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

What is this Friend Thing You Speak Of

I am your friend.  But I cannot promise you forever.  Forever is way too long.  I will not lie.  Sometimes I will do things that you don't like.  Sometimes I will make decisions that you wouldn't have made.  Sometimes I will take care of myself rather than hang out with you.  I will not take care of you.

Taking care of you doesn't have the appeal for me that it used to have.  We cannot rescue each other.  That is not reality.  I will not want something for you more than you want it for yourself.  We are not children play-acting at house and chosen family routines.  We are not teens learning how to separate from our parents and from each other.  Because we are adults, there is no taking care of in this relationship.

I have my limitations.  There are times when by necessity I will disappoint you.  Life is like that.  I certainly will walk away before allowing you or anyone else to clip my wings.  I am my own free agent.  You are yours.  I am responsible for me and you are responsible for you.  I cannot fix things for you.  I've had to investigate what things bound me and what things freed me.  I will not do that work for you.  It is the highest insult to you were I to do so.

I am not good at indirectness or at interpreting your facial expressions or your acting out.  Use language and words or you will lose me.  If you want me to know something, tell me.  Preferably face-to-face but on the telephone at the very least.  Don't bother writing me notes about what upsets you.  We are not in high school.  I never understood that sort of thing when I was.  I don't get it now.

I am good at having fun.  We can go places together, pal around, explore the woods, sit in the backyard, hang out at the mall.  I'm game for most anything.  I am also good at silence.  Sometimes I may not want to talk much.  I am an observer.  I study.  Chattering is useless and irritating.  I am not afraid of the quiet.  I hope you aren't either.

I am your friend for the moment.  For however long we are here in the same space, let us enjoy each other.

sapphoq n friends    

    

On Friendship

Friends drift in and out of my life.  I drift in and out of theirs.  We know where to find each other.  And that is good.  

I have learned-- really really learned this year-- something about being.  I have mitigated the harshness of my inner critic.  I have turned down the volume of the incessant reviews in my brain.  Yes, I have learned a new way of being.  

There's something about respect.  Something about believing in the possibilities that is each of us.  Something about allowing others to have their own journeys just as I have mine.  We are all different, but not so different that we cannot recognize ourselves in others and others in ourselves.

And yet, there is something else there.  Something that fiercely informs me that I will no longer be taken advantage of, that I am not a sheeple, that I protest.  Anger has become my truest friend.  Not my only friend, as a few people have mistakenly thought.  My truest friend.

I have been lonely too.  Not so lonely that my socks talk to each other in public.  But lonely enough.  I have felt the vastness of the universe.  We are each of us alone in our own skins.

I am a tiny speck among other tiny specks.  A bunch of specks can form a dirt pile.  It takes one person to start a revolution.  One person and a friend to gain momentum.  When you kick our dirt pile, we reform.  We are a mass of dirt piles.  We stir up and clink to your leather shoes and your lilly-white garments.  We interrogate authority.  We agitate for change.  We clog your vacuum cleaner when you try to suck us up.

There's something to be said for solidarity within the protest lines.  There's something deep about a bunch of dirt clumping together.  We form a network which plants ideas and dreams.  We know how to live.

sapphoq n friends