Making it stick.: Go Gay

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Go Gay

Or at least go right alongside a gay friend or family member.

This will be just the second presidential election since 1984 that Oregon will have _no_ anti-gay ballot measure. The 9th circuit turned down the anti-gay petitions for lack of sufficient signatures and lack of evidence the counting method was improper.

I've proudly voted pro-gay against each measure since moving to Oregon 20 years ago. Mostly these have lost, more narrowly than I can believe in this day and age. The last, worst one to pass was 2004's anti-marriage measure. The state legislature took some steps toward civil liberties since then. These current petitions were aimed at shutting down those modest gains.

Sigh. The road away from ignorance is a long hard one. So to speak.

Here's to all my gay male and female friends who've made my life better over the years. I hope we can do much more for you sooner rather than later and get far beyond fear and hate.

2 comments:

Bernard said...: Patrick, it's a strangely American phenomenon. For the first 6 years of my life, homosexuality carried a jail-term in the UK. I never thought that by the time I'd be 46 I'd be 'married' to another man. The whole of western Europe has become so gay-friendly in the last 20 years, that I can barely believe it has happened.

Everywhere I've lived and worked, I've come out to people, even when I've been warned the boss was anti-gay and I'd lose my job. And over the years I think that kind of behaviour just wore down prejudice - when everyone knows someone gay, then there's nothing to base irrational fear or hatred on any more (that's not to say that there might be some rational reasons for hating some gay people - we're not all nice).

I think Europeans look on the the hold that christianity has on the US with bemusement - we just don't get it. But then even Catholic countries such as Columbia and Ireland are making far quicker progress towards gay equality than the US is. It now looks like even Cuba might have gay weddings before the US (http://www.pinknews.co.uk/news/articles/2005-6818.html).

It must be very depressing to be American and to believe in equal civil rights, and to see the christians holding back progress. All I can think is that there are lots of sons and daughters of American christians who just put as much distance and secrecy between themselves and their families. Before I came out to my own catholic mother, I'd been told by my sister that she was anti-gay. I was only 20 but I didn't hold back (it was still illegal for me to be gay in the UK at that time). Anyway, my whole family have known since then, and to a person they would stand up to anyone who was anti-gay (including my twelve-year-old nephew who told his 'Religious Education' class that they were ignorant).

Things can change, and quicker than you might expect.; 8/18/2008 10:59 AM
Patrick Logan said...: "Things can change, and quicker than you might expect."

I hope so, for the better.

Currently we're also facing an administration that is trying very hard to classify contraceptives as "abortion".

A large part of the problem are the policiticians who don't really believe any of these things, but they are "playing to their base" and using people's fears and superstitions to keep themselves in power.

Scary stuff. We're one or two supreme court justices away from either 20 years of sanity or insanity.; 8/18/2008 11:50 AM