Gay Marriage Will Destroy Society, as told in musical theater

I really am my most insightful at 0100. Late last night, or early this morning, as I was brushing my teeth, a song from Fiddler on the Roof was playing in my head. Figuring how it got there was futile, so I moved on to thinking about the theme of the musical play. That's when my mind made the crazy pants, midnight jump from musical theater to Gay marriage. I know, right. Musicals to Gays? How do those connect? That’s about the time my wandering mind fell upon an upsetting but undeniable truth. This schmaltzy community theater staple holds a stern warning about just what a real and dangerous threat to traditional marriage Homosexual matrimony truly is.

The big opening number of Fiddler features the full cast, the entirety of the village, singing proudly of the importance of tradition. [I like this version] As the story progresses, the three oldest daughters of the protagonist, Tevye, come of age and marry. Each in ways further challenging the tradition they sang about approximately a half hour before. The lynchpin of this chain of events is the eldest daughter, who defies tradition by eschewing the arrangement to the well off butcher, to live in poverty with the tailor she is mad for. It was marrying for love that rocked the entire community. It set in motion the snowball that led to the youngest of the three committing the unspeakable act of marrying outside the Jewish faith. This defiance found  her wed to her beloved, but divorced from her family. In an hour and a half of adapted for Broadway Klezmer music, a family is torn apart by breaking tradition to marry for love. If bucking tradition simply by marrying without Daddy’s permission can wreck a fictional family, real-life Gay marriage will blow traditional marriage off the map.

It is a tiresome argument that the conservative Right pontificate about preserving traditional marriage, and the liberal Left waste their breath trying to convince the Right that they have no idea what the words traditional marriage mean. Surely Tevye and company can be trusted as the guardians of tradition. The tell us that marriage is a business deal between man and a father, for the privilege of marrying / getting rid of a daughter.

If we take a look and the traditional marriage practices of the last thousands of years or so, a traditional marriage is a transaction of property. Asking for a lady's hand sounded much less "make me the happiest man alive" and much more "I offer a cow for your lovely daughter.  Two goats for the ugly one" Then bargain was signed and sealed. A contract. A marriage contract?  Yes. Such a thing was the bond of matrimony back then and is remains to this day. The Ketubah  is alive and well and an integral piece of a Jewish wedding and marriage. Of course, over time it has stepped far from the exchanging of livestock for women, but despite the PR makeover, it descended from documents signed to close a sale.

Now, let’s step away from all the Jewyness for a second, because marriage as business has never been specifically Hebraic. The royals of Europe were just as without choice in partner, forced to marry for politics’ sake.  The practice of betrothing a child even before birth was common in Asia. In fact, today up to 90 percent of marriages in India arranged*.  

Even in the Land Of The Free marriage is about money, or was until the 1960s. Women often entered college seeking an M.r.s. Degree first and a Bachelor's in something or other as a fall back. It was always hoped by women and their families that they would "marry well" What does it mean to marry well? A woman used whatever charms she had to rope a man who would be a good provider for her and her children. Provider, in this case, is a euphemism for meal ticket.

It wasn't until the Women's Liberation movement of the 1970s that marriage started to inch its way toward becoming a partnership of equals. Less than forty years ago marrying for money was the status quo. Marrying for love was the domain of harry legged bra burners, if they chose to marry at all. If the traditional marriage all those law makers are trying to protect are the unions of a man and his property or a financier and his whore then Gay marriage is a terrific threat. When heterosexuals marrying for love challenges traditional marriage, equal marriage rights for Gays will destroy it. It's hard to maintain patriarchy in a same sex relationship, but more than that,  Gays won't marry for money.

The very definition of Gay or Homosexual is loving someone of the same sex. The kind of love that can not be ignored or repressed for long, no matter how deeply it’s shoved to the back of a closet. For heterosexuals, love is a feeling, a state of being, perhaps. For Gays, love is identity. We are who we love. The search for financial security from a partner or hope of finding a sugar daddy exists among us, but these couples aren't the ones standing in line for days to obtain marriage licenses. This is what terrifies the conservative lawmakers who, in their younger days, married a swell gal though she married a cash cow. These older gentleman have come to resent their loveless relationships to the point of tapping feet in airport bathrooms and posting photos of their private parts on Twitter. They want what we have, so they are doing their damnedest not to let us enjoy it.

But we do enjoy it, every single day. Every morning we kiss our partners out the door. We read news apps together over coffee. We go to absurd lengths to build our families. We embrace at every opportunity. We fight, and we make up. We nag and we negotiate. We reluctantly take out the garbage. Our tastes in movies and music somehow meld overtime. We become fans-by-marriage of the other's beloved sports team. We warm up to our would-be in laws  We forget which box our Menorahs are stored in and create makeshift ones out of glass bottles. (Okay, maybe that's just my family.) My point is, Gay people are married in their hearts and minds and daily lives all around you. In states where it is legal and in states where it is constitutionally forbidden . And all of us are married in our way, out of love and nothing but love. The traditionalists watch us, green-eyed and fuming. They know that when marriages are bound by heart strings, the tetherings of purse strings are as steady as a fiddler on the roof.

 

TRADITION! 

*Citation - abc 20/20

The Higher Callings of Flowers and Chocolate

It’s Valentine’s Day and Facebook and Twitter are blowing up with statuses, images, tweets, and memes expressing more vehement oppositions than we saw through the entire election season. Single people are out in droves protesting the grave elitism of chocolate and flowers, baring their jealousy with fangs and herbicide  Sympathetic couples declare that it’s “just another day” and “show your partner you love them everyday.” More romantic couples are trying to convince such V-day haters to stop peeing on their Poptarts. Or in this case, Russel Stovers. It’s war out there people. Perhaps that’s why Cupid is depicted as an archer. But there’s much more to this holiday than the joining lips of lovers, and spitting mouths of singles. It appears that no one seems to get the point of the love potion tipped arrows.
Like most holidays, St Valentine’s Day begins with a legend. We like our legends here. It gives us the power of shouting ‘It’s just a made up bogus tradition” around any holiday or festival we are not fond of. Still, the legend of St. Valentine is one we should all consider carefully, before setting any Hallmark stores ablaze. As it is told, In third century Rome, Emperor Claudius Gothicus set many laws oppressing the Christian minority in his state. One of these edicts was that Christians were not allowed to marry. A minority group denied the right to marry by the government? Rings familiar doesn’t it?

Saint Valentine, who was Valentinus at the time, defied the Emperor by committing the brash crime of showing empathy and kindness and performing marriages of gay .. I mean Christian couples. For his troubles he was arrested and eventually beheaded. All for the sake of equal rights for those whom the law of the land prohibited their marriage.

Kind of a different perspective from let’s all eat chocolate and have sex while we point and laugh and single people, right? Saint Valentine worked in direct opposition of the government performing marriages the state had banned. Then he lost his life for it.


What would our reactions be if such occurred today? How would we feel if a pastor was arrested and beaten, and hanged all for the crime of acting on the belief that marriage is a human right and not a heterosexual privilege? How much would we, gay or ally, appreciate his sacrifice? Would we begrudge this modern martyr the honor of smelling a few roses and eating a piece of chocolate? Would we even accept that we picked the coconut one, because we celebrate the life and work of a person so important to ending our struggles? Do the Whites bitterly continue to clock in while only the Blacks take Martin Luther King Jr day off? Should single people curse such contributions and acts of love for those prohibited from marrying? Or do we all salute the overcoming of barriers to equality and those who worked and died for it?

It is my hope and plea, to all of those who decry Valentine’s Day to consider it’s deeper meaning. To understand how the actions of one man 18 centuries ago, apply so directly to the struggles of right now. Rights now. For all who hate or celebrate, remember too look beyond the pink and red, and perhaps see the rainbow waiting behind it. Look past smoochy couples, and perhaps see how that kiss will not seal a wedding ceremony for so many of your friends, or for yourself.
We have come far. We have so much further to go. Single or in a relationship, If you believe in equal rights, smell a flower, eat a chocolate, and remember the man who started this fight.

National Coming Out Day, Confessions of a Small Town, Teenage Queer, All Grown Up

This photo was taken Oct. 8th, 2001, the day I came out of the closet, shouting into a microphone on the University of Texas at Austin campus. Because I've never done a damn thing half way.

Hey Kiddies! It's National Coming Out Day! Time for me to reflect that I have been out of the closet almost four times as long as I was in it, and I am very very old. It baffles me to think back on that 15, 16, 17, year old kid, so terrified of what she was, when now I don't know how to be anything but exactly what I am. I'm old, and lying and avoiding the truth takes far too much energy. I remember, night after night, day after day, i spent in prayer over the feelings I couldn't deal with, which became more and more unwieldy each day. I remember that never once, in two and a half years, did I pray for G-d to make me straight, but every time asked to be shown which path He intended for me. He eventually did, and I followed it, and it sucked, for a while.

I lost a lot, a damn lot, for being true to myself. Contact with my little brother and sister, being the biggest and most painful. Their father, my step-dad, didn’t want them exposed to any one who was gay, and that meant their big sister.I haven’t been able to speak more than a few words to them in 11 years, not even on their birthdays and Christmas. I also had to quit my favorite subjects in school and hide in the art classes because of the bullying. Yes, small town Texas is so bass akwards, the drama department is/was the least safe environment for gay kids. But there were a lot of victories, to. I found a community, thanks to the Austin non-profit Out Youth, and I found a voice. My skin became armor and  I developed my biting wit, because nothing is more fun than making a bully look like an idiot with one good quip. I started writing the poetry that later made me locally famous. I learned that my well being deserved to be my first priority, and unlike far too many queer teens, I survived.

I also became obnoxious. The more and more those around me pushed that I was wrong for being a lesbian, the more lesbian I became. From the pretty blonde happily waving in the photo above, in a few months, I became a spiky haired, men’s clothed, facially pierced, in your face, junior bull-dyke, given to wearing t-shirts with slogans like “I can do everything your last boyfriend couldn’t,” and “hold my hammer while I nail your girlfriend.” My older sister jokes that when I met people for the first time, during those days, the introduction went like this, “Hi, I’m a lesbian, I like girls, I’m 100% queer! queer! queer! and I will probably bang your sister at some point. Oh, and my name is Mouse”  As you can imagine, for the loved ones around me, this got old ...quick. It didn’t take long for my sister to give me the advice of my life, one day over lunch. “You’re a lesbian,” she said “and that’s great. That’s wonderful. But it’s not the only thing you are. You are smart, and creative and a pain in my ass and I want you to be all of those things because the whole package is far more interesting than the angry one-dimensional loudmouth you are acting like right now.”

It all seems so far away now. I honestly don't think of the anniversary of my coming out, until someone mentions National Coming Out Day, which heralded my own escape from the closet, 11 years ago. That, and somehow all that came with it, is but a dream on the mist. The pain. The fear. The triumph. The first kiss with a girl. Over the last decade I have been transformed. Shifted and settled into a woman who never tells people she’s queer, because it doesn't matter, but will tell everyone, if it comes up in conversation, about her precious wife, because nothing matters more than she. A woman who fights for equality because equality is the only right way, not so much because it directly affects her, because her marriage is perfect, legal or no. A woman who every once in a while, is shocked, momentarily, by the fact that she is gay, married to a woman, and that there are people in the world who think that these things aren't as natural and comfortable as tomato soup on a cold, rainy day. Being gay isn't a big deal to me. It was once, but is no longer my principle trait, just a weave in the fabric of who I am. Not to be hidden, not to be highlighted. Just a small part of the big, wonderful, picture.

This post is dedicated to all the men and women and people in between, young or not so young, who still must be themselves only in secret.It is my hope and prayer that all of you find the safety to live as you truly are. Wonderful, whole, individuals deserving of all the love in the world, from whomever you choose.

An Important Lesson from Chickengate.

Yesterday, my partner and I did not go kiss in front of a Chick Fil A. We did not choose to abstain from the protest because my wife remains marginally closeted for professional reasons. We did not stay home because we couldn’t find information regarding which Chick Fil A to go to at what time. It was an experience we shared the night before that made us realize we don’t give a damn what Chick Fil A thinks.

Late Thursday night, like married couples do, my Sweetie and I quarreled. To vent my frustrations, I took our dog for a walk. Though I wasn’t gone long, when I returned my girl was already in bed reading a book. As I started to prepare for my shower, she took hold of my wrist and gave it a gentle tug, a cue to get in bed beside her. I was still in my street clothes and reeked of cigarette smoke, but I lay down on top of the covers and Sweetie pulled me into her arms. She stroked my hair and whispered “Baby, I’m sorry.” My, “I forgive you” was understood, but remained unsaid. Even after seven years, my wife’s embrace can leave me breathless. It was in that moment, as I intertwined my fingers with hers, and our cat wriggled his way into the middle of our cuddle, that I realized no amount of hate can touch this love.

There is no word can be said. There is no bill can be passed. There is no rock can be thrown, that will break-up this marriage. It is not a piece of paper stamped by a bureaucrat that makes us married. It is the way she bags up the trash for me to take it out. It is the kiss I place on her shoulder blade whenever I find myself behind her. It is the way we refer to each other as mom, or momma when talking to our pets, and shake our heads when we see the new “girls fashion” at Target. It is the box of her favorite candy hidden in the back of the pantry, and the bottle of my favorite tea picked up on the way home. It is learning to forgive the socks on the floor, but nagging about the leak under the sink. It is the frustration of one that other stayed late at work without calling. It is proofreading each other’s papers, presentations, and blog posts. It is giving in that she will talk on the phone while driving, but insisting that she use a bluetooth because I  worry. It’s laughing at the same in-jokes for half a decade and learning to love the produce stickers on the freezer door. It is the day I realized my aversion to juice or tea made with corn syrup was entirely her influence. It is reserving every “I told you so.” It's being the human dictionary to her human calculator, and always being in awe of her uncanny googling skills. It is the way she really listens when I blather about evolutionarily maladaptive traits in arachnids, or socio-political theory as represented in The Hunger Games or other such pedantry.  It's understanding each other's need for alone time and her coming to terms with my close friendship with my ex. It is forgiveness and learning to let go of grudges. It is that one thing each of us does that makes the other insane. It's the library fines incurred when I insist she read the book I just finished, and forget to renew it online. It is the midday text messages that say I am thinking of you. It is ending every phone call with “I love you” before “goodbye.” It is accepting that we will fight, and learning to fight fair. It is never going to bed angry, even if it means staying up til 2am, that make our relationship as impossible to put asunder as any legal marriage. No amount of waffle fries can ever take that away.

Chickengate 2012

The very concept of this image is bullshit.

Let me tell you why.




Ok Friends. Listen Up. I am clearing up this Chick-Fil-A confusion right about now. It goes like this. IF THE COMPANY TAKES YOUR MONEY AND USES IT, OR GIVES IT TO PEOPLE WHO USE IT TO DO THINGS YOU DON'T LIKE, DON'T GIVE THEM YOUR MONEY. See, nice and simple. The Chick Fil A boycott has nothing to do with First Amendment rights (at least as far as I know, no one has been pepper sprayed, God Help Us if they have) The CEO of Chick-Fil-A, has every right in the world to say anything he want about Jesus Hatin' Turd Punchers ‘til his tiny little black heart’s content, and we can call him A Bible Thumping Nazi Dingleberry all we want. It's not about words. It's about MONEY. Words are what we are slinging around to to convince each other to either stop spending money on tasty tasty waffle fries on principal, or to buy more of them because, you know, fuck the gays.

Now let me be clear. CEO, Dan Cathy’s comments SUCK, and are what lit this fire, but it is the laundry list of anti-gay organizations and hate groups that receive a cut from your purchase of nuggets and hand squeezed lemonade that are the real issue. I believe I speak for all gays everywhere when I say we really want to get married and we get our feathers ruffled when people do shit on purpose to make sure that never ever ever happens By GOD! Because, you know, all gay people kick puppies and drown kittens in sewers. What we REALLY can't stand is our family and friends (the ones that still speak to us, precious few that they are) giving money, even indirectly, to these groups that think we were all minted straight (ha ha) from Satan's asshole.


Armed with the truth about how the company donates our hard earned cash,  we took to the interwebs and made damn sure everybody knew exactly where their money was going, so that they could make the informed decision to stop giving it to Chick-Fil-A. After all, they love their gay friends and family more than lightly breaded chicken breasts. We took over Facebook and burned out everyone we know with photoshopped images of cows holding signs ala Westboro Baptist. Yes, we got a little uppity. We posted a ton of statuses, and we wore our rainbow tube socks to work two days in a row. Our Bad. But can you really blame us? We're not twelve months removed from all the Occupy Wall Street shenanigans and all the action we are calling for is to eat at KFC and make out in a parking lot for a couple of hours. Even if our boycott dollars are made up tenfold by right-wing dollars, everybody now knows what they are getting along with their peach milkshakes, and if nothing notable comes from the Chick-Fil-A Same Sex Kiss Day, it will provide the country with some free Lesbian Soft Core, and that means everybody wins!







This semi-gratuitous, hot lesbian make-out, featuring one of our country's finest defenders of freedom, is brought to you by the demise of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, the discriminatory policy those damn illiterate cows fought to keep in place. 

A Brand New Day

 IanEgan

The world is moving quickly these days. It seems every time I sit down to blog, a news ticker announces that eight things have happened that fundamentally change what I was going to write about. It is very hard to keep up. Frustrating as it is to my blogging muscles, I cannot but take it as a good thing. Everything you’ve ever known is now the dice in a world wide game of Farkle and all you can do is hang on till the dice are thrown.

Never in my memory have I seen so much support for my people, the queers. I know that 10 years ago, the little baby dyke I was would never have thought everyone from the President of the United States to Kermit J Frog would support her right to marry. Hell, when I was pulling my books out of a vandalized locker or outwitting my taunters only one state offered civil unions. The possibility of gay marriage existed only in the tenacious optimism of a seventeen year old. It’s been a decade that I have campaigned fruitlessly against Chik Fil A, and in twenty four hours my Facebook newsfeed was wallpapered in photoshoped images supporting equal marriage, notes and statuses condemning the company, and invitations to at least a dozen protests. It was pretty overwhelming to the rural Texas high school student who was told observing a day of silence in protest of bullying was a safety concern.

As November 6 inches closer and closer, people talk a lot of crap about President Barack Obama, and I am sure a lot of it is deserved. Gun control, bailouts, birth certificates mean a lot to a lot of people. But this little lesbian doesn't give a damn. What President Obama has done in the last four to fix, or screw ,the economy, (depending on your point of view) stands only dimly next to the dominos that he has tipped in the direction of my freedom. Brick by brick the wall that stands between my family and full rights of citizenship is being dismantled. Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is dead, just a few years too late for this aspiring Air Force Officer. DOMA is on it’s way out, another laundry list of policy changes  and the right to call my wife my wife is officially on the table for his next term. Seeing these wonders on the horizon, when, even as young as I am, I never thought they could happen, doesn't leave any room in my heart for immigration, or health care, or Fast and Furious. It is far too filled with hope of Live and Let Love, and happiness that a new day is dawning in this country. A day that my loved ones and I can finally be proud to call the USA home. Finally feel that we belong here.