What Would Jesus Do?

I usually smile when I hear people ask, “what would Jesus do?” I think of Jesus and I think of a man with open arms who welcomed saints and sinners alike, but I know that people have different views of Jesus. I read an article about a church in Tennessee that is kicking out a family because the family supported their lesbian daughter’s push to change the laws in Collegedale, Tennessee. Kat Cooper, who is the daughter in question, led an effort to have family benefits extended to her wife. After the city council voted in Cooper’s favor, members of her family were allegedly invited to a meeting with church officials and told to either publicly repent for supporting their daughter or leave the church. I read this article and I had my own “what would Jesus do” moment. The church’s actions are essentially saying that Jesus would not support his family member if they were deemed a “sinner.” Jesus, the man who was willing to die for the sins of other people, would turn his back on his family. It sounds ludicrous to me. I know that the church didn’t mention anything about what Jesus would do, but that was the first thought that came to my mind. How can any church begrudge a family for their unconditional support of their child? I want to find out more about this church. I hope that the church has a long list of other families who have been addressed in similar meetings. I hope that the church has the same policy for unwed mothers and the parents of unwed mothers unless the parents have publicly repented for supporting their unwed child, divorced people and anyone who admits to fornicating or is found to be using contraception. I try to be supportive of religious freedom, so if this church is strict enough to blame the parents for the “sins” of the daughter, then every parent in the congregation should be held accountable for the “sins” of their child. Fair is fair.

You and I

I felt like sharing a random poem today:

 You and I

You moved me

You pushed me down the stairs, around the table and out the door

My feet took baby steps

I thought about walking away

But I turned and begged you to give me more

I wanted that hurt because it came from you

I wanted to feel it, to breathe it, to bathe in it

I wanted it

And you gave it so freely

You touched me

You hit me before I fell, as I was falling and after I was on the floor

My arms protected my face

I thought about screaming for help

But I knew there was no one to hear me anymore

I wanted your love so I pushed away all others

I wanted to have you, all of you, not just part of you

I wanted you

And you denied me so easily

You broke me

You grabbed me, twisted me with your hands and struck me at my core

My body became limp

I thought about pulling away

But I knew it was my fault because I didn’t finish my chore

I wanted to tell you I was sorry

I wanted you to know it, to believe it, to finally see it

I wanted an end

And you were done so quickly

You scarred me

You ripped off the callous, squeezed it and put lemon juice on the sore

My soul wept for us

I thought about our years together

But I couldn’t get you to remember how we were before

I wanted to invade your mind

I wanted you to see us, to remember us, to want to be us

I wanted to go back

And you pulled me forward abruptly

You lost me

You hid me away, forgot what you had and what you kept me for

My heart ached for you

I thought about holding on

But I saw that you couldn’t look at me anymore

I wanted to warn you I was leaving

I wanted to face you, to tell you, to show you

I wanted to be strong

And you didn’t want anything for me.

Ariel Castro's Kind of "Love"

I apologize in advance and promise that my next post will not be a rant, but I have to get this off of my chest. I live in a suburb of Cleveland. I remember when Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus went missing. I remember watching the yearly coverage of the vigils. I remember the shock and relief I felt when they were found alive. 

I look at Ariel Castro and I see him for the troubled soul that he is. I understand that people like him need to be locked away forever in order to protect the rest of us from falling victim to them. I thought people from all sides of the political aisle could come together and shake their heads in mutual disgust at what Castro did to those three women. I foolishly thought that his actions would stand alone as sick and perverted and so far away from what normal people do, that there was no comparing him to everyday people. 

I should have known better. Our society is built on sound bites and sensationalism. We beg for it like a dog panting for a bone. We live to be outraged and offended and insulted and frankly, it irritates the hell out of me. I can’t remember the last time that I watched a panel on MSNBC, FOX NEWS or CNN, and I didn’t hear someone say something that I felt was a bit extreme. We have to tone down the rhetoric because we've gone too far. We jumped overboard a long time ago and I’m starting to wonder if the ship of human decency will ever turn around and come back to rescue us from ourselves.  

I saw an article about a conservative radio host comparing LGBT love with Ariel Castro’s demented “love” for his victims. My first thought was that surely the commentator was misquoted. No rational person would ever compare a mutual love between consenting adults to a one sided love in which the unwilling partners were kidnapped, imprisoned, terrorized, beaten, raped, starved and abused in more ways than can be described in words. How can anyone even remotely link the two? I can’t fathom the thought process of people so obsessed with ratings and talking points that they abandon common sense. 

So who did this? Well I blame both people who were having the discussion. Sandy Rios, an American Family Association talk show host and Fox News Contributor, and Erwin Lutzer. Their discussion about some Facebook post, became a discussion of the ways in which love is contorted and sometimes perverted in to something that in no way resembles love. Lutzer began talking about pedophilia in an attempt to explain that all love isn’t good and loosely connect it to the idea that same-sex marriage represents bad love. Anyway, Lutzer said, “A pedophile I’m sure says that he loves children…but you can see how destructive that love is.” He went on to say “Once love is undefined as kind of this ‘I want to do this and so I’m loving’ then, of course, we end up where we are ending up today with a great slide in morality…” Here is where I take a breath to keep from screaming. His argument upsets me for two reasons: one, it is comparing apples and oranges and two, it is attributing something to love that love has not done. Let’s address the first argument. There is a huge difference between the love between two consenting adults and the love between a consenting adult and a child. Where do I begin? As a society, we acknowledge the inability of a child to consent or enter in to agreements. Gone are the days of 12 year old brides (unless you live in a cult or something). Children cannot have legal relationships with adults because we realize that children are not the same as adults. Children do not think the same way as adults. They don’t usually have the foresight to consider the long term ramifications of their actions. We don’t even trust children to drive vehicles until they are a certain age. To compare a “relationship” between an adult and a child to a relationship between two adults is to completely ignore the fact that one contains two people who can legally enter in to agreements and one does not. Proponents of same-sex marriage are not looking to make love “undefined,” they use the same definition as everyone else, only theirs is gender free. Instead of marriage being a union between one man and one woman, proponents of same-sex marriage argue that marriage should be a union of two consenting adults, regardless of gender, but everything else should stay the same. And for the second part about morality, um, society started slipping down that slope a long time ago. Sex sales everything, from shampoo to food to cars. Singers prance around on stage in risqué outfits, young celebrities are sexualized way before they should be. Wholesome family entertainment is virtually a thing of the past with few exceptions and that has little to do with homosexuality and everything to do with the drastic change in American morality in which things are only immoral if you get caught doing them. 

Now back to the comment that Sandy Rios made about Castro. Castro was an abuser. His “love” for his victims was, is and always should be criminal. No one has the right to hold someone against their will and abuse them. Same-sex marriage is about people willingly committing to each other. If a gay man came to the Justice of the Peace with his partner bound and gagged in a cage, the Justice of the Peace would need the partner’s consent before and during the ceremony. You don’t get to force your “love” on other people who don’t want it. That’s why there are t-shirts that say “Against Gay Marriage? Don’t Get One.” A sane gay man doesn’t want to force a straight man to marry him any more than a sane straight woman wants to force a gay man to marry her. When proponents of same-sex marriage say that it’s about the right to love, they don’t mean to love someone who doesn’t love you back, but rather, the right for two people to love each other and express that commitment through entering in to an institution that declares their love to the world and gives their relationship legal protections under the law. Comparing same-sex love to Ariel Castro’s love reflects poorly on the person making the comparison because it is clearly a comparison that is made for emotional purposes and not based on any rational thought. 

Can we please stop with the sound bites and outrageous comments and go back to thinking before we speak?

How I Really Feel Today

I'd like to turn myself in for giving a false representation of my feelings. On the outside, I agree with the verdict in the George Zimmerman case. I admit that the prosecution didn't do a good job. Hell, they couldn't even be bothered to prep their own witnesses. I ignore the fact that all Zimmerman had to do was identify himself or better yet, leave the police work to the police. I blindly overlook the hypocrites who in one breath say that Zimmerman had every right to follow Trayvon but in the next breath condemn Trayvon for not running home when he had every right to be where he was and to return to his leisurely pace after he thought he had ditched the guy who was following him. I concede that it was an uphill battle when only two people knew how the fight really started and one of them was too dead to tell his side. I understand that in the American sense, justice has been served. Zimmerman and Trayvon had their day in court. Zimmerman was exonerated and Trayvon was convicted. I understand that there are no winners in this situation. I understand all of this.

I respect the views of others and I understand that I shouldn't be bothered when Zimmerman supporters engage in what I call the "ho shaming" of Trayvon. For those who don't know what I'm referencing, I'm talking about when you excuse the rape of a woman because she was a prostitute, she was dressed the wrong way or because she has had sex with a lot of different guys. I don't care if Trayvon was a thug every other night, that night he was a teenager walking home in the dark with a man who pursued him by vehicle and then seemingly by foot. He was a teenager who either asked the man "why are you following me?" or "do you have a problem?", either way, the man, by his own words didn't simply say that he was neighborhood watch. People are quick to point out that Zimmerman didn't have a legal obligation to disclose this information but I think that was necessary information. I think it would have somewhat diffused the situation because it gave him a reason to be patrolling the grounds. Without knowing that he's a member of the neighborhood watch, he remains just a creepy guy who has God knows what intentions. We teach our children to never let the stranger take you. We tell them to fight back, to scream, to do whatever they have to do to get away. And then we have a case like this and we have to rethink what we tell our children.

This case has left me with more questions than answers. Should we tell our children not to walk too slowly because people won't assume that they are listening to music or that they are on the phone, but rather that they are casing the area? Should we tell them not to run or walk too quickly when someone is following them because then people will think that they are trying to escape? How do we judge the appropriate speed for them to walk? Should we tell them that they don't have the right to walk around at night because that makes some people uncomfortable and bad things could happen? Should we also go ahead and tell them that if they encounter a creepy stranger they should ask the stranger a few questions or let the stranger put their hands on them or just wait and see what the stranger wants to do to them or with them, because if they refuse the stranger and heaven forbid fight for their life, said stranger, even knowing that help will be there soon because he’s the one who called the police, might panic and shoot them in the heart at point blank range and since they're dead and it was too dark for anyone to really see anything or to record what happened, the only account we'll ever hear will be that of the man who killed them and some will turn them from the victim to the criminal?

Outwardly, I will say that I accept the verdict and that I agree with all the people who say that we shouldn't make it about race. The logical part of me understands that the verdict did not declare open season on the young black male. I get that it has been open season on the black male for a very long time whether at the hands of people who look like him or others. I agree that the focus should be on the fact that a teenager, regardless of race, was walking home to watch a basketball game and he never made it.

On the outside, I thank the jury for their service and for looking at the evidence. I thank them for establishing that the intentional act of shooting someone in the heart at point blank range is okay as long as you’re losing the fist fight and have a few wounds to bolster your case. But on the inside I’m thinking about all the times that I have been followed for no apparent reason. I’m feeling the need to be ignorant and say let’s go out and exert our legal right to follow people and see how they like it, but I’m not stupid enough to do that because I know that wouldn’t end well for someone like me. 

On the inside, well, on the inside, at least today, I feel like this:

I’m not one of those people who want something bad to happen to George Zimmerman or who want Trayvon’s family to pursue other legal means of holding Zimmerman accountable for his actions. The case is over and I just want to leave it at that. I freely admit that I don't know what happened that night and that I thought it was a shame that Zimmerman might have gotten a long time in prison for something that I didn’t think was malicious, but I was okay with his potential sentence because it put him in the same boat as a lot of people in Florida who were subjected to mandatory sentencing. The first person who comes to mind is Marissa Alexander, who had an opportunity to shoot and kill her estranged husband but instead aimed her gun away from him. She fired at the wall, so she received a mandatory 20 year sentence. If I was Marissa, and I knew how my story would end, I think I would have just shot him. If I’m going to do 20 years or more in prison, at least let me commit a crime that inflicts bodily harm on someone else. I think of the father who fired a warning shot for his daughter’s boyfriend and received 20 years. Now back to my point, I don't think Zimmerman was or is a racist. Nor do I believe that he set out to kill Trayvon, but I do think that his actions set up a tragic string of events that left a 17 year old dead and it saddens me that there are no legal consequences because according to the American judicial system, Zimmerman was well within his rights.

That said, on the outside, I'm not going to let you know that in my heart I believe the outcome would have been different if the roles were reversed. I'm going to keep that to myself because I know that you will accuse me of pulling the race card when all I was trying to do was tell you my opinion. I'm not going to explain to you that it's not about black people playing the part of the victim, but rather the fact that Trayvon Martin was not allowed to be one. For me, this is an issue of equal protection under the law and equal rights for all, because the verdict confirms that Trayvon neither had the right to be where he was nor the right to defend himself from what he perceived as a threat and that is why people are so upset. Then you have people like O'Mara who made the comment that if Zimmerman was black he never would have been charged with a crime. To that, I respond much the way O’Mara did in his closing argument: really?  I think if Zimmerman was black, he would have been arrested that night and he would have been charged without people having to protest and he would have had to prove that he was innocent and no one (except their respective friends and family) would have cared because black on black crime is rarely newsworthy. In honesty though, I actually don't care what race Zimmerman is because the root of this case is that Trayvon committed the crime of walking while black. This is the conversation that I can't have with a lot of people without them getting upset or defensive and so I think it, but I don't say it. I'm not angry about it or even bitter. It is what it is and all I can do is live my life and continue to follow the laws of this country. I know that I control my destiny and that I have to work hard for what I want in life. I refuse to let my skin tone dictate my status in society or be an excuse to underachieve; however, I am aware that no matter how successful I become, there are some people who will always view me the way Zimmerman viewed Trayvon that night. 

What hurts me the most is that I know myself and I know that this won’t stir me to act and I’m disappointed by my willingness to accept the verdict because I know that means that I will soon move on as if it never happened. I wonder how other people are going to face the aftermath of the verdict. I wonder if all the “outraged” people will use that feeling and channel it for something good or if they will pay lip service to the verdict for a while, add it to the list of perceived wrongs that they have in their back pocket and move on without trying to cause change or open a dialog about issues that need to addressed. 

Whatever the case may be, George Zimmerman is a free man and it’s time for everyone, myself included, to either turn it in to a movement for a positive change in society or to move on, but there's no reason to keep rehashing it if all we're going to do is sit in our seats and repeat the same arguments.