Patriotism

Today, while sitting around in the derm office listening to my attending tell stories to his rapt all-female audience (seriously, there is one male resident.  ONE.  8 other residents, all 10 or so nurses, and 2 PAs are all female.  What is WRONG with that program?!?), he was chatting about watching protesters in Portland, OR.  "They're all the same, you know, just looking for attention.  They protest week after week, just pick different things."  All the girls (except me) laughed and agreed, with various corroborating statements.

Now, I have to admit that I have never walked in a protest, or stood in a demonstration.  It's not that I've never had the opportunity to do so: my church is constantly staging vigils outside of women's clinics to pray for the end to abortion.  And it's not that I don't support peaceful protesters.  I honk like an idiot when I pass sign-wavers on street corners.  It's just that I suppose I've never felt passionately enough about something to stand on a busy street letting strangers ogle me all day, and I've never gotten over the horribly sad feeling I get when I imagine myself begging a troubled 16-year-old girl not to take the only way out she thinks she has (Yes, I'm a coward, and that's another issue, which we'll address later.  Save your comments). 

But I will passionately defend the right and the effectiveness of protests.  Perhaps the method of protesting has gotten a little lost along the way (PETA can be a bit ridiculous...), but the essence of what it means to protest something has remained the same.  Look at how protesting has played such a significant part in our country's evolution, from the Boston Tea Party to the Civil Rights Movement.  No one should be belittled for choosing to participate in a demonstration, even if they're carrying a sign that says "Friends Don't Leash Friends" (I've never seen such a sign, but if I had, I would have laughed, since it has significantly sexual undertones...).

These thoughts came later, though, after I'd had time to reflect on the little "How-Pathetic" party my attending was throwing.  At the time, all I thought of was this: over spring break this year, my family and I went to Colorado to go skiing.  One evening, we watched through a store window as a bunch of people marched through downtown, carrying signs calling for peace and an end to the war in Iraq.  I lifted up E, pointed through the window at the marchers, and taught him what it means to desire peace. 

Maybe all demonstrators are the same people, protesting some new fad injustice every week.  And maybe these marches do or do not change anyone's mind, or have any impact on the world at large.  But maybe protests speak to something at the very core of what it means to be American.  And maybe, just maybe, a march will live on in someone's heart as a very proud memory. 

On that day, as a photographer for some local paper trailed along behind the protesters, he paused to capture the sight of my 4-year-old son, who was peering solemnly through the window and making the peace sign.

State of the Union

Your need to protect your
oh-so-holy marriage
from gays, devils, sinners
(or gays = ?)
is pathetic

God
(Whom you think you know so well by reading a book
written in mortal words by mortal hands
passed down through centuries
and interpreted in modern tongues and modes of thought)
denounced physical love between
your women and between your men
Too bad science holds the opinion
that the human mind (our God-given
Difference
from the lowly beasts)
may not always have the same Sex
as biology imposes on our bodies
In children, we treat it with hormones and surgery
In adults, we shun it because it's a choice by then, right?
But then, science and God have never gotten along
In human comprehension, at least

But I see no legalese describing
the Desecration of God's Covenant
by drive-through wedding chapels and
"I Do"s said before judges
Where is your holy uproar against
the words "forever and for always" said
by unwilling children with unwanted children
already growing under satin gowns?
How did you figure out you could wash away sin
with a different last name?
I suppose, if they get divorced in the end,
God never said anything about that...

Does a gay person really threaten your holiness?
Does having married gays
cheapen your marriage by extension?
How blessed could such a sacrament possibly be,
if an Evil you supposedly don't even practice
can threaten the sanctity of the vows
you said in the Presence of God (or Elvis)?

Please find a better word for me and mine, then
My skin is brown and I married
(Oops, should I have asked the
Conservative Confused for permission?)
a man
the color of bleached sand
Not so long ago, we were in the law books as
forbidden and wrong
Have we really progressed?
Should we rename our love
(suggestion: "gene pool diluters")
and leave
the holy connotations of MARRIAGE
to those of you with perfect biological compatibility
in every nook and cranny and act of your marital bed?
This desire to be involved in someone else's
bedroom decisions
is so Saintly of you
God is omnipresent and therefore so should you be

But how kind of you to hide your hatred behind
concessions like "hospital visitation"
After all, felons have visitations
and child-rapists can marry whom they please
Do you give yourself a pat on the back
for your tolerance?!
(Memo - Headaches are tolerated
Not people)

But by God, as gays are less human/holy than thou,
their commitments are less than yours
and instead of Marriages
(because Christianity created that word and holds the patent)
therefore, they shall be called Unions
because that is a broken word

And in this imperfect Union of unsettled States
sometimes I am deeply ashamed
of what we come together to create
in our fear and our misunderstanding
and our tolerance