'sblood

Tonight I heard a horror story. A memory locked in photographic detail for over forty years. Something I never expected to know nor something that I will ever forget. Told to me by a witness, not the victim, of brutal homophobia. 

It isn’t my story to tell, and I’m not so sure I could repeat the details – and definitely not with the surprising poetry of the recollection. But it does leave me saddened and horrified. That it wasn’t merely a story. That it was a real testament to why Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is an abomination.

But I left that story and the subsequent calming conversation not thinking about the politics… but about humanity. I don’t know… I don’t understand how anyone can create the impulse in their mind to do such things. How any one person on this planet can decide to do such things to other people.

But the world is crazy. I know this. I know, too, that every single human being has the blood of a broken heart on their hands. We all possess the stain of deliberate or indirect cruelty. Not one of us doesn’t earn that karma. And sometimes we have to make the choice to accept one wrong to avoid another… but there are things… there are moments when cruelty and insensitivity are conscious decisions.

Maybe my emotions are a little ragged by the image now imprinted forever in my mind. But, I really don’t understand how anyone can side with people who find hate an acceptable tool. I don’t care if Jesus is your best friend. Deciding that it is okay to hurt and abuse another being is bad. It is not acceptable. It does not buy you a path to heaven. Not matter how many times you seek forgiveness from your BFF on the cross.

And yet… we live in a world where a whole party of people encourages each other to not give a damn. That having concern for other human beings is an infringement of freedom. It is socialism. It is standing against something a group of dead men decided two centuries ago. Health care isn’t bloody Obamacare, people. It’s stopping people from dying. Dying. Dying. Your right to bear arms isn’t a God given freedom. It’s a determination of humans that walking around with lethal tools somehow makes you… safer? Huh. Safer from what? Bullies who can’t comprehend human decency? Even to a fellow soldier who also carries a gun.

And defense of marriage? Really? Really. If marriage is something that needs to be defended, clearly you have no faith in your marriage. You have no faith in the power of love… which is the ultimate reason that homosexuals want the freedom to marry. 

Love.

Where is the love, people? Where is the ability to see through the foxy film and see another human being across the aisle? Maybe… maybe you don’t agree about everything. Of course you don’t. I’m probably not going to agree with most people about most everything… but every person is loved. Every person has a mother. A father. A brother. A sister. A best friend. A child. A dog. Some other living being to whom you also inflict your cruelty and intolerance.

And then there is the silent witness who has to bear your bloody cruelty and carry it with him for forty years.

Stop reading a two thousand year old book and listening to the 24 hour screaming on cable news. Look up. Look at people. And see the love in their eyes. And see the love that you will hurt when you do them wrong.