Gay as it Ever Was

See what happens when everyone votes? Just because someone is smart enough to empower him/herself through their citizenly right, nay duty, to vote that doesn’t mean that he/she is voting smart. In fact, the argument for many non-voters is the concept that one smart vote is impotent against 100 dumb votes and that what’s popular in an election is not always what’s ethical and just in the world. Case in point, the passage of CA proposition 8.

The closest thing to a P.C. argument for proposition 8, the “face” of prop 8, is that homosexual marriage might be taught in school. Why? I suppose because for some time it was entirely factual and a good education is defined by expression of facts that might come in handy sooner or later in life.

Let’s take a step back and look at the real world. Who cares about education about homosexuality’s legal history in the classroom when homosexuality is in action whether we like it or not in the hallway, the lunchroom and playground. One simply can’t expect to keep the blinders on one’s child forever, and while homosexual marriage might not be discussed in the classroom, the concept of homosexuality certainly comes up in the classroom, whether in history, social studies or art class….it comes up because it is a matter of fact and that’s what education is all about.

I am a product of the public school system and I, like every other child in my various schools, was educated about homosexuality first and foremost from my homosexual schoolmates. I didn’t need Mr. Weber to teach me about homosexuality when “Slim Jim” or “Killer” was more than happy and all-too-willing to share their thoughts, experiences and knowledge on the subject from the inside out. In the classroom it wasn’t a focus, but it was certainly implied that some historical figures, famous artists and athletes may not be heterosexual and that it was part of their struggle for the great successes they respectively achieved.

But why am I writing about all this and arguing about prop 8 after the fact of it’s passage? Why, when there are so many angry young liberal idealists and bitter single and coupled homosexuals blogging and demonstrating their asses off, is this heterosexual middle-aged happily-married man chiming in? To answer the first question, because I honestly didn’t believe that we were so uneducated, fearful and unethically controlling in a state like California in the year 2008 that prop 8 would ever pass. I was much more likely to believe some years ago that the institution of legal homosexual partnership wouldn’t pass in the first place, at least in my lifetime, but it did and it happily existed for some time before we decided we had the right to revoke rights. To answer the second question, it’s because I’m pissed off about it, I have the right to express it, and, thanks to the good people at AmericanNonFiction.com, I have the platform to do so on a potentially massive scale. Quite simply, I voted against it and I will stand by that position and I’m here to tell you why. This is Indy USA and for what it’s worth, the ethereal concept of American Independence implies we don’t revoke it or any of the accompanying independent human rights of any citizen. Even the criminal citizen maintains human rights, including marriage.

Let me tell you a story about homosexuality in the American public school system. My step-brother decided to come out of his closet fairly early. We were 13 and 12 respectively and he was one grade up from me going into a public junior high school located in lower-to-middle class western Florida. He didn’t have an easy time of it, and frankly neither did I, as “that fag’s fat little brother”, to which all I could say was, “Hey, that’s step-brother, dude, and back the fuck off”. However, my step-brother managed not to harm, rape or attempt to convert any of his classmates despite their hostility. Somehow, go figure, I managed to remain heterosexual while learning a lot about what it is to be homosexual and, in fact, my step-brother did his best to help me make time with some of his self-titled “fag hag” female friends. With the passage of prop 8 it’s apparently still not a bowl of cherries, but in western Florida in the late ’80s as a teenager it was more than a little tough.

It was not the only factor, but being the kid step-brother of a homosexual looking at going to the same schools from junior through senior high in an honestly both physically and mentally hostile environment was among the leading factors for my departure from the state and life with my mother, whom I love as dearly as any child loves his mother. It was a tough real-world decision about my real-life chances at making something of myself, but I stand by it. In fact, before my departure I was assigned a truant officer due to massive periods of simply not going to school at all…and I don’t mean cutting a class or two, I mean living a lie and cutting out school altogether for weeks at a time. This truancy issue helped my mother understand my choice to leave her in favor of my father for the rest of my childhood, but she didn’t like it and harbored resentment that didn’t get expressed and overcome until some years later after I graduated college. In a way, the American problem with homosexuality is responsible for tearing a heterosexual child from his mother’s arms. That’s just so wrong and I wish more people who support prop 8 understood that.

It was as painful a decision as I’ve ever made, but I believe I might well have dropped or failed out of school and lost any chance at a decent college education had I stayed, which is exactly what my step-brother did within a year of my departure, followed by a weak but meaningful suicide attempt and a residence in a Charter hospital. Today he manages a convenience store in eastern Pennsylvania, unhappily unmarried and presumably living alone since his mother’s recent death. Today I am a professional musician and part-time writer in Los Angeles with a college degree and white-collar job experience to fall back on, happily married.

Let’s look beyond this window-dressing argument which abuses fear in one of it’s most primal forms, fear in defense of your child via education. It is a huge step of trust and parental growth to finally let the child go unaccompanied into the school system, from the mid-life crisis bus driver to the sexually suspicious gym coach to the a-little-too liberal American History teacher…it’s not easy, it is scary and it is very, very easy to provoke fear in the parent. For the architects and advertising designers of prop 8, this clever fear-mongering approach only proves out that they are not “stupid” (although perhaps a little ignorant in a few departments) and know exactly what they’re doing by looking to revoke human rights.

The heart of the matter isn’t that homosexual marriage, or whatever term of legal co-dependence you care to use, shouldn’t be taught in school. Any parent paying into the tax system to provide their children education probably doesn’t want their children to be taught lies or inappropriately censored material. The heart of the matter is that the supporters of prop 8 wanted the fact erased, and for better or worse they got it.

Somehow, the handful of voters within the same generation determined something was a human right and therefore it was humane and just to recognize it, but then decided (in greater numbers than the previous election) that this right should be taken away regardless of the inhumanity this implies. I suppose to the religious fundamentalist this is some twisted version of the proverb, “The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away.” So much for progress. To that I offer my own proverb with an Indy USA-esque ammendment, “Don’t tread on me, and, by the way, you’re NOT the Lord.”

Homosexuals pay taxes as much as anybody, often more, due to the limitations of tax breaks by being forced to remain legally un-partnered and rarely having natural children, yet outside of their community they are still often forced into hostile environments. Yet I’ve never felt physically or mentally threatened by homosexuals I know. Granted, that is just my experience, but it seems pretty common among the heterosexual people I know. Sure, somebody somewhere has been raped by a homosexual (insert ironic statement about the Catholic church’s legal woes) just as is the case for the heterosexual…evil exists, but I believe it is not sexually specific to the homosexual and I stand by that until someone proves otherwise.

Homosexuality may not be deemed decent by some churches, but it has been deemed legal by some states, and to these states improvement looking at the income, cleanliness, friendliness and low crime rates in cities like West Hollywood, CA and Provincetown, MA. One can argue that homosexuality is backward Darwinism and religiously unnatural, but this is smoking, drinking, dope-shooting America. It’s legal, bitches, and I’ll put down my Lucky Strike when you pull it from my cold dead (childless) hand. If anything the homosexual is one of the few sects practicing population control in a world that’s already over-crowded.

If homosexuals don’t have children and it’s so unnatural, conservative wisdom tells us they’ll thin out their herd as they die off. On the other hand, homosexuality has existed since as far back as history goes and exists in the animal world. Gee, maybe it’s not so unnatural after all. Point is, who are we to judge? Who cares if it’s a choice or a genetic trait? This is America and we are all human beings. If a homosexual commits a crime, let him be tried for that crime, not for his character. While homosexual acts among consenting adults were at one point illegal, they are no longer illegal and frankly they have existed regardless of legal status and will continue to exist as far as I can see short of global, potentially ongoing genocide. Go ahead, keep revoking rights and taking steps backwards…see where it gets you.

I can tell you where it’s already gotten you, the supporters of prop 8. It’s gotten the discussion of homosexuality louder and more vehement than ever, in the school, on the streets and on the ubiquitous baby-sitting machine, the Television. I doubt that ‘s what you wanted, but for better or worse you voted for it. It may not seem as noble to some, but the difficult movement for American homosexual legal and social progress is very little different from the progress we’ve seen among women and so-called minorities, who’ve produced some of our finest governors, senators and president-elects, and as far as I can see it’s all been for the better of our state, national and global good.