Essays: March 2005 Archives

One of the most difficult challenges for me is to be tolerant. I didn’t used to be this way. It used to be my nature to be tolerant of others who disagree with me on any issue. There was a time that I would never turn my back on a friend. Never.

But, I’ve changed in the last couple of years. Apparently, with age, I’ve been given the gift of being able to see through bullshit when I see it. A couple of examples...

The article below shows yet again one more attempt from our government to send a strong and resounding message that it’s perfectly ok to discriminate against gays. I guess it’s our turn. I get get. I understand that. But it doesn’t mean I have to agree with it.

What the Boy Scouts are doing is simply wrong. They are sending out a message that it’s just fine to keep the gay men away from kids (the Girl Scouts do not discriminate against lesbians). In essence, the Boy Scouts are saying, although they wouldn’t want to admit this in front of a camera, is that there is truth to the stereotype that gay men can not be trusted around your male child. Is it fair? Certainly not, but this is what they are up too.

GOP Bill Would Force Cities To Admit Scouts Despite Gay Ban

Senate Majority leader Bill Frist has introduced legislation that would make it illegal to bar the Boy Scouts from using pubic facilities.

In 2000 Supreme Court ruled that the Boys Scouts can prohibit gays. The high court said the constitution gave the scouts, as a private organization, the right to choose its members. The Scouts also prohibits atheists.

Civil liberties groups have challenged the scouts’ access to government facilities because of the ban and its requirement to swear an oath of duty to God.

The Pentagon last year settled one lawsuit by telling U.S. military bases around the world not to become direct sponsors of Boy Scout troops or Cub Scout dens.

Dozens of cities and school boards have also barred the scouts from using public facilities.

If Frist’s “Support Our Scouts Act” becomes law the federal government would be obliged to support the Scouts and state and local governments would be required to give Scouts access to their facilities if they make them available to other groups.

So how does this effect me? I went to the grocery store not so long ago and a couple of men were out in front of the store collecting money for our local Boy Scout troop. They looked at me and apparently I glared back. When I approached the store, they did not ask me to contribute. I will not give money to anything that discriminates in this fashion.

People can choose what they want to do as far as their children are concerned, but I will tell you this. If I am friends with some couple, and I find out that their son is in the Boy Scouts, how close do I want to be to those people? Everyone knows how the Boy Scouts feel about gays. Yet, they are allowing their son to be a part of that. So, does that mean that at some level, they support and endorse that behavior? I don’t know, but I do know that I am more cautious around people that do this. A wall goes up.

In the last election, I lost a friendship because he voted for President Bush because it was for the “good of the country” (his words). How is trying to keep me at second class citizenship for the “good of the country”? I know... there are other issues that we are facing that are important. But it seems to me, that in a country that boasts freedom for all, trying to establish a second class of citizenship smacks in the face of what we tell the world we believe in.

So where does this leave me? Very simple really (when you get to be 50, you want simplicity in your life). I won’t be friends with anyone who will not support me as an equal citizen. PERIOD. If my relationship with Kent isn’t on an equal standing with your marriage, I won’t be your friend. If I don’t have that support, you never were my friend to begin with.

Friendship is about respect. It demands nothing less.

A strange thing happened last night. I left work and went to my health club. I did my usual 30 minutes on the elliptical trainer, followed by a combination of free weights and resistance training. The whole workout was about 75 minutes.

So afterwards, I go to the locker room. Someone is occupying the locker right next to mine. He was there trying to get dressed for his workout. In the process of this, his stuff was in front of my locker, preventing me from getting to my locker to get undressed. So, I leaned up against the wall to rest while I waited for him to finish up and move.

There were three other men in there with me, in different states of undress. There was an older gentleman in the corner who I would say was in the 60-65 year age range. He was naked and trying to get dressed. All the sudden, he looks right at me and says, “I’ll be God damned! Queers are every fuckin’ place you go!” Everyone got quiet. I looked at him wondering what he was talking about. Then, it hit me, as he was glaring right at me, that he thought I was cruising the guys in the locker room!

It pissed me off. I looked right at him and said, “Listen grandpa, if you were the last man left on the face of this Earth, not gonna happen, not in your wildest dreams, so don’t flatter yourself.”

With that, one man who apparently had no problem with me waiting for my locker started laughing hysterically at what I just said. The older man in the corner stormed out of the locker room cussing.

I undressed, took a shower, and for all the hard work that I just did for a really nice workout, I decided to spend 10 quality minutes in the jacuzzi (a treat to me)! I then took a final shower, dressed, came home and cooked dinner for Kent. But all the while I was doing all of this, my guard was heightened. I wasn’t sure if the guy would try to get some of his goons to work me over after I left the club, or something of that nature. I had to walk a bit to get to my car and during that walk, I was looking everywhere to see if anyone was around. Isn’t it weird? Something like this happens and in the back of your head you wonder if you are going to be the next victim of a hate crime.

On the way home, I was rethinking the whole situation. Here, you have someone who made a wrong assumption, got angry and made a scene, for something that wasn’t even real. Amazing.

There were a few articles that I came across this week that merit mention.

The first issue concerns Canada. Canada must by now be feeling a bit uncomfortable in it’s new lime light. They seem to be a beacon of democracy these days. First, after President Bush was reelected, there were many Americans who applied for citizenship to Canada, willing to leave the United States and give up their United States citizenship. These people were a combination of left-leaning people who felt that their country on many levels was trampling on democracy for many of it’s citizens. Others, such as couples of the same sex who wanted only to have equality through marriage, seek to live in a country where they could be equal.

But now, there’s a new group of Americans who are taking a closer look at our neighbor to the north; young Americans who joined our military and have been deployed to Iraq.

Thousands of people seek asylum in Canada every year, but these were extraordinary exiles: They claimed to be refugees from the United States, soldiers no less, who deserted duty in Iraq and are taking a provocative stance against the nation they vowed to serve.

“I was willing to give my life. I received a Purple Heart for being injured in combat,” said Darrell Anderson, 22, one of a handful of deserters who have surfaced here decrying the war and seeking protection as refugees. An Army Humvee gunner from Lexington, Ky., he spent seven months in Iraq before packing a duffel and fleeing while on leave earlier this year.

I’m going to be able to live the rest of my life with my head held up high, knowing I wasn’t part of the killing of innocent people,” he said on a recent night under a banner in the library that read: “Message From Canada, War Resisters Welcome Here.”

Anti-war activists and Americans who settled here to avoid serving in Vietnam are embracing the soldiers as kindred spirits, but this is a different generation of defectors. They volunteered for the military, and though Canada opposed the Iraq war, it’s arguing against granting the soldiers asylum -- a contrast to the Vietnam era, when Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau declared his country “a refuge from militarism” and welcomed tens of thousands of deserters and draft evaders. (source)

It’s a tough issue that effects people I work with. I was talking two days ago to a woman at work who has a boy who is entering his teenage years. She believes that our country has made a bad decision in the war in Iraq. She fears that by the time her son is 18, a draft will be in force. She is thinking of starting the process of moving to Canada. Then the subject was changed because she said if she kept talking about it, she would start crying.

It’s not that these people are cowards or unpatriotic. I know that some people want to paint them in that light because it makes it easier to dismiss them. If we had an immediate threat such as an invasion to our country and were in imminent danger, I would be the first to take up arms to defend my country. All we have done is abuse our power and be the new bully on the block. Meanwhile, the hatred for our country increases day by day.

We, in return, imply to Syria that they could be our next target. And, our relationship with Russia is deteriorating as well. This is how world wars begin. Only this time, we are the Germany. We are the aggressors. And we all know what happened to Germany.

And finally, a milestone has been reached in the war. The number of United States troops killed in the war on Iraq has reached 1,500.

At the local level in Connecticut, I received an email from the People of Faith, that covers many religious denominations that believe, among other things, that gay people should be treated with equality. They are having a rally against the war in Hartford. This was part of the email:

END THE WAR IN IRAQ!
END THE OCCUPATION OF PALESTINE!
STOP TARGETING MINORITIES AT HOME!
BRING THE TROOPS HOME NOW!

March and Rally
Saturday, March 19
Hartford
March at 12:00 noon
Intersection of Capitol & Broad
Rally at 1:00 p.m.
Barnard Park (South Green)

Be there if you can. I plan to be.