Alabama has been in the news lately, and it mostly hasn‘t been good. While my state did recently legalize gay marriage (to the amazement of everyone - including me), there’s been a big mess about which counties will issue licenses, and Chief Justice Roy Moore (previously removed from office for the SAME DAMN THING) defied a higher order to do his job, and told lower judges to defy it too.
There’s also the incident of the violent Madison police officer who paralyzed an Indian man, for which our governor belatedly apologized.
Alabama is rightly infamous for this kind of bullshit. I know. Believe me, I KNOW. There is nothing you could say to me that would make me feel worse about my state and its history. But I am tired of defending myself from my right-wing relatives while at the same time feeling compelled to defend myself from people on the left who are supposedly my allies. “Let them secede again. Good riddance. Dumbass rednecks.” That sort of bullshit.
So let me tell you a little bit about me and where I come from.
I was born in Texas and grew up as a sheltered white girl in Birmingham, Alabama in the 1970/80’s. I was raised to be a politely racist Southern Baptist like the rest of my family, but that plan went astray when I was double-promoted at my "private neighborhood Christian" (white) school and then put in public school because it was the only gifted program available in Birmingham at the time. I am glad that my IQ saved me from the crappy education that would otherwise be my fate. I actually got to attend racially integrated schools (before white flight took over) and had friends who didn’t look like me (as well as attending EPIC School which was for kids of different abilities). I can’t express how much this changed my perspective from the majority of my family.
In college (yes, we have them in Alabama!), I realized I wasn’t completely straight. It took me a few more years to figure out that I didn’t have to choose between straight and gay, because duality rules here in this land of Jeezus vs. Satan, even among the supposedly queer. It was an eye-opener to realize even the gay folks could be judgmental assholes, and there is such a thing as bisexuality.
And there is such a thing as liberal bias against red states. Y’all need to stop. We are not all stupid. Many of us are trying to change things where we live, just by living our freaking lives, and if you don’t know what it’s like to push against the current all your life, you need to shut up.
The Alabama state motto is “We Dare Defend Our Rights”. That is of course sadly rooted in our Confederate past, but like so many other things about my state, I have adapted it to my own purposes. I defend my right to live here and to love many things about this place and its people, even as I fight some of those same people to change what holds us back. It’s sad that I feel I have to defend against those who are supposedly on my side.