Thoughts on Equality, Illinois

I inexplicably BOLTED awake this morning at 4:38a.m. to realize I never set my alarm for the morning. D’oh! Idiot. I had to be awake in about a half an hour. Naturally my brain did that annoying thing where I kept thinking, HURRY and fall asleep you only have 27 minutes now….25 minutes - QUICK, relax! I hate my brain. The feeling is mutual, based on all the shit I forget on a regular basis. 

Then I started to realize I am supposed to use this half an hour for something. For a split second, I thought….. exercise? Hahaha my brain and I had a big laugh at that idea. 

Besides, my balls are still KILLING ME. The balls of my feet are horrible, some dealie where I have two bones that are supposed to be parallel but aren’t. Saturday I volunteered, standing on my feet for most of 6 hours in (low) heels. Big fat, hairy deal, right? When you ARE a big, fat hairy deal and spend most of your life on your knees……crawling around with my KIDS, you pervs….this is obviously kind of a big deal. It was well worth it. I volunteered for Equality Illinois, at their annual “Justice for All” fund-raising gala. 

GALA, I was at a gala. I know. An important, black-tie gala fund raiser for a good cause. Equality Illinois is a nonprofit that was founded to secure, protect and defend equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in Illinois. This is the civil rights movement of our time. You know if I am voluntarily leaving my house, AND getting dressed up, it’s a big fucking deal.

And it IS. This gala not only raises money with donated items from artists and businesses , it is a celebration of all of the hard work by this community to come to this point in terms of equality. In attendance are big business owners, television news and weather people, and local politicians. It is a rare chance for me to spend time with people on the news, other than just the criminals. Of course in Illinois, there is a very fine line between our elected officials and our criminals.  

Here is a picture of me with the mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel:

For reasons I won’t discuss, I decided NOT to be pictured with our state governor, Pat Quinn, who was 2 feet from me with his security.

I DID opt to get a picture of myself with Dr. House, Hugh Laurie.

Okay, not really. In that dark ballroom, this charming bastard TOTALLY looked like Dr. House, (and he said he gets that all the time, so no, I was not just drunk.)

I LOVE this event and this charity, not just because they allow the volunteers to partake in the open bar, though I would be a bigger filthy lying whore if I pretended I don’t love that. I have done this event for years. It’s one of those good-for-your-soul events. Any reason for me to leave the house without my kids and have adult conversations is good for my boring soul, but this also lets me meet people I don’t normally meet out here in our quiet, conservative suburb. People who are willing to fight for equality, whether it is fueled by political reasons, or their own personal struggle. People who, just like all of us, only want to love and be loved, and have the freedom to decide WHO that should be.

Most people are dressed to the nines. Young men don bow ties and in some cases more makeup than you would catch this old bitch wearing, young lesbians cling to their dates to mark their territory. There are a handful of delicious, dramatic attendees draped in velvet who look like they only climb out of their caskets after sunset to drain humans of their life blood. Some are just everyday people who want to dress like the opposite gender. 

Transvestites have my respect, not only for their ability to look fierce, wear platform heels and dance the night away in their Spanx, but also for their courage. They have the intestinal fortitude to act on feelings that go against the norm, to refuse to be pigeon-holed, stand up to those who fear them and say “This is okay. Stop spreading hate because I am different than you.” That is, unless they are taking the el home after midnight, then they are forced to change clothes just so they can survive. 

There are many reasons they do this, sometimes they don’t fully understand themselves, maybe it started pre-puberty before they knew what gender or sex even was. This is a whole different topic than I wanted to discuss, but if you don’t understand this, if you have never met and spoken to anyone like that, or incorrectly think cross-dressing is only a sexual thing, I urge you as a human being to please go to a page I will post links to at the end.

Obviously you can go to many other non-biased sources (NOT Wikipedia for cry eye,) and learn a little bit about your fellow humans. The page I will link below has comments from REAL people on why they cross dress. The people I have met over the years that cross dress are not anything like the media have portrayed them in the past. They are warm, amazing, normal, good people in your neighborhood, with jobs, family, and various different reasons for just wanting to feel like the opposite sex, and be treated as such. Some are not gay, some are, none are trying to hide their true identity, as I have heard some people assume. 

It is not in their best interest to pretend to be something or someone they are NOT, quite the opposite. They are looking for acceptance for who they ARE, just the way they are. Click here to read more, you may be surprised. I will put the link at the end as well so you can read on.   http://www.crossdresserheaven.com/why-do-men-cross-dress/

This is a great take on perception, from Anonymous Art of Evolution 

Getting back to my point, the LGBT community only want the freedom to live their lives like everyone else, for example to marry who they love and have that marriage respected. They have had to FIGHT for this. They have, in some cases, devoted their entire lives to one person, always been there and supported that person, only to have outsiders or their loved ones estranged family step in at some point and tell them this does not matter, this is not legal love. Wait, WHAT?

These human beings are sometimes not being treated like human beings. This makes me angry. Don't get me wrong, as a human being myself, I understand we are flawed as such, few more than I, but I also try to learn from my mistakes and improve because of them. Having made numerous mistakes, I am almost starting to resemble a halfway decent human being, and I want others to join me.

I live in a suburb of Chicago, where I feel most of us are pretty open-minded, but those old-fashioned notions are still alive and preachin’. Last year a certain over-priced chicken restaurant, who I will not give any further PR to, refused to serve gay people. I heard a lot of people saying, [typing,] “They are expressing their opinion. They are free to operate their business in this way.” Wrong. If you feel this way, it's nice to meet you, President George Wrong-ington. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but when your opinion causes another person to have their civil rights violated, this is about more than your antiquated opinion. Let’s think about that.

My opinion that tea is disgusting and tastes like EAR WAX is just an opinion. 

This doesn’t really affect anyone, the tea industry (if such a thing exists) is not negatively affected in any real way by my opinion. If I, however, refuse to serve tea to people who have brown tea-stained teeth, or start a nation-wide campaign, appeal to the largest demographic of rich people in our nation, to BAN the manufacture and/or public consumption of tea? Now I am violating the civil rights of tea drinkers who like to consume this vile beverage. The difference is everything.

People who are against the LGBT community and/or their rights are afraid of what is different than their traditional ideas. They often hide behind their religious beliefs and an interpretation of an ancient book, written centuries ago by people who died because they didn't know about, say, germs. This book forbids, among other things premarital sex, consuming that with “fins and scales in the seas” and “…the swine….he cheweth not the cud; he is unclean to you,” forbids working on the Sabbath, divorce, getting remarried, and apparently certain haircuts: Leviticus19: 27 states, “Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard.” 

Pic from http://social.razoo.com

I doubt anyone North of the Mason-Dixon line and the year Nineteen-dickety-six still operates under the letter of this ancient text. 

from Washington Post, 2012

I just wish everyone would focus on the bigger ideas of love and kindness. This book was written in another world. People change, laws are changed, technology changes, hell people in this country convince themselves they needed an updated mobile phone every couple of years, the only thing consistent in this world is change, it’s called Progress. For some reason, we still have legislature that feels it’s a good idea to mix church and state. 

The brilliant writers of our nation’s Declaration of Independence, also written centuries ago, even knew this idea does not work. Our country is based on freedom, freedom of speech, and freedom of government, which currently does not seem to include freedom from government’s Red Tape, since we live in a world where it is easier for us to start a WAR than change outdated laws. 

Our freedom also includes freedom of religion. Thank GOD right? Or not. The choice is OURS.

If you believe that some all-wise, omnipotent deity guards your every move, and has some master plan of the destiny of our planet, and we are merely pawns in some huge chess game to test our faith that has been playing out for eons, you’re adorable and you are free to feel as such. If I feel we control our own destinies every day with our actions, and if I feel marriage is NOT a religious ceremony, but instead a legal contract between two people who love each other and want to share their lives together, I am free to feel that way. 

Why am I still not free to chose WHO I want to spend my life with?

Prior to 1967, interracial marriage was illegal. This notion is ridiculous to anyone not in the KKK. This is no different. The few humans that still believe that gay humans are any different than heterosexuals, especially when it comes to family, obviously haven’t met very many.

The good news? Illinois is a great state, one of the few that has so far at least adopted civil unions to address the marriage issue. According to a web site dedicated to explaining Illinois Civil Unions “…the Illinois Senate Executive Committee voted  8-5 in favor of the gay marriage legislation, which means the bill will be sent to the full Senate.

So what does that mean? It means there still needs to be a full vote by the Illinois legislature, and that the legislation to legalize same-sex marriage requires only a simple majority. When is that going to happen? We don’t know.”

This is my quick two cents. I wish I were a better writer, or had an editor to make this less painful to read, but this was what my addled brain was able to come up with this morning. I joke and rant and hate a lot of shit, but in real life I do try to be kind to people, even those that are different than I am. Everyone is going through some kind of struggle, you often won’t see their struggle. Life would be so much more COMFY if we helped each other and worked together more.

Please remember: “HUMANkind, be both.”

Please read more here.

http://www.eqil.org/

http://www.illinoiscivilunions.com

http://www.crossdresserheaven.com/why-do-men-cross-dress/