I haven't posted a diary in a very, very long time, but wanted to contribute my voice to the many bloggers who are screaming, loud and clear, "NO" on Proposition 8.
Some folks might feel that I have no real dog in this hunt. After all, I am married, heterosexually so, for much of the last 28 years. I'm also emotionally (but not physically) polyamorous, but that is a different diary for a different time.
Yet my sexual orientation is not heterosexual. I am bisexual. I was, during a year-long period in my teens when you couldn't be bi, a lesbian. Back then, you had to either be straight or gay, because otherwise you were just either a ho or too chicken to come out, depending on whether you were talking to someone gay or straight. And, since I was what I thought was irretrievably in love with the woman of my dreams, I concluded that I must be a lesbian -- the boy down the street a mere distraction from my "true nature." That was the product of the sexual rhetoric at the time, and it was only through a lot of hard lessons and tears and just not being able to "pick a side" that I realized that I am genuinely sexually and emotionally capable of loving men and women equally.
(Some might feel that the fact that I haven't been in a real relationship with a woman for nearly 30 years now makes me a poser and that I'm just a straight chick trapped in an overly sexual body. I have learned to accept those judgments even if they aren't true - it's easier than arguing when you can't point to who I sleep with as "evidence" of my sexuality.)
But even if I wasn't bi, Proposition 8 still affects me personally, even if I am already married.
It affects me because my youngest daughter, who is only 18 years old and is unmarried, is even more bisexual than I am. She was fully out before she was in the 11th grade and has disappointed many a youngblood trying to get with her by making clear that no, she isn't just "experimenting" when she's thrown them over for a girl. And vice-versa.
Someday, I hope she marries. Because I believe in marriage. And I want that special type of love and joy and companionship for her, as most mothers want it for their children.
And I want her to be able to marry whoever she wants to. So I'd be against Proposition 8 under any and all circumstances, for self-interest even before looking at any other reason.
But, this diary is not about me and why I am against Proposition 8. It's even not about my daughter, and why she's against it, and looking forward very much to Tuesday when she can as a newly minted member of the California electorate cast her vote not only for the next President, Barack Obama, but also against the hatefulness of Proposition 8.
This diary is about my 78-year old, raised in the South and in the church, not formally educated but quite smart, Dad. And what, unless he's lying to me (which he has never done), will be his vote against Proposition 8 on Tuesday. And the discussion we had about it yesterday, which gives me hope that if only enough of us try and talk this thing out taking head on the religious concerns, we can beat back this hateful proposition and all the others like it whenever and wherever they come up.
(BTW, If you are a religion-hater, or one of those folks that consider us religious people "deluded", "crazy" or whatever, and like pointing it out at every opportunity, just skip the rest of this diary since this diary is not about people like you.)
Occasionally, fate intervenes just when you need it to. I had a doctor's appointment yesterday and actually managed, as a result, to get home early, hours before usual. Just as I was settling in for some websurfing and a well-deserved, long-missed Everquest session, the telephone rang and a person whose voice I didn't recognize asking to speak to "John", saying they were from a "national research organization." John's my dad. I figured it was a poll, of course quite common right about now. I almost said he wasn't home, since anyone who knows my dad knows that my father hates talking on the phone. If you can't say it in 2 minutes generally speaking you'd better say it in person because he'll be maneuvering to get you to stop talking. This is true even for his "friend" that calls him religiously every Sunday at 1:00 from New York, perhaps hoping he'll move back some day and marry her. But, it wasn't my call, it was his, so I just handed it to him with a "Daddy, some person on the phone wants your opinion about something."
Within 2 minutes, it became clear after my father was overheard saying "I was married but my wife has passed", and "No, I haven't been to church in a while" and "I don't know, I don't think much about that." My father was being called about Proposition 8. Since I am not an eavesdropper, it was everything I had to try and guess what was being said, fearful that there were some "Yes on 8" people trying to give him their hateful lying propaganda.
I realized that I needed to say something. I could not run the risk that a member of our family was going to cast a "Yes on 8" vote on Tuesday - and he is indeed going to the polls, as he has every election except the one he was hospitalized for in 2004 and so out of it that I had to break the news to him that Bush had won -- again. He is leading the charge of voters in our little house in the 'Hood who will be going to City Hall together to cast our votes for Barack Obama, since this is a day that, as a Black man growing up in South Carolina during the Depression with its overt racism and living in New York City with its covert racism, he never believed he would see (neither did I, but that's another discussion for another time, too!). He simply could not become one of the estimated 58% of Black voters in California (in addition to the majority of Latino voters) that have expressed their intent to vote "Yes" on Proposition 8.
Normally, I do not get in my father's business any more than my father gets in mine (this is how our family is; grown people don't get into the business of other grown people unless invited). But I got in it anyway.
"Daddy, who was that on the phone?"
"Oh just some people trying to talk to me about how I was going to vote."
"Were they asking you about something called "Proposition 8?"
"Yeah I think that is what it's called."
"About gay people getting married?"
"Yeah that was it."
"Did they they try and tell you how you should vote?"
"They said something like that." The panic meter was starting to go off in the back of my head.
I said "Daddy, you can't vote Yes on 8. You just can't. It's not our business to be getting in the way of people who want to get married."
"Alright, alright, if you say so", he said. My father has always given me anything I want even though he talks shit about it since he can't ruin his rep as a "stern dad." He also clearly had been talked out by the people on the phone - he hates the phone. He hates a lot of talking. So I thought "Whew," and started heading back to my computer to log into EQ - it has been a long week.
"But wait a minute now, [Shanikka], you explain something to me, then....."
Uh oh.
"You tell me this, then: Now, when God created man, he saw that was lonely, right?"
Now, if I believe my what my late mother always told me (I miss you, Mommy!) my father hasn't regularly attended church in almost 50 years, having walked out of a Sunday service in a huff after they'd taken up the collection, counted it, declared it "not enough" and sent the collection plate around again. Thus, except for rare occasions the only time you'll see my dad in a church is a wedding or a funeral. But that doesn't matter. Like most of his generation he was raised in the church, in the deep South. So he may not be a thumper, but his religious beliefs are just as important to him as they were to my mother, for whom her faith was far more central day-to-day. So even though to me Proposition 8 is a political, not religious, question, my father's quesiton made clear to me that he and I couldn't go straight into the politics. We first had to get through The Religion.
"Yes, that's what the Bible teaches us."
"And he created woman from his rib so that he would have a companion, right?"
"That's what it says, yes Daddy."
"So then how is any other way? I don't understand it."
I took a deep breath. IME "I don't understand" is the old school response you always get (or, at least, what you always used to get) when talking about gay people with the older generation of Black folks -- although who knows now, with our churches in the past 10 years having jumped on the noisy nasty shunning and hatred bandwagon of the past decade and caused white liberals en masse to associate homophobia disproportionately with Black churches as if white folks haven't been most of the ones actually killing gay people for being gay.
"Well, you agree with me that God don't make mistakes, right?"
"Yes of course."
"And that's what you taught me all my life, you and Mommy, right?" (Yes, for the record I'm nearly 50 years old and my parents are still mommy and daddy. Sue me ;)).
"So why did God make what some people think are nearly 1 out of 10 of people gay or lesbian? That's not a mistake, right?"
"Well, but how I do know they don't have a choice?"
"Daddy. You know how many gay people, again?"
"I know a lot of guys and gals (yes, he's old) who are 'like that.'"
"And they are your friends, right?"
"Yeah, that doesn't have anything to do with me being friends with them. I'm friends with everybody."
"Now, how many do YOU know that you think actually chose to be gay?"
"I don't know whether they choose to be that way or not....."
"Daddy, seriously now. Can you think of a single person that would voluntarily put up with all the shit that gay people have to put up with?"
"That's fair. No I can't imagine someone would do that on purpose if they had a choice."
"So God made them this way, right?"
"I guess so."
"And if God made them this way it wasn't a mistake, right?"
"Right."
"Why would God condemn millions of people that He made?"
"Can't think of a reason. But that doesn't mean that it's OK for them to get married. I don't know if it is or not."
"And Jesus said that if we could not be like Him, and be celibate, that we were to marry, right?"
"Yes."
"Jesus didn't say "everybody except for you gay people" when he said that, did he?"
"I don't know. I haven't read my Bible in a while."
"Well, He didn't. I'll show you."
"You probably don't even have a Bible around here."
Oh I have one, alright.
So off we go to Matthew and Mark. And sure enough, there is bupkis.
"See? Not a word. Wouldn't you think that if God had a really strong opinion about it he'd have said something, or had Jesus say something? I mean, it's not in the 10 Commandments. And Jesus made a point of talking to the Pharisees about marriage, right?"
"Fair enough."
"I mean, even hearing the preacher tell it the only time gay people come up in the Bible at all after Jesus came is just 4 times, and that's stretching it: Romans 1:26-27, 1 Corinthians 6:9, Timothy 1:10, and Jude 7. The only one that even references gay sex is Romans, the same Roman that says 3 passages later that disobedient children are just as bad as all these sexual people. See?"
"Well, 1/2 the time preachers don't know what they are talking about anyway."
Nod, and my dad reads the Scripture out loud. So far, so good.
"Now I've been disobedient all my life, right?"
"You aren't a bad girl."
"Daddy I jumped out of my high chair when I was 2 and split my head open on the oven door handle after you told me to sit still like mommy said; put [my brother] up to take apart your $250 Bulova watch after you told me 3 times not to bother it or I'd get a spanking; got drunk enough to throw up all over the couch when I was 15 after I told you I'd just been out rollerskating; and came home at 6:30 in the morning from graduation night when you clearly told me when giving me permission to stay out after 11 that I'd better have my ass home by 2:00 AM if I knew what's good for me."
"Oh, right. Well, you got a spanking for at least one of those if I remember correctly."
"Yeah, but whuppin' wasn't enough. You were supposed to kill me."
"Who said?"
"If you go by the Bible, God said."
"Well, I don't believe anything says that God said to kill bad kids."
"Well, somebody thought He did. See?"
Off we go to Deuteronomy 21.
"See? Whuppins don't count. It's stoned to death."
"Now you know I only spanked you 3 or 4 times your whole life."
"Yes Daddy and I remember each one of them like it was yesterday, believe you me. But that isn't the point. You see it says it here, right? No disobedient kids - kill 'em all. And in fact in Romans it says that disobedient kids are just as bad as all these folks having "unnatural sex" in Paul's opinion. Actually worse, since disobedient kids are actually listed as "depraved" whereas when Paul was talking about the "gay people" part he didn't call those folks depraved, he just said they "didn't know God." It's right here in Romans, see? In Timothy, too!"
"Well that's what it says, I guess."
"But Daddy, here's the thing: was Paul Jesus?"
"Of course not."
"And Paul didn't even meet Jesus, right?"
"I don't know - did he?"
"Nope."
"I did not know that."
"That's OK, lot of folks assume that Paul knew something because Jesus told him when Paul didn't even know the man. But hear me out: Even Paul tried to make clear when he said what God wanted, as opposed to when Paul was just speaking for himself, right?"
"I don't know. Was he?"
"He sure was, especially when it came to the question of marriage."
So off we go to some 1 Corinthians with Paul's regular use of the phrase "I, not the Lord" amongst other hedging of bets phrases that Paul used when he was just making shit up, as opposed to "The Lord, not I, command" when he actually knew what the hell he was talking about.
"See? Even Paul knows that his opinion isn't anything more than Paul's opinion. When he is saying something that God wanted him to say, he said "Not I, but the Lord", or "The Lord, not I". He did, see? I mean he even says lots of times that things he says are just him talking, not what God commanded him to say or Jesus taught, right? So, I mean, if Jesus didn't say anything, and God didn't say anything, who is Paul to say something but Paul? I mean you leave it up to him and you and me shouldn't even be having this conversation since I'm just a girl and I am assumed to be too stupid to even know God's word for myself. And I'm definitely not supposed to be talking about it to a man like I know something."
"You always did talk a lot."
"I know but you still have to admit that Jesus didn't say anything about gay people, let alone about whether they should get married?"
"You're right, he didn't."
"Not even in the Sermon on the Mount, where he made clear that God's one true command was to love Him as no other, and love our brother as we love Him."
"OK you have a point, but....."
"Here's the thing though, Daddy: John, Matthew and Luke and Mark didn't say anything either, though. Now, you'd think that Mark and Matthew definitely would have said something, especially Mark is supposed to have gotten his accounts of Jesus and what he said and did straight from Peter who was actually there. Now, if gay people and whether they should get married or not was a huge issue for God, wouldn't you think that even ONE of them would also mentioned Jesus talking about it somewhere? I mean, Lord knows He managed to talk about everything else that God thought was important and he was clear that Love is the highest law -- even Paul admits that. But NOBODY other than Paul had a single thing to say about gay people and love. Or gay people and marriage. Why is that?"
"I don't know, maybe because they were busy."
"They weren't too busy to talk about marriage, that's for sure."
"Right"
"And especially weren't too busy to say 'God doesn't like divorce', right?"
"Well, I never got divorced." (Nope - but he and my mother were separated 95% of the time after I was 12, except for a brief period of time when they tried to reconcile. And yet when my mother died on November 4, 2005, he was the last person she laid eyes on, and he was with her until nearly the very end, separated or not. 47 years after they were married.)
"But I did, right? More than once."
"You did, yes. I'm sorry you felt like you had to."
"I am too. But now, Daddy, here's the thing. If this Proposition 8 passes, there's all these people who have already gotten married because they love each other - fulfilling the highest law, according to the Bible, to love, and stating that love publicly by getting married. About 25,000 people in California this year alone. Now God's been reasonably clear about the divorce issue. He's also been clear that when it comes to marriage "What God has brought together let no man put asunder". Right?" They're not supposed to get divorced and they probably aren't going to get divorced, but certainly the law can't divorce them when they don't want to be, right? So they are going to stay married. Yet if God was against gay people being married in the first place, he wouldn't have made a situation where the law might say that married folks couldn't stay married, right? He definitely doesn't like married people splitting up except for adultery - Jesus was crystal clear about that, no getting around it. But all these folks screaming about gay people getting married being "wrong" can't point to a single thing Jesus said, and most just make excuses for the "no divorce" thing all the time, right up there with the kill the disobedient children thing. So why is it our place to get in the way of gay people getting married just everyone else? Especially since if you're literal about it Jesus said that in the ideal world everyone would just be celibate anyway?"
"He said that?"
"Ayup." I love my Bible. No highlights but I remember where that stuff is.
"Well, He said let them marry."
"Indeed he did. With no exceptions that I can find in my Bible. Now you take that, and the command that we are to love and treat our brother just as we want to be treated, and how do you get to something like Proposition 8? You may get there, but it isn't anything God said that got you there, right?"
"You may be right."
"And that's before we even talk about the fact that if you look at how some of these folks read their Bible, I couldn't even have gotten married to [my first husband] until 30 years ago, since you know Black folks and white folks couldn't get married. And those folks were saying that was God's plan too, for us to be slaves and that if God wanted us to marry he'd have put us all on the same continent."
Therein was a long pause. My marriage to a white man was something that broke my father's heart, especially since I'd not even told my parents I was married for 6 months out of fear of what they would say. Contrary to myth, it's not just white people who think that someone else's people are "not good enough" for their children to marry. And it took him years to get over it, and come to embrace not just my first white husband, but the next one, too, as family. Since white people weren't family - they were the source of pain, and disappointment, and disrespect for most of his life, to be largely avoided, until I married one.
With the quiet, I got scared I'd hit a nerve and just undid the past 20 minutes. But I hadn't.
"You couldn't have married in some places."
"When you were young, Daddy, I couldn't have in ALL places, at least in this country. You know that. You know what they said. They'd have taken the kids away too, until right around 1950 even here in California."
"That ain't right, taking away people's kids."
"It isn't. But they'd have done it anyway. And some of these folks would have quoted the Bible at you - hell, some of them still quote the Bible when saying why they don't like it."
"That ain't right."
"And it's not right to take anyone's rights away either is it?"
"No I don't go for that."
"Well, that's what Prop 8 is going to do. Gay people already have the right to get married. That's what the law says, here, and in Massachussets and in Connecticut and other places too. This thing is trying to take that away. Next thing you know they'll be coming after ours too again, knowing some of these folks."
"OK, I hear what you're saying. I agree with you - you can't take away folks rights once they already have them."
"So you agree with me that you have to vote against this Prop. 8, right?"
"Looks like I do. It's not up to me to say. It's up to God to say, and he hasn't said they can't."
"Daddy, please don't vote for this hateful thing."
He looked at me. Just looked.
"OK, OK. I won't. I promise."
Whew.
"I still don't understand it, though."
And that's where it ended. With my father not understanding it, but now being a member of the "No on 8" club, anyhow. With luck, if it comes up he'll spread the word - since while he doesn't like talking much, if anything can get him talking it's politics.
And despite not being a churchgoer, he trusts his Bible. Not interpreted by the preacher, but as we Baptists are taught, read for ourselves.
In the end, even if my dad doesn't "get it", even if he passes to the next life and he still "don't understand", if a simple "Daddy, please don't vote for this hateful thing" is enough to cause this 78 year old man to cast his ballot against Proposition 8 on Tuesday -- and given the look on his face when I, the daughter who he has never refused, said just that to him, I'm pretty sure that it is -- then its still all good. Because he hasn't stood in the way, and the part of him that knows with certainty, even before I said a single word to him about Proposition 8 that "It ain't right to take anybody's rights away" won out over the "not understanding."
Between that and my (despite all my teaching, him knowing full well I'm bi, and me thumping him routinely over the head) "man's man" homophobic son asking me "Are you crazy?!?" when I accused him of planning to secretly vote Yes on 8 and putting a No on 8 bumper sticker on his car at the request of his sister and his roommate who gave him one the other day (It's like the one I have from Cafe Press, which says "Jesus didn't teach hate. Please vote No on 8.", maybe, if there are enough folks like me willing to speak to the religious in language that they understand and accept, to reach one, things will be OK. I sure hope so.
No, I pray so.
No on Hate. No on 8.