I read this article from the Los Angeles Times and I had a thought. As I posted the link to my facebook account, it hit me: I am posting stuff that is going to make some people who see it think I am crazy/very wrong/stupid.freakishly liberal/etc.. I hate seeing the conservatives in my newsfeed posting their stuff about tea parties and immigration reform. It makes me reach for the hide button in a flash.
Was I relegating myself to someone else’s hide bin? Maybe, but, and here’s the thought—not what hit me, the thought—I don’t care. My post wasn’t angry or hurtful. It was simple. Justice waits a little longer. I see it in just those stark terms. Allowing people to marry, to openly and publicly declare their love for each other in the face of the fears of other people is justice. Justice for every person that has grown up gay in the last 50 years and couldn’t say so. Justice for any person, if it is justice at all, is justice for all persons.
Which is why I believe in gay marriage. I am not gay, don’t want to marry a man, don’t even like them if I see a good looking one. I believe that letting people be themselves is the definition of freedom. I believe that when we expand freedom we advance justice. I believe in justice. I am not angry about it. I am not angry about the hardships faced by gay people; I am empathetic mind you, but not angry. Anger comes from fear, ask any psychology doctor—heck ask a student in Psych 101—fear transformed. It is the opposite reaction of balling up and crying. It is the puffing up, looking bigger than you are and trying to scare the thing that scares you.
It’s brilliant.
It’s also not very pretty when it expresses itself in society. You get internment camps, racism and other nasty things. (Short sidebar: it doesn’t produce genocides. That isn’t anger or fear. I don’t know exactly what it is, but I know it’s not fear. More like a virus infecting a group of people’s psyches. But, that’s another subject entirely.) But fear in society is very difficult to deal with because individuals don’t like to admit that they are scared, and angry ones even less. In societies, everything about the individual human remains true, just more so.
If people can be conflicted, scared, sweet and dangerous so can groups of them. If they are scared, collectively they are more scared. If they work together to solve a problem, they can accomplish anything. But, if it is difficult to change one person’s mind, the challenge facing someone trying to change a group or a society’s collective mind is overwhelming. It’s why civil rights took more than 100 years to go from slavery to a voice and a vote. It’s why there is still not equality, even if Obama is President.
So, it’s not unusual for justice to wait. Gay rights have only really been in “let’s get some equality” mode since the Stonewall Riots in 1969. Forty years is a long time in a person’s life, but in terms of the human struggle, it’s a blip. The decision by Judge Walker was gorgeous. It was everything I wanted to hear a judge say to the people standing in the way of justice. It was what I wanted to hear a judge say to the Supreme Court after Dred Scott, after Korematsu, after every wrong decision we ever made. It’s just not justice when it’s only for some.
But I’m not angry (See, have faith, coming full circle back to the thought now.) So why are so many people angry right now? Are they angry about the way they are being treated? Well, they are angry about the way they are being taxed, but that’s not new or even unique to the people on the right. Are they angry about being kept from something? Nope. They are angry at change. Sarah Palin (Or as Elon James White refers to her, and I will defer to him on this, Herpes) even a jokey thing about the changey thing. They are angry that white people are not going to be the majority in America in 10-20 years. They are scared about pretty much everything. And they are expressing that fear as anger.
That anger is what turns me off. I have heard people I know referring to problems they see, and they are quick to blame and quicker to start sounding like the FOX (un)news ticker. It’s the illegals fault. It’s socialism, and that’s wrong. It’s against God. I want to ask these people, my friends—How? How is their fault? What? What is socialism, and Why is it wrong? Where is God’s will? Who gets to say?
I admit, I sound angry at them. I am not, and trying to explain myself in around 1000 words is a pretty good start at proving that I think. If you are just angry, yelling is more efficient. Manifestos are bad though, they tend to run longer however.
I am frustrated that no one is challenging the fear with hope. Obama did in 2008, while he was a candidate. He has sounded less promising in the time since. He is however, accomplishing many of the things he sounded so hopeful about. In order to get that done, he has had to cede—for reasons I truly disagree with—the inspirational tone. The left needs another King, or a late-model Malcolm X, perhaps something different. But we need a voice to counter the anger, to balance the rhetoric with discussion.
So I don’t care if people hit the hide button or call me a stupid liberal. Because I’m not stupid. I am a liberal. I believe in the power of people to make things better for the next generation. I believe that is called change, and through change we can reach for justice.
Now if we can just do that without so much deficit spending…
