Obamaphobia, Latinophobia, Homophobia, Zenophobia…

In a past episode of Private Practice one of the characters was dying of cancer and gave herself permission to speak her truth. No lying, no rescuing, no Mr. Nice Guy. It was incredibly refreshing. One of the other characters said of her when they met “ooh, she doesn’t filter. I like her.”

In real life, people who don't filter are quite rare, at least in western society; I can’t speak for any other. It's not unusual for them to be seen as having something wrong with them. We’ve developed a veil of politeness behind which we hide the reality of what we think and feel. I’ve never really understood it and it sure makes life complicated if you register the underlying emotions, because you’re constantly seeing two opposing aspects of people.

It’s especially confusing if they don’t register their own underlying emotions. Like phobics. Some are aware of their phobias. It’s kind of difficult not to know you’re scared of spiders or open spaces for example.

When it comes to Obama, Latinos, gays and foreigners, phobics usually aren’t aware that what they see as rational justification for attack and exclusion is just fear. To mix metaphors horribly, they’re like empty drums making a lot of noise but coated in dung, rolling downhill, gathering more dung unto themselves.

Mind you, that metaphor doesn’t work at all, because the more they roll and gather like-minded phobics to themselves, the noisier they become. The noise makes for great headlines so the media grabs onto it and blows it up as big as possible. Because we give such weight to whatever impacts the strongest on our immediate senses, before long it can seem as if the phobics are the majority. That can make a person very disillusioned about society. Disheartened and disinterested in speaking out, because what’s the use when you’re a lone voice in the crowd?

But it’s important to remember that the people filled with rage and fear and prejudice against immigrants, homosexuals, Latinos and Barack Obama, aren’t necessarily the majority; they just make the most noise. People who’ve got nothing of any value to say always do.

Gay Marriage, Racism, Giant Corporate Interest – the Fight Against Injustice

Statistics on gays and lesbians in the US form a very small percentage of the total population. Yet look what they achieve, in spite of the huge and inhuman resistance to them. Treated like animals, spurned by society, laughed at, mocked, hated. Gay politicians fight courageously and are shot for it, like Harvey Milk. That doesn’t stop others from taking up the cause. Brave people. Determined people.

What about African Americans? How hard did they have to fight against crippled minds and psychopathic power?  How many sacrifices did they make, never knowing whether they could succeed or not? How many women and children were raped, never receiving justice, just more of the same? But they didn’t give up.

And now, the right for gays and lesbians to marry is gaining momentum. They will succeed. And although the conservative, intolerant white mentality that supported the KKK and slavery lingers on, sometimes in the most alarming places, despite the racism that underpins all conservative politics in the US, Barack Obama is a twice-elected president.

It only happened because enough people said “it’s enough” while they were demoralized and destitute of spirit; excluded from mainstream society and the benefits that those who are included take for granted. The hardest fight of all. People say it’s easiest to fight when you’ve got nothing to lose. That’s because they’ve never been there. When all you can hold onto is something so minimal it’s invisible to others it’s more precious to you than anything else in the world. To fight knowing you may have to give that up isn’t easy. It crucifies you. But they did it.

How many people, I wonder, have been hurt by the banking crisis? How many lives have been destroyed by the hold giant corporations have on politics? How many people maimed, tortured, killed, because of the power of the military industrial complex?

How many people think banks and bankers should be punished for their crimes and forced to pay where it hurts? I'm sure it's a greater percentage than that of any minority that has fought for its rights and succeeded. Yet Americans seem to remain powerless. Why? Because they don't care enough to actually band together as one and fight and never give up? Because hardliner conservatives continue to be voted into Congress? Because they all use the banks and corporations that are busy destroying them?

It's not just the US, it's western society. Banks and big corporations control the world. But they’re run by people. There are a lot more of us than there are of them. It's time for a world revolution of a completely different sort. No guns, no violence. Just intelligence (as in thinking for ourselves and not letting ourselves be conned by politicians) and persistence. 

Maybe it’s already begun. At the beginning of the fight for gays and lesbians; in the days of slavery and the KKK, it probably looked as though nobody was fighting. But they were. It was just the beginning. It always starts as something internal. That’s where we are with the control that banks and giant corporate interest has over most of us. We're angry, we know it's happening. Pockets of active resistance flare up. We haven't banded together yet but our revolution will gain momentum. Revolutions always do.

Same-Sex Marriage - Bigotry Is Alive and Kicking, from Popes to Justices

What is it with the World and Gay marriage? The unfettered bigotry of the resistance to it, from Popes to American Justices, makes it hard to believe we live in the 21st century. As for the rationalisations, and often from seemingly intelligent people, they boggle the mind.

The New York Times published some valuable quotes on the subject. Our esteemed new Pope Francis I wrote in a 2010 letter to Buenos Aires monasteries, “Let’s not be naive: this isn’t a simple political fight, it’s an attempt to destroy God’s plan.”  

His predecessor, Benedict XVI, said in an interview with the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, “Above all, we must have great respect for these people who also suffer and who want to find their own way of correct living.” Which sounded great until he added “On the other hand, to create a legal form of a kind of homosexual marriage, in reality, does not help these people.”  

He was just carrying on a tradition. John Paul II wrote, in Memory and Identity: Conversations at the Dawn of a Millennium, “It is legitimate and necessary to ask oneself if this [gay marriage] is not perhaps part of a new ideology of evil, perhaps more insidious and hidden, which attempts to pit human rights against the family and against man.” 

In the Ironton Tribune Michael Reagan, son of Ronald, made a call to arms of all the sanctified people in the US – sanctimonious more like in reality – whether they be Protestants, Jews or Catholics (he doesn’t mention Muslims or Bhuddists). He castigated them for having no moral outrage. “Why aren’t thousands of our pastors, priests and rabbis shouting from their pulpits? Why aren’t they leading their congregations through the streets in mass protest?” He commanded them to unify and rise up against gay marriage which in his opinion will create a dangerous precedent, “a very slippery slope leading to other alternative relationships and the unconstitutionality of any law based on morality. Think about polygamy, bestiality, and perhaps even murder.”

Two same-sex marriage cases before the US the Supreme Court have the Justices hemming and hawing and generally dithering, grumbling over having to make a decision about the constitutionality of Proposition 8 which banned same-sex marriage in California in 2008, and the Defence of Marriage Act which forbids federal recognition of same-sex marriage. Chief Justice Roberts even went so far as to wish that President Obama had just refused to enforce a law he didn’t believe in. Great advice coming from the Supreme Court. 

Of the dumbest arguments I’ve read against same-sex marriage the first is that the purpose of marriage is procreation - which means nobody who’s sterile or simply doesn’t want to have children, or is too old for it to happen, should be able to marry. The second is that it can’t be allowed because of the gays who will then get married just for the tax breaks. I’m not even going to get started on the Bible.

But the strangest part of all this is how heterosexual marriage is placed on a pedestal as if it’s the foundation of all that’s healthy in western society. In reality, the marriages that work are the ones where both partners have love and respect for each other, are committed, and are accountable for themselves. Hardly the domain of heterosexuals.