Essays: November 2007 Archives

I’ll get to stupid people in a minute.... but first a brief update....

We went to the Connecticut Opera Saturday night. We had a great time. We went to the pre-opera dinner, hosted by Max (a very nice, as in really nice, chain here in the Hartford area). Wine flowed freely, with a nice dinner, complete with the conductor visiting and giving a talk on the Hartford connection to the opera we were going to hear that night, Puccini’s Tosca. It turned out to be a very nice product.

For some reason, we were thought to be very high-standing patrons of the opera. At least, we sat at the table where the President of the Board of the Connecticut Opera sat. I actually had a great time. He asked how I got into opera, and I shared my childhood experiences of going to the “dam park” (yeah, just below a dam with a big water spill), putting out my blanket on a sunny Saturday afternoon, turning on my radio, and listening to Live From The Met, where I heard the really big voices of yesteryear, in real time no less!

Why did I do this? To escape my life at the time (and no, I didn’t share that with him). It was kind of like this for me...

I’m in a lot of trouble in the Evangelical community these days because there’s a group of oppressed people that I tend to love. And it’s a group of people that everybody’s upset with these days... But let me just say this. I was in high school. And there was a boy in high school who everybody picked on because we found out he was gay. We mocked him, we ridiculed him—you know what high school kids can do when they find out that somebody’s gay. We humiliated him in every way we could think of. On Fridays when the other boys went into the showers following gym, he would never go in—he was afraid. And when we came out with our wet towels, we whipped them at him and stung his little body.

I wasn’t there the day they took Roger and pushed him into the corner of that tile shower, and as he wrapped himself up like a fetus, five guys urinated all over him. He went home, and that night, went to bed, got up at two o’clock in the morning, went down to the garage, and he hung himself. And I knew I wasn’t a Christian. (source)

Except, of course, I didn’t kill myself over it. It was all timing really. Given six more months, since my terrible secret of me being gay was getting out to the good citizens of Emmett, and starting to circulate through the high school, I suppose I wouldn’t be here writing this today. The timing was that I was a graduating senior. I received my diploma and went off to college to escape my fate at their hands, unlike the boy described above. But I have to tell you, the last two weeks of my school year were a bit scary... watching where I was at... staying in a public place... leaving school late after I was sure everyone had left. You know, today, I don’t really feel anything at all about that. Don’t get me wrong. I do everything I can for gay teens in distress, but I’m finding that there are less and less of them all the time.

As gays meld into the broader population, places like West Hollywood and the Castro district in San Francisco will inevitably lose some of their appeal. As more gays come out in more places, the diversity of homosexual politics and lifestyles will come out with them, and the tolerant will multiply.

For some of the pioneers from the edgy, embattled, ecstatic “good old days,” this may be bittersweet. “But isn’t that what everyone wanted 20 years ago?” Gates asks. “Just to be treated like everyone else?” (source)

I think that’s a good thing. I know some people feel that we are losing our identity, and perhaps we are a bit. I don’t know if you’ve visited The Castro lately, but it’s certainly not what it was 25 years ago. But in the greater scheme of things, what is really happening is that we are finally able to become whole people with out “the gay thing” defining us. For me, that has meant that I’ve become less directly involved with “gay rights”, although I still support many gay rights causes and organizations. It has also made me more interested in all the other things that are waiting out there for me, such as hiking, photography, music, and art. I know they were always there for me, but when you are defined by society by your sexuality alone, that becomes your definition, and your worst fear. Today, in America at least, sexual orientation is becoming more and more a non-issue. Indeed, many of the people who in 2004 were so against gay marriage, are now changing their views, largely because people feel they can be themselves and are coming out more.

So.... back to stupid people. This morning I’m on my way to work. I stop at a stop light just before turning off on the road that eventually leads me to the freeway. At the corner are about six people holding signs that read, “I want lower taxes. I’M VOTING REPUBLICAN!”

I wanted to take a photo, but the light was pour, it was raining like hell (so I kind of felt sorry for them), so I just continued on. But on my way to work, I started thinking about the irony of it all. These people want lower taxes so they are voting Republican?

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could cost as much as $2.4 trillion through the next decade, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday. The White House brushed off the analysis as “speculation.”

The estimate was the most comprehensive and far-reaching one to date. It factored in costs previously not counted and assumed that large number of forces would remain in the regions. (source)

I guess I’d like to know just who they feel will pay for the $2.4 trillion? We will, through taxes because that’s the only way the federal government has to raise money. So maybe they should have voted Democrat in 2004? Just a thought.

And I also wish the Democrats would “grow some” and, as Nancy Reagan once said, “JUST SAY NO!” to the current administration on spending.

After seven days, Maryland jurors smote the Westboro Baptist Church and its leaders Wednesday, awarding a grieving father nearly $11 million after anti-gay protests disturbed his Marine son’s funeral.

The father, Albert Snyder of York, Pa., sobbed when the verdict was read in U.S. District Court. Members of the Topeka church listened with tight-lipped smiles to the findings that they had invaded Snyder’s privacy with intent to inflict emotional distress.

The federal jury first awarded $2.9 million in compensatory damages. It returned in the afternoon with its decision to award $6 million in punitive damages for privacy loss and $2 million for distress. (source)

I grew up in a time when you did things for people. Instead of going to the mall (actually, we didn’t have malls in those days, we simply had little stores that specialized in clothing or whatever), we helped people out. If a neighbor was in trouble, we would offer our support, and our support was more than just words. Our support came in the form of helping that neighbor through deeds. If a funeral procession went by, you stopped and put your right hand over your heart and faced the funeral procession as they passed, out of respect for the family and the deceased. It was the proper and decent thing to do. And today, I still do that.

Today, our culture has changed a great deal, and not all in a good way. Yes, there have been some positive changes, such as more tolerance for despised minority groups. Somewhere in our fight for free speech, which we’ve had for a very long time, some of us it would seem have lost sight that there are times when it’s simply better to keep your mouth shut. Being able to say something does not mean that you should say it. But now days, more often than not it seems, people don’t give two cents about the other individuals feelings. Feelings are so politically correct after all, and politically correct seems to be going out of fashion.

I understand all of that, but whatever happened to just simple, every day, common decency? I’m glad that Fred Phelps disgusting group of thugs got hit big time with this settlement. He boasted afterwards, “Oh, it will take about five minutes to get that thing reversed.” Perhaps, but I would hope that Phelps, and a lot of the rest of us, would come away with two points from all of this...

1) Just because you can say something doesn’t mean that you should say it, out of consideration for others.
2) You do have free speech. But, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t consequences to that free speech.

Nothing is free. If you want to say certain things, there could be actions taken against you. This is what has happened to the Westboro Baptist Church. Their actions caught up with them. So, my hope is that the appeal will fail, and they will be liable to pay these costs, which they are financially unable to do. I’m told that their combined net worth is around one million dollars. I don’t return their hate by saying this. I simply hope it will stick because without money, there’s not a hell of a lot they can do.

And while I’m on the subject of decency, I suppose it’s worth a mention that this group has done the same thing for many years at the funerals of gay men who died of AIDS, and of course, they picketed the funeral of Matthew Shepard. America never cared about this activity until the group started targeting something more near and dear to the hearts of America; their straight sons who died in war were now being picketed at their funerals. How dare they? Pick on the gays, but not us. My un-Christian attitude on this is, “What goes around comes around”, but that’s not me. I’m more along the lines of, “Now you know how we felt.”

This is worth mention because this is precisely why the Phelps clan decided to stop picketing the funerals of gay men, and started targeting a larger and more sensational audience, dead soldiers. And it’s interesting to note the change that has taken place in the verbiage of the signs of this church.

From this....

To this....

They want the press coverage, and this is one way to get that. They have a right to their opinions and they have a right to express those opinions, but in my opinion, we have to find a way for them to have their freedom of speech, however vile we may think their message is, without them inflicting emotional damage on others. Picketing funerals crosses the line of decency. The emotional toll these people inflicted upon these families is what this settlement was about. The only difference is, they used words instead of a hammer. Had they used a hammer to do the same damage, they would have been prosecuted

Do we want any and all free speech at the expense of decency and a respect for what families are going through when they are simply trying to get through the hell of laying their son to rest? Somewhere, something went terribly wrong.