Telling the Truth Out Loud

There’s Something I Need To Say

czanghi:

I’ve been afraid to say it for a while because I was afraid to say it wrong, but I think I’ve finally got it.

Ever since I started high school there have been people who assumed I was gay. It bothered me in that it was an assumption that significantly decreased my chances with boys, which were already unencouraging as it was. It didn’t occur to me to be offended in any other way. 

Today someone yelled at me out their window as they drove by. I didn’t hear what they said because I was listening to my iPod, and for all I know they said “THE WEATHER IS BEAUTIFUL!”. It’s anyone’s guess. It brought me back, however, to the other times people have yelled out their car windows at me, carefully choosing the message they wanted to get to me as they sped by, and settling on “DYKE!”. When this has happened to me, I didn’t get mad. 

I got excited.

I get excited because I get the chance to yell “HELL YEAH!”. The first time this happened, I had no idea why I’d done it. It wasn’t premeditated, it was just the first thing that came out. My body’s initial reaction was to yell back, and this was my mind’s initial response. 

I’m still not gay. I’m not even bi. I’m not pansexual or asexual. I like boys.

But here’s the thing. All of the people I knew in high school who thought I was gay treated me no differently. I know that makes me lucky, not just because I never had to deal with bullying, but because it taught me that even if I were gay, nothing else about me would change. That helped me understand that about other gay people, too. Hell, about everyone. 

My mom once said to me that sexuality is a very small part of who a person is. There is so much that makes us who we are, and if we choose to be defined by our sexuality, we are doing a disservice to ourselves. Not because sex is wrong or something we shouldn’t be open about, because if that’s what we choose to be our thing, we undermine our intelligence, our talents, our charms that lie in our personality, not our sexuality. Some people are more sexual than others, and that’s great. It is perfectly fine to be a sensual person. My mom went on to say that whether or not a person’s gay doesn’t make a difference in who they are. If they’re a good coworker, they’ll still be a good coworker regardless of how they live their life outside of work, and who they share it with. What’s more, it’s none of her business. My mother’s insight on life continues to astound me.

I am a Christian. I realize that the Bible classifies homosexuality as a sin. I also know that it classifies all human beings as sinners. Today in religious studies we introduced our paper topics and one guy said he was studying a passage that said the penalty for cursing is death. “I don’t know about the rest of you,” he said, “but my whole family would be dead”. We all laughed. I know that my religion calls homosexuality a sin, and I know that how someone else lives their life in a way that hurts no one else is none of my business. I know that he who is without sin must throw the first stone, and none of us are sinless. Nobody, NOBODY, has the right to judge someone else on their actions that do not hurt other people, because nobody is perfect. I know these things, and I have struggled with how to interpret homosexuality through a Christian view for a long time.

Being perceived as a homosexual never scared me, but being a good friend to my gay and bi friends and being a good Christian caused me to live in fear. I wasn’t afraid that I shouldn’t be friends with those people. The idea that being friends with them was wrong never crossed my mind. What scared me was that while I understood the doctrines set in place by my religion, I still couldn’t agree with them, and I didn’t know why. The things I knew to be true about my faith and the rules set in place by the religion that fostered that same faith didn’t seem to go hand in hand. 

I decided a long time ago that my faith is nondenominational.

I knew that there was a disconnect. I knew that a lot of studying and searching and praying would be involved, and I knew it would be difficult. I didn’t know why this topic was so important to me. I know now that it’s because I have an intense love for people. I love the way people think and behave and interact. I believe that all people are beautiful.

And above all else, I know that the overarching theme of my faith is love. No matter what the clear-cut truth is, no matter how many people make Christianity look bad with their bigoted hatred, I will always believe in love. 

To all of my homosexual, bisexual, pansexual, asexual, transgender and otherwise friends- I will always stand up for you.

I will always love you.

And I will never miss an opportunity to shout “HELL YEAH!” 

Kony 2012

fishingboatproceeds:

edwardspoonhands:

Apologies for my stunned silence in the face of  the Kony 2012 movement and the internet’s explosion of power. I’ve never felt like the whole internet has simultaneously pushed down the same keys at the same time. Not even the response to SOPA made me feel this level of solidarity. 

The LRA has been around, being evil, and making the world suck more since I was in college, and that’s when I first tried to raise awareness for stopping them…more than ten years ago. Sometimes it feels like there are so many terrible things in the world, it’s impossible to figure out what to focus on. But the LRA is getting that focus now. And I hope we can maintain it.

Having seen the video that Invisible Children put together for this cause, I am floored. It is a masterpiece and the reaction to it has been exactly as strong as it should be…which is to say, EXTREMELY STRONG.

However, my worry is that we will soon feel about the LRA the way we feel about Syria today. John’s video recounts tremendous crimes against humanity that continue in Syria right now, and yet the mot common comment is “KONY 2012.” I would like to encourage us all to understand that international relations are not conducted on the time scale of the internet. 

If we look back in three months and think “What happened with that Kony thing?” we will have failed. Honestly, it was hard for John not to feel that way about Syria as he scrolled through the video comments today. Like he put a lot of work into a video that no one cared about because it wasn’t the soup of the day. 

Of course, it’s difficult to compare what the government of Syria does to what the LRA does, since the LRA is so deeply evil. And the message that Invisible Children is bringing to us is extremely powerful and we have to capitalize on that excitement in every way we can.

The 2012 deadline seems dangerously arbitrary, though, I’m sure, very motivational. I apologize for my tempered enthusiasm, I’ve wanted this guy (dead or alive) for over a decade, so I’m used to it not happening. But we’ve never had energy like this surrounding the cause before either. We must do whatever we can to make it happen, but this is a marathon, not a sprint. 

Let’s run it together.

Go Here and Act Now

Let me first underscore that, like Hank, I have publicly and privately advocated for the destruction of the LRA for a long time, both in terms of what I talk about and in terms of where I give money. For the record, I have not donated directly to Invisible Children because organizations like Charity Navigator have raised important and so far as I know unanswered questions about IC’s work and their transparency (see this tumblr post for more links, although some of them are dubiously reported), but I greatly admire both their mission and the clarity with which they are able to articulate it.

Regardless, I think it is tremendously important to arrest Joseph Kony and end the terror he has brought to Uganda, Sudan, the DRC, and the CAR. It’s something we can all agree upon, which makes it easy to rally around, and at least at first glance, it lacks the complexity and ambiguity of, say, trying to figure out whether to intervene in Syria.

But in fact, the business of killing and/or capturing Kony and dismantling the LRA is not so simple. For one thing, a US-backed mission to destroy the LRA failed in 2009, leading to retaliatory mass murder. Furthermore, members of the American military are in Uganda right now working with the Ugandan armed forces to dismantle the LRA. Congress has also acted (albeit belatedly) to offer better intelligence to governments where the LRA is active. European governments have been similarly supportive.

In short, it’s unfair to say that Kony isn’t famous, at least to diplomats and governments. It’s just that—like other famous evil people—he is not an easy person to kill or capture. The truth resists simplicity, whether we’re talking about Uganda or Syria or Egypt or American Presidential nominating contests.

To dismantle the LRA, we need to maintain sustained pressure on political leaders here and abroad, which is the kind of work that as Hank points out requires continued focus and commitment.

Here’s to running these marathons together.

On Feminism

In my Judaism in the Old Testament class we learn the different methods for analyzing scripture, such as Theological, Literary, Historical, etc. On Thursday we were to analyze a passage about Miriam from a Feminist point of view. Our professor asked us to define Feminism. In particular, she asked us specifically not to define it in what we think of as a politically correct way, but what it means to us. What do you think of when you hear the word Feminism? What is your personal definition of Feminism?

 I realized that this was the first time in my life that I’d ever taken the time to think about it.

This is what I came up with: 

“A Critical Eye. 

Feminism turns a critical eye towards the objectification, disrespect and omission of women that exists in the media, the workplace and the home. It points to the undercurrent of inequality that still exists in our society.

Many young women today consider Feminism to be outdated because, as they say, they have never experienced nor seen such inequalities. Feminism argues that this is due to the undermining of women engrained into society’s traditions, solidifying them in not only women’s, but men’s minds as normalcy”

There were several girls in my class who claimed to have never seen/experienced these inequalities, and while in many ways that is due to victories won by D\Feminism (we can wear pants, get jobs besides secretaries and teachers, and play school sports), it also shows that many problems still exist that are so deeply intertwined with our perceptions and expectations we fail to notice them. It is difficult to point these things out to anyone who doesn’t have a clear understanding of what Feminism is, or who hasn’t taken the time to think about what it means to them, and whether or not their information is correct. I admit, until now, I was one of those people. Many movements and belief systems are associated with their extremists, making it difficult for the ideas at the movement’s core to move forward. 

 And what are these deeply intertwined problems?

 I will no doubt go into this in later posts, but the unbelievably unhealthy expectations thrust upon young women by every facet of the media is almost overwhelming.