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Saturday, Nov 21, 2009
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Thanksgiving |
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| Thanksgiving | ||
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by Jennifer Vanasco -
SGN Contributing Writer It's tough to think about Thanksgiving - about literally giving thanks - when so many in our community are so angry. It is less than a month after the election, and many of us are still smarting over the great loss that is Proposition 8. We are angry at the Mormon and Catholic churches for funding discrimination. We are angry at the citizens who voted to deny us marriage. We are angry at our own organizations that did not somehow head off the disastrous result in California - as well as the sad, Gay rights-denying votes in Florida and Arkansas. We are angry at ourselves for not predicting the fallout earlier, and for not doing more to help. We are angry, and when we are angry it is difficult to find room in our hearts to be grateful. And yet. We do, in fact, have much to be grateful for. Let's start with the election of Barack Obama. I don't just mean let's be thankful that the man himself was elected president. We don't know yet what sort of president he'll be, and whether he'll rise to face the country's challenges with grace and courage. I mean let's be grateful - and maybe a little astounded - that the American people voted a black man into the nation's highest office. Let's be honest. A lot of us who are urban Democrats secretly suspected that this day would never come - that America would be too racist, too scared of "the other" to vote for Obama. But they did. And we should give thanks, because the fact that they did should give us hope. Forty-five years ago, when Martin Luther King, Jr., gave his "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, how many could have predicted that 2008 would see a black president? At the time, black people were often still being prevented from exercising their right to vote. Right now, when less than a month has passed since California took away our right to marry, it seems impossible that there will come a day when we will have full civil rights - even harder to imagine that 45 years from now there might be a Gay person elected president by a landslide. But now we know that the impossible happens. So let's give thanks for that. Let's give thanks, too, at the way Gay people have risen in response to the Proposition 8 vote. It could have gone the other way. We could have been so disheartened by the vote that we slunk back into our closets, or started ripping each other apart. Instead, in cities across the country, we have come together for a common purpose. We have stood together and marched together and promised each other that we would be here to fight for our full civil rights. In King's speech, he referenced the "marvelous new militancy" of African-Americans of the time. Yes. Let's give thanks for our own marvelous new militancy. Let's give thanks for our strength and renewed sense of purpose in the face of temporary defeat. Let us, like King, say that "No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream." Let us be thankful that we will be able to test our commitment to winning our civil rights with upcoming marriage battles in New York and New Jersey. Let us be thankful for all those who stood with us - Oprah, Keith Olbermann - and voiced their strong opinion that denying civil rights to Gay people is wrong. Let us be thankful for the family members and straight friends who gasped in shock and dismay when they learned about the vote, and who called to tell us so. Let us be thankful that the arc of history indeed bends toward justice - and that it is certain that our time will come. Let us be thankful that the vote made us angry instead of afraid. Yes, we are angry. And we are right to be. But let us also be thankful this Thanksgiving that we are ready to face the fight before us. We have never been stronger than now; we have never been more unified than now. Let us be thankful that we are, once again, rising up. Jennifer Vanasco is an award-winning, syndicated columnist. E-mail her at jennifer.vanasco@gmail.com. |
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