Follow-up on Prop 8

I want to update on a previous blog; Prop 8 is back in the news again. The Family Value Fascists are trying to shove people back into the closet to join the bad toupees and John Deere ballcaps they have collected there. I am beyond sick of reading their insipid and ridiculous comments. The one which disgusts me the most is that "they just want to flaunt their lifestyle." No; what they want is equality under the law. If you plan to make a career in the military and you're good at it, you shouldn't be kicked out if somebody discovers that you'd rather sleep with G.I. Joe then make boom boom with a woman back in the village. "Don't ask don't tell" is ridiculous and is a ruling without balls. Perhaps the wrong Clinton was in the White House when this one came down. The courts had some gumption decades earlier. What has happened to them? Are they so fearful to what will happen to the elections in the future that they won't make a decision with any teeth? "Seperate is not equal." The courts knew it when they saw it was based on skin colour.

Until they rule fairly on this, a couple can be together for years, but not be granted the ability to decide whether a person on life support can terminate their life or not, even if it was something they'd discussed. They have no rights to pension or spousal benefits. However, a common-law heterosexual couple may, even if they're cheating on each other. There is no justice.

So many people don't care because they aren't affected by this. I'm beginning to realize to some degree what it's like to have that stamp of difference placed upon you. A few years back I was recognized by the official person in government as accommodated/disabled on the basis of chronic pain. It was caused by shift work and now I have severe and steady migraines and am stuck for all eternity on night shifts (even on my days off). I still want to work and don't want to rely on pain medication, so it's hard. I ask for no special treatment except to work graveyards. The chronic pain has been bad enough and so has been losing touch with friends and family. The worst, though, is the suspicion. As I'm never out in the light, I don't know my neighbours. I am constantly having to defend myself to the myriad of bureaucracy. Seperate is not equal. Seperate is just alienated and feeling inadequate. Seperate is why my work partner is dead.

I've read that gay youth have a higher rate of suicide then normal. I absolutely understand that now. When a group of people is constantly feeling the need to explain their actions, over which they have no control and of which there is nothing wrong, you're only going to frustrate them and drive them into depression. After all, there's nothing they can do. It's crazy making. So, they just start to hate themselves.

I've realized something, by the way, since I've been labelled and treated like a gimp. That's how inherently insulting some questions actually are, as I can now see the meaning behind them. When they ask me why I'm not married, what they're really fishing at is my orientation. These people would never pose this very same queston to a person who is married, would they? In fact, they'd probably risk getting hit were they to go around and do so on a regular basis. I once would be polite and answer that I had chronic pain that would cause me to vomit three days in a row; that I literally couldn't move when I was like that and was relegated to bed with a bucket. I could never expect another person to live like that, especially since I was now totally nocturnal. Since I now know that the only reason they ask is to see who I'd rather sleep with, I don't answer. Let them brood about it. It's not an issue to me, so I don't feel the need to defend myself. However, I now get an inclination of what some people must go through on a daily basis. I can see why they would start to avoid family weddings and get togethers.

Getting rid of nonsense like Prop 8 is only a miniscule step, but it's a start. It tells people that this isn't a legitimate excuse to hate. You'll still have the idiot at home in the wife-beater undershirt preaching his bull. But, after the courts stepped in and ruled that it wasn't okay to discriminate on the basis of colour, it took decades but we did manage to get a black man into the highest office in the world. Attitudes can be changed. Maybe we can do the same here and cut down the high rate of suicide amongst gay youth.