Day 346- "Bigotry disguised as prudence"

It still seems an unwritten rule in establishment Washington that homophobia is at most a misdemeanor. By this code, the Smithsonian’s surrender is no big deal; let the art world do its little protests. This attitude explains why the ever more absurd excuses concocted by John McCain for almost single-handedly thwarting the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” are rarely called out for what they are — “bigotry disguised as prudence,” in the apt phrase of Slate’s military affairs columnist, Fred Kaplan.

-Frank Rich "Gay Bashing at the Smithsonian"

Dear Mr. President,

Frank Rich's column in the New York Times is worth reading, and not just for the brilliant and characteristically eloquent way he takes down the hypocrites crying "hate speech" about the Smithsonian's exhibit including "A Fire in My Belly." Beyond the cold political outrage, Rich draws a parallel between the deaths of bullied gay teens and the deaths of so many artists and the ones they loved to AIDS. His words convey a palpable helplessness, the frustration of watching from a distance as so many suffer and die needlessly as those in power condemn them, of listening as the hateful bullying from the right once is once again allowed to marginalize the gay community without objection.

I can relate to the way Rich feels. It's appalling to see the Smithsonian capitulate to the homophobic bullies on the right offended by art. And while Republicans in congress pile on their own objections, they continue to hold up repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell, and, as Rich notes, have yet to participate in the anti-bullying it gets better project. I think that common sense tells us a piece of art that some find offensive is far less deserving of the condemnation of members of congress than a national epidemic of homophobia and its attending death and suffering. I don't understand. I know I am removed from it, living in the privilege of a white-skinned heterosexual body. But I couldn't help but see the faces of my friends in the stories of the young artists dying of and losing loved ones to AIDS, of the boys giving up on life because they fear they will never live and be accepted for who they are. I see them in these stories and I ache for losing them and seeing their losses. Most of all, I feel angry. Angry that I cannot protect them from people like this, people with the power to help them who do nothing but make it worse and then have the audacity to get angry about their expressions of frustration. It is unsurprising that a religion wielded as a tool of oppression will become the target of criticism and frustration by those it oppresses.

Heterosexual Christians wrote the laws of this country. They have determined who can vote, who can marry, whose lives are worth funding research to save and who gets to serve in the military. It is long past time for it to be ok to make and display and honor art that expresses the pain at the damage that their system has caused. The Smithsonian made a mistake, backing down in the face of this manufactured controversy. I think it is time that you (and more of those with the power to change our cultural acceptance of homophobia) stood up and said so.

Mr. President you campaigned on the promise that life for gay and lesbian Americans would be better under your administration than under President Bush's. While there may be a limit on how many minds you can legislate into acceptance, there are unjust laws that are within your power to change. The alteration of this exhibit at the Smithsonian may seem like a small thing, but it is the latest in a long series of capitulations to the idea that not only is being gay unacceptable, being angry at the way the rest of the country treats you isn't either.

Please read Mr. Rich's column, Mr. President, and ask yourself if you are still fine doing nothing on this issue.

Respectfully yours,

Kelsey

Day 247- Hunger Games

Dear Mr. President,

The last two days I've been completely taken in by a work of fiction in that all-consuming way that still manges to surprise me when it comes in the form of a young adult novel. The Hunger Games series, by Suzanne Collins has had me reading by lamplight far past my bedtime and trying to shut out any nonfictional news of the real world. I had been mostly successful but, alas, enough reality has crept in that I'm aware something terrible must have happened to my college football team. (Thanks, Facebook.) Once my joyful shelter of fiction had been cracked I gave in and read the news.

Frank Rich's column on Iraq was maybe the wrong thing to read after nearly two full days engulfed in a world where the class divide is so extreme the rich and powerful force the poor to offer up their children to fight each other to the death to keep the rest of the population entertained or afraid. Several days ago I wrote to you about the end of the war in Iraq and an old friend responded angrily. He told me something that I had not known; a mutual friend who served in Iraq during the wars early years was in fact being redeployed there. The war, he was saying, is not over. Our friends are still being taken from us. I feel like Frank Rich was sending you a similar message.

I'll own that at first I was stung, stunned, unsure what to call what I felt. Was I angry? At myself for being naive? At you for being misleading? At my friend for pointing it out? I felt something close to guilt, as well, as though my eagerness to take you at your word was the reason that our friend was being sent back. Both friends are, for various and complicated reasons, people I have valued and cared for from afar, keeping their generous natures as far from me as my arms can manage. Perhaps my guilty conscience had more to do with the distance I have forced us to maintain, then, and not related to the war at all. I haven't been particularly close to any other soldiers; perhaps it is the personal cost I manage to keep abstract most of the time. I don't have to be particularly close to any of the men and women serving in Iraq or Afghanistan to feel like I know them. They could be my sisters or my nephew, my cousins or my friends and neighbors. They're someone's children, and they're sent off to kill or to be killed by someone else's children. What do we have to show for it? Two countries full of grieving parents and a number of very wealthy military contractors. I think, Mr. President, that my earlier letter to you was wrong.

Frank Rich and my friend from long ago got it right while I missed the point. You haven't ended the war, you have changed the name. The war will end when the mentality and values system that sent us to war in the first place change. I don't blame you, Sir. You were one of the earliest and most eloquent opponents of the war. When its command passed to you I am sure that necessity required you to compromise some of your more abstract positions. But the war was never an abstraction or a policy position to the people suffering in it. The half of me that feels angry would like to personally track down Cheney and Rumsfeld and John Bolton and all the other neocon architects of this conflict and ask them if they've had their fill of entertainment. The half of me that feels guilty wonders how much my own fear and its resulting inaction is to blame and how much yours is. Tonight, as I think of all the lives we've lost, all that we have irreparably destroyed, I know that there can be no escaping it with a new name or even a convincing work of fiction.

Respectfully yours,

Kelsey