-Letter from a Chicago Writing Desk-
On Love, Marriage, and Equal Rights for All

So you may be wondering where I’ve been all summer. Probably assuming I’ve been having a blast in some tropical paradise, frolicking naked and getting into sexy adventures. Well, not so much. This summer has been taken up with -ta da!- grad school. I have been thinking my head off, folks. And I was separated from Lance for 5 weeks, which was no treat when I realized that the walls of my summer apartment were so paper thin that Skype sex was OUT. So disappointing! I was totally going to do a Skype sex experiment so I could give my readers some advice about how to do it. Alas, studying and lonely nights were all I got.

But I was thinking a lot, as I mentioned above, and reading a whole lot, and talking about the stuff I was thinking about and reading with other students. Which brings me to my point of today’s article: the astonishing reminder that not everyone in America is liberal, open-minded, and educated. I know that may seem obvious to some people, but you forget these things when you spend all your time in metropolitan havens of intellectuals and artists. You forget that much of America has the complete opposite views that you do. Or maybe they agree with you in general, but they don’t listen to NPR as obsessively. Or they don’t really care to be up on sociopolitical issues.

Anyhow, here’s the story: I was asked to lead a reading seminar discussion on Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Letter From a Birmingham Jail.” For those who may not be familiar with this piece of writing, it was written by Dr. King while he was in jail, having been arrested for peacefully protesting for civil rights in 1964. It is written as an open letter to clergymen who had criticized his activism. The letter references instances of prejudices in America, and calls for unity and acceptance for all people. It is a powerful, thought-provoking, and beautifully written piece.

As the leader of this reading seminar, I was doing my best to be sure that everyone got a chance to talk, to ask questions, to respond to one another. The discussion got deep, and intense at times; how could it not? The subject matter of African-American civil rights is difficult for Americans talk about. We feel guilty, I think, that our countrymen acted so unfairly to others because of differences in race. Those of us born many years after this decade feel a sense of disconnection and disbelief; how could there have been segregated water fountains? We stop to think about our own actions and places in society; are we acting justly? Are we doing enough?

As I listened to my classmates, I felt something tugging at the back of my mind. When people spoke of unfairness, injustice, and cruelty, I thought about our current America. We profess to be a land of freedom and equality now, right?? But not everyone gets the same rights, STILL to this day!

How antiquated of an idea, that not all adults can marry in every state! How frustrating, that we KNOW that gay marriage will be legal for all in a few years, but we still have to go through this back and forth of the laws! How appalling, that gay partners cannot be on each other’s insurance plans, cannot be with each other in the hospital! How devastating, that bullying and stigmatizing causes young people, who should be treated with the utmost love, acceptance, and understanding, to end their own lives!

I’m thinking these things during the reading discussion, and I’m trying to stick to the text, so I only allude to them briefly. Something like, “Well, we’re still working on equal rights in this country…” But a classmate gets it, and she takes up the torch, bringing up gay rights as analogous to civil rights fights of the past.

And then a different classmate says something so utterly surprising I am momentarily speechless. This is where my forgetfulness about the people of other backgrounds comes in.

She says something like, “Well, I don’t think that gay rights is the same fight. I mean, they aren’t treated like black people were. Nothing that bad has happened to them. What would they write on their protest signs?”

This woman has a good heart, I’m sure. It’s just that she’s from Texas (sorry, it’s true), and maybe she doesn’t watch the news. Like I said, I’m speechless. I’m floored. But I’m leading the reading discussion, and I have to say something.

A movie montage is going through my head… Matthew Shepard’s face surrounded by the flames of hell on Godhatesfags. com, the Stonewall riots, my cousin getting punched in the face for holding hands with her girlfriend, Dan Savage’s It Gets Better campaign, Prop 8, the Boy Scouts banning gay scout leaders, pink triangles, cancelled proms, Charlene Strong’s heart-wrenching story on the Moth podcast, Marcus Bachmann’s hypocrisy, and all those teenagers who were pushed so hard that they gave up, five in one month last fall.

I have to stop this terrible carnival ride in my head and say something. I look this poor woman in the eye and stumble through something like, “No, I don’t think that’s true. I think there’s still a lot of equal rights work to be done in our country.” I cited a few of the examples above, and she looked surprised. And I thought holy balls, she she really doesn’t know this stuff!

There is, indeed, a lot of work to be done in this country, my friends. It’s really important work. It’s important that you educate your children, your friends, your family, and the occasion ignorant stranger, on the fact that every person on this earth has a right to love, be with, and commit to another person, regardless of gender, race, class, religion, or anything other thing that makes them “different” from each other. And it’s important that that love and commitment is recognized by all the people in our communities, and our governing bodies.
—

Yesterday, I had the great honor of being part of the wedding of two women who are very dear to me. It was an absolutely beautiful and joyous ceremony. The love between these women was palpable, and love for them and their happiness emanated from the family and friends surrounding them. As the wedding party processed, gleefully, down the street from the ceremony to the reception, we passed a table of young folks that cheered for the brides. One gal, a complete stranger, shouted, “Thank you, state of Illinois!” She was referring to our state’s recent passing of a Civil Union law.

One small step forward, Illinois. I’m grateful that this step allowed my friends’ commitment to be recognized, legally, by our community. I know that this will continue in the years to come, and I am so looking forward to that day when I’m talking to some little kid and I hear them say “What? Gay people couldn’t get married in America? That’s so weird!” It WILL happen, I know it will. We gotta keep working toward making our country the place of liberty it claims to be.

xoxo,
Lucy

11 September 25 Permalink

Today I’m posting a fantastic guest essay from one of my favorite followers:

http://nellvoss.tumblr.com/

A former Chicagoan, Voss moved to Los Angeles recently, and she writes a great blog called “Searching for Culture in L.A.” (which is indeed a difficult task). In terms of her search for a perfect mate, she has a rather different perspective than most…

Unwinding the Biological Clock

I don’t really care to get married. I don’t really care to have children. I’m sure of these things, but because of the rigorous brainwashing of society at large I have accepted the idea that I will change my mind around thirty-two, and suddenly my uterus will be screaming about getting filled up until I get to weak to resist and just give that bitch what it wants. The biological clock argument worked pretty well on me when I was a teenager, and really kept working as long as this magical desire was still part of the hazy future. Well, I’m approaching the end of my twenties and I still don’t want any goddamn stretch-mark-making, time-sucking, little monsters to take over my identity. I was not raised in a house in the suburbs with a mom and a dad and a dog and a brother. I think I turned out okay, so why shouldn’t I be able to choose something other than a nuclear family for my own future?

I am a fan of monogamy. I just don’t think that it can really be a permanent state. At some point you will no longer get along, or, at the very least, you will stop having sex. I’m still pretty young, but it seems to me that life without sex is death in disguise. The problem with all of this is that, as a pretty, intelligent, straight woman, I am expected to want all of the things that pretty, straight, intelligent women of previous generations have demanded from sex partners. The truth is I don’t give a shit about that stuff.

The only reason I ever talk about my supposed future children is when I am imagining what I will not do to them. The longing to do better than my parents did is the only time I ever think about having kids. Well, friends, I am happy to report that I have the perfect solution to this conundrum. You see, one of the worst things that my parents bungled was the handling of their respective remarriages. They subjected me and my siblings to their obnoxious new mates without so much as a heads up. They were re-establishing themselves as free adults, a step that would never have been necessary if they hadn’t had to give up on being free adults in order to have children.

That is why I have decided that my ideal childrearing relationship would be a long term partnership with a divorced man who has children. Preferably one who shares custody with the children’s mother. This would allow me the satisfaction of doing the stepmother thing right. It could be revolutionary. I like the idea of being involved in the lives of other people’s children. Other people’s children are my favorite kind of kids.

So go ahead, have children with that dreamy man you’ve found. But when you wake up one morning and realize you hate his guts? Divorce him! Before you’re both old and wrinkled! These are the best years of your life! Get on with it!

There is nothing sexier than a man who can be relied on to do things properly; a man who can be trusted to do the grocery shopping without micromanagement; a man who will know what to do if somebody accidentally swallows something poisonous. So let that sexy man find somebody who finds him attractive, and you go on with your bad self and find somebody who thinks a lady with saggy tits and scarring on her abdomen is just the cat’s meow. If you divorce him and he ends up with me, I will make you this promise:

I will never try to replace you. I will never say bad things about you. I will never interfere with decisions that are the rightful province of you and the sexy man I will be sleeping with. I will never talk about my sexual relationship or in any way be showy with the public displays of affection when the kids are around (or at all, that shit is tacky). I will stay out of the way, but I will provide your children with something too. I will make it clear to them that if they decide that they truly hate me I am gone. I don’t need to ruin the relationship of a dad and his kids. I am not interested in that. I will be like the cool aunt. Or maybe the nerdy aunt, but any way you slice it, you wouldn’t really be upset if your kids had one more aunt, would you?

In addition to the boon of having the chance to positively impact the lives of some kids who have probably had a rough time the last few years, I think there are other bonuses to be found in this scenario. There is no rule that says that partners must live together. I would be happiest living separately but close to my partner, and I think this works well for the hotty divorcee relationship. I don’t even want to move in! I just want to occasionally hang out with your kids, but mostly we’ll hang out when they’re at your house. This means half the time your kids get the ultimate, devoted dad, while I get the time to be the free grown-up I want to be, and the other half of the time dad gets to be fulfilled in his romantic life and I get a non-clingy man friend.

And if/when we go our separate ways? No messy moving process, no home upheavals. Let’s stop the brainwashing and show kids that divorce doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Let’s show them how good life can be when their parents are truly happy and fulfilled. Let’s show them that love doesn’t have to last forever to be true. And let’s prove it to ourselves while we’re at it.

Thank you, Guestwriter Nell Voss

http://nellvoss.tumblr.com/

6 March 10 Permalink