Some years back, I saw a movie entitled Watermelon Man. In the movie,the character, played by Godfrey Cambridge, is a bigoted white man who awakens one morning to find he has black skin. Those with privilege rarely even realize it, as the character finds out in his new life.
Follow me on an imaginary flight of fancy, where you find yourself in a world where the overwhelming majority of folks are gay, and only perhaps ten percent are heterosexual. The society multiplies by use of techniques like in vitro fertilization or agreed upon cohabitation by the bisexual members of that really gay world.
Early on, you develop an awareness. After all, some folks hate you, see you as an enemy to their society, and will attack and/or kill you. Straight children are bullied by their classmates, fists flying accompanied by cries of "HETRO!" "Breeder!" With each new person you meet, you must assess how much you want to share about yourself. Preachers after all have associated you with evil incarnate, and some even call you a terrorist. For what? Well you dare love your girlfriend/boyfriend, or your life partner. Note I didn't say spouse, because laws don't really allow that in most places. You had actually tried to be gay, having been married once to a same sex partner. But it just didn't work. You cared for your partner, but as a friend, not a spouse. It simply wasn't your nature to be gay. So finally you came out and embraced your heterosexuality. Sadly your family did not understand, and they all disowned you, leaving you to seek family among your friends instead. Friends were lost, and if you were under age when it happened, you might have been kicked out onto the streets.
Your co-workers are talking about their life at home. You're silent, for if you dare start talking about your home life, they look at you, some thinking to themselves that you could not know what real love is. They assume you're a prisoner of lust. "But I was born this way." Some reluctantly agree, while others find that impossible. God surely wouldn't make a person straight for heaven's sake! Their thought processes could not get beyond the sex act to realize your love was just as profound as their own, and a basic human need most people desire in life. They cannot understand you would really want to live your entire life in a partnership that embodies, love, caring, fidelity, all the things marriages are about.
One day you are in a car wreck. You are sent to the hospital and are in ICU in serious condition. Semi-conscious, your mind goes to your soul mate. However that person never appears. Seems your bigoted dads opted to keep your beloved out of ICU. The person most important to you cannot get in to see you. In your state, your dads get a power of attorney to handle your business. They enter your home and sell much of what your partner and you had obtained together in a lifetime. You'd meant to get those powers of attorney, will etc prepared, but that cost a lot of money, money the two of you with low paying jobs could not afford.
What if you died? Dads ,might get the rest of your possessions (and your partner's). The funeral was a lovely one, but your soul mate was not allowed to attend. The pastor in the pulpit speaks of your sinful existence on this world, but is convinced that at the last moment of your life you prayed for forgiveness and were healed of demon heterosexuality. So convinced that is what he tells everybody else, who nod knowing no one really is born that way after all.
Yep, there were lots of folks out there who got it, and could accept you for who you are. But even they were often lukewarm when it came to standing up for your basic civil rights, and some were not at all sure you should be able to do anything as radical as get married. Too often they just remained silent.
So back to the real world. Everything I wrote above has happened in real life to people I have known. They were gay in a straight dominated world. Our hearts have expanded over the last several years. I recall when one of the worst abusers of gay people were the police who could act aggressively for no reason and face no consequences for their actions. One judge I recall acquitted a man who killed another because the man he killed was homosexual and probably had it coming. Now rights have been extended in some states and even marriage rights in a few. We are on the cusp of equality ready to grasp her sweet fruits and move towards that more perfect union. Some want to go back to an uglier time, but that is not what the future holds in store for us. Currently we are in the midst of a campaign to enshrine prejudice in our state constitution in Minnesota. I've got faith though, and I've got hope. We've a chance to say no to the bigotry that leads us to vote on two amendments, one targeted at the gay population, the other to the poor, students, elderly etc (Voter ID.) It is our great opportunity to vote NO on both, and further tilt the moral arc of the universe towards justice. (Thank you Theodore Parker and Dr. Martin Luther King.)
May love heal our hearts and justice triumph. May it be so.
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