Old Hymns and Hope - revised

"The Dust Bin of History" was the name of a column I wrote. Its sole purpose was to bring attention to 21st century people who just "didn't get it.” Usually, they were very odd and second-rate characters found on the third paragraph of a news story who were caught up in ideas popular a hundred years ago, or even worse, pretending they understood how concepts expressed a hundred or even a thousand years ago should be interpreted today.

But located on the front or back of a newspaper, each of them had one common characteristic: their voice and/or actions represented ideas, faiths or political points of view that people in the successive generations from now, will just shake their head and wonder, “Why?”

History is filled with “dust bins” – ideas and people whose names and ideas are forgotten like flecks of dust. Does anyone remember the names of folks who nailed Jesus to a cross, who believed in slavery or who relegated women to the kitchen? Names like Caligula, Jefferson and Hitler come to mind but they were the leaders of lost causes.

I wonder how many of the "common" folks from those times went along with their leaders’ thinking. Did they say, “Well, I’d rather keep my old fashion belief." or "He represents how I feel." or “My tried and true feelings always worked in the past.”

I can never know how people felt then; all I can ask now is; why do change or the future frighten them so.

When I was in college I had a conversation with the Chair of the English department which ended with her saying: “Oh, Frank, logically prejudice cannot survive … not in America.” So in the 70s I thought that if this country could move beyond the “gay" issue, beyond narrow-minded folks and divisive rhetoric, then perhaps, just perhaps, we could move into a brighter future.

Decades later I now realize that some women died before they had the vote; that slaves died enslaved and that many gay persons will never see a world of equal rights...

There is an old Christian hymn whose first line reads: "The strife is o'er, the battle done, the victory of life is won." I can hear the tone as I write those words. It is a restoration song whose words point to that better future.

I live in the hope that the strife surrounding gay persons will be o’er and that the victory of life will be won.

A Letter to Equality California

Mr. Kors,

I may have been fighting this "battle" longer than you have been alive ... well, I really don't know your age, but...

Personally, I am one of folks who "knew the 'first' generation” of gay activists but am a member of the "second generation that got wipe out by AIDS" group. Those years ago, I moved "back home" to escape a confusing world, to avoid the "cancer" and to escape the pain of the early AIDS death of the man who these days would have been "my husband."

And so it has turned out that this gay man has lived out most of his life in a "str'8" world ... even if it was in a suburban of Los Angeles. There are many of us here. And I discovered that "out here" and just being "me" worked ... even without a lover or kids.

I worked in the religious world, went to church, tended my garden, took care of my parents, smiled at my neighbors, joined the local Rotary, set up neighborhood associations, did my share of volunteering and in a small ways tried to create a better world. It has been a world outside of political wonks and ghettos. Life is about walking around the neighborhood with friends and, at some point or other, coming out in small ways.

It is the idea of those "small ways" that make me think that you and "Equality California" have done the right thing in delaying the vote on marriage equality. And to be frank, I am not sure there are not enough of "me" around and just being good neighbors now.

One more thing ... many of the ground folks in last year’s campaign to defeat Prop 8 were clueless. I can get on a phone and talk to anyone ... that's what I have been doing for 30 years. But the guys you hired to run the campaign on the local level? They were clueless. I imagine they were all working they way up the political ladder and had no idea of why my next door neighbor cried when I told her about Jimmy; Jimmy, who these days "would have been my husband'" ... and for whom I will always say, "Better once than ever, for never too late ..."

So spend some time and get some folks around you who know what winning this "fight" is all about ... Please?

Religion doesn't confer right to discriminate

There are two bills -- HR 3685 and 3686, before the House of Representatives which seek to give gays, lesbians, bisexuals and the transgendered protection from discrimination in the workplace. Naturally, President Bush indicated that he'll veto the bills.

A statement from the administration (on 3685) indicates that his main issue with the bill is that it "is inconsistent with the right to the free exercise of religion as codified by Congress in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act."

So, being a Christian means you get to deny people jobs based on what goes on in their pants when they're not at work?

for the the BIBLE tells me so ...

And that says it all!

NOTHING on poverty

A small group of my brothers (probably not sisters) in Christ met in Washington last weekend at something they called a "Values Summit." The only thing on there minds were gays and abortions and which Republican presidential candidate would be toughest on "them gays" (and their "gay agenda") and the "abortionists" even though surveys of that same group say that the economy and Iraq are their number one & two concerns.

David Kuo, President Bush's former special assistant in the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives seem aghast and stopped commenting on the "summit" saying in his blog, Beliefnet. "I must end the post now or else I will write things that I will have to repent for."

So it seems that the religious extremists are still in charge of the Republican primaries.

At the conclusion of the values "event" it seems that former Baptist minister Mike Huckabee won the day for those attending until call-in voters were added and then "the great switch-a-rue from 'livable' republican to right wing appeaser", former governor, Mitt Romney of Massachusetts was first. Now ain't that special.