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Sunday, Nov 22, 2009
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Not Thinking Straight: Not beating around the Bush |
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| Not Thinking Straight: Not beating around the Bush | ||
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by Madelyn Arnold -
SGN Contributing Writer Here it is, the new year, more than two months after my column was supposed to reappear; it's passing strange how hard the world has conspired to keep me away. Snow, rain, crazy problems - everything has happened but a range fire. Uh, do you smell smoke? Shocked, and Glad to Feel It In fact I was halfway through writing about the election and the joy - unprecedented but surely not uncalled for - of electing Barack Obama. One way I can tell I've aged is in how astonished I was that Obama succeeded in being elected (though he's miles better than everybody else). It's months later, and I'm still weepy thinking about it - and I'm not sure what percentage is our ditching the last eight years or that racially, we're catching up to Cuba. (Yes, I know about Cuba.) But you see, I was a child when I first saw White/Negro etc. directions over restrooms, and the usage struck me mute because I was so ashamed. At the time I'd been living in an Indiana town larger than 10,000 souls, so I don't think I'd seen a sign like that (later I realized they were everywhere, south of us) - but I knew such a division was wrong. Joy, Joy, Joy I don't know that everyone was thinking like this on the bus the day after the election, but there was certainly pure joy - a sense of incredible freedom like this giant boot was off everybody's neck. (Folks acting like they weren't in Seattle, but some friendly place where greeting strangers starts you talking - someplace you hear about from some friend in the Peace Corps.) People were jumping up and grabbing your hand as you came in the door - grabbing total strangers, sure they'd be friendly. It was a wonderful shock, like nothing since the antiwar or civil rights movements. And it was too much for me & I had to get off the bus. But maybe we can't abide joy too long. That evening I heard about Proposition 8. I had been about to write about the film Milk, which had just opened. I don't think Harvey Milk would have relaxed and been sure everything would be fine - which perhaps too many right-thinking Californians did - that Proposition 8, coming so soon after the court decision about marriage, naturally would fail. (And this has nothing to do with whether one wants to marry or not.) As civil rights sail in with Barack Obama, we get shoved off the back of the boat. Obviously there was no connection in too many people's minds & as if Gay rights weren't civil rights. Our Own Proposition Actually we have an example right here in a minister who understands mistreatment because of his race, his appearance: Reverend Ken Hutcherson of the Antioch Bible Church in Kirkland. He has made it his particular emphasis to rail against our civil rights - believing, it seems, that we, as Gay people, shouldn't have any. There's more than a hint of the anti-intellectual about this; people have approached him with information about homosexuality, but he won't consider it. I happen to know how hard he's making things for young people in his congregation - and in this day and age, maybe not just the Gay ones. Camp Meeting, 1965 When I was15, my mother dragged me, for the first time, to a Bible Camp meeting. I'm not sure why. She had always avoided religions which channel mental unhealth, or emotional excess, although she was serious about her own beliefs. Perhaps she had an inkling what I was (and she initially hated it), or she may have realized I think just the way my father did. The preacher was ahead of his time, and was raving against Queerdom. I had to sit there listening to him spit bile about us, and it hurt to know we were beneath contempt, but what was crushing was to see my mother - and my friends and neighbors - so vigorously agreeing. I'm sorry for Hutcherson's daughter, who arranged his now-notorious meeting at a high school she attends, but his anti-Gay campaign is well known. Surely she could have seen it all coming. After all, we don't have to just roll over and take his sort of venom now. And we don't. Hutcherson is making a career out of trying to roll back our rights, a strange thing for a man who has founded his own church, declaring that he knows what discrimination's like. I know what youth in his congregation can face, and it's cruelly painful. I remember. Joy, Joy, Joy! But we have a new president who seems to have as fine a taste in enemies as friends; perhaps he really will work for everyone - including us. He appears dignified, intellectual, well-informed, and, clearly, of color. It's about time! |
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