I sometimes am reluctant to really get personal on this blog. Yes, I post a lot of pics of my dad, but you know, that's just something that has been on my mind for a while now. I haven't actually posted much in the last year, mostly because no one reads my blog, so why should I post on the blog? Hmmm?
To me, that's a good question.
Anyhoo, it's my blog and I'll post if I like to. And thanks to the three or four of you out there who occasionally pops by. Thank you!
When I was growing up, living mostly between my father's bar and my mother's church with very few choices in between, I knew a man named Queenie. And she was magnificent.
Queenie was a non-operative transvestite and she, with his sash and strut, would come into my dad's bar. If I remember it right (my memory has been shot by a constant worrying mental stream of going to hell as a young one), Queenie was the best and funniest people in all of the world. I try not to remember the drunkenness and drugs, and I don't remember if I ever heard him say he'd been beaten, or rumors of such, but he would always sit at the end of the creamy purplish bar laminate with the black arm rests, at curved end of the bar curved near where the phone boxes used to be, before they were moved to the front, as the phones lost the box and became surrounded by plywood rests simulating privacy nearer the door, to be replaced themselves where the phoneboxes used to be by Pac Man and a pinball machine.
I wish I could remember specific stories. I could ask my mother, though dad would have told me tell me the real scoop. One thing I do know that from a young age, I have known a gay man and I remember him fondly. It was only later that I "realized" that gay people were bad. I never gave it one bit of thought, until the day I was told I should.
I learned that I should think about it from going to church. The church my mom was a member of was a part of the Apostolic community of churces, hard-core, dispensationalist, tribulationist, Rapture-ready warriors. And I grew up smack dab in the eye of its storm. I often say if it hadn't been for the bar, I would have gone completely mad.
I have a relative who is gay and has been out for a very long time. He went through hell for a long period of time and even now, I suppose, both demonized by family and trounced by life. I won't say much more than that.
I have often wondered myself if I were gay. Maybe that I don't date is not because of my first 20 years of life being told how horrible a person I was (primarily for just having been born a sinner), but that I was gay and being in my dad's bar with a bunch of fast-talking men and the women that they talked fast to had nothing to do with my aversion to dating and playing the game.
Ha.
I realized a long time ago that in fact, I was not gay, I just wanted to have been born a man. Men have a whole hell of a lot more fun and they get to rule the world. Don't get me wrong. I like being a woman mostly, but you know what, I'd much rather be the objectifier than the objectified. Got a problem with that?
Ha.
I guess the bottom line to this post is that I dislike the fact that Rick Warren is giving the invocation at Barack Obama's inauguration. As far as I'm concerned, this country is based on a God-free Constitution, where the rights of the people trump the rights of God. My spirit is dampened a bit by this decision, as if the wind has been knocked out of my sails. From a political point of view, I can see where this is coming from. However, Obama has alienated a wide swathe of his 'base' with this decision to appeal to those who still believe he's a Muslim or the anti-Christ or a Socialist or whatever. I hope this move works. Something is working, particularly when the likes of Pat Robertson, on CNN the other day, says that he's "remarkably pleased with the job that is Obama is doing." I fell off my chair, figuratively, of course.
Obama has come this far seemingly knowing what he is doing. It's difficult, I believe, for mixed-race people like the both of us to take a firm stand on moral issues at times. When you yourself were outlawed by dint of birth and the Bible is made to prove your blood apostasy, it's tough enough to attempt to bring everyone together around the dinner table, let alone around the world over long-standing issues such as abortion or gay rights. Compromises of a personal nature are made all the time to get along. Whether right or wrong, it's the way it is.
Obama has steadfastly been an advocate for pro-choice causes and he says he's for gay rights but not gay marriage. Warren (and Robertson) helps to legitimize Obama's presidency, and I can plainly see the wisdom of that. However, I hope that Obama, in trying to lure in the Religious Right, does not forget that the Vocal Left and Moderate Center are the ones that actually voted him into office and rallied continously and constantly by his side.
Oftentimes, black people of light-skin have been known to or accused of, abandoning their race and slipping into the white community because it's easier. I hope that President-Elect Obama does not slip into the Religious Right too readily because it's easy. They, like the left, will never make his life at president easy.
We'll see what the next four years brings.
