OP/ED
Let a Smile Be Your Disguise?
Should We Be Taking
it To The Streets?
Editorial
Let a Smile Be Your Disguise
My rose-colored glasses are shattered. I’m angry and I’m tired of trying to be civil about it. I’m sick of the word ‘civil,’ as a matter of fact.
All this daytime so-called civility has left me nighttime rage. One person too many approached me with ‘polite’ commentary on my life and my love. With what looked like genuine concern in her eyes, she started to tell me what a terrible thing I was doing to my daughter to be raising her in a lesbian environment. She said she didn’t hate me and wasn’t a bigot, she just wanted to help. She couldn’t have known how much of that same rhetoric I’ve had to listen to and ignore or try to respond to politely.
She found out, though. She caught the force of my pent-up rage.
The tears I shed in February as I tried to cover the House Judiciary Committee’s vote to move away from including me and my partner for life in the marriage rights we need so badly turned to screams at this woman.
The bewilderment I felt every time another smiling face sat in front of lawmakers and testified to my second-class citizenship turned to a barely restrained desire to shake this woman until she felt some small part of the pain I’ve experienced every day.
The intense disappointment I’ve felt as I’ve watched fellow citizens of this state I have chosen as my home stand up and spew forth long lists of untruths about me, my community – about people I admire greatly, – turned to a palpable hate for this woman, and I let her see it.
I dropped the pretense of understanding I’ve been carrying around with me and tore into her verbally. I said horribly unkind things to her and about her. I’ve never in my life vented such open hostility.
Then, in the midst of telling her just exactly what I thought of her and all the others she represented, I woke up. It was 4:00 am and I was shaking and crying in my bed.
I was stunned by the force of emotion I have apparently been stuffing deep into my psyche, but I shouldn’t have been. Politicians and pundits can call the debate ‘civil’ all they want to, but they’re only fooling themselves. A nice suit and a smile does not civility make. Hate, bigotry, and intolerance are not civil, no matter how they are packaged, and I’m weary of hearing that they are.
I’ve been as guilty – guiltier maybe – as the next person of bragging to wanna-be Vermonters about how safe we are here. People call the office constantly from out of state wanting to know of ‘gay-friendly’ places to stay when they visit. In my naivete, I used to laugh and tell them they didn’t have to worry about that here. “Vermont is gay-friendly, period,” I would say.
My heart is broken, along with my rose-colored glasses.
Our community is being attacked. For many of us – for me – it is a new sensation, for others it’s a far-too-familiar feeling. Feeling for myself some of the hate and pain that I now realize many people have lived with for years, I want to apologize for my previously cavalier behavior.
The truth is that horrible, nasty, uncivilized things are happening to our community and our supporters all the time. In the name of civility, we don’t publicize them. To keep from giving the true deviants in this equation the attention they crave, we don’t call the media when our churches and homes are vandalized. We teach our children to be strong and ignore taunts from the unenlightened. But the truth is that it really does happen, even in Vermont.
We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the truly civil, and apparently Teflon-coated, individuals who face this stuff every day and, because of their jobs, never give in to the reaction that must come to a boil under their cool surfaces.
Bill Lippert is king amongst this crowd. I don’t know how he has kept his composure in the face of the testimony delivered over the past few months. His devotion to our community is unparalleled. He chooses his moments carefully and makes his presence – our presence – known in a graceful, articulate, and honorable manner.
The truly civilized amongst us are those who have opened their hearts and their minds, taken a good look around them and have seen people – no more, no less. With that in mind, they have supported our rights to be treated as what we are: equals. There are 76 of them in the House of Representatives -- and we hope at least 16 of them in the Senate.