"Zero Tolerance" outtakes

[Plaid Adder]

There was a lot I didn't put in today's column (http://www.democraticunderground.com/plaidder/05/39.html) because the issue is so personal for me that it brings up a lot of stuff I don't feel like talking about where the Freepers can see it. One thing, certainly, is the decision about whether to have children, which my partner and I have been agonizing over for several years, and which will have to come to a head pretty soon because we're not getting any younger. Another is the fact that one of our friends, who's in her early 60s, is about to lose her partner to ovarian cancer, and watching that happen is just heartbreaking--and it is absolutely infurating to see the assholes on the right braying about how we don't have real relationships and we're not real families and we should be hidden away from the children when we are trying to figure out how to take care of our poor friend and her dying partner because the dying partner's asshole family is not around because they never could deal with her sexual orientation and of course neither of them ever had children.

For a lot of gay people, when we hear "We Are Family," we're thinking about our friends in the gay community, because historically we've had to fill in for each other in place of the biological families that have abandoned or rejected our us. Liza and I are both lucky enough now to have supportive families (my mother took, like, 10 years to get there, but still), but our friends are from about a half-generation earlier, and it just is insane thinking that this woman is going to die with her brother still turning his back on her because he's an asshole using Christianity to justify and intensify all his childhood resentments.

You know, these are the most serious things in the world--love and family and community. And to have those fuckers at Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council running around spreading their filth, at a time like this, is just too much.

I have been reading a lot of 18th century plays lately, and Bush's resort to the language of "liberty" and "tyranny" makes him sound exactly like the hero of a neoclassical tragedy, complete with bombast. The reason for the coincidence, of course, is that our founding fathers and their documents all come out of the same period, and they were all influenced by the same language, and Bush is desperately trying to sound like them. In my head, this whole drama has started to take on a neoclassical flavor. Here's something I never ended up including in the column, about the whole idea of tolerance and why it doesn't compute:

***********************

WHAT WE SAY:

All we want is to be able to enjoy the same rights and freedoms that heterosexuals have, including the right to marry and the right to raise a family. That's all. Really.

WHAT THEY HEAR:

(Enter AMAZONIGARTHA, in battle dress, with the severed head of a church elder dangling from her girdle, followed by a retinue of amazons, martially attired, whooping in barbarous celebration.)

AMAZONIGARTHA: Praised be Bilitis for this victory!
Name we this counry AMAZONICA.
And now we've conquered, know ye what to do:
Seek out the families sheltered in their homes,
And while the timid fathers look not on,
Debauch their wives--ay, and their daughters too--
Till from their husbands by some wily craft
They win the precious, the life-giving sperm,
And bring safe to us here in the camp.
Then BREED, my sisters! From your mighty wombs
Bring forth a legion of young warriors
Who'll grow till they o'erwhelm them at the polls,
ANd make complete all our dominion.
And when the Goddess calls me to her breast,
May I be damn'd if then within the bounds
Of all this country there can still be found
A woman who'd endure a man's embrace,
Or man who'd dare to call his seed his own!

(Exeunt omnes cackling in wild exultation.)

*********************
I may be crazy, but I'm not as crazy as this goddamn world. I'm not watching the SOTU tonight; there's no way I can take it. But I bet it will be even more bombastic than that.

Sigh,

The Plaid Adder

[lectrobyte]

1. Thanks for the article, excellent as always.

[hippiechick]

2. The essay was marvelous, Plaid.

:yourock:

[Plaid Adder]

3. Thanks, hippiechick

Do you hear from Momma Kef ever? HOw's she doing?

The Plaid Adder

[hippiechick]

6. A couple times a week ...

Check your PM.

:)

[IrateCitizen]

4. Our next-door neighbors are a lesbian couple of 25 years...

I've never been antagonistic toward same-sex couples ever since I realized their existence, but I also never truly understood many of the travails facing them either.

That was, until my wife and I moved into our current place a little less than 3 years ago. Our next-door neighbors are a lesbian couple that has just celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary together.

They're wonderful people and great neighbors, and we are constantly offering up help to each other when we need it. But the thing that really hit home for me was listening to one of our neighbors talk about the problems they face regarding health insurance. With my wife and I, it isn't an issue -- so long as one of us is working. But with our neighbors, it is ALWAYS an issue. They cannot receive household coverage, simply because they are a same-sex couple.

Also, the more I think about it, the angrier it makes me that here you have two people who obviously love one another and are committed to one another, in an age where divorce is treated so flippantly by so many, and marriages are just discarded because neither person really wants to work on making them work -- and somehow their "lifestyle" is considered amoral by a significant part of the population. If only we had more couples, regardless of whether they were hetero or homosexual, who were as committed to each other as our neighbors are, this country could only be a better place.

[Plaid Adder]

5. Our friends are going through the same thing with the insurance.

Our friend was self-employed as a hairdresser until she tore her rotator cuff. Now she's unemployed with only the crappiest of health insurance. Her dying partner still has insurance through her job, but they have had to go through all kinds of stuff to make sure that our friend will always be consulted about her care, etc. With the new medical privacy laws, you have to put all kinds of legal safeguards in place, otherwise if something happens to your partner, you may not even be able to get in to see her without the permission of the family, let alone be consulted about whether to take her off life support.

We just had to drop a huge chunk of change to get our wills and powers of attorney and stuff like that made up, because otherwise, if I die and she survives, she doesn't inherit, because we're not married. We do have the house in joint tenancy with right of survivorship, so that's all right, but otherwise, if something happens to one of us, the other is SOL. The power of attorney is another problem, because we live and work in two differnet states, and the laws about living wills and so on are different from state to state...and it's basically just much, much more complicated than it has to be.

The having children thing is affected by this too. My partner would like to take off work, if we have them, for a couple years--but then she wouldn't have any insurance, and so the kids wouldn't have any either, because biologically they would be hers. My employers would let themselves be boiled in oil before they'd put her on mine. I'm infertile, and my employers' health plan won't cover fertility treatments except in very limited circumstances, none of which apply to me. And on and on.

These things that are abstract issues for everyone else are, for us, intensely personal, and affect basic life decisions that everyone else takes for granted.

AH well,

The Plaid Adder

[Lisa]

7. very sorry to hear about your friends coping with cancer ...

I'm so sorry for them. One of my co-workers lost his partner to Hodgkin's, a few years back. He left his job and spent the last few months caring for him. Unfortunately this was back before British Columbia recognized same-sex marriages. I think Chris was finally awarded limited survivor benefits, but the whole experience was just heartbreaking. That your friends would have to endure the insinuations that they don't have a "real relationship" is just insult to injury.

[Kber]

8. First of all - great article

second, the insane gov't intrusion into our bedrooms affects us all, one way or another.

My husband and I are in the process of making our will - nothing fancy - the thorniest issue is who has custody of our kids of we experience "simultaneous death" (there's a nice legal term for you).

We had pretty much decided on my husband's younger sister. She shares our values, is young enough to handle the kids, but old enough to be a responsible parent. One issue we have to look into first is if she will face any legal impediments to becoming their legal guardian because she is gay.

So, in a nutshell, my husband and I agree that this woman would definitely make the best guardian for our kids, but we need to consider the "state" laws around adoption when making a personal family decision. The last thing I'd want is for all ready traumatized kids having to go through a custody battle.

And I deeply resent even having to consider the gov't bigotry in what should be a strictly family decision.

[billyskank]

9. Nice to read one of yours again, Plaidder

Please don't stay away too long! :hug: