I’m just saying, seems like an awfully good idea.
I’m not really a thinker so much… I mean, I can think about things in a logical from point a to b to c manner, but it’s not really how I have my best concepts come up. I’m not sure how to explain it other than by saying sometimes I feel like I’m more intuitive than intelligent.
What does that mean? Well, it means I think/worry about a thing, trying to shove it into its box so I can think/worry about other things that don’t need thinking cause they are ready for doing… and while it’s in that box that I’m stomping up and down on to keep the lid shut while I handle something else, what magically pops out is the solve.
Clear as mud, I know. And I’m sorry but we’re gonna keep wandering anyway.
It came to me, while worrying over the SCOTUS’s latest antics and maybe considering rereading The Pelican Brief out of a certain grim nostalgia while recommending others read The Handmaid’s Tale cause I ain’t ready to put on a Martha uniform yet.
Whether you call them MAGAs or hard right Republicans (which I don’t like because the people I’m talking about aren’t Republicans) or, my personal favorite, Tuckerites, the fact of the matter is these are people who are banding together around hate. Something has happened to them, and I don’t know what, and honestly, I barely care at this point. Something happened to the point that one of the drivers for their sense of purpose is to tell other people how to live. And sometimes they call themselves Christians, which, you know, you do you, fact is that little brown guy told you to love, accept, and care for everyone, not the those that happen to look and think like you.
Think about what being on the inside of that community is like. Some of you may already know what it’s like- the ongoing crusade against so many things that don’t matter, giving (and giving, and giving) money to support people who want to stand on a stage and scream into a microphone to tell you what to think, and by the way, give me more money. I’ve known folk that were churchgoing types… but you know, I’ve never seen a member of said church turn up when they needed someone. In fact, I’ve seen members of churches put people in precarious positions (hey, elderly woman, why don’t you let this sketchy drug user be your new roommate? we’ve prayed on it, it’ll be fine) that don’t exactly equate to caring for people in a healthy way.
Please understand, if your experience with organized religion has been different from mine and my observances, I’m happy for you. I don’t need to hear about it, just keep doing you and let it keep doing what it does for you.
Myself, I don’t need that. I don’t need someone to play gatekeeper and standing between me and faith. No one does. I suppose I do follow Christ a tiny bit, or at least some of the teachings- but he was not the first or only one to tell humanity to be good to each other, make amends for trespass, and pray in private.
So, getting closer to my point here.
What do the communities that aren’t simpatico with the Tuckerites have in common?
Well, they aren’t built on a foundation of hate. Ever been to Pride? It’s an outpouring of love and acceptance. Ever been welcomed by a sweet old abuela to dinner? Pure, fattening as fuck lard cookies made with love. People who cling to their identities and refusing to be other than out of pride, and sometimes stubbornness, but always, always love. These people know who they are with a surety like a lodestone drawn to true North. Their purpose is a better life for their people, for their children, and they are fucking fiercely beautiful and strong in that purpose.
In my heart, I believe the Tuckerites are jealous. Beyond who they vote for and who they hate, they have no identity. They parents and their children are either just fucking like them, or very fucking distant, trying to find their own path out of the judgmental hatred.
I ended up talking about this to a whole lot of people last week, so I guess there’s nothing stopping me from writing it now. My mom was definitely a Tuckerite, and she really did not care for gay people. “Why do they have to shove it in everyone’s faces?” was a common question, and, like most of my generation, I would sigh and refuse to engage. (Yes, my mother knew I am bi, she just didn’t care to acknowledge it or it may have impeded her ranting.)
When that same question came up during the Q&A portion of the panel I was on, it rang through my head in a memory I’ve been trying to forget. “How do you deal with these people who say this?”
Well, clearly, I didn’t. Funny thing about life is that it typically creates the circumstances for growth, if you are willing to see and take advantage of them. My foster son, who was out and gay, reconnected with us during the pandemic. I’m sorry to say that he never got to meet my stepdad (who passed when we were still all in bubbles and everything was shut down solid), but from the moment he met my Tuckerite, grieving mother, he took her into his arms and called her Gramma. He helped us move her out of her apartment, came to spend time with her while she was living here, and even visited her in the hospital, took her deliveries out to the rehab center. He could get her to laugh, take her meds, and eat when she would ignore the rest of us. Jake had a million things to do at any given moment, and he always made time for my mother, always treated her with great care and affection.
One of the last times I saw my mother was Mother’s Day, and my foster son, naturally, went with me. She reached out to hug him before me, and hugged him again after me when we left. I never asked Jake to censor himself around her, or be anyone but who he was. And if this home is built on anything (except Star Wars), it’s love and care.
From the time she met Jake til she passed away nearly two years later, I never heard her say a single negative thing about gay people.
Love will win over hate every time- in my deepest heart, I truly believe this. I have to, or the tidal wave of hate breaking over our heads right now becomes unbearable.
It’s just hate, fueled by jealousy of the strength of communities, by fear, by anger. When you’ve been sold a bill of goods stating that to be enlightened/saved/whatever rocks your jollies has only one miserable path that requires you to condemn others, and you see all these others who know who they are, daring to be different, and then being HAPPY being different from you… and that you cannot follow… surrounded by people who love and support their differentness, knowing you would NEVER receive that same care if you let yourself be like them…
I’d be pissed too.
Curiouser and Curiouser 