The Coffee Chronicles

Okay, now I've had it; the time for quiet resistance is at an end. While I will openly admit, of course, that I'm not usually quiet in the first place, I think that what I'm about to write here will compare to my earlier rants pretty much as noise compares to silence. This business about banning "gay marriages" has gone far enough. Now, I've thought about my position at some considerable length; why shake my fists at the sky? To be sure, there are several wise persons in my life - wiser than myself, I'll easily admit - who have suggested that "this, too, shall pass"; even though history tends to support such a perspective, I can't help myself. I feel like there's nothing standing in the way of what looks like a bum-rush from the conservative right, and I offer my feeble hands, gritty and weathered from too many unfair fights, raised in defiant protest. So, allow me to throw my hat into the ring, to muddy the already swirling waters, with this opinion. And far be it from me to revisit my own previous commentary, because this ground has been well-tread; now I'm just angry, damn it.

On Wednesday, The President of these United States - a man who, I believe, is at this very moment putting our global well-being at risk, who is already responsible for the needless deaths of more than eighty American servicemen and women in Iraq, who is quietly, silently, running this country's economy into the ground - told the nation that he believed that marriage should remain the sole domain of unions between men and women. Oh, right - because we've got marriage totally perfected on that end, right? And it's not total discrimination he's calling for, of course; that went out with lynchings and tall white hats. But, it's almost as bad:


Oh, great; just make it illegal for gays to marry. Leave the women's vote out of the Constitution. Write laws prohibiting the integration of schools. We've seen this before, people. Anyone remember Jim Crow? And don't count out those White House lawyers, by the way; we know they're pretty good - they're excellent, at least, at dealing with charges of prescription fraud and underage drinking. Way to go.

So, what is it the opponents wish to accomplish by their very public condemnations? I've thought for some time about this, and I realized that it's come down to one thing: votes. This should have been obvious from the outset, but let's call me an idealist - I mean, I read The Fountainhead every morning before breakfast, so I guess I'm not the most tuned-in person on the planet. But, there you have it - the politicians don't talk until they think the voters will listen; even then, it should be noted, they talk about what the voters want to hear. And if a recent Gallup Poll is an accurate representation, people are ready to hear what the President is saying: American acceptance of homosexual lifestyles has dropped at leat 20% since the Supreme Court threw out a law making sodomy illegal. What the hell is going on? Check out this prophetic article from the National Review to put some of these issues in perspective.

What remains now is for us to decide what's got America talking. It seems, all things being equal, that it can only be fear; but, fear of what, exactly? Are we afraid of shame, sin, crime...ourselves? Sure; I mean, when in your little community is it okay to come out and admit that gay marriage isn't so bad? This is a society that, until the 1970's, was still building homes that provided separate bedrooms for husbands and wives, for Pete's sake. There are obviously a few things that we can't seem to get comfortable with; it seems that we have enough trouble with what's under our own clothes, no less our neighbors'. And so it's our fear that those in power are preying upon, and why shouldn't they? Allay the voter's fear, get the voter's vote. It's that simple. Notice that the Republicans are doing all the talking, while the Democrats - to my knowledge, at least - are keeping relatively mum. "We're already pretty screwed," their silence seems to say, "let's not make things any worse." How's that for leadership qualities?

Well, I'm going to ask it, because I don't give a shit - or, perhaps, precisely because I do. What's so wrong with the idea of gay marriage? Don't be all prudish and religiously fundamental on me, now - what society believed a decade ago isn't too valid in some cases; what makes you think that what people said a thousand years was any more applicable? There's a pretty clear-thinking fellow I know who had something to say on this issue, and I'll paraphrase:


Not to mention improve the tax base, raise property values, and help unify formerly fractious urban environments. Things must be pretty bad - the politicians are ignoring money. Just ask anyone who lives in a high-income urban neighborhood if they have any gay neighbors; the answer will be, most likely in a cheerful tone, "yes." Wake up, America. It's not the gay couple living next door that puts our future at risk - far worse are the subtle acts of discrimination we're committing in our blind fear. When a co-worker learned that I make my stand in favor of gay unions, he offered, helpfully,


Who are these idiots? And when opponents start talking about mean and women having children together, I simply have to say: it's not having children that we have trouble with, it's raising them. What about unwanted children? What about adoption? Doesn't it seem that the idea of "family" is a trite concept long overdue for critical rethinking? In this day of welfare, divorce, unstable homes, and marital infidelity, I think that children need all the open arms they can find. If someone - or a couple of someones - want to make an unwanted child their own, then they should be afforded that right. After all, biology isn't our problem as a race of humans - we've proven that we're animals, and biology works just fine. It's the responsibility towards that biology that we don't handle so well.

And so, George W. Bush prattles on:


...and, no doubt, his own purported use of cocaine,


Brilliantly put, and with a keen eye on the Bible. How appropriate, as the very next day - today - the Vatican weighed in with its own long-awaited release, a document titled "Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions Between Homosexual Persons". Pope John Paul came out swinging this time, urging Roman Catholic politicians to take an official stand against the possibility of unions between homosexuals becoming legal. This blatant merging of Church and State cannot possibly stand, of course, but doesn't anyone else think that this sort of saber-rattling has gone too far? The ultimate insult added to our injuries, as it turns out, also stopped me in my tracks with its hypocrisy. The Vatican's newest document, as it turns out, also denounces gay couples adopting children. Says the Vatican,


Violence? You mean like the violence that Catholic priests have been committing upon trusting children for years, violence that the Catholic Church still doesn't completely own up to? No thanks, your Holiness, I don't believe you know what you're talking about this time, infallible or not. What will followers do, in light of these comments? What about gay Catholics? And don't for a second think that they don't exist. A long time ago, as a baby in a borough of the City of New York, I was baptized a Catholic. Today, long after I've lapsed in my duties, my faith, and my belief - long after I've chosen a different path through life, shortly after seeing this latest abomination spill from the lips of the Vatican - I wish for even further distance from my unchosen allegiance with the Church's mis-guided notions.

If this makes you want to scream, go ahead. Scream at me, yell at the politicians, roar at the Church, shake your fists at the sky. But do something.

Don't count me out just yet. I've been banging my head up against reality, as it were, and I've found that reality bangs back. As tonight is the last class of the Summer term at school, I'll get some of my free time back, but there's so much queued up in the stack that I may never climb out from under my to-do list. First order of business - blog some more, dammit. And in that vein, there's something interesting I found - again, the very last to know - with the help of a kind reader, obviously concerned for my social well-being. Thanks, by the way - and for the rest of you, as a result, there's Googlealert. The brainchild of a brainchild, it's sort of a tool for continuous information, and - in case you were wondering what's making the Internet so slow these days - it searches for whatever you want, whenever you want, forever and ever until you stop it. Interesting; like having your own grad student to do Internet searches for you, perhaps even about you. Being less than a household name myself, I think that there's not much I could wring from its vault, but I'm sure I'll think of something. I'll leave you with a sample from the considerable list of reviews cited on the website; it seems that the Japanese media loves Googlealert, and can't stop writing about it. Of course, they write in Japanese, which leaves us with this shining translation:


I couldn't have said it better, myself.