The Dog Thinks I’m a Terrible Host

So, W. came out to ponder the lay of the land with me, literally, by wandering around my yard looking at my drainage issues. He arrived and rang the doorbell. Mrs. Wigglebottom barked ferociously and he greeted her politely. I then put her in the house while he and I went outside to look at things.

So, guess who came bounding around the side of the house all like “Don’t worry, guys! I’m totally here now!”

But it’s clear she thinks I’m a shitty host. She was trying to show W. all the fun stuff to do at our house–sit in the cool grass, splash through the mud, muck about under the bridge, etc. You know, all the cool stuff I never think to show guests.

But I was able to regale W. with tails of my septic tank, which I imagine is some kind of giant poo-filled steel bunker and delight him with my crawdad towers.

And, not only that, but the TDOT folks are going to do some stuff to stabilize my front ditch and allow me to fill in the hole.

Of course when I came in the house after they left, you will not be surprised to learn that Mrs. W. had made her way back out the back door.

I’m still not sure if I shut it or not. But if I did, she has figured out how to open it. Which is a little frightening.

I’m Covered in Petroglyphs and Other Random Things

1. I am both confused and delighted. What is this? What does it mean? Where are the critics who can explain this to me?

2. The arrival of a girl from Fulton, Mississippi in the comments to this post, to explain why they just had to have a second prom sounded so real to me that it gave me chills. I mean, that, right there, is the truth, unvarnished. There will be backtracking, later, but rarely do you see someone speak so frankly about why the majority had to exclude a minority and how they experienced it as being justified. I wonder, a little bit, if her second comment isn’t an indication of the realization that what sounded good and justified in her echo chamber sounds like evil to regular people. I don’t know. It’s interesting. You do wonder what it’s going to mean for those kids that the class of 2010 in Fulton, Mississippi did this–that you’ve done something so wrong when you were so young that you’re never going to live down. Do you become hardened to it or does it eventually kick you in the soul?

3. I love Beverly Marrero. But, yes, we get it, State of Tennessee. You think women are idiot children who need your constant observation and guidance or else we breed properly. Yes, it’s insulting. But it’s also hilarious.

4. I guess you might say that the Tea Party folks have a broad range of views–from “we are not like the Klan” to “but if we were like the Klan, you’d be dead.”

Campfield’s “Can’t Say Gay” Bill

I’ve been thinking about my parents, with their new lesbian friends, who are just like a “normal” couple. I’ve been thinking about it a lot because it’s kind of a remarkable closed system–how small town America works. You make life so miserable for gay people that they leave, thus ensuring that the only gay people who ever even ping your radar are the most militant activists, thus allowing you to believe that all gay people are like the misunderstandings you have of the most militant activists, thus allowing you to feel fine about continuing to make life so miserable for gay people that they leave.

So you never have to encounter any ordinary, openly gay people who would shake your belief in your own self-righteousness.

Which just goes to show, in part, that both strategies are important. You have to have folks kicking open the door AND you have to have folks who are just like “Nope, not going to leave and not going to hide any more.” You have the ground-breakers and then the folks who come along to live ordinary, open lives on the tilled land, so to speak.

The ground-breakers make a path, but it’s the folks who use that path every day who keep it well-worn and free from brush.

What’s interesting to me about Campfield’s “Can’t Say Gay” bill is not just that it provides cover for bullies, but that it shows you that Campfield (or whoever wrote this bit of legislation) is pretty astute about the “problem” with non-activist gay people.

Non-activist gay people change minds*.

When people learn about gay people, not as some far off urban culture, but as a regular possibility in your very own community, even people you know and like, it’s hard to be afraid of them. Those two little old ladies sitting together on their porch are really a threat? I’m supposed to believe that the dentist and his partner are really corrupting our society?

Of course not. They’re just our neighbors. They’re just some regular folks we know.

The people whose hearts are hardened towards the activists can still be reached, often, by people they personally like.

So, what can you do, if you have an anti-gay agenda?

You have to make it difficult for people to come to know that people they personally like and recognize as “regular” are gay.

And, economic times being what they are, you can’t drive the gay folks out of the rural communities any more. Even if gay kids want to move to the city, who can afford it? Or if a gay couple has to move home to take care of Mom? What can you do? They have to come home and take care of Mom.

So, you practically have to do what Campfield is up to here–if you can’t make gay people leave, you have to make it taboo to talk about the fact that they’re gay.

But, it’s at best, a sieve to hold back the ocean. There’s still TV. There’s still the internet.

And the broader culture is changing.

And, eventually, folks are going to figure out that Campfield is on the same side as the Westboro Baptist folks**, that his agenda and the agenda of folks who protest at soldiers’ funerals are the same.

And eventually, they’re going to look at him with the same disdain they have for the Westboro Baptist folks.

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*This is not to say that activist gay people don’t change people’s minds, too; I hope that’s clear. But while a gay pride parade or two in the heart of Boys Town is going to blow my teenage mind and delight me and be evidence to me that everything I’ve been told about gay people is a lie, it just reconfirms to people like my dad that everything they’ve heard is the truth. Which is why there is no one right strategy in any given social justice movement. What clicks for one person is not going to be the thing that clicks for another.

**I also think that about those folks in Mississippi who went ahead and threw a secret prom so the gay chick could not attend. I mean, yeah, it pisses me off, but, damn, how good can you feel in a few years when you realize that you and the Westboro Baptist people have the same agenda? You’re no better than the folks who picket soldiers’ funerals. That’s going to be one to be proud to tell the grand-kids, I’m sure.