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Sunday, July 4, 2010

Little Scraps of Paper

Hi, there, Blogland Friends!

I have missed you. It has been some time since I've last blogged...but I've thought of you. Where you are...what you're doing...why there are no comments...you know. The usual things an intermittent cyberspace blogger thinks about.

The last time I blogged, I posted a letter that I had written to a Regional Transit Company, which shall remain nameless. Due in large part to the fact that I have little desire to be sued for libelous slander. Hmm. I wonder if First Amendment rights apply to those of us in the True North, strong and free...

However, here I sit, slightly sunburned and freshly showered reflecting not upon the Human Rights Commission's decision to reject my application for consideration of violation of Human Rights, but upon a scrap of paper that I found yesterday while cleaning up mass accumulated sheaths of paper. It is an innocent little thing, a piece torn from a free local newspaper. On the back, there are ads for cruise lines, nanny-seeking families and male enhancement drugs (funny how life sort of goes in that order...) but on the front, scribbled in my own reckless cursive, appears the following: 'who are we to comment on the propriety of another person's choice of sexual expression?'

Source unknown. Maybe it was me. Maybe I read it somewhere. It does sound awfully prolific...esoteric. I will take credit for that, I think.

I often find myself writing down things that I don't want to forget (often to forget where I wrote them, and sometimes forgetting why I wrote them down exactly...but knowing there is a reason. Like, Santa Claus.)

I thought of this little innocuous scrap of paper this afternoon...while standing at the corner of Church and Yonge Streets in the blistering sun watching my very first Gay Pride Parade.

I thought of all these people - literally thousands of them - both in the Parade and watching it, who have been subject to the judgement and moral sanctimony of those around them for longer than we can even remember. People who have been subjected to the judgements of others...judgements that we have no place making, and go far beyond our right to excercise freedom of thought and opinion.

Consider: It is against the law for any man in a relationship with another man - committed or otherwise - to donate blood. If you were dying....and a pint of blood could save you, would you care at all about the person who gave it? I doubt it.

I watched a Parade float full of couples marry along the route. I could see that same shine of love and hope in their eyes that I felt on my wedding day, even from my lowly post on the street, behind a steel barricade. How can I not stand behind two people who love each other so much that they are willing to spend their lives, perfecting that love?

I felt a strange kinship with these people...no, I am not gay. But I do know what it feels like to spend your life feeling like there is something completely beyond your control that holds you back from living the life that you want to live. And that something has everything to do with what other people think of you, and what they believe you to be.

Returning home, I was so surprised to hear people ask, 'why would you go to something like that? Are you gay or something?' Well, no. Recently married to a wonderful man, dear Sainted Husband, pretty much rules that out. But I remain taken aback. If you were struggling with something that defined you as a person and permeated your whole life, wouldn't you want people - gay, straight, bi, transsexual, black, white....whatever - to stand behind you? To say that your struggle is important because we are important to one another as members of the Human Community?

While part of Pride is the 'we're here, we're queer, get used to it' mantra, a bigger part is supporting each other and the people we love in the choices that fulfill their lives in a way that is meaningful to them.

Thank goodness for those little scraps of paper. Without them, today might have been lost in a rain of Trojans and Mardi Gras beads.

My love to you all; whomever you love and however you do it.

1 comment:

  1. Thank you for your thoughtful reflections on this travesty in our society. We need more people like you to comment publicly on our thoughtless (is this a real word) actions and feelings. Why are we so insecure and fearful of ideas and lifestyles we don't understand.

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