Monday, February 27, 2012

That Picture

I posted this picture on Facebook today:

But I agonized over it a little. See, the thing is, I didn't want to be one of those straight people who shores up her tolerance bona fides but smiling down benevolently on gay people. It's hella patronizing, n'est-ce pas ?

On the other hand, it's a nice picture. It's nice to see people coming home from military deployments to people they love, isn't it?

But if this had been a picture of a straight couple, would I still have felt moved to throw it up on Facebook? Or did I want to post it to make sure that everyone knows I approve, when my approval (as we used to say back home) is not hardly the point.

I went for it and posted it alongside an anecdote from, I think, Andrew Sullivan about all the good wishes gay people have bestowed on straight people and how it's nice to see that going the other way now. And that is nice. But maybe still not the best reason for posting pictures like this.

In the end, I think the best reason to share pictures like this is that it's good to be happily complicit in the normalization of images like this. The more we look at pictures of gay couples kissing, the more quotidian and unremarkable it becomes. And that's good. I'd like to live in that world. I'd like to live in a world where a picture like this gets a few "awwwws" and likes from people who just know these guys and not 50,000 people who feel compelled (like me) to pronounce upon their kiss.

I'd also like to live in a world where nice young fellows like this didn't have to go and spend a few years getting shot at in Afghanistan. But I guess that's for another post.

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

In Which I Suppress a Profound Urge to Punch Someone in the Neck


I've been leading this Girl Scout troop for about 5 years now. And, it's a lot of work and the cookie stuff stresses me out to no end. But, you know, I love those girls. All of them. Even though now they're getting to that age where some of them are kind of stinky and they yell a whole lot and are generally wild. But, I am firmly in the camp of these girls and I want wonderful things for all of them - no matter how loud or stinky they are.

And I'm really going to miss them upon my retirement at the end of the year. I love each and every one of those girls. But it's time for a break.

And then I read this, and was simultaneously seized with the urge to punch this asshat in the neck and re-up for another year. Here's the quote:

Nonetheless, abundant evidence proves that the agenda of Planned Parenthood includes sexualizing young girls through the Girl Scouts, which is quickly becoming a tactical arm of Planned Parenthood.

There are no words for how angry this makes me. Sexualizing girls through the Girl Scouts! What, in the name of decency, is WRONG with this man? What kind of a sick, twisted mind thinks of the Girl Scouts as a place where girls are sexualized? The Girl Scouts, for crying out loud! The Girl Scouts whose primary mission is empowering girls. To quote, "building girls of courage, confidence and character, who make the world a better place." An organization, not to put too fine a point on it, made up of LITTLE GIRLS! Who can see these girls and see them as sexualized? Who?

I'm glad you asked. I'll tell you exactly what kind of a sick twisted mind comes up with this: the kind of damaged, simple, and weird mind that is terrified of an acceptance of any sexuality beyond the most "traditional" (and I hope those scare quotes indicate just how ridiculous that word is... as if gay people sprang whole from a disco in 1975. It's just SO FUCKING STUPID). Accepting that two women might want to be in a relationship or that a child with a Y chromosome might feel more comfortable wearing pink is the same, to a mind like this, as actually having sex.

How sick is that?

And scoff and guffaw all you want at the notion of a Republican led war on women. But it's real and the front line is right at Planned Parenthood, an organization which Republican leadership would dearly love to see as Acorn Redux. Well, too fucking bad. You're not going to beat Planned Parenthood because there are too many women in America who have a real relationship with that place. And we'll fight for it.

But, for the love of decency, leave our little girls out of it!

I'm not re-upping for the Girl Scouts next year, because I just don't have the bandwidth for it, no matter how much I love all those little girls. But I am upping my monthly donation to Planned Parenthood. And I'm doing it in honor of State Representative Douchebag from Indiana.

In closing, here is a picture of my daughter who is a Girl Scout, who is aware that people are gay and that babies aren't picked in a cabbage patch and who is, absolutely and unequivocably an innocent: