In Glory and in Stink, Part Two: Addendum

Dear Friends,

Last night was exciting - my friends and I witnessed the Obama victory at a fantastic neighborhood bar in Oakland. We cheered his excellent acceptance speech, and our hearts were full with images of joy being broadcast from all over the world. I called my mom, who campaigned for Obama, outside the bar and spoke to her while fireworks went off in the streets. 

During these thrilling moment, votes were being counted all over California. As Obama acknowledged the existence of his queer supporters in his acceptance speech, Californians were voting into our constitution a ban on the civil liberties of gay people. By the end of Obama's speech, I had a queasy feeling of: we've been here before. His beautiful message - one of hope and redemption and healing - is empty if we do not hold him to it for ALL of our citizens.

On a personal note, Michael and I have long struggled with the history of marriage as an institution. We questions its history of sexism and its emphasis on reproduction. We wonder why the state should even be involved in people's relationships in the first place, outside of the logistics of next-of-kin and that sort of thing. We believe in the importance of the ceremony, but question the relevance of insurance premiums or tax breaks. That being said, the reality is that we live in a culture where marriage - in that form - IS a part of our society. And if you, like us, are concerned with the values of marriage in this culture, than you should be very concerned about barring queer access to it. 

Because queers can update this custom and infuse it with gender equality that will free men, women, and the rest of us from all of our historical attachments. We (along with the young people in my generation) can transform marriage, can disentangle it from its dark past and make it about love and connection and faith. 

Yes, we can. 

Today is a historic day for America, but it's also a day where the struggle for civil rights is still raging for many of her citizens (and non-citizens). It is a day where a 58-year-old man punched an elderly couple with "No on 8" street signs in their yard. The election may be over, but yes, you can.

Let's hold Obama and ourselves accountable post-election to his message and the feelings it stirred in us. As he said last night, 
"This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were.It can't happen without you, without a new spirit of service, a new spirit of sacrifice.So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other."

This marriage issue is one in a long line of inequities we face as a state, a nation, a world. Please write to your congresspeople if you live in California, and write to ours if you don't. Please feel my outrage, my frustration, my sadness. I ask you to hold this struggle in your hearts today even in the midst of your celebration. Because the curtain cannot drop on any of us if all of us are to rise. That's what Obama has made us remember, and that's what I urge us all - including the man himself - to never forget. We're the ones who have to remind him and all of our politicians that this country belongs to all of us. We can effect change, we can work from a place of humanity and love. We can do it together. Yes, we can. Yes, we can. Yes, we can.

In Glory and in Stink

Today, election day, has reminded me that my “fragile fortress” metaphor extends beyond my own body and to the tenuous  interconnection around me. A short list  of the beauty I’ve seen in the Bay Area: 

1.“No on Proposition 8” volunteers on almost every street corner in Oakland, enthusiastically waving their signs.

2. About a million “No on 8” stickers sported by an enormous diversity of people on the BART, including people with a range of gender expressions, an African-American couple, and an elderly Chinese woman. 

3. A caucasian family (mother and two small children) waving homemade “Obama” and “No on 8” signs into the rush hour crowd pouring out of the Macarthur train station. 

As you may know, I voted for Nader because I think his progressive views are more aligned with my own than any other candidate, and because I think his ethics and track record are spectacular. Though my ideals are disappointed by the impossibility of Nader gaining traction, my faith in my fellow citizens is not. And my hopes are for an Obama win tonight. 

I spent a long day with my two classes of mostly ninth graders, dealing with behavioral issues and other obstacles. I left one class feeling inept and frustrated, and the other feeling inept, frustrated, AND saddened. In educator parlance, it’s been “one of those days” - the kind of day you question the point of being one tiny person with one tiny heart trying to effect one tiny bit of positive change in one enormously fucked up world.

It was the walk back from School of the Arts to Forrest Hill MUNI Station when I first really noticed it. Everywhere electricity crackled from breast to breast, from “I Voted” sticker to “I Voted” sticker. Outside Civic Center, “Yes on 2” and “No on 8” volunteers handed out their stickers, and people stuck them to suit lapels and backpacks and breast pockets.  

Then, the strangest thing happened: my chest felt full of the grotesque ugliness around me. I saw the housing projects, the homophobia, the fact that we all die and some of us die without warning or explanation. I saw the awful story my student, Janelle, told in class about a white man calling her and her little cousins and her grandma the “N-word,” unprovoked, in a San Francisco parking lot . I saw that ugliness for what it was, maybe for the first time. 

I saw my father  and his desperate anger, I saw the hate inflicted on the body of the transwoman they found up by 280 not long after I moved here, I saw the fear in the “Yes on 8” homeschoolers who live next to where I work. I saw the frustration in the heart of the half-caucasion student in my creative writing who hates white people, and in the African-American students who applauded appreciatively when a character in a movie we watched echoed a similar sentimetn. I saw the ignorance and the loneliness and the grief, dripping out of each of us into a roiling, endless river.

And I saw the incredible beauty. I saw the liminality we are all in tonight, and the peace that is found here. Regardless of his actual politics, Obama’s message and uprightness in campaigning has invigorated people. We are reminded--all of us--of our desire for connection, of our human drive to love and respect and witness the glow in each other. I saw the potential for real change in this moment. I saw people move together with common purpose. I saw us all connect together to our humanity. 

And I saw you. I saw you on the BART and on Oakland Ave and in my classroom. I saw you in your glory and your stink, and I am here with you. I see you, right now,  in Janelle’s grandmother, who looked right at that man insulting her and her grandchildren with all the force of history, and looked clear through to the dark heart of the matter with grace and dignity. I see you with her, I watch you move your lips and say, as she did, “God bless you.“ Calm and graceful as a mountain in a thunderstorm; rough and rageful as the wind itself: we are all part of the story, and I see you .