DOMA is dead and gay folks can start marrying up, the Voting Rights Act has been gutted and Paula Dean is the devil incarnate!
So now I am getting emails from a multitude of organizations wanting my money, my signature, my time, to help support their right to marry in my state, their right to vote, their outrage over "The word that shall not be spoken by white folk".
Folks - I wrote this a while ago but now that hysteria is all around once more I feel the strong need to reiterate it. I know it does not matter, but it is through a strong sense of betrayal that I have to say this out loud. I am not gay, I am not a woman, I am not black. I know you think that makes me special (I know people think that all of us heterosexual white males hold secret meetings and plot the downfall of civilization and well as to split up all the money). Nonetheless, even though I am part of a "privileged class" (yep, my life has been one long freebie), I have, for many years, supported a range of rights for all who desire them. If I had been motivated by self-interest for the past several decades, I could and would have made different choices.
No, I will never want to marry another man - it is a foreign idea to me; no, I will never need an abortion; no, Paula Deen (nor anyone else) will never ever insult or "hurt" me, no matter what word she uses - my skin is thicker than that. No, disenfranchising black voters will not affect me personally - I have never been one - and the hysteria over the blathering of an old, southern white woman does not matter to me. I have nothing to gain from tax increases (because they will fall on me) or decreases (because I will not get one), lower student loan interest rates (paid mine off many years ago), or better unemployment compensation (I do not need it). I am so old that no matter what we do to the environment, it will not recover in my lifetime, nor will it kill me.
So, since I have often voted for those who support these initiatives that mean little to me personally, I have, for years, supported causes that I had no personal stake in. And it is clear at this point that I have gotten shit on in return.
Hence, for now, every email from each of you asking me to support your cause, from gay marriage, to women's rights and choice, to voting rights, to immigration will get the same response from me. "When you come out in support of the right that is personally relevant and important to me - my right to keep and bear arms as a law-abiding citizen - then I will consider supporting yours." As long as you make it impossible for me to support you without in turn denying my own rights, we will have to part ways. So don't come to me when you find you cannot get married in my state, when they institute a voter ID or poll tax, when they cut voting hours during your favorite times to vote, don't come to me when they close the abortion clinics in your state or shove a vaginal probe where the sun don't shine. You are on your own, abandoned by me as you have abandoned me.
Until you find a way to acknowledge my rights, your selfishness and self-indulgence will be met with my disdain and I will become a single issue voter.
UPDATE: So here's a good example of what I mean. These people think that I should give a damn about someone else's rights when they could care less about mine. Folks - I am not going out on the limb for you any more, not going to argue for fairness for you when you argue for restriction for me. As far as I am concerned, until you stand up for my rights, the people in Texas and anywhere else can close all the abortion clinics, ban gay anything and keep everyone they want from voting. In fact, as you become more militant in trying to limit my rights, I may just have to respond in kind.
Yes, I think I will have to make a deal with the devil, as ignorant as I might think he is; if the unsavory likes of a Louie Gohmert, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, or the Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott will stand up for my right to keep and bear arms, then they will get my vote. That's how fed up I am with selfish snobs who want to exercise their rights but want to constrain mine.
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