Controversy

It's been a while since I've blogged, but I felt I needed to gather my thoughts on this one.

October, 1998. A bunch of us were sitting around between classes, burning some time. Someone came in and said that Matthew Shepard had died. I really didn't follow the news, so I didn't know what was going on. Then someone told the story of what had happened to him. If you don't remember, Matthew was beaten, robbed and strung up on a fence, left for dead. The two boys that did it felt their actions were justified because Matthew was gay.

The people around me seemed to want to talk to me about it, but I just couldn't. In fact, I had to go stand outside in the sunlight for a while. It was difficult to wrap my brain around the image of that kid dying the way that he did. Even worse was the knowledge that the two boys that murdered him felt they were perfectly justified. After all, God hates queers, right?

I had come out about a year before. It was a difficult process. Telling other people was the easiest part, actually - and most of my friends already knew. Telling myself was hard. It meant I needed to drastically revise many of the dreams I had for my future. I don't think I ever really wanted a picket fence, but I would have settled for some kind of normalcy.

The trade-off was that I finally knew the truth about who I was, and it was a relief. I had been walking around, feeling as if some part of me was disconnected. After I came out, I felt like a part of humanity again. I found a group of gays to hang around with, and I didn't feel so different all of the damn time.

The day that Matthew died, I became aware that there are people who would be willing to hurt me, if they knew I was gay. I really hadn't thought about it before. But there it was, right in front of me. Since that time, I have been exposed to many people that don't think I have a right to exist, much less get married. The Gay Pride parade here in Omaha (not exactly gay Mecca) always draws some protesters. I've been screamed at, spit at, and condemned to a Hell I don't believe in, in the name of a deity I also don't believe in, by people I don't even know. What do I do in those moments? Smile and tell them that their God will forgive them for being so judgmental. And then their heads just about explode.

Iowa joined the ranks of states that consider me a whole human being last Friday. It made me proud of my home state. The atmosphere these last few years has been riddled with fear. The idea that it's ok to hate certain kinds of people has been especially pervasive, and that's scary for someone like me. It made me a little moist around the eyeballs to hear that withholding rights from a group of people is unconstitutional. It has never been my belief that the people who founded our country wanted church and state to be close friends.

When we were kids, my older sister and I never wanted to play with our younger sister (we were crappy like that). Mom would always tell us that we had to play with her, so we would let her be in the same room with us, but we wouldn't acknowledge her. (I know. Awful. I assure you, I've made amends for all this.) Whenever I hear about new legislation barring gay people from having the same rights as straight people, I am reminded of those episodes with my sister. Our hope was that she wouldn't want to play with us, and would leave us alone. To me, this is the same tactic, twenty-five years later. If we don't acknowledge the gays, maybe they'll just go away. If we treat them as if they're illegitimate and unwanted, they'll get the hell out of our hair.

I have news. This tactic has worked for a number of years, but it is failing. The gay people I meet today are different than the gays I met ten years ago. We are no longer willing to believe that we are less than our straight friends. About a year and a half ago, I officiated at the wedding of a couple of dear friends of mine. In Nebraska, where people like me don't count. These women got married because they love each other, and for no other reason. It was the most beautiful wedding I have ever attended. The brides don't believe me, because they didn't have any money and ended up renting the Paralyzed Veterans of America gym for the afternoon.

That said, I wish we had focused on equal rights instead of marriage rights. No matter what happens with the marriage rights, it is still perfectly legal to fire me in 30 states out of 50 because I am gay. Housing discrimination is also perfectly legal in many states, in fact Nebraska wrote it into their books just a few years ago.

It is late, and my soapbox is creaking, so I'll get off. It was good to get that out - it's been rolling around in my head for days. more stories another day - happy ones, I promise.