Face Value

Heaven forbid, here I am content with the writing I did for my english class but the coffee has yet to wear off. I want to take advantage of the time I have now to blog some of the thoughts that have been ricocheting around my head in conjunction with some thoughts that I’ve just had. Hopefully I can make a coherent spiel out of it. Please, don’t interpret this as me trying to coax anyone out of the closet. Not only would that be awfully hypocritical but it would be far from my intention. I mean only to provide food for thought.
The paper I was working on was analyzing the pros and cons of civil disobedience and opinions on it. I was reading a few articles, some of which were a bit dated. Many of them gave instances of civil disobedience and discussed their justifications, and the majority of these cases involved civil rights. Slavery, Woman’s suffrage, African-American segregation, etc. You’ll see disobedience anytime that anyone is offended enough at not getting their fair share. But what is a fair share these days anyway? What do YOU want from the world you’re living in? Respect? Equality? Acceptance? Approval? Do you think you have all of those things? It’s amazing how often people are treated as less than they deserve. It’s not just legally either, it’s more than that. Take Rosa Parks for example, a civil disobedient, she refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery bus that day back when. But what do you think made her more furious: legally having to inconvenience herself and surrender her seat, or being treated as less of a human being than someone else? There are those out there that consider members of the LGBT community as less than human. It’s true, they’re out there. The solution, you might think, is civil disobedience. To crank up the engine for social change and shift it into drive. Alas, lo and behold, the engine won’t turn fast enough, and why? There isn’t enough fuel. There’s not enough power to crest the hill that we’re climbing any time soon. Let me ask you a question, what’s the difference between you and Rosa Parks? Yes, chances are you’re not a middle aged African-American woman living in the 1950s. It’s more likely that you’re a unique variant of the average person living in the 21st century. So if you were sitting comfortably in the front of the bus, and the driver hung a sign that said ‘All LGBT must surrender seats’ would you take your place and stand? What if someone you knew was on the bus? What if you were with your friends? What if you were with your family? Would you still identify yourself and stand? Nobody would know you’re lying if you stay seated. The person next to you looks just as normal. You can avoid persecution and the only price is your inaction. It would take a lot of courage to stand up. This is why there’s no fuel for the engine, no one will stand when it’s so easy to just stay sitting down.  You can’t tell which side of the battle someone is on at face value. While you’re choosing to stay seated on the bus you could have a pleasant conversation about the weather with an anti-LGBT advocate. Or maybe you’re sitting next to your soul mate that you’ll never know because you're both hiding yourselves. We create facades for ourselves out of fear. If our orientation was clear to everyone from birth we might still be marginalized, but we wouldn't be forced to pull the curtain later in life. We wouldn't have to shatter the preconceptions that others have and possibly face the following judgments. We value our momentary freedom from persecution more than the long term elimination of persecution. Progress toward that goal may be slow, but I still have hope. Recently I’ve met people that would stand up on that bus to identify themselves and sit back down to show they won’t take anything less than equal rights. I’ve met people who aren’t even LGBT but are members of the community and would forfeit their seat to stand with any of us. We might be short on fuel for our engine of change, but I think that we’re well supplied with hope.