Prologue
I had just spent the last six hours of my Sunday afternoon sitting at my desk in the kitchen. I was reading the last 200 pages of Stephen King's Bag of Bones...what a rush. King has a way of drawing you into the story so completely that reality is blurred and unimportant. The suspense and drama printed on the pages are just as real and relevant to the reader as they are to the characters.
I first read King in 1976... Salem's Lot, I couldn't put it down, and now, 39 years later, I was again held captive to the imagination of a genius. I sat spellbound, my mind racing, reading as fast as I could trying to keep up with the pace of the story. Finally, exhausted, the story was concluded. Good had triumphed over evil and the hero had survived no worse for the wear, the damsel had been saved (at least one damsel anyway, we may have lost a couple others along the way)...until next time dontchaknow.
Chapter 1
I have a TV that sits atop my refrigerator and earlier I had been watching the golf tournament. I put the book down, disappointed that the story had ended. I looked up at the TV and realized that the tournament had also ended, some time ago and I didn't even know who had won.
As I was allowing my heart to return to it's normal rhythm I began flipping channels on the TV. When I got way up to channel 397 I saw a guy sitting at a table, the kind of table you see at any banquet hall or flea market. On the blank wall behind him was a hand written sign with a phone#. I listened for a moment.
"Kill the Gays" is what I heard him say. Now this guy was way too cowardly to actually say those words but his meaning was clear enough. What he was doing instead was regaling his audience (probably just me) with stories of the original colonies, 1642 was the year he had mentioned. In that year, according to him, sodomy was a capital offense and a person could be executed for said behavior.
He told the story of a man who had been convicted of sodomy with a ten year old boy and that the man had been hanged for the crime. The boy had been flogged! He then told another story of a man who had been convicted of the same crime with a 13 year old boy only this time the man hanged and the boy was flogged and then hanged as well.
He said he didn't know why they hanged the "victim" (his word) but he supposed that they felt that most likely the boy may have "enjoyed" the encounter a bit too much and he was therefore a danger so he should be done away with as well.
I was outraged, I picked up my cell and dialed the number. He picked up the phone on the first ring, "Hello, you're on the air with...what's your question?"
"You're crazy" I said.
"Why do you say that?"
"You're suggesting we should kill the victims as well as the perpetrators of rape"
"I'm not saying that I'm just telling you what they did back then"
"It's public knowledge, look it up yourself!" He spits at me.
"I don't know if it is or not but to suggest that we should kill gay people is bad enough but to suggest that we kill the child victims of rape is crazy!"
"I didn't say we should, I just said..."
"Yes you did, just by using it as an example that is exactly what you were saying"
"Look for hundreds of years sodomy has been illegal in this country and around the world, homosexuality is a sin and it is against God's law"
"So homosexuality, Sodomy as you call it should be a capital crime punishable by death?"
"If that's what the law says" he answers defensively.
"You're Crazy"
"You don't understand God's law" he says to me as if I were a child.
"You are bat shit crazy" I say again.
"You should read..."
"NO" I interrupt "You are crazy , no more discussion, you are crazy" and with that I hang up the phone, I've had enough of this Wako.
I catch the end of the conversation on my Refrigerator TV as there was a time delay in effect and then he says "Well folks I guess that's how it's going to be tonight." "People just don't understand that America is becoming a moral wasteland and it is up to us...blah, blah, blah" I turn off the TV, I've REALLY had enough of him.
Chapter 2
The problem is that jerkoffs like this guy cannot be ignored. A very small minority of people in this country agree with this cookoo and that small minority has learned, well, the mechanisms of electoral politics. Even though Roe v Wade is settled law these people continue to fight against it. For forty years it has been the law of the land, but still today, the House of representatives and state legislatures around the country continue to undermine it.
They have corrupted and stacked the judiciary in their states, they have gerrymandered congressional districts to such a degree that they cannot lose the majority. In the Senate they filibuster everything, requiring 60 votes to pass any legislation. When they finally get the majority they refuse to appoint judges to the federal bench. They take away the right to vote from minorities by passing unconstitutional poll taxes.
In South Carolina we recently learned that it takes a 2/3 majority to even discuss taking down that reprehensible and hateful confederate flag. They passed the law with a simple majority and it takes a super majority to undue it; how's that for Democracy. This country is being controlled by a radical right wing minority. So, what are we the majority of Americans doing about it?
NOT A DAMN THING! That's what. Most of our progressive brothers and sisters sit out the midterms. The Supreme Court rules that Americans have the constitutional right to same sex marriage. The right goes nuts but in the states they say well then we just wont issue any marriage licenses or in Texas anyone who has a religious objection can refuse to issue a license. They simply defy the law and we take it.
I don't care who we nominate for President, Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton, it won't make a bit of difference unless we can retake the Congress. If Hillary is gonna spend a Billion dollars getting herself elected then she had better spend another billion getting out the vote in every state. And then if we can manage to win back the Senate whoever becomes the Majority leader should take the filibuster and dump it in the trash.
In it's current form the filibuster is a hindrance to our democracy, it is not constitutional. And that's not all, this idea of blue slips from Senators from the state of a judicial nominee. The constitution says the President nominates and the Senate confirms. It doesn't say anything about well we can't proceed with the nomination because Sen. so and so hasn't turned in his blue slip.
No single Senator should be able without a majority to stop the business of the Senate, PERIOD. I fear that if we do manage to get the Senate back we will elect Sen. Shumer as majority leader, "cause it's his turn and the Senate will be just as dysfunctional as it is now. If we want our country to run like the superpower it once was, if we want a world class infrastructure, if we want ALL of our citizens to be represented, If we want ALL of our citizens to have food, education, housing and health care, then we had better get off of our asses and overwhelm the voting booth next year and DAMN well do something about it.
Because if we don't this idiot I talked to tonight on cable access and his ilk will surely pass "Kill the Gays" laws and maybe even kill the child victims of rape, if they might have enjoyed it a little too much...you never can tell.
Wanna help, call The reverend William Barber, NAACP North Carolina he doesn't sit around on his ass, he's out there doing something about it. How about former state Senator Nina Turner, she's doing something about it go help her. Bernie Sanders is trying to do something about it, go help him. How about President Barack Obama, who gets up every morning and does something about it, tries to something about it, and want's to do more of it, support and help him. But most of all GO VOTE!