Not Your Cheese

I haven't posted in a bit, and I'm sure the 3 or 4 people who read this blog regularly have been devastated by my lack of consistency, however, there hasn't been much going on. Sure we have a president with an IQ above room temperature, and yes, the world has rejoiced, but I figure that is a reasonably well disseminated story. On the same day as the Rapture of the Messiah from Hawaii came the news that a slight majority of Californians believe that the government has the right to take away the rights of some of my friends, co-workers and neighbors to practice an archaic religious ceremony. 

If I were so inclined, I could marry whomever I may choose, and it's none of my damn business whom anyone else chooses to marry. One of my co-workers, who is not a US citizen, told me that if he could vote, he would vote against gay marriage. He actually gave me the "Adam-&-Eve-not-Adam-&-Steve-god-will-punish-them" line and then:

K: Will god punish you?

O: Noooo, of course not. I will not marry a man!

K: Then what does it matter to you?

O: It doesn't matter. The Gay People can do what they want, but God won't be very happy with them

K: If it doesn't matter to you, then it's between them and god, so why should you tell them what to do?

O: I think you are right, but I don't want them to go to hell.

K: What if they don't believe in god, or they don't believe in heaven and hell?

O: OHH, some people do think that, don't they? Well, it is between them and god. I can't stop them from going to hell. You are right. Thank you.

Why can't it be that easy with anyone else?

So, there was the voting thing, and then I went to Indiana for my brother's surprise 45th birthday party.

Yeah, Indiana... I think this is where I'm supposed to spew elitist vitriol against my experience in this not quite blue, perhaps deep maroon-bordering-on-purplish state, but I can't. 

I met a guy at the party who voted democrat for the first time not only in his life, but in generations of his family. His father called him an idiot, and he couldn't bring himself to tell his mother. If that had been the extent of it, I would have been kinda proud of him, but he started that line of the conversation by congratulating me and my mother personally on electing such an articulate African American into the highest office of the US.

So articulate and intelligent that he didn't think of Obama as a black person.

The fact that my mother was there prevented this guy from accidentally running his kidneys into my elbows. Twice. 

As I was preventing him from becoming intimate with a dialysis machine, I remembered that we were in Ft Wayne, Indiana. Before my brother moved there, the only black people in Indiana were the Jackson 5 & family, and we know how they turned out. We're dealing with people who don't see the irony in saying "fine dining" and "Cracker Barrel" in the same sentence. The dialogue has to start somewhere- if people aren't willing to open their minds, no amount of prying will get it done for them. While I haven't grown any more fond of the nine to eleven hours of travel each way, and I still don't trust buying a burrito from a restaurant that doesn't call itself a taqueria and doesn't display it's menu in Spanish; while I don't feel comfortable in a place that doesn't appear to have taxicabs or even sidewalks (let alone a single Chinese video store with SECCAM dvd players), I'm going to give the heartland a break. My family's there, and they were cool enough to have me, so they must know what they're doing, right?

Right?