Pissed Off

I know it's a little, um, hypocritical to post a long rant about how stupid everyone in the world is for not thinking exactly the way I do just days after posting a long rant about how horrible it is the way we all judge one another, but...Whatever. Hypocrite, thy name is Tiny Coconut.

So here goes: What is WRONG with people? I have spent most of the past week or so with my mouth hanging open at how so many people can be just flat out WRONG about so many things. Yeah, I know, two sides to everything, everything's not black and white, the world is full of greys, blahblahblahblahblah. But, sometimes? Not grey. Not even two sides. Just one side. Only one.

Only one side: Religion, when used as a political force, is bad. Evil. As are the people who use it.

Yeah, I know. But I believe that with all my heart. I'm the daughter and granddaugher of Holocaust survivors, and the great-granddaughter of Holocaust victims who I never had the chance to meet. I know whereof I speak. As my father always said, when he explained why we never received any training in Judaism or even set foot in a temple, "Religion is simply one man's reason to hate another man."

And so now I look around in bewilderment and think: How is it even conceivable that anyone could care what the sexes are of people getting married? How could it possibly ever make even the teensiest bit of difference to you, Mr. or Mrs. Whoeverthefuckyouare? Forget the whole question of whether or not your religious beliefs should be shoved down the throats of everyone else, because clearly, if you're standing out there exhorting people to stop those gays from marrying in the name of Jesus, you don't care what I think. You actually believe (and here I must chuckle grimly) that what you believe is what I should believe. Actually, you believe that what you believe is what I should be LEGALLY BOUND to believe. Well, you can blow me. How's that for a classy, intellectual argument?

But let's assume that it's OK for you to shove your beliefs down my throat. How can those beliefs--those much-touted Christian ethics of love and acceptance and do unto others, the mere phrasing of which (Christian ethics) I find unutterably obnoxious, implying as it does that no other religion has those exact same set of ethics--how can they possibly explain being so hateful and unaccepting? How can they explain doing unto the gays what you would fight tooth and nail against having done to you?

I don't know. I literally and absolutely can't fathom how anyone can feel hatred towards gay people in their heart and still consider themselves a good person. And I literally and absolutely can't fathom how anyone who would deny them equal protection *under the law* (i.e., not in your church, where you're free to do what you want, but in the public sector) doesn't think they hate gays.

I'm just in a rage today about all of this. A constitutional amendment. From the same people who fought and would still fight tooth and nail against an ERA. A constitutional amendment to say that you, sirs and madams, are not as good as us. You do not have have the same rights as the rest of us. You aren't worthy. But, no, we don't hate you. We're Christians. We love everyone.

To end this rant in which I've no doubt alienated several of you, I give you an entry from the Greatest Hits of Em, another "out of the mouths of babes" moment.

This was a year or so ago. Em and Baroy had gone over to M and G's house. I've written about them before; they are, indeed, a committed gay couple who by all rights should have been married years ago. Em was in their bedroom, and saw a picture of M and G surrounded by G's family, all dressed up. (It's a picture that was taken at G's grandma's 90th birthday party.)

"Is this your wedding picture?" Em asked M.

"No, honey, it's not," M replied.

"Where is your wedding picture?" Em asked.

"We don't have a wedding picture, Em. Uncle G and I aren't married."

Em considered this for a moment, her brow furrowed. "But you live together! How can you live together without being married?"

M and Baroy laughed for about a month over that one. It was, indeed, the perfect combination of liberal acceptance and puritanical outrage I've ever heard of. And it's one of my all-time favorite stories about how cool my kid is.