It's been a while again.. Just been busy with everyday life, and not doing anything fun enough to write about. This week, though, gave me a couple reasons to post again:
1. End of the school year means free work schedule until August! YAAYYY!
2. We got a dog! YAAYYY!
3. My new home state legalized gay marriage! YAAYYY!
4. It's actually reached 90 degrees in San Francisco! BOOOOOO!
So, let me get down to the details...
She's been called Tippy (Toes), (Pupper)Muffin(Maker), Schmoo, Sprout, Scrappy, Cuddlebutt, Chickpea, and multitudes of other names that only get used once. Poor thing! You'd think that after a week we could settle on a name. It doesn't help that she responds to anything, so there's really been no need to decide yet. She is a pint-sized, long-legged awkward lap cat of a dog, and we love her to BITS!!!
She fits into a cat bed just so...
...and knows how to use her puppy tools to melt human hearts. Who could resist those ears?
Feel free to suggest a name if something grabs you.. we're set on nicknames (in no short supply) but it'd be nice to have something to put on her collar and to sign letters with.
So, gay marriage! Whoo! But boy, oh boy is there some backlash going on, at least in online news sites' reader comments. I'm truly terrified of the ignorant, intolerant and simply false and hateful things people have posted. Besides all the religious nuts who interpret the Bible in their own special way (and conveniently fail to be as scrupulous in judging their own lives [Leviticus says No Eating Bacon!]), the "logic" that some people use to oppose gay marriage is shocking. Well, now that I'm reading
The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby, I shouldn't be so surprised. Two arguments have dominated the non-religious oppositional comments: One, that marriage is between a man and a woman, and it simply can't exist in any other fashion; Two, that marriage is about producing children, so if there can't be any children, there shouldn't be marriage.
So these people would nullify marriages between people who cannot or don't wish to have children, or who have lost their children? And all those single moms and dads out there are working hard for no reason.. their kids are ruined already!
Well, instead of rehashing what's already in the public sphere, I'll use my space to air out my views. "Marriage" can mean many things: it legitimizes a relationship, it satisfies expectations of adulthood, it bestows benefits within governmental and bureaucratic systems (hospitals, etc.). These things are cultural and specific to the policies made by governments and bureaucracies. They have nothing to do with what happens between the two people in the "marriage". There's a lot of cultural rhetoric about "marriage" and that creates a pressure to conform. America's current statistics about divorce and domestic violence clearly show that men and women are entering marriages for reasons that don't, shall we say, enhance their own lives.
My own conception of what marriage means is based on the cliché that we use to explain relational subjects: "When two people really love each other...." It really is as simple as that. But "love" has seemingly been lost in the fog of pressures to conform and legitimize romantic relationships. What is love, anyway? I always wish that my language had more words to capture nuances that are completely sidelined to general terms; I remember being awed when I learned that there were different words in Latin to refer to the love between lovers, love between parents and children, love between friends, love of objects, love of activities, etc. And the degeneration of the English language in mass media is so powerful that even more terms and concepts are crammed into even fewer words, and people are left to interpret the meaning,
if they think about it at all.
But back to "When two people really love each other...." Regardless of language, we all know somewhere inside what that means. People are hard-wired for love. And does it really matter SO MUCH who it is that we love? Isn't it more important that we love truly? That we don't empty love of its meaning and power by simply conforming to cultural expectations?
There is obviously a great divide between those who believe in the traditional family structure and those who place their values elsewhere. Just like many other issues, there will always be a divide. But what I argue against is the need to legislate (indeed, to dictate) others' lives. Who has a right to tell me who I can and cannot spend my life with and share the benefits of that recognition? And in the end, to me, marriage is about formalizing and bonding love. If that's why people want to get married, why does it matter what gender they are? All of those "family values" that conservatives scream about are founded on the idea of loving relationships, aren't they? I guess the problem is that they don't understand, or refuse to recognize, that people who aren't exactly like them can also love. Oh, and probably that we're incapable of being normal people. How fucked up is that?!
I know that there are nutcases out there who still believe that non-heterosexual people spend their entire lives having degenerate sex. The lion's share of why they think this is such a bad thing, I concede, will most likely never change in their minds. And there are all kinds of homos, just like there are all kinds of straight people, and all kinds of white and brown and black people. Why, why WHY is our country so unable to deal with difference in a realistic way? WHY is it so hard to recognize that while there are basic things that tie humans together, there are also mostly insignificant things that make us different? For all of the rhetoric about melting pots and tolerance, our affluence and ability to travel the world, the media-exposed environment we exist in, we have, as a whole, very little to show for it. Lip service can only carry one so far, and America has been hitting the wall of reality with every civil rights issue in the popular sphere.
I grew up in a society that condemns racism, yet it's open for debate whether our country is "ready" to elect a black president, and there is a vast misunderstanding of Muslim culture and Islamic practices which fuel our never-ending war on "terror". I grew up in a society that encouraged tolerance and diversity, and slogged through my fair share of institutional activities
targeted at increasing those values. Yet those schools, from pre-K to college, were overwhelmingly caucasian. And a shocking number of states voted to ban gay marriage last election season.
Those of you reading this who might be saying, "But I'M tolerant, in fact I embrace diversity, and I'm DEFINITELY not a racist!" -- think for a minute about why you claim that, and how it came to be so. I suspect, just like myself, that this attitude was cultivated as a response to avoid being labeled intolerant or racist, not because we had positive experiences with people who were so different from us. That's the really important thing at play here in so many of the issues that dog us. We're not learning from actual experiences. How do we change that? Well, I won't claim to have the magic answer. But I know that it's *so important* to get out of your context, especially in non-urban areas, to see that your way of life isn't the only way and that people do get by, perhaps as well as, or even better than, you do. And I know that media representations are very important in our society. I mean, everyone in the media is a caricature of sorts, but stereotypes need to be thrown out. I'm sick of seeing flaming homos on tv, disappointed that lesbians only ever look like straight women, and wondering where the trans folks are (besides Rupaul, god bless her!) With all of these "edgy" tv programs being broadcast these days, I'd like to know where the real homos are. One compliment I'll bestow is on
Six Feet Under -- the character David was a "real" person who was also gay in that series.
Can I also take a moment to spotlight the fact that homos are now the only people it's okay to denegrate in the media? I can't even enumerate the amount of slander, outrageously stereotyped or perverted characters, and anti-homo-tension situations I've seen just in the last year. You can't make fun of black or brown people, nor Jews or even Muslims in the media, but it's perfectly okay to mock gay people. WHAT! THE! FUCK! If you haven't noticed this, just pay a little more attention next time you watch tv or a movie. It's in the asides, the sarcastic comments, all the way up to the freaky predatory homo character, to the entire theme of the movie (
I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry).
At least I'm glad that the California Supreme Court judges drew on their landmark decision from the 1940's to allow interracial marriage. I've always thought that gay marriage is a very similar social issue, one that has its proof of harmlessness in the pudding, as it were. It took the rest of the country twenty years to follow suit with interracial marriages.. hopefully it won't take that long for gay marriage to be legalized elsewhere, but the social and
legal climate does seem to be very similar to that era.
Oh, and speaking of the race thing -- Barack and Hillary have disappointed me so profoundly by playing it safe and suggesting that they support equal rights for everyone, and they support civil unions for non-heterosexual couples. HELLO! No, really -- excuse me, HELLO!!!! Does this remind anyone else of the
separate but equal doctrine in our sad history? Civil unions are not the answer, and politicians who claim to make a difference should not support them.
Well, to wrap it up.. I know this is a long post, and I haven't even addressed half of what bothers me.... Gay marriage is really not such a terrible thing, especially in our shallow, materialistic culture. In fact, I'm surprised that there's such an outcry against it when we all know that those finnicky, fashion-obsessed gay men will spend BILLIONS to have the perfect wedding.. isn't money the be-all, end-all in America? Or are we now actually turning inward and evaluating the meaning of our lives?
BWAAHAHAHAAA!
Puppy rain jacket for rainy San Francisco winter! Yes, those are ducky buttons. Shut up.
I wish I could find a cute human rain jacket with ducky buttons and a ducky lining that fit over my cute human fisherman's sweater!
chickpea wishes I was the one wearing the sweater. It's so cold sometimes, though!
Lounging at home...
She loves to lay with her butt in the sun. Wouldn't we all, if we could lay around all day?
"Yes, I have sloppy chocolate lips. It make me the cutest ever, so just accept it."
"I have the longest legs in the whooooole wooooorld!"
Frog Dog!
"pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease! look at how cute I am, how could you let me sit on this floor?!"
chickpea likes to be on both of us at the same time. She won our hearts at the puppy slammer when she stretched out over our laps and gave a big, contented sigh. When we go out to eat, she sits in my lap and puts one paw on Vanessa's knee!
Yes, I love the skinny redheads with freckles!
