It’s fucking Wednesday. And an ugly Wednesday. Weather wise it was OK, but politically it was just a really bad hangover.
Jon Corzine lost the governorship of New Jersey to Chris Christie, noted Bush ‘pioneer’. Chris Christie said he would reject Obama’s stimulus package, reject any public works projects. He’s also against a woman’s right to choose and if the New Jersey legislature passed a same sex marriage bill, he would veto it.
But that seems neither her nor there since Maggie Gallagher and her flying monkeys would swoop down and incite lies about how gay people were trying to indoctrinate children. The only indoctrination would be if a child asks if 2 men or 2 women can get married. If little Tommy or Betsy say they want to marry little Jimmy or Kathy it would be OK. And to Gallagher’s ilk, that is wrong.
It all basically boils down to the fact that they want to keep homosexuality a sin. Even if you do not believe in their god, they want to force their religious beliefs down your throat. And by witnessing the shit that happened in Maine yesterday, people will swallow it, hook line and sinker.
I am disgusted with religion and the catholic church can fall into a pit. All religion can resign themselves to their personal hells. I have no use for them.
The bullshit of ‘Oh it’s in the bible so it must be true’ is patently ridiculous. A crap book written and edited over and over again by people worshiping an iron age sky god has no relevance in the 21st century.
My life is not a sin. Bill’s life is not a sin. I try to be a good person. I help people who need help when I see it. Bill has remarked a few times that I am more christian than most christians by the things that I do. I don’t blow my horn about the things that I do. I just do them and I am on my way.
For the past 25 years or so I have been fighting. I have been marching. I have stood with ACT-UP fighting the government’s inaction on AIDS research in the 1980’s. I have held the hand of one of my best friends as they lay dying in a hospital room. I have changed his diaper since the hospital staff refused to while in the hallway the nurses clucked and basically said that he had brought it upon himself.
I have buried a few friends since then. I marched on Washington a few times and marched in the New York City streets protesting the murders of Matthew Shepard beaten nearly to death and left to die in Wyoming, murdered because he was gay and James Byrd dragged to his death behind a truck in Texas, decapitated when the truck went over a culvert, murdered because he was black.
Why?
Why do I have to fight for the same rights that my straight friends and family members take for granted. Why can they kiss their loved one whenever and wherever they want but I have to take a cursory look around before I do the same to kiss Bill?
In the past year alone, in New York City Jose Sucuzhanay was beaten to death by attackers who thought he was gay. He wasn’t.
Jack Price who is gay was beaten over the weekend that I marched on Washington last month. He was only just recently released from the hospital a week or so ago.
And these were only the gay bashings that have been reported.
Because of this alleged shame that is forced upon gay people, most beatings generally go unreported.
I am tired of fighting. I am greatly disappointed in President Obama, who will court the gay vote and collect the gay dollars, has gone on record as being against same sex marriage, saying that it should be left up to states.
I wonder if he would have felt the same if his parents had to deal with interracial marriage on a state by state basis? And his attorney general Eric Holder who also had a chance to say something about the referendum in Maine but opted out, saying he didn’t know enough about it. The current administration has also gone on record urging the Defense of Marriage Act to stand.
Today I watched some of The Price of the Ticket, the James Baldwin documentary and found 2 quotes that I posted on Facebook and posting here.
“The flag that we pledge allegiance to, does not pledge allegiance to us.”
And
‘You’ve always told me, it takes time. It’s taken my father’s time. It’s taken my mother’s time. My uncles time, my brothers and sisters time. My nieces and my nephews time. How much time do you want for your ‘progress’?’
It’s statements like this that enables me, or perhaps forces me to equate the battle for equal rights for LGBT people and the civil rights battles in the 1950’s and 60’s.
James Byrd Jr.
Matthew Shepard
Jose Sucuzhanay
Jack Price
So why are you pondering over all this stuff? You’re trying to make everyone’s problem in the world your own? There are people who want to kill me for all sorts of reasons: everytime I ride the A Train I could get murdered just for being Caucasian, or for being gay (though people never “guess” that I’m gay, but…still..) I think you have to relax a little and just remember that the younger generation (under 30) always votes on our side, so in time full equality will come. But there will always be murderers who kill for all kinds of reasons……so be it.
Why am I pondering? I wasn’t pondering I was quite pissed off and I think the 5 people who regularly read this here blog are unaware of what is going on so they’re reading about it for the first time. I know anyone can be killed anywhere. And I try not to take for granted the under 30 voters will vote in our favor, since the main thing is getting them to the voting booth, JohnsonTech.
I took a look over your blog, and all I’m saying is that you seem to….I don’t know, internalize?…these things where you give undue significance to outside events. I KNOW they’re important subjects, in general, but you probably make yourself a stressed out nervous wreck by feeling like they pertain directly to your own life and your own well-being, more than they actually do.
I would think that since I’m writing and getting it out of my system I am externalizing. Generally after I write I feel better and not as stressed as I am beforehand. You should see me before I write. I can’t speak for you JohnsonTech, but I find reacting to events like above is a release for myself and also informative to my favorite 5. Should I only write about things like this when it directly affects my life & well being or shouldn’t I speak up when what I feel is an injustice is done? Injustice done over and over and over again….
Are you from Terre Haute?
No. I doubt Terre Haute has an A Train, or any subway at all.
It’s just where JohnsonTech is based online.
It’s your blog, so you can write whatever you want, especially if it’s a stress reliever. But I think you’re doing what I see so many others do, where you see too much personal symbolism in what’s going on out there. You see parallels and the like. It shouldn’t bother you any more than terrorists cutting off Americans’ heads, or gay serial killers. I mean…those things SHOULD bother us, but not to where they’re causing us that much psychological stress. So I’m just saying you should, maybe, consider that you’re doing that and just temper it a little, for your own sake. Anyway, what happened in all those bashing cases you bring up? The culprits all wound up in prison. Just as anyone who robs and kills another for 20 bucks should. Be glad you’re not living in other parts of the world where murdering gays is virtually legal, sometimes even state sanctioned.
Anyone cutting off anyone’s head is a concern.Gay serial killers, besides Andrew Cunanan, are alarming when it happens. And that doesn’t happen too often I think.
Thank you for your suggestion, but after writing this blog since October 2005. The stress is manageable and also a fire that gets me writing on subjects that are lightly reported and often forgotten.
The Jack Price case has yet to come to trial and I will report on that and what I feel about that when it happens.
I am quite glad to be living in a part of the world where murdering gays isn’t sanctioned. But it is upsetting that the unsanctioned murder of gays continues.
I prefer to write about it than to stand silent.
I only mentioned the oddity of serial killers, gay or otherwise, and heads getting cut off because, if we want to pick and choose bad-things-happening-to-innocent-people to run parallel to our own lives, there’s a smorgasbord out there to choose from. But we shouldn’t do that. It’s okay to be concerned about everything, but, like with elections, they don’t have anything to do with whether we’re winning or losing in our own lives.
I can’t say I am concerned about everything but I do write about things that I find alarming and are generally under reported. Daniel Pearl is still in the news, as are hundreds of horrible things that go on. I prefer to be an activist in whatever manner I see fit. Whether marching in the streets of Manhattan or Jersey City or Hoboken or gathering information and offering my view on the situations here on this blog. And I vote in elections to have a say in what is going on in this country, state, city. I participate in the process however flawed it may be.
Yes, all that’s fine. I was just talking about your personal stress about these matters. I could be right or wrong, but it’s just something you should consider.
Thank you JohnsonTech
And I’m not some guy all full of wisdom. I’ve just noted that type of thinking, with others. Anyway, if you live in the NYC metro area like I do, the vicious Manhattan gays should have taught you by now how much evil is out there- lol.
Oh don’t I know it!
But you’re in Hoboken, and have a partner, so you already have a lot over the Manhattan gay ghetto losers.
That doesn’t mean I haven’t had contact with the vicious Manhattan gays that you wrote about, does it?
I do have to say, it’s odd that out of my thousand plus blog entries, only a handful are fired up like this particular one.
I appreciate the communication, considering out of the 5 subscribers that I know of, maybe 1 actually comments.
The majority of the entries are generally mundane and dripping with ennui.
Thanks once again JohnsonTech for taking the time to communicate with me.