Oh yeah, my blog. I watched something on the news the other night about how some people are making money off of their blogs, so if you could tell your friends and I could gather 5000 or so followers, I'd appreciate it.
Let's see, New York decided to make an appearance to the 21st century. The gays can get married, or as my dad says "Do they not see married people, why do they want to torture themselves????" I have to agree with the far right, homosexuals getting married is going to ruin the "sanctity" of marriage...... ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME!???!! The sanctity?? Sanctity?? You might be able to come up with a lot of arguments why you're against it, but please keep sanctity out of the equation. Have you watched tv lately?? Do you see who is holding up the sanctity of marriage in our country? Britney Spears, Dennis Rodman, Elizabeth Taylor, Lindsay Lohan, the entire casts of the Bachelor and the Bachelorette, Larry King, Hugh Hefner, and everyone else who has made their marriages last as long as Britney Murphy's drug career.
I would comfortably say I have a couple hundred friends who are in openly gay relationships. Most of them put my heterosexual friends relationships to shame. Hell, they put my past relationships to shame. There might be large groups of people who would give me a list of "facts" why this law shouldn't have passed. I'm truly hoping that none of these protestors are either women or a member of a minority race. Guess what? I never lived through the civil rights movement or when women weren't allowed to even sit in a classroom or church, but I'm assuming it's about the same thing. Here are people, who are happy WITH THE WAY THEY WERE BORN, and want the same rights everyone else gets. Isn't that what Martin Luther King wanted? Or Virginia Woolf? Or Betty Friedan? Now the names are George Takei or Rosie O'Donnell. I think we made a huge turning stone this week and I bet when my generation's kids are my age, they won't be able to think of a time when homosexuals couldn't get married. The same way that I don't remember blacks not being allowed to vote. Or women holding a public office. Or minorities being allowed to play on professional sports teams. I mean this is the white heterosexual male's country!! At least that's what we told all the native americans before we took the land and killed all of them. Duh.
But.........I do believe in change. I do believe in progress. I believe living in the stone age prohibits our growth. I believe times change and we adapt to those changes. But it takes some time and patience. I remember when the no smoking law hit NYC while I was bartending and we were convinced all of our jobs would disappear, no one would go out anymore, and people would rather buy a six pack and smoke in their apartments than have to go out to a smoke free bar. We were wrong. It took about 6 months for everyone to figure out how it was going to work, but 10 years later, no one thinks twice about the rule now. And it's spread across the country but it's not made a big deal of anymore. People adapt.
Gay rights has been a hot topic for years. Extremely hot. So hot that half of our country thinks the other half wants to kill them all and send them to hell. The "God Hates Fags" church appears at military funerals to protest. I can't believe no one has shot them yet. I'm very surprised by that. When this law passed last week, the first people I thought of were some of my closest friends who have been together for years and can now share the same bond that my parents have. Men who have lived together for 20 years and love each other the same amount they did the first day. Women who tell there co workers that they've been dating each other for 5 years and get the response, "Wow, I didn't even know you were gay".
So the next morning rolls around and the news on all the stations are how the law passed in NYC and everyone's reaction to it. And my worst fear came to light. CNN cuts to a celebration, most likely in Chelsea, from the night before and you would think Studio 54, La Cage aux Folles, and Ru Paul's drag show looked like they were having an orgy. Now..... as someone who lived in NYC, I know where these parties were and most likely us actors would have ended up somewhere near them if I lived there, but here I was in Orlando Fl watching 4 men in body glitter and thongs grind up on 3 drag queens wearing extremely flamboyant pink feather costumes. I smiled. I was so happy for them. But then I thought of the 6 men sitting in a bar in Mississippi who don't even think they have seen a gay person in their life thinking that this was what this law meant. The "freaks" getting their way. The reason people are prejudiced and racist is because they usually don't understand. They have preconceived stereotypical images in their head that are the worst of what they can imagine. I was upset at CNN for not helping this "change" be shown for how special it really is for so many millions of Americans. I wanted to see the young couples. The older couples. The couples that defined exactly what love means and how happy they were. This is why the theater community rose up together. We have so many friends who feel equal. That they can hold their head up high. That they fought and won.
There will always be hate in this country. For every race, gender, and orientation. Hate crimes will continue to happen and that's just sad. This law is not going to change anyone's mind over night. But I do think that over time this will come to be a thing of the past. We'll laugh that we kept a group of Americans on the back of the bus or out of the church. We'll change and grow together. People will think that NY has given rights to their "images" of what homosexuality is, but they're wrong and we as a people have to grow up and realize that we are here for each other. We only slow ourselves down if we're against one another. We make people aware. We do our job to promote how much good all of us can do. As someone in the heterosexual community, I hope we don't ever let the gay community down. You know the people you can count on. Congratulations.
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