Cody
Williams
Texas Cowboys
Never Buy Texas From A Cowboy
Last year, homosexuals everywhere rejoiced after a conservative leaning US Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional a Texas law that banned adult consensual sodomy between two men. Up to that time man on man sex in the land of the Alamo had been outlawed. The case brought before the court involved a police raid and the subsequent arrest of two hombres locked in naked lust in the privacy of their own bedroom.
Many liberals were amazed that the law existed which the police followed to the letter after being informed of the illegal activity by an offended neighbor who called after eavesdropping on the burly buggers. “Two men are having sex with each other” was all the squealer had to say to get the police to break through the apartment’s door, storm into the steamy bedroom, handcuff the two perpetrators, book them, toss them in jail, ruin their jobs and reputations and set in motion a legal struggle that went all the way to our land’s highest court, costing both sides of the legal argument millions of dollars.
Social conservatives saw the decision as an intrusion being handed down by an overreaching, legislating from the bench, activist court and an attack on the family, fraying further the sanctified fabric that keeps our society in the good graces of a jealous God. Hell would be paid they vowed. Liberals too were surprised, that this type of invasion of privacy would be sanctioned anywhere in a two hundred year old United States of America.
Then a San Francisco mayor started defiantly issuing marriage licenses for men to marry men and women, women, energizing a national backlash that resurrected a troubled presidency. George Bush would not have been reelected without the help of onward Christian soldiers defending family values and drawing the line of demarcation between decency and decadence, the sacred and the profane, between Red states and Blue states.
Recently the Texas legislature passed a child care reform bill that forbids “homosexuals and bisexuals” from acting as foster parents to children the state takes from homes where leaving them poses a serious threat to the child’s health and wellbeing. If not for foster parents these children would otherwise be state wards. Often these children are taken from abusive, neglectful or drug addicted parents. Many have been abandoned, rejected, starved or not properly cared for. Many are unwanted adoptions candidates. Many have no positive role models or would otherwise be forced to live on the streets. Many long for any loving home, a meal or understanding.
The Associated Press reported that under the proposed amendment, for an applicant to be a foster parent or a foster parent whose performance is being evaluated must list whether he or she is homosexual or bisexual. If the applicant is, the state would ban him or her from becoming a foster parent. If the person is already a foster parent, the child or children would be removed from that home.
I would imagine to administer this new law gays too must be barred from the caseworker and administrative jobs that oversee the placement of children in these home. I mean you can’t have a homosexual directly responsible for denying opportunities to other homosexuals. Some Jews in Auschwitz were expected to march other Jews in to forced labor camps. But that didn’t work too well. And because low-level caseworkers can’t be gay, then surely program managers, policy makers and elected officials can’t be gay or bisexual either. A complete sexual history screening for Texas state workers may need to be done. Fire everyone with sinful sexual potential.
The Texas Senate will take up a measure that would change its constitution to recognize marriage as being between only a man and a woman and deny any privileges afforded such unions to any different other combination of adults seeking the same. The amendment prohibits the state or any local government from creating or recognizing "any legal status identical or similar to marriage," such as civil unions.
Arkansas legislators recently tried to ban gay people or any family with a gay member from becoming foster parents. (Would exceptions be made for that strangely distant uncle who lives with his “roommate” the next town over and only visits during the holidays?) In December a judge declared that law unconstitutional.
In Michigan, the Reverend Keith Butler, a leading opponent of equal rights for homosexuals is prepared to launch a campaign for the US Senate. Butler is a founder of one of the state’s largest evangelical mega churches. He preaches the evils of homosexuality from his pulpit to his 16,000 member homosexual free flock. He brags that all of his male members are ‘real men.’ (If you believe that I got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you).
I know of one gay DC resident who refuses to go out to lunch or dinner with another man for fear of being pegged as a homosexual and lose his job as an on-air television personality. A national sports radio personality proudly announced to his drive time audience that he would disown his infant son if the kid grew up “to wear his mother’s panties.” (Station owners must have that ‘no gay family member’ policy that Arkansas legislators wanted to pass) A popular Atlanta cleric who founded a very successful ex-gay ministry recently spoke at an ex-gay convention in Jamaica just days before an openly gay man there was brutally beat to death. Being gay for some folks in America is not much different from being a Jew in Hitler’s pre-war Germany – living under condemnation with a foreboding fear of rejection and reprisal.
There seems to be a lot of legalists and legislators with sex on their brain. And these people appear to be threatened by homosexuals to the point of wanting to change our state and federal constitutions to deny certain inalienable rights to people they deem sexually different. Apparently these defenders of the family and all things supposedly Holy don’t view all men (and women) has having been created equal. At least not equal to them.
One would think that these folks only had a problem with deviant sexual orientations. But their issues run deeper than that.
These people take issue with the very government founded by our forefathers. The one envisioned with “liberty and justice for all.” They have a major problem with the constitution our elected officials swear to defend. Our soldiers die defending. They claim to be soldiers for God but what they fail to recognize is that the constitution of the United States of America was expressly designed to protect us, its citizens, from the very religious tyranny they aim to impose. Our constitution was designed and drafted by men, many of whom escaped religious persecution and fought wars shedding their blood and watching others fall dead on battle fields to create a country where all of us, homosexual or not, could live free from religious persecution.
Ironically, these folks claiming to be followers of Christ would deny those they label as ‘different’ from doing the only one thing He, while or earth, commanded us to do: Love one another by doing for each other as he did for us – to sacrifice. Bruised and batter children in need of foster care shouldn’t have to continue to suffer because some religious zealot misinterprets holy text.
Yes, anti gay organizers in many states will have some success rolling back liberties for those they deem different. However, I believe their victories will be short lived. Jesus, like our forefathers, spoke of ideas wedged deep in the heart and soul of man, ideas which will never be truly defeated -- love, liberty, acceptance, inclusion and equality.
Fear and hate, no matter what the guise, have temporal reigns.
What Jesus, and our founders called for was no easy accomplishment. Both Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, in owning slaves, failed to live up to the very ideas then penned. The intolerance and bigotry being voted into law across America requires nothing more than fear, intimidation, divisiveness and self-serving hatred to win a nod of approval. It takes much stronger men, and women, more courageous, with greater character, with sounder theologies to recognize the same humanity in each one of us, black or white, gay or straight, Jew or gentile, protestant or Catholic, Arab, Asian, man or woman.
As long as there are oppressed people, someone will fight for freedom. Wherever there is intolerance someone will seek to be accepted. As long as there is hatred, someone among us will preach true love. As long as there are wrongs, someone, somewhere will be willing to die, to sacrifice, to right them.
© 2005 Cody Williams
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