I woke up feeling really dumb. Like I just don’t get it anymore.
I mean I know it’s been a very long time since the days when I began to get it. The Sixties became the Seventies which slipped into the Eighties, and then we found ourselves in the Nineties and Two Thousands with a couple of Bushes, and whoosh, it’s 2010.
When I’m feeling this kind of stupid, it seems to me as if we’re moving back in time and instead of forward. And the light of hope seems to be fading before my eyes.
Now, of course, this could just be me: some kind of vitamin deficiency, or my own private response to the recent days of rain, or too much gluten. What do I know? I spend a lot of time in the coffee shop in front of a laptop that emits all kind of dangerous rays. And my friend Bill is quick to remind me that I watch too much TV.
But it’s hard to be optimistic when the cynical and stupid and greedy are determined to drag us all down.
And it’s a hard time, figuratively and literally, to be gay when the forces of darkness seem to be gathering around us.
I mean are we really going to allow them to force gay men and lesbians back into the closet? Are we going to let moronic and creepy people like Christine O’Donnell and Sharron Angle to force women who have already been traumatized by rape to bear the children of men who have committed the most heinous of crimes?
In the name of family values? In the name of God?
Hey, I’m the first to admit I don’t have the same kind of privileged personal relationship with God that they do.
She hasn’t called me once on my iPhone. No burning bush for this cowboy! No request to be my Facebook friend. Not even a measly email.
Sharron Angle is the Republican who wants to be Harry Reid in Nevada. She thinks a thirteen-year-old girl who’s been raped needs to learn to make lemonade with the lemon that is rape or incest. “You know,” she said, “I’m a Christian and I believe that God has a plan and a purpose for each one of our lives and that he can intercede in all kinds of situations and we need to have a little faith in many things.”
Am I missing something here? Is the rape and incest of a thirteen-year-old part of this plan? Or just having the baby?
Because ending this unwanted pregnancy is clearly not a part of Sharron Angle’s plan:
“I think that two wrongs don’t make a right. And I have been in the situation of counseling young girls, not 13 but 15, who have had very at-risk, difficult pregnancies. And my counsel was to look for some alternatives, which they did. And they found that they had made what was really a lemon situation into lemonade.”
So somehow an at-risk, difficult pregnancy is the same as dealing with rape and incest?
For a while Angle was chairwoman of We the People Nevada PAC. Their website proclaimed:
“The radical homosexual movement and other groups seek to destroy the traditional family structure which is the underpinning of society. Their agenda should be opposed.”
She was a member of the Independent American Party of Nevada, which, in a newspaper ad, announced: “objection to homosexuality is a liberty and right of conscience and shall not be considered discrimination relating to civil rights.”
So much for Angle. Then there’s Rand Paul in Kentucky who calls himself a libertarian but doesn’t think liberty works for women when it comes to reproductive rights. “I believe life begins at conception and it is the duty of our government to protect this life.”
What am I missing with this one? The same men and women who rant against government now want to use it to sanction and control women and gays?
Then there’s my favorite, Christine O’Donnell of Delaware who wants to be one of our one hundred – count-em – one hundred Senators. She thinks gays have it too good considering how homosexuality is a perversion that violates the will of the Lord:
“They — homosexuals’ special rights groups can get away with so much more than nobody else can! They’re getting away with nudity! … They’re getting away with lasciviousness! They’re getting away with perversion! … They’re getting away with blasphemy!”
Fortunately, for Christine, gayness can be cured by faith. Unfortunately, for Christine, there seem to be lots and lots of them with little faith. Still uncured.
I don’t have room to talk about Ken Buck of Colorado or Joe Miller of Alaska but it’s possible we’ll have five new Senators who will make life miserable for gay people and women and me and maybe you.
Help! Please help. Do something.
The Berkshire Record, Thursday October 7, 2010. © Mickey Friedman. All rights reserved.