We Are One

We’ve all seen the footage in the past week of the aftermath of the devastating earthquake that shook the country of Japan and the resulting tsunami.  It has left us feeling great sorrow and still we have found great hope.  Living on the other side of the world, there is no way for me to fathom the magnitude of the destruction or what these people are going through, and yet I feel great compassion.

We live in a world that is much different than it was in the past.  My generation, unlike any that have come before, find ourselves linked to each other through the various means of technology (and also a global economy).  We find it easier to learn about other cultures and even know people from these cultures.  Some of us are even lucky enough to visit the other nations and experience these different cultures first-hand.  It’s cross-culturalism… (Ok, so I made that last word up, but you should still be able to get what I’m meaning.)

In a time when we can have great pride in our nation, we can also have pride in other nations and in other people.  It can no longer be and “us and them” mentality.  We all share this planet, and deep down, most of us want to live in peace with each other as we build our future together.  We’ve spent centuries fighting each other over what we would consider the most ridiculous things in the present time.  Only in those rarest of situations has it been necessary to really take up arms against each other.  And now we are finding out that we can achieve so much more by working together as a whole (as one unit) rather than by the barrel of a gun or the shell of a bomb.

A couple of years ago, I became friends with a guy that lives in Tokyo.  Through our conversations, we both have had the experience to learn about each others culture.  Upon hearing of the earthquake last week, one of the various thoughts and concerns I had was about his well-being.  It was eight-hours later (mostly because I was at work) that I found out that he was fine.  In the ensuing days, we exchanged a few emails to which he admitted that he was surprised and overwhelmed by my caring, my sympathy for his nation and people, and for all the good thoughts and prayers that I was sending over to them.  It truly meant a lot to him… especially since I was doing all of this for someone I had never met before.  In trying to figure out the best way to help, I first asked him if there was anything that he needed personally that I could send over.  He told me that he was set and wasn’t in any need and that I should focus on one of the various agencies sending relief into his country from my own… to which that will be done.

A new world community is being born at this very time.  We are connecting ourselves more and more to one another while still remaining loyal to our own nations.  And it is when disasters such as this occur, that our common bond unites us and gives us great empathy for one another.  It reminds us of our most basic, and yet most enlightened, form of humanity.  It all comes down to the old Japanese custom of community… of one.  We are all one in the same.  It is time we start focusing on our similarities rather than our differences, and it is time that we start building toward a future that embraces our diverse cultures and allows them to thrive.  I am reminded of some words spoken by President Kennedy in 1963, “For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s futures. And we are all mortal.”

There are no words that can adequately describe what the people of Japan are going through or what we, the people on the outside looking in, feel within ourselves as we watch the footage, see the pictures, and hear the stories (both good and bad).  But rest assured, that the people of this world community are paying attention and we are mobilizing to help, and we will not stop until the job is done and the routine of life once again resumes.  It is all about our sense of community… the society in which we live and how we shape it… and how we have come together under friendship to light a new torch of peace, love, enlightenment, and pride in our fellow man.  We are showing the best of ourselves and each other… we are showing the best of humanity.  We are of one.

A Mother’s Simple Logic

My friend Drew posted a blog entry earlier today, and it was so moving, that I’m going to share it all with you.  I have tried to speak logic and reason in a lot of the entries that I have made over the years….being gay isn’t a choice, and God loves everyone.  The vast-right wing, religious zealots of this country are always out there taunting us with ‘that we’re tearing apart families,’ or ‘soldiers in Iraq are dying because we harbor gays,’ or ‘God sent Hurricane Katrina to punish us for harboring gays.’  I have repeatedly denounced all this as utter nonsense…which any American with any sense of logic would do.  But now here’s a mother from the state of Vermont (which allows civil unions).  She got so fed up with stuff being written in the paper, that she put pen to paper and came up with something very powerful.

“Many letters have been sent to the Valley News concerning the homosexual menace in Vermont. I am the mother of a gay son and I’ve taken enough from you good people. I’m tired of your foolish rhetoric about the “homosexual agenda” and your allegations that accepting homosexuality is the same thing as advocating sex with children. You are cruel and ignorant. You have been robbing me of the joys of motherhood ever since my children were tiny.

My firstborn son started suffering at the hands of the moral little thugs from your moral, upright families from the time he was in the first grade. He was physically and verbally abused from first grade straight through high school because he was perceived to be gay.

He never professed to be gay or had any association with anything gay, but he had the misfortune not to walk or have gestures like the other boys. He was called “fag” incessantly, starting when he was 6.

In high school, while your children were doing what kids that age should be doing, mine labored over a suicide note, drafting and redrafting it to be sure his family knew how much he loved them. My sobbing 17-year-old tore the heart out of me as he choked out that he just couldn’t bear to continue living any longer, that he didn’t want to be gay and that he couldn’t face a life without dignity.

You have the audacity to talk about protecting families and children from the homosexual menace, while you yourselves tear apart families and drive children to despair. I don’t know why my son is gay, but I do know that God didn’t put him, and millions like him, on this Earth to give you someone to abuse. God gave you brains so that you could think, and it’s about time you started doing that.

At the core of all your misguided beliefs is the belief that this could never happen to you, that there is some kind of subculture out there that people have chosen to join. The fact is that if it can happen to my family, it can happen to yours, and you won’t get to choose. Whether it is genetic or whether something occurs during a critical time of fetal development, I don’t know. I can only tell you with an absolute certainty that it is inborn.

If you want to tout your own morality, you’d best come up with something more substantive than your heterosexuality. You did nothing to earn it; it was given to you. If you disagree, I would be interested in hearing your story, because my own heterosexuality was a blessing I received with no effort whatsoever on my part. It is so woven into the very soul of me that nothing could ever change it. For those of you who reduce sexual orientation to a simple choice, a character issue, a bad habit or something that can be changed by a 10-step program, I’m puzzled. Are you saying that your own sexual orientation is nothing more than something you have chosen, that you could change it at will? If that’s not the case, then why would you suggest that someone else can?

A popular theme in your letters is that Vermont has been infiltrated by outsiders. Both sides of my family have lived in Vermont for generations. I am heart and soul a Vermonter, so I’ll thank you to stop saying that you are speaking for “true Vermonters.”

You invoke the memory of the brave people who have fought on the battlefield for this great country, saying that they didn’t give their lives so that the “homosexual agenda” could tear down the principles they died defending. My 83-year-old father fought in some of the most horrific battles of World War II, was wounded and awarded the Purple Heart.

He shakes his head in sadness at the life his grandson has had to live. He says he fought alongside homosexuals in those battles, that they did their part and bothered no one. One of his best friends in the service was gay, and he never knew it until the end, and when he did find out, it mattered not at all. That wasn’t the measure of the man.

You religious folk just can’t bear the thought that as my son emerges from the hell that was his childhood he might like to find a lifelong companion and have a measure of happiness. It offends your sensibilities that he should request the right to visit that companion in the hospital, to make medical decisions for him or to benefit from tax laws governing inheritance.

How dare he? you say. These outrageous requests would threaten the very existence of your family, would undermine the sanctity of marriage. You use religion to abdicate your responsibility to be thinking human beings. There are vast numbers of religious people who find your attitudes repugnant. God is not for the privileged majority, and God knows my son has committed no sin.

The deep-thinking author of a letter to the April 12 Valley News who lectures about homosexual sin and tells us about “those of us who have been blessed with the benefits of a religious upbringing” asks: “What ever happened to the idea of striving . . . to be better human beings than we are?”

There you have it.  Simple logic.  I agree with everything she has written….and not just because I’m gay either.  It’s what I’ve spoken of for years.  We’re born this way….and if someone thinks there’s a 10-step program to ‘fix’ it, then let’s see them go through the same program to make them gay.  Not possible.  And if God’s punishing us for harboring gays and giving in to the ‘gay agenda,’ then why isn’t he punishing those that commit genocide??   And these religious nuts are always out there quoting this is the way God wants it.  Now, I’m a religious man and I do believe in God….but I don’t have a direct line to him nor do I claim to ever know what he thinks….because I have no idea.  And neither does anyone else….so shut up!!  You’re not that special.  What we need in this country is logic and reason to take hold.  The only way a civilization can thrive is when all members contribute  I am not here for you to pick on….I’m here to be living in happiness.

Peace.