I hesitate posting up another opportunity to shout from the mountaintop to a throng of folks who already tend to agree with the idea that folks need to mind their own damn business where other folks’ marriages are concerned.
I do though, because my daughter came out to me this week as bisexual.
Let’s be a little clearer. She didn’t “come out” with breathy confession and looking at me obliquely to see if I was disappointed in her, but rather she told me about her new crush at school. Her best friend Allison, who she likes to hold hands with when they run around as young girls are sometimes wont to do. She didn’t think too much of it, just letting me know who she was palling around with, and she told me with the same air as the boys that she’s liked. Because we raised her up to be honest and open, and share with us.
What did I tell her? To not hit on straight girls, and to be careful around the Fundie types who abound in Upstate New York. And to find someone that she likes, even loves.
That’s really all that is important. That’s all I want for her. To find happiness, and to comfy in her own skin. And I hope to hell that she never has to make a “choice”–something that the gay community is sometimes as guilty a the straight community of trying to force–because she shouldn’t have to choose who she falls in love with, and if it’s proper or correct. Not in that sense at least. She finds love, and someone who treasures her? That’s all a father can ask for: someone who loves her and wants to make her happy and keep her safe.
The decision on Prop 8, the picking apart of DOMA, it points towards a loosening of the idiocy of trying to legislate a religious morality as the foundation of marriage, and I welcome it. Because it has no place in this country. It has no place in my putative party, and I am glad that Olson was the one who worked on this case, because it illustrates the divide within my party. The Religious Right is nearing an end to its usefulness, and even relevance to the American political process, and I cannot wait for its passing.
Not out of despising faith, or the values that religion teach. Not out of a hate for the faithful. But I welcome a day when bigots can no longer hide behind the trappings of religion to shield their bias. Using religion to justify your bigotry is the opposite of the teachings of near every faith in the world, yet, we seem to tolerate it a bit, when you invoke Jeebus to cast stones.
That the Religious Right has hijacked my party’s platform to preach a brand of divisive radicalism offends me. It offended me long before I had a daughter, and long before she held hands with a girl named Allison, but now I have more than just philosophical musings. I have a stake in the game, beyond my brothers and sisters who have already been discriminated against, and told that their love isn’t as valid. Now, you slack jawed, mouth breathing radicals are pointing fingers at my little girl, and damn you all to the 10,000 Hells for insinuating that the sweetest, most open hearted girl in the world is somehow less deserving of love and affection and a chance at happiness.
Get in the way of a father who wants his little girl to be happy. I fucking dare you.
34 comments