Guns

In the wake of today, here’s a thought.

The @BreakingNews twitter feed has reported seven different gun crimes within the US in the past five days. Including a shooting at a high school in Omaha.

Guns are weapons. Guns are used to commit violence. Guns do not protect.

Maybe it’s time to address that while guns were a necessary part of survival on the frontiers of this country in 1789, it’s not the same today?

I don’t know how we go forward from this. I don’t know how to resolve this. But I do know that we need to figure out exactly why we think everyone should have a gun.

 

Violence

As my thoughts go out to Congresswoman’s Gifford’s family I’m reminded of a line from the West Wing. In the wake of the attack on the president and his staff, CJ delivers this moment from her podium.

This is our 5th press briefing since midnight. Obviously, there’s one story that going dominating news around the world for the next few days, and it would be easy to think that President Bartlet, Joshua Lyman, and Stephanie Abbott were the only victims of a gun crime last night. They weren’t. Mark Davis and Sheila Evans of Philadelphia were killed by a gun last night. He was a Biology Teacher and she was a Nursing student. Tina Bishop and Linda Larkin were killed with a gun last night. They were 12. There were 36 homicides last night. 480 sexual assaults, 3,411 robberies, 3,685 aggravated assaults, all at gunpoint. And if anyone thinks those crimes could have been prevented if the victims themselves had been carrying guns, I’d only remind you that the President of the United States himself was shot last night while surrounded by the best trained armed guards in the history of the world. Back to the briefing.

Please, oh please, I hope that what happened today wasn’t politically motivated, but no matter what happened, can we please have a real discussion about GUNS in this country.

 

A little thing that’s a big deal.

Last night at the People’s Choice Awards, Neil Patrick Harris won the award for Favorite Actor in a Comedy TV Series.

I don’t usually watch award shows, and didn’t know much of anything about it until I saw the clip of NPH’s acceptance speech circulating the internet this morning.

The moment is remarkable in that it’s so otherwise unremarkable. Just an expression of love that we see all the time at these awards shows, except this time it’s a gay couple.

There were gay kids across the country watching this happen last night. Seeing one man kiss his partner in the bright lights of national television, then publically acknowledge him in his speech.

The wheel of progress is moving forward quicker with each day.

 

Out

Over Christmas I was asked by my mother-in-law about my “coming-out experience,” and I had to stop for a minute and think about how to answer the question.

Coming out to my friends was messy. Some embraced me, and some disappeared. Some even told me I was going to hell.

Coming out to my family was uncomfortable and complicated. I didn’t handle it well, and alienated myself from them in ways that I now regret. They’ve warmed to it somewhat and our relationships have evolved in ways that surprise me sometimes. When my sister talks about Ryan as her brother it warms my heart, but at the same time my folks will still introduce him as my “friend” to other people. (The ”friend” that got invited to my father’s retirement from the Air Force, so there is that.)

But when I think about “coming out,” I don’t think about it as something that is somewhere in my past. I think of it as something I do every day.

-When a customer at work asks me if I’m married when they see the ring on my finger, do I go along with them and smile, or do I point out that I’m not allowed to be married?

-When I start working in a new place, how do I bring up the person I go home too? Do I talk about what “I” or “we” watched on television last night?

The gay rights movement is often compared to the civil rights movement in the middle part of the last century, and there is pushback by some that our struggles aren’t the same. And to a degree that’s true, although maybe not as some would think.

You can’t usually tell someone is gay at a glance. (sometimes, you can) That person usually has to do something to “come out” to you for you to know. And that “something” is every day a little bit terrifying, because I never know how the other person will react. So far I’ve been pretty lucky. Not everyone is.

I don’t know that this post had a point, just thoughts rolling around in my head. What does “out” mean to you?

 

How DADT repeal gets us closer.

Imagine these scenarios.

Lt Commander Riley comes home from work with a big bouquet of roses for her partner. She tells her to get dressed up, they’re going out. They go to the little restaurant down the street that they’ve wanted to try, but were afraid to go to because someone might see them.

It’s a few weeks after DADT is finally totally dead. A group of Sgt. Thompson’s buddies approach him. They awkwardly beat around the bush for a few minutes making small talk before one of the guys blurts out, “So you’re gay, right?” Sgt. Thompson is initially terrified by the question, having lived in silence about this part of his life for years. His buddies explain why they suspected, but because of the law, they didn’t want to bring it up, because someone might hear, and they didn’t want him to get kicked out. They share a laugh, and life continues on.

By all accounts this is going to be reaction to the end of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. A big non-event. A few people get to have their quality of life improved and no one is otherwise effected.

But where it gets exciting is this scenario.

The Labor Day squadron picnic is coming up. Major Daniels knows that Lt. Parker is gay and that he lives with his partner off-base. Because of DADT, the partner has never been able to come to any of the functions that are part of life on a military base. The Major lets Lt. Parker know that he’s expected to bring his partner to the event. His wife has been dying to meet his partner, and several of the other officers’ spouses are too. Parker and his partner have a great time at the picnic and the partner is invited to join the Officer’s Spouses Club on the base.

This is where DADT repeal is going to be the first domino that starts a whole new wave of acceptance for gays in America.

When he has you over for dinner while your spouses are deployed, you’ll discover that you’re not that different.

When he call you in a panic because he hasn’t heard from his deployed partner for while, you’ll know that his love is just as real.

When he is standing beside you at the homecoming, so nervously excited that he can’t even stand still, you’ll know that you’re the same.

The military has been the great equalizer in American History. On the battlefields of the world, minorities have won their equality by fighting alongside their comrades. It’s hard to hate someone who you call your friend.

 

Freedom Means Learning How to Deal

While I was eating lunch today, the local news was playing in the break room and they came to a story about the mosque controversy in New York City. One of my co-workers said, “I don’t think they should be allowed to.” I asked her why. She had no answer, only that they shouldn’t. I can hope that her lack of a reason was her being ashamed of why she’s opposed to it, but I don’t know for sure. But I do know that she felt strongly that this mosque was a bad idea, and this is America, and she’s allowed to think that.

But since this is America, what she thinks about it isn’t relevant. This group that wants to build the mosque (which as I understand it, is less of a place of worship and more of a community center), is fully within their rights to build what they want there as long as it is within the city’s zoning laws, and the local officials have overwhelmingly approved the center.

In America we get to have opinions, and we get to voice them. It’s one of our most cherished freedoms. But it doesn’t mean that we get to force other people to live by our beliefs/standards/ideologies.

There is a group of 9/11 victims’ families that is opposed to it, because they don’t want to walk past a reminder of what they lost. But there were Muslims who died in the attack as well, so…

Should we ban cars so that the families of car crash victims don’t have to see them?

Living in a free society means that you are going to be confronted with people who have a different worldview than you.

This should be celebrated, rather than becoming another excuse to trot out the same closed-minded arguments that have been replayed over and over in a country where each and every one of us is from some other place with some other culture.

Much is made about the promise of America and the freedoms and ideals that we represent across the globe. I just wish that we didn’t have such a hard time living up to them.

 

If wishing made it so…

As I was walking to the door of my apartment this afternoon, I saw a father and his young son (maybe 2 or 3 years old) walking across the parking lot to the small pond. I stopped and watched for a moment as the father picked up the boy and carried him across the street. The little boy was pointing at the pond and perhaps talking about the ducks that were swimming across the surface.

Watching this moment, I felt a little sad. Because I want to be a dad. I want to have a little boy or girl that I can take on walks, that I can read books to, that I can play games with, that I can teach to do all sorts of things.

But what is easily attainable for some (relatively) is a far off, maybe one day, just maybe possibility for me.

It’ll happen one day, but for now I have only to stand and watch longingly as someone else has all the fun.

 

Some Background

The church I grew up in taught me that I was damned to hell.

Then it showed me the way to salvation through faith. That all my sins would be forgiven and that there was nothing I could do to lose that forgiveness.

Then it told me that being gay was unforgiveable, and I was once again damned to hell.

I disagreed. This is my story.

I grew up in a pretty religious family. I’ve been able to recite John 3:16 as long as I can remember. We went to church nearly every Sunday, and I was in a weekly bible study youth group starting in 3rd grade. It was a national organization (AWANA Clubs International) that included weekly bible lessons along with memorization of Bible verses.

When I talk about my youth group upbringing with people these days, they often think I’m describing a negative experience. But I loved being a part of this group. I eagerly went each Wednesday to the church and eagerly memorized more and more verses. I participated in the group’s annual “Bible Quiz” against other AWANA churches in the area, and in 6th grade after spending two months preparing, my teammate (and best friend at the time) and I combined to answer the first 6 of 8 questions in the speed round. I continued through AWANA all the way through high school, earning the highest award given in recognition of completion of the 10 year program. Receiving that plaque (which I still have to and hang proudly) was as big a deal to me as graduation from high school a few weeks later.

I was the model young Christian. I went to church almost every Sunday, went to youth group every week. In high school, I was a “Leader-In-Training” with the a K-2 group. The highlight of every summer was a weeklong camp I attended each summer from 6^th grade through graduation where we did more Bible study and memorized more verses along with all the other fun summer camp activities. I even went back as a counselor after my first year of college.

Even with all this God-focused education, in middle school I started to figure out that I was a different. I was attracted to men. My Christian upbringing was somewhat sheltered and it was it took time before I had a vocabulary to define myself as homosexual. And with the vocabulary came another problem. The Christianity I grew up with seemed to be in direct opposition to this part of who I was. I tried to ignore being gay. I hadn’t told anyone, and maybe if I just spent more time in Bible study it would just go away.

When I was a junior in high school, I worked up the courage to admit the truth. I was driving by myself on a cold winter night when I said it out loud. It was twelve months later that I finally told another person, a friend from school who was not connected to my church life. And two and a half years passed before I worked up the courage to tell my parents.

Perhaps ironically, it was all those years of Bible study that allowed me to come to terms with being gay, because I didn’t just memorize verses and listen to sermons, but I was taught how to read and study the Bible myself. I was able to reconcile what the Bible does and doesn’t say, and separate the laws of the Old Testament from the teachings of Jesus. It was this deeper understanding of my own personal faith, that taught me that being gay wasn’t wrong.

Faith is personal. Each person decides what to believe. They can decide to believe what they’re told the Bible says, or they can strike out and decide for themselves. Because in challenging those long-held beliefs you can discover that some are made stronger.

 

Sportsmanship

This past Wednesday something incredible was happening. A major league pitcher was on his way to a perfect game. This is a feat that has only happened 20 times since 1900, but this would have been the third perfect game this season.

As the 27th batter stood at the plate, the stadium surely held their breath in anticipation of being a part of baseball history. The event that followed has been replayed over and over again since that evening, because a blown call led to the play being ruled a single instead of an out. The perfect game was lost.

What’s truly remarkable about this whole series of events is what didn’t happen after the call at first base. The pitcher (who’d been the one to make the catch at first) smiled and returned to the mound. There was no loud outburst from the manager, the kind of spectacle we so often associate with a blown call.

After the game, when the umpire who made the call saw tape of the play. He owned up to his mistake, and personally went to the locker room to apologize to the pitcher. At post-game press conferences when the media was surely looking for anger, the player and manager were calm and collected.

The next afternoon, when the umpire was given the opportunity to skip the game and avoid the wrath of the fans, he decided to return to the field. The pitcher delivered the lineups, and in front of the entire stadium shook hands with the umpire.

This is sportsmanship. This is what we ought to teach our children.

Armando Galarraga, Jim Leyland and Jim Joyce. These men get it.

This may not have been a perfect game by the definition, but it’s certainly something even better. It’s the perfect expression of America’s pastime.

 

McDonald’s New Ad

I’m struggling with what this ad really says. It’s part of a larger
campaign that positions McDonalds as a place for everyone.

The commercial is being hailed as an achievement. ‘Hey look, there’s a
gay kid in an ad for a major company! Yeah, it’s only aired in another
country, but this is progress, right?’

But wait, the kid isn’t even out. He’s getting lunch with his dad, and
has to hang up the phone quickly while talking to his boyfriend so that
his dad doesn’t hear. So guess what, he doesn’t get to come as he is.

Maybe I’m a curmudgeon. Maybe I’m taking it too seriously. But if
McDonalds really wanted to go pro-gay in this ad, they need to try
harder next time.