As many do, I have ... bless their Grinch-sized heart... the odd hometown acquaintances who aren't taking today's news as well as they took yesterday's. "Gutting the Voting Rights Act? Yay. Striking down DOMA? ONOZ!"
I have one fellow in particular whose view of homosexuality boils down to a sound bite, and not a particularly new one: that homosexuality is a social disease.
Yeah, I've heard that one. It's got focus test group watermarks carved all over it. Anyway, said acquaintance maintains, in as many words, that he's not going to tolerate something that's wrong.
OK, this fine fellow has a history of showing his ass when it comes to equality issues. Remember the Great Chik-Fil-A Caper, wherein said fast food chain was revealed to be spend oodles of cash helping support homophobic and (indirectly, via the Family Research Council) to homo-lethal causes like Uganda's STILL-going push for criminalizing homosexuality, though the capital crime penalty is likely to be dropped per a quick NN discussion I had with Dr. Kapya Kaoma, who figures prominently in the movie "God Loves Uganda" See Frederick Clarkson's preview diary here for more.
Back to topic: So, my mine acquaintance decides to go buy Chik-Fil-A that week. A lot. He even posts a picture of his sandwich, gloating about how good it tastes to eat in an establishment "with absolutely no f...s". Yes, he actually used that word on a Facebook status. I know.. there's lots of things I could and should have done including reporting it but I didn't. I'll own that oops.
So, this is That Guy Lecturing Me On Morals. He's going to stick to his, and his morals on the subject of marriage equality are not too off those of the Westboro Baptist Church peeps we love to laugh at. He's more softspoken about it when it's someone else's wall but I was getting his goat.
You see, if someone's going to toss down a 'morals' gauntlet on my damn wall, I'm going to speak up. So I did.
The internet gives us both a clearer view of our neighbors AND a taller fence. It's at once the illusion of familiarity and privacy. But it can be made a real kind of security and trust, when we try, and when we're patient with one another. Hmm... okay I actually had a point here... let me get back to it. I think that's why we're now seeing the shift in views on many social issues, including marriage equality. It's more transparent who we're hurting when we deny rights or goodwill along issue lines. That's not going to bother everyone on every issue but over time it adds up.
I think we're becoming more comfortable as a society with the new way we interact. In the past, in that mythical small hometown many of us forget as being the secretive, judgmental and all too often mean spirited place in which we grew up, there was only one public space and fear of differences abounded. And people feared to go too far out into the clearings of public life and when they did, most stuck to the rules. Rules that fenced them in and cut off their vision more surely than any cage or blindfold. But things are more wide open now.
We don't like that governments and corporations - and each other - can take advantage of this but it's a genie that will never go back in the bottle. So we adjust. And one way we adjust is dial back the range of things we care to be scared about. And while I think the gossips will never stop fretting about who's marrying whom, and soap operas of some kind will be around a thousand years from now, the scandals that titillate us are evolving. Just think about how, once upon a time, interracial relationships were not just scandalous for but outright dangerous to their participants.
Personally, I’d rather we hiss at each other, left and right, about big fat technical issues that actually drive the power and prosperity of America. Really asks ourselves why we get ourselves painted into corners where, sometimes, the idea of helping fellow Americans becomes debatable. Hurricane Katrina. Really? Do we all remember those few days where powerful voices stepped up to the media mic and said, well, maybe we should write off New Orleans? Because I remember those days. We snapped out of it, as a country, it seemed but something died in the country when the levees broke. I know it’s still a problem; so do the victims of Superstorm Sandy.
It’s a problem because it became conditional, if and when we’d step up for our fellow Americans. It became debatable, if doing the good thing was doing good politics. It became questionable, if we were going to survive as a nation. And far too many people these days relish the prospect. And that’s just plain pitiful.
And then come the good days. The days when compassion has odd grumpy champions, and Things Get Done. I don’t think we have too much to lament or cheer, respectively, with this week’s Supreme Court rulings in comparison to that much bigger question: How do we get back to dropping everything to help each other, without working through the angles?
And maybe we should be honest with ourselves and ask that much bigger question: Should we even try to patch things up? I’m as strong an advocate for trying as anyone…and I have my own doubts. I have them all the time. A country is like a giant multimillion partner marriage, a patriotic polygamy of a kind.
And like families, countries break up, too.
And maybe what we are really discussing isn’t gay marriage but a nationwide divorce.
That's when the 'morals line came in', to which I responded in the Biblical language he was thinking he knew, and yet...not really.
a higher standard is exactly it. Matthew 5:43-48 gives an explicit prescription. Ideally, have no enemies. But if you have them, love them anyway. God does, like them or not. Or, maybe Jesus is wrong? Two thousand years ago a world superpower that felt this way: They were called the Romans. They thought loyalty to ones own and triumph over enemies was full of win. Most of the peoples they conquered, among then the Judeans, felt the same way. Well, the Romans don't exist anymore. And the thing that has grown and flourished, give or take some bumps, has been that message of putting love first, and enmity last. So yeah, we should hold to a higher standard...especially when it costs nothing to be kind.
Especially when it costs nothing to be kind.
That's when I was told homosexuality is a social disease.
I in essence told him to go because it was about to be a fight - between his moral standards and mine.
And, sorry. I think mine are the higher ones. I think OURS are the higher ideals.
We like liberty and security. We like laws AND justice. We like rights AND equality.
So, dear hometown friend: Higher Moral Standards? You Say?
CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.