A personal blog by a graying (mostly Anglo with light African-American roots) gay left leaning liberal progressive married college-educated Buddhist Baha'i BBC/NPR-listening Professor Emeritus now following the Dharma in Minas Gerais, Brasil.
We
can’t live ethically without caring about ourselves as well as others.
And we can’t be mindful without caring about what is happening here and
now. Care underpins the radical attention that dharma practice accentuates.
November 8 is looming. It
seems the closer we get to Election Day, the more heightened the
emotions, thoughts, comments and stakes involved.
I’ve done my best to stay out of the fray. I’ll post funny little
ditties about both candidates on Facebook, hoping to keep things light.
But the reality is this election is far from light ― it’s incredibly
dark. And as an LGBT individual, it’s downright scary.
We reached a milestone last summer when gay marriage became legal
across the country. My mother called and left a message on my phone that
nearly brought me to tears. “Congratulations!” she said in her
heartwarming and adorable motherly voice. “That’s the way it should be.”
Come November, my mother is voting for Donald Trump. So is my father.
Both of them love me unconditionally. Yet, both of them hate Hillary
Clinton with a boiling passion that has been bubbling to the surface,
across the country, for months ― even years.
This is hard to reconcile for me. On one hand, I respect their
political views and right to vote for whom they choose. On the other
hand, I don’t get how they can vote for someone who has threatened
to appoint Supreme Court Justices that would overturn the marriage
equality ruling. It directly affects me. It affects my family. It
affects my daughter.
Straight people who have enjoyed the privilege of getting legally
married, and all of the benefits that legal marriage provides, don’t
think about things like this. Not even my parents. It’s not part of
their world, one in which they’ve been able to blindly take these kinds
of things for granted. And they aren’t the only ones.
The other night, a relative of my wife’s came over for a visit. He’s a
genuinely nice guy. He loves our daughter and often brings her gifts
and stuffed animals—mostly oversized cows, which she loves because,
well, she loves cows.
It was a brisk yet pleasant October evening. We were sitting outside
in front of my house. Glasses of wine were in hand. Naturally, election
and real world chatter arose. I don’t mind engaging in this type of
conversation, as long as its civil and constructive. Like my parents,
this relative is voting for Trump. But I’d venture to say he’s more of
an active fan. When he asked why we weren’t going to get on the “Trump
Train” and cast our vote for him, I said simply: “As gay individuals, we
can’t afford to. We have to take that into consideration.”
(Sure, there are a billion other reasons why I am not voting for Trump. But being an LGBT individual is at the top of the list.)
This particular relative decided at that moment, that it was a good
time to tell my wife and I ― and our four-year-old with perky ears who
was busily playing at our feet ― that he believed marriage was only
between a man and a woman. I stopped him right there. I got up and
hurried my daughter inside for a bath.
I like to think I’m an understanding person. I respect all people and
their political opinions, no matter how drastically I disagree with
them. I’m fine with family members of mine voting for Trump. But to
question the validity of my marriage in front of my daughter, that’s
where I draw the damn line. My wife and I took the same vows as every
other married couple on the planet. We work hard to live a decent life,
raise our family in peace, and be good human beings. Our marriage is no
less or greater than anyone else’s, and we go through the same exact
trials and tribulations. The only thing that makes our marriage
different is an ignorant and outdated point of view.
I rather enjoy being married. I’ve been in one for seven years now. And I hope to enjoy my legal
marriage to my wife for the rest of my life, with our daughter a
witness to our love and appreciation for one another ― sexuality aside.
But as the election nears, I’m beginning to wonder if that’s possible.
Trump has a decent shot at winning. And people, even those in my own
family circle, don’t seem to care about how that outcome could possibly
affect the LGBT community.
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If
we had to make a choice between outer pleasure, comfort and peace, and
inner freedom and ultimate happiness, we should choose inner peace. If
we could find that within, then the outer would take care of itself.
One
day in India on my second stay, Maharaji said to me, “You don’t have to
change anybody; you just have to love them.” In relationships, when the
other person doesn’t fit into your model of how heaven would be, you
don’t have to play God. You just have to love individual differences and
appreciate them the way they are. Because love is the most powerful
medicine.
The world is in travail, and its agitation
waxeth day by day. Its face is turned towards waywardness
and unbelief. Such shall be its plight, that
to disclose it now would not be meet and seemly. Its
perversity will long continue. And when the appointed hour is come, there shall suddenly appear
that which shall cause the limbs of mankind to quake.
Then, and only then, will the Divine Standard be
unfurled, and the Nightingale of Paradise warble its
melody.
I
had thought the point was to pursue happiness and flee misery, and this
attitude extended to Zen practice. But now I saw a new way of looking
at things. What if the point was to start by accepting suffering?
“[Alan Turing] was and is a hero of all time…a man who is a
gay icon, who didn’t deny his nature, his being, and for that he
suffered. … This is a story that celebrates him, that celebrates
outsiders; it celebrates anybody who’s ever felt different and
ostracized and ever suffered prejudice.” —Benedict Cumberbatch I usually find movie award shows to project primarily fluff
and silliness, and they rarely stir deep emotions in me. But listening
to Benedict Cumberbatch accept the award for Best Actor at the American
Film Awards for his portrayal of Alan Turing in the film The Imitation Game two years ago brought me to tears. This stemmed from a sense of deep pride and an endless abyss
of sadness. Cumberbatch’s commitment and passion shined through on
stage as he talked about transforming Turing’s story, his brilliance,
and his humanity to the silver screen, helping to give Turing the
long-overdue wide-scale recognition he rightly deserves. Alan Mathison Turing was a pioneering computer scientist,
and he served as a mid-20th century British mathematician, logician, and
cryptanalyst who, working during World War II at England’s Government
Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, succeeded with his team of
scientists and linguists in cracking the “Enigma code” used by the Nazi
command to conduct covert communication operations. Because of Turing and his colleagues’ efforts, Cumberbatch
said, there is now general agreement that they shortened the war by at
least two years, saving an estimated 17 million lives. Prime Minister
Winston Churchill singled out Turning as the person whose work
contributed the most to defeating the Germans. The Imitation Game also highlights the enormous
obstacles placed in the way of women entering the sciences, especially
mid-century. In this regard, Keira Knightley made an equally moving
speech at the American Film Awards in accepting theBest Supporting
Actress award for her portrayal of Joan Clarke, who worked with Turing
in deciphering the code. “Particularly now, when women are such a minority in all
fields, her story and the fact that she really perseveres, and she had
space and time and grace, is really inspiring,” she said. Though initially considered a national hero in Britain,
in 1952, government officials arrested and prosecuted Turing on the
antiquated charge of “gross indecency” when he “admitted” to maintaining
a same-sex relationship. Rather than serving time in prison, Turing
chose to undergo estrogen injections then considered in men a form of
“chemical castration” eliminating sex drive. Turing took his life two
years later by swallowing cyanide just two weeks short of his 42nd
birthday. I find it deeply ironic that while Turing and his team
helped defeat the Nazi war machine, a nation intolerant of any form of
difference including same-sex relations (especially between men), the
primary “allied” nations fighting Nazi Germany – United States, Britain,
and the Soviet Union – all maintained laws criminalizing homosexuality. Under King Henry VIII in 1533, England passed a “buggery”
(or sodomy) law, doling out the penalty of death for “the detestable and
abominable Vice of Buggery committed with mankind or beast.” Under the
rule of Elizabeth I in 1564, death for same-sex acts between men became a
permanent part of English law until the 1880s. British courts at the
time concluded that sex between two women was impossible and, therefore,
exempted women from the statute. By 1885, English Criminal Law punished
homosexuality with imprisonment up to two years. This remained in
effect until homosexuality was decriminalized in 1967. In addition, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin criminalized
homosexuality with eight years imprisonment or exile to Siberia. And in
the United States, consensual same-sex relations were against the law at
one time in all states, and remained illegal in some states as late as
2003, when the Supreme Court finally overturned such bans in its Lawrence v. Texas decision. In 2009, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown officially
apologized to Alan Turing on behalf of the people of his nation for “the
appalling way he was treated.” Parliament finally brought up a bill of
“pardon” in 2013, and on 24 December, 2013, Queen Elizabeth granted
Turing a posthumous pardon. Though the English government never actually forced a
physical stigma onto Turing’s body, they branded the symbol of the
outsider, the pervert, the enemy deeply into his soul. This branding
seriously deprived the British nation and the larger world community of
his continued genius, his generosity, and the many additional gifts he
could have imparted. I agree with Benedict Cumberbatch that Turing’s wide-scale recognition is long overdue.
To
be free means to open your heart and your being to the fullness of who
you are, because only when you are resting in the place of unity can you
truly honor and appreciate others and the incredible diversity of the
universe.