the evening news, I was "used to" these sorts of momentary spotlights. I was at work when I and my soundbite were flashed on the screen. My co-workers saw it too. None of them commented. Work that evening was super quiet.

     I am troubled when I read a letter posted on the bulletin board of a local (moderate) church exhorting women to "vote the bible." Some survey, according to the letter, has demonstrated that christian women do not vote. A campaign has been announced. Christian women, vote the bible. Vote for your candidates of faith. Here comes another figurative bloodbath.

You may save this tag. You may use it on the Internet as you will.
Please, no hot-linking. Thanks.

     When a corporation can declare itself a person and then go on to legally insert itself into decisions that ought to be left between a woman and her physician-- decisions that are informed by her faith or lack of faith perhaps, along with her personal circumstances and her health status-- there is something wrong. Abortion is a terrible tragedy. Yet, I recognize the necessity. When a fetus is not viable, it is the height of cruelty to inflict an organization's religious stance on the pregnant woman. She has her own spiritual advisers, perhaps. Leave her alone. Politicians, stay out of her vagina.

     When politicians vote according to their sincerely-held religious beliefs, there is also something wrong. The laws that the churched celebrate can also be the laws that deny minorities their own vision of spirituality. The Jewish woman-- whose religious tenets dictate that the life of the fetus is not equally or more important than her own sacred life-- loses out. It is a catholic proposition that we are entirely responsible for what others do with our shared resources and medical technology. I do not understand this sort of communal guilt. But I recognize it as something that adults had tried to instill into me as a teen (and failed).

You may save this tag. You may use it on the Internet as you will.
Please, no hot-linking. Thanks.

     When students are mocked for not having a religion in a public school setting and no teacher or administrator steps in, something is wrong. To say nothing is complicity. To join in is horror. Yet this scenario has happened with all too much frequency. Read Hemant Mehta if you don't believe me. The rights of the majority ought not to stamp out those of minorities.

     Minorities are the other, the stranger, the outsider. We have to fight for our place by the fire. Because my niece and her lover have to fight for basic recognition, I am involved in the movement to change state laws that do not acknowledge that two women can fall in love and raise a family. It is the height of immorality that allows a hospital to deny an adult access to his or her same-gendered partner in a time of crisis. It is a sham that allows another to deny a rape victim the morning after pill. It is horrifying that any work site which accepts public funding should even dare to discriminate against potential hires who have a state of being.

     Corporations are not people. Corporations that accept any sort of public monies ought to remember that the tax dollars of the faithless are part of the financial windfall. At the very least, we ought to rise up and collectively shout, "Hey, you're not the boss of me." Self-determination is something that all civilians ought to be able to have. Because our lives trump your grand corporate feelings.

sapphoq n friends