universal freedom to exist: it’s coming

April 7, 2009 at 10:36 pm | In philosophizing, quotes, race & racism, social critic | Leave a Comment

” ‘We’re here and we’re gay!’ It’s important to be proud of who you are, but you should really just be proud to be yourself. It’s much more important.”

-Rufus Wainwright

 

I can’t remember where I read this quote, but it made me feel like I’m not alone in that people are thinking about the ideals and open empathy that we need to really have a functioning, harmonious society. I have always thought that it is very important to understand that there are all kinds of people who believe in all different things, want different things, and that often these things are conflicting in their fundamental philosophy or everyday practice. I feel like the important thing to understand is that in our society, where we have created laws and systems to protect us and help us prosper, it is our responsibility to each other to create a world in which we are all complete free to do whatever we need to self-actualize and have a fulfilling life, as long as it does not infringe on others. What constitutes infringement can be difficult to define when you get into certain situations, but I generally think that definition should mainly include occurrences that directly impact another in some way, not simply the sensibilities or ideals of another, but some actual effect to their life or self.

A good example for this is the conflict between people who are accepting of homosexual people and their desire to live as they are – romantically attracted to the same gender; and people who believe that this is not natural and should not be allowed to exist in our society. The thing about this conflict that bothers me is that many who do not believe homosexuality should exist have many reasons why they have a negative view of homosexuality and feel that it should be curbed in it’s existence (ie: wanting laws passed so that homosexuals cannot be legally married as heterosexuals can), but none of the reasons I have ever heard given actually effect anyone else’s life, property, or mental/emotional health. I do understand that it is an important issue, to both sides, but there is simply NO reason to make a law that mandates that a group of people cannot live their lives as others do. This is a matter of drafting our societal structure to help us maintain civilization, not an opportunity for people to decide what is acceptable to exist.

I’m going off on a bit of a tangent- back to the reason I wanted to post this quote. So far BEYOND all of this “I want you to live like me!” bullshit we have some one (Rufus) saying that it is important to accept yourself and not be ashamed of any facet of yourself, but that really it’s about ALL those things that make you you, and all the things you love, think about, and do, not simply a demographic criterion, that make life meaningful and liveable. And the person making this statement is one of the individuals being discriminated against, but he still understands that life is about more than these general things about ourselves that don’t even scratch the surface of our lives. 

We will need to eventually get to a point as a society where we’re not sitting around trying to demograph, stereotype, peg, and change different people. Every single person wants something different when you really look at people, and it’s so important that our society comes to understand this, or we will remain in conflict forever and there will always be some group that is not completely free.

Alright, way past my bedtime. Hope my writing isn’t too terrible. Night!

aaaaa! beautiful!

August 2, 2008 at 5:13 pm | In race & racism, sensualism | Leave a Comment

My posts have been more aesthetic-centered lately, but here’s another wonderful thing I just saw. This portrait is from the The Sartorialist. He usually photographs people in full and focuses on the clothing or details, but occasionally he just snaps some one that he finds to be striking.

Gotta love fair, red-headed people. Kind of reminds me of my uncle, Paul. My dad’s brother and sisters all have red hair.

gay marriage, etc.

July 2, 2008 at 8:24 pm | In philosophizing, race & racism, social critic | Leave a Comment

I’m actually not really gonna talk about gay marriage in this post. I’ll sum my views up for that for now with this: I don’t believe being gay is wrong. I believe anyone should be able to marry anyone they love and care about, they should be able to say they are married and have those legal benefits, and we should not expect any religions or belief systems to change the definition of their beliefs. There’s a reason they came up with the “church and state are separate” thing all those years ago.

 

I wanted to talk about an episode of 30 Days I saw in re-run the other day. It’s the episode on the issue of gay couples adopting children.

A Orange County woman who had been adopted as a child and has adopted children of her own, and also has religious beliefs that say homosexuality is wrong, believes that homosexual couples should not be able to adopt children. She goes to live for a month with a male couple who have 3 adopted children. They live… somewhere in Michigan, something like that, and the woman and the couple, to me, seemed like pretty similar types of people. Relatively conservative and laid back, pretty average people, all beliefs aside.

Through the episode the woman spends a lot of time with the family, she meets people who support gay couples adopting kids, and she actually has to do some volunteer work for an organization that supports it as well. She has a very hard time with the volunteering since she basically has to go around promoting exactly what she really disagrees with. I can totally understand what a challenge that would be, it’s totally opposite of what she thinks is right.

Throughout the episode, pretty much everyone she meets she really likes, and really thinks that she respects the people she’s with – she just totally doesn’t believe they should be able to adopt children. She also even meets two young adults who had been adopted (I think by heterosexual couples) but spent most of their time in foster homes, and she hears what a horrible hard time they had, and she doesn’t believe it would be good for them to be left in foster care, but doesn’t think they should be adopted by homosexual couples instead.

 

There were two parts in the episode that really bothered me and made me sad. The woman was at a barbeque with all these people who are gay and straight but all support gays adopting. The woman is talking to this other older lady about her beliefs and how uncomfortable she is at the party. And she’s telling this older gay woman that she still respects her as a person and thinks she is a nice person, but just doesn’t believe she should be able to get married to some one she loves. That’s not respect.

Then toward the end of the episode the woman and one of the men of the couple she’s living with are discussing how the situation is uncomfortable because of their difference in beliefs. He tells her he doesn’t have a problem with her beliefs until it starts to step on his toes (I feel like he puts it this way for lack of better wording, they were all a little tense in the conversation). Pretty much anyone can understand that what he means by this is that he mainly has a problem with her beliefs when it becomes law and prevents him from having his family, or would cause the circumstance where his children would be taken away from him and his husband – those sorts of impositions. She then replies with, “Well what you believe, if you can adopt, doesn’t that step on my toes? It offends my beliefs.”

It’s this kind of thinking that SCARES me. Don’t get me wrong, I totally understand what this woman is saying, the idea that gays can adopt when her beliefs say it’s wrong does offend her beliefs and that’s not nothing – but it doesn’t stop her from LIVING HER LIFE. If beliefs become LAW then everyone has to live by your beliefs. She makes the point more than once that people will vote and they’ll see who wins, but that’s just absurd. This is a free country where we are allowed to believe what we want and live our lives how we want as long as we do not significantly hurt one another.

Again and again I hear things that fundamentalists or conservatives believe, and everything they want politically is something that will force some one else’s behavior: you must have the baby, you cannot get married, you cannot have children, etc. From the other side it doesn’t force anyone: I can’t handle having a child, I want to marry this person, I want to have children. Those things do not affect the other person directly. Yes they will happen and exist, but it does not impose directly on anyone’s life who disagrees with it. And frankly, laws and government are only supposed to protect us and make public life possible. What we all do in our personal lives is not a federal, state, county, or city issue. It’s between us in life, not through laws. Government and law should be the well planned, effective skeleton that holds up our country, not the meat of it’s life and culture.

 

Lastly, this woman said something that was very sad. She said she was having such a hard time because she didn’t hate the people she met or anything like that, they were great people, etc, she said something like, “It’s just so hard trying to talk to people who are trying to do the exact opposite of what I’m trying to do.”

 

They are not doing the opposite thing. They are doing the exact same thing. Trying to have a family and raise happy and healthy children, and have positive values. I can’t imagine how many people there are  out there who have the same beliefs as this woman whose behavior she would find totally deplorable. People need to stop looking on paper, and in books for some answer so they don’t have to think about anything. LOOK RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU! They are the SAME.

Stuff White People Like

February 17, 2008 at 9:30 pm | In race & racism | 2 Comments

So I haven’t been a topic-centered blogger for very long yet (just “so saturday I went to this concert and bla bla was there” up until now), and have just started to get an idea of what the community/culture is like. I found a seriously hilarious blog tonight called Stuff White People Like . It’s a dry satire blog on white/yuppie/middle class/liberal/educated/urban culture. I thank god that I have a great sense of humor, because I was reading this blog and laughing hard at stuff that I see myself doing or liking or thinking about. It’s a little dicey because the stiffs who don’t get it leave their racist or complaining comments, but that’s a good thing ultimately because people should talk more about race/racism and try to debug it.  I have always been passionate about how I think racism is not really about race and is more so about culture differences, fear, and differences in affluence (i realize there are direct and deep ties to race, but it all gets a little complicated). I am really happy/grateful that I am bi-racial (german, scottish and african american…tri-racial? tri-national?…whatever) and I hope that I can have some sort of perspective that helps people understand what race really means and how it defines you as a person. I’m sure I will have many more blogs about race in the future, probably some very serious and aggravated, but for tonight I wanted to keep the humor theme going. Here is a comment I posted on an entry about Michel Gondry, a director that white people like: 

“This blog is hilarious satire! It’s so funny. I’m bi-racial (white/african american), which can sometimes leave you with the ever hilarious/troubling paradox of “Am I white or am I black?”. I was reading post #68 and I thought, “I certainly think Bjork is cool…I must be white! Glad that’s cleared up.” Then kept reading, “Hey! I wanted to direct music videos when I was 16-20 too! That’s two…I guess even though I am 1/2 black, I must be white.” But then, “Oh, wait, I don’t own ‘The Work of Michel Gondry’. I did seriously think about buying it, but never did. I must be black!” And…”But I did seriously love the ‘Around the World’ video….white? But I don’t think it’s foolish, I still totally think it’s great…black?!?”
After considering the evidence, I am forced to conclude that I am, in fact, both black AND white although this is seen as impossible in human american culture. ” 

  :) . Goodnight. 

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