One night, a week or two ago, my kids and I were visiting my friend Kate's house. She is a mom, just like me, and has three kids of her own. My kids and her kids started fighting. I know it sounds shocking that five kids, age range of 3-9, would actually have conflicts but they do....and this one was about that age old fear....COOTIES! My son yelled, "You have girl cooties," to which my daughter replied, "You have boy cooties," and the others chimed in with a cootie tag festival. They then tried to touch my friend Kate with their "cooties" and she told them to stop teasing each other. She then muttered something under her breath about "John Smith" germs.
This, of course, was not his real name...for the benefit of this column I have changed it. I figured John Smith is as good an all American name as any and this IS an American story. I asked her who "John Smith" was and she told me. He was a kid in her class at school back in the small town where she grew up.
From day one, John Smith did not fit in at school. He was the weird little kid that everyone picked on. Also from day one, Kate, being the compassionate person that she is, would defend him. She always stepped in between John and the latest bully who was picking on him. As she has always said, "I love the underdog!" Anyway, the term "John Smith" germs became the talk of the school and anything that was unappealing or disgusting in life was dubbed John Smith related.
Kate didn't know much about John's home life but more than likely, she remembers, his parents were not very loving and thought he was weird too. She recalled that he just had that look in his eye that he was abused, ignored and unloved. As John grew older, he was ridiculed more and more. His personality, at this critical stage of his human development, became more and more desperate as he got older.
If he dropped his schoolbooks and a girl helped pick them up, he would say that he loved her and he would follow her around like a beaten puppy. The girl would then usually freak out and run away.....adding to John's extreme sense of isolation. After graduation, John moved to Minneapolis and no one really heard about him until their 10 year high school reunion.
The day of that reunion, someone in Kate's class heard that John just died at the age of 28. He had AIDS.
As Kate was telling me this story, I began to imagine myself being ostracized my entire life...never knowing love, support, or kindness from anyone. I could see how someone like John, never truly understanding emotional relations, would mistake someone's/anyone's sexual advances as love. I imagined a lonely person seeking out and inviting this mistaken compassion from scummy people only to have this perpetual quest end with the ultimate price: his life.
I started to cry at the table as she related the rest of the details to me. Maybe I was tired from my chronic lack of sleep lately but I could really feel what he went through. Kate looked at me and said, "Why are crying? You didn't even know him." I realized in the moment that she asked me why I was crying. I knew him very well because there was and is a part of me, even with all the support and love I have in my life, that is just like him. We are all John Smith. And we are all responsible for his death.
And then the thought that came to me after that made me truly understand why our country is so fucked up, which is, in essence, the point I have been trying to make since I started the blog. Who we are and who we become starts with our family and with our first community. While there are several communities that are filled with decent people, many have ignorant, spiteful people that can't understand the damage that are inflicting on their fellow citizens.
This is why I get upset about things like...my daughter being told, by conservative friends, that she can't play with the neighbor's girl because they are gay (aka evil and dirty). This is why I get upset when I hear Sean Hannity and others like him say that AIDS is God's wrath. This is why I get fucking pissed off to high heaven that our Secretary of Education, Margaret Spellings, put pressure on PBS to NOT air a children's cartoon which showed a child with two mommies.
Can anyone out there understand that this is completely unacceptable and not something that we can just chalk up to a "difference of opinion?" These attitudes are part of the perpetuation of ignorance and fear that will ultimately lead to more difficulties in life for the children we need to nuture. It is something that has increased, not decreased, in the last five years. Gee, land-a-goshin, I wonder why?
Now, I do not mean to say that my friend Kate's hometown is evil. Certainly time has changed people's attitudes there and they have become more tolerant and giving. They and we still, however, have a long way to go. Our country...our communities are at a critical point in our country's history and we have a choice: we can either continue on the path of intolerance and produce more John Smiths of the world or we can learn to love each other, regardless of our oddities or faults and follow the morality of Jesus Christ.
I know that people roll their eyes when someone says, "It takes a village," due to the person who said it but she was (and still is) 100 percent accurate. More people need to think this way and start helping people out. It takes a village of tolerant people as well. Several of you will remark callously that I should be tolerant of other people's views (i.e. conservative views). People can think however they want...as long as they mind their own business. When they start pushing their intolerance like a junkie pushing rock in the Farmington part of Los Angeles and when they start leading our country with that intolerance...forcing their agenda on us...well, they should not be allowed in the fucking village as far as I am concerned.
More importantly, if your children are teasing someone or if you hear about something like this at a school or anywhere, speak up, put a stop to it, and, if you can, severely discipline those involved. If it is a situation with adults, ask the person who is doing the teasing why they are so unhappy. Maybe it will get them to stop and think and maybe you can help them.
Start with your kids. Or your friend's kids. I will start with mine. Teach them to be tolerant and to educate those that are intolerant. Maybe we can spare ourselves any more timelines in which the John Smith story happens again.
Let's hope.
11 comments:
I liked the article a lot!
This is a absolutely true observation an the phenomena is very very difficult to fight.
I try to be open but catch myself being superficial or ignorant or just judge people, which lock "different" Even if I know, that being different is what adds the spice to our life's!
So I'm using your article and recall :
I want to keep trying to be a better person and open to each person on the planet until this person starts attacking me.
And I truly believe if we do not stop our kids to tease others, to speak bad about being different they start judging and they build groups and than they hate.
Keep writing and try being open and fair. Try to give your kids support and a path to walk on but do not stop them to discover the jungle.
You've struck a chord on this one. Parents are first and foremost role models for their children. Never forget that.
It seems to me that conservatism is based on intolerance. Fiscal conservatives believe that we should pay smaller amounts of taxes because "everyone should take care of their own". Charity (usually church-based) is the solution for taking care of those who cannot take car of themselves. (And, I would argue, the single biggest difference between liberalism and conservatism is how each define the line for who can and cannot take care of themselves. Conservatives have a very strict line - one that defines the group in such a way that it can be accommodated by a small tithe to their church of choice, or by the $100 they sent to the Red Cross after the tsunami last year. Liberals tend to be more forgiving in drawing the line, requiring the use of "community funds" - aka tax dollars - to accommodate that group.)
Religious conservatives lash out at homosexuals - deriding their "choice" of sexuality. They seem to lack empathy. They literally cannot imagine what it would be like to be the confused teenager, seeing all their male friends drooling over girls, wondering why they are not. It's like they choose not to see homosexuals as regular people. That it could be their son or daughter who is the confused teenager.
Conservative readers will no doubt claim that you are "blaming society" for John Smith's troubles. We should be blaming John Smith, they'll say. He should just pull himself up by his bootstraps, by gosh. Or he should have sought help at Church XYZ. Or they'll blame John's parents. As usual, they'll miss the whole point of the post.
It's up to everyone to look deep within yourself and decide - are you acting to reduce the number of John Smiths or increase it?
I have to admit that when I read your posting I was moved....moved to wonder why the story of "John Smith" is any more salient than any other story. Yes it's sad, even tragic to those who knew (and loved?) him. But I don't agree that his tale is indicative of any problem that hasn't existed as long as there have been societies. We're all responsible for his death? OK. I don't happen to agree, but by similar abstractions I understand that we're all responsible for the deaths of people around the world who are starving, without medicine, etc. If that reality tears you up inside to the point where you feel compelled to marry action to thought, I support that 100%. I don't see the world that way. That right there might be the true distinction between a conservative and a liberal, whatever that's worth.
Phil, your definition of what it means to be a conservative is so offensive to me that words escape me. What you describe may be true for the conservatives with whom you associate, but I would suggest that might simply be a reflection of their character and not the character of conservatives as a whole.
By the way, Markadelphia, the delicious irony of you castigating conservatives for "forcing their agenda" on others while at the same time advocating that people should impose their belief system on other people's kids is not lost on me.
You're a good man, Markadelphia.
Don't worry PL, it was confimed last night by another liberal that conservatism is based on intolerance. Lovely huh?
"Forcing their agenda on us" is an interesting choice of words as, my own views aside, it seems to me that the libs are the ones attempting to force a change to a long-held and deeply important religious principle onto people that, looking at the results of the votes by the people on the issue thus far, the people just don’t support at this point in time. Blaming it on ignorance and intolerance hasn’t worked too well in your favor thus far. The only person on this blog who put forth a reasonable alternative was a conservative.
I don’t think this is an American story as there is much more intolerance in other parts of the world.
This is something that has increased in the last 5 years? Says who? Hell I think that previous generations were much more intolerant than the people nowadays. As I’ve said before, Washington DC is not the center of the universe and I can’t see how people like GWB are responsible for situations like Johns when it is obvious that John’s formative years took place long before GWB took office and well before Sean Hannity got his radio show. There are more gay people on TV today than there were 5 years ago so why do you think more gay people on TV will help when, by your own admission, things have gotten worse in the last 5 years? Truthfully, when reading your story, I had no idea John was gay. My first thought was that he led a Goth lifestyle i.e. wearing black clothes, dark eye makeup, listening to bands like Cradle of Filth, eventually picking up heroin maybe, claiming he shits bats, and so on.
AIDS is a terrible disease but it is a behaviorally spread disease, meaning that a little bit of behavior modification can greatly reduce the chances of getting it.
You want people to mind their own business yet homosexuals define their entire existence by what they do in the bedroom. I don’t care what people do in their bedroom. You want people to mind their own business yet you want to change the way the people around you vote. Don’t you thin they’re smart enough to make up their own mind? It’s none of your business how any of your friends vote.
"They should not be allowed in the fucking village as far as I’m concerned"? Honestly, that sounds a little too much like the people who bullied John and will only widen the divide between the 2 groups of people in question. Your piece was consistent for the most part until that paragraph. So people need to think a certain way in order to be let in to the village? There are plenty of people on the far left that absolutely hate anyone who is associated with any organized religion or who goes to church, I can introduce you to a couple of them anytime you want to meet them. Are they allowed in?
Know that you would be engaging in intolerance to show that intolerance is wrong. In one paragraph, you advocate having more gay people on TV in your village and 2 paragraphs later, you advocate keeping certain segments of the population out of your village based on their thoughts. If those people are kept out of your village they aren’t going to be able to reap whatever benefits (if there are any) of seeing gay people on TV. It’s kind of like when I read certain European travel boards, they always talk about thwarting pickpockets on a daily basis in Rome but they never say that they actually did anything about it except write about it on the internet. There’s nothing wrong with administering a Clothesline from Hell to the person whose hand you catch in your pocket. Anyone who acts like an animal should be treated like one.
I don’t know any conservatives that think AIDS is Gods wrath and no conservatives I know think gay people are evil. That sounds to me like the fringe and if someone were to tell me that my child couldn’t play with certain neighborhood kids because there are gay people in their house I’d unleash a tirade of profanity on them so big that it would probably float over Lake Minnetonka for 10 years. Then I’d seek out any geriatric relatives they may have and dropkick them on sight. Anyone who thinks that AIDS is Gods wrath is just plain nuts. Before you create a link between those nuts and GWB, notice that abortion is still legal in this country. Fact.
I’m not a parent so take the following with a grain of salt...myself, I think children need less nurturing. I was never "nurtured" and I was brought up in a time where children were to be seen and not heard and I turned out fine (last time I checked anyway) as did many of my friends. My parents never made me the center of the universe or had me believe that everything that should be done should be done with "the children" in mind. I realize we live in a much different world nowadays though, not sure if the whole parenting thing is worth it anymore.
Truthfully, some people are more John Smith than others. I’ve never fit in with any 1 group of people and there are very few people on this planet I have ever truly connected with. Even though I have a lot of friends in a variety of settings I’ve always been somewhat of a loner and I’m OK with that...some of the stuff I think is cool is not viewed as cool by everyone and since I don’t let society, or anyone else for that matter, tell me what is cool, what I should wear, what car I should buy, what job I should have, where I should live, etc etc it’s OK. Come to think of it, I don't think the definition of a loner is someone that is necessarily introverted, shy, or antisocial...maybe it's just someone who doesn't require community, an interdependent social structure, or constant interaction to exist. Loners can be viewed as completely independent, self sufficient and self reliant. They don't need or desire to travel in packs. Whenever I go to Europe, I fly over by myself.
I don't prefer solitude over interaction, I prefer solitude over conformity. Simpler, less problematic IMO. Seems like there are 2 different mentalities in play - the pack mentality that defines and accepts people through social acceptance (barf) and thinks that peace and harmony are better achieved through conformity (barf). The loner mentality defines and accepts through the self and achieves peace and harmony by adhering to his/her own thoughts and principles that he/she has created. I speculate that a true loner is a bit more individual than most...they are less likely to lose that individuality because they are less likely to seek to fit in to any one group and less likely to adopt the ideas, principles and habits of any one group just for the sake of acceptance into said group.
I’m not decreasing the number of John Smiths and I’m not increasing the number either. It doesn’t have to be one or the other, it’s not a zero-sum game.
The amusing thing about the opposite of "everyone should take care of their own" (government-run social programs) is that their results are always in dispute. It seems obvious to me that 40 years of liberal social policies have resulted in the very epidemics of crime, homelessness, poor education, and racial tensions that liberals decry today. Liberals, on the other hand, have an endless supply of evil, white, conservative males they can pin their failure on, even as they rob those very people of their hard-earned money to pay for even more failures of social programs(you know, calling for tax rates to be even higher than 40% for a simple middle class wage earner like Crab. You show me a country with amazing social benefits for its people and I’ll show you a country with double digit unemployment, zero job growth, a pension crisis that dwarfs our deficit crisis, and a staggering economy due to the tax burden thrust onto it by the overbearing state. There are tradeoffs in life and we can’t ever "have it all".
Remember when welfare was going to "end poverty in 1 generation"? What a laugh. Social Security was meant to prevent the elderly from living in poverty. It was never meant to serve as a source of income at a level sufficient to maintain one's standard of living into retirement. It was originally intended as a sort of welfare, and we need to start thinking of it that way again. It only takes simple deductive reasoning skills to see that there is, in fact, a problem with Social Security as it's currently structured. Bush wants to address it now. Democrats don't even admit that there's a problem (though curiously they did when a Democrat was in the white house).
Focus on your "intentions" all you want, I’ll focus on the “results” of what your whole "community funds" ideas have achieved thus far.
I won’t deny who my party works for. And yet, your party you vote for is the one who boasts about working for only a subset of American citizens - the middle class. Yours is the party of two Americas. Mine is the party of one: when I talk about tax cuts, I mean tax cuts for everyone who pays taxes, fixing Social Security for everyone who contributes to it, protecting everyone from terrorists by any means necessary.
This is why liberals need conservatives: you need us to fund your social programs, and you need us to blame when they fail. You need us because your whole argument is based on class warfare and you can't have "us versus them" without "them."
As soon as you liberals stop whining about how external forces (conservative intolerance, other people increasing the number of John Smiths, etc) are conspiring to keep people down you can end the victim mentality.
On this I'll let the poets speak.
Exerpt of lyrics from "Not Ready to Make Nice" by the Dixie Chicks:
I made my bed and I sleep like a baby
With no regrets and I don't mind sayin'
It's a sad sad story when a mother will teach her
Daughter that she ought to hate a perfect stranger
...
Nice poem, Steph. It goes along with the whole point of my post quite well.
First to PL, sure, there are many tragic stories. A single one is not more important than the other. I just chose this one to illustrate a point about intolerance. I think Phil's point about conservatives is dead on. They are intolerant. So I guess the only thing I am intolerant of is....intolerance.
I am sorry if this offends both of you....PL and Crab...but there seems to be a great deal of inability, recently, for conservatives to own up to their faults. This is because, according to them, they have no faults...and everything else is the fault of liberals.
I would have to say that the "fault" lies 70 percent with the current leadership, which is conservative, and 30 percent with the Democrats for standing by and doing nothing.
And as far as dictating an agenda goes....people don't have to "approve" of gay people but they shouldn't be allowed to vote on it...this is an agenda the right is pushing. NCDs have failed to see that the problem started with them...not the liberals, who from my point of view, are guilty of complicity simply by doing nothing. So, the way I see it, I am defending tolerance.
If you refuse to change and be tolerant, and by tolerant I simply mean minding one's own business...if you actively seek out law that is intolerant of people, then you will not be allowed in the village.
Another interesting percentage...support for gay marriage nationally has gone up from 29 percent to 39 percent in the last 15 months which I attribute to people becoming more informed and less ignorant.
Frankly, your "village" sounds like one from which I will quite happily be excluded. I guess I didn't realize what an intolerant, unbending prick I was, but now that I am armed with that knowledge, I'll make it a point to act more along those lines.
Granted, I haven't read the legislation line for line, but I don't really believe that what's being voted on is approval of gay people. Sally Biblethumper undoubtedly views the gay marriage issue in those terms, but she doesn't represent the majority of the conservative base. Again, I refer you to the consistent and constant support for equal rights for gays (as opposed to gay marriage). You don't have to like the opposition to gay marriage, but it would benefit you to understand all aspects of it rather than painting it with the broad "intolerance" brush.
I'd be curious to know more about where you got your 29% and 39% numbers, and how those numbers might have been affected by the wording of the questions in the polls. After considering the margin of error common in such polls, that increase could reflect nothing more than a subtly different interpretation of what the question was asking, given the change of context inherent in a 15 month span. It's unfortunate that you continue to judge people as being ignorant, but I suspect that you also give too much credence to the liberals' effort to "educate" us, given the nature of the issue involved. Just a hunch.
No you're not. The last time I checked you weren't picketing at the State Capitol for a gay marriage ban. The support that you show for people who are doing that is a problem but not enough to keep you out of the village.
You are not actively pursuing intolerance...that's because you are busy actively pursuing the ponies and the all time record for most MASH re-runs watched by a human.
I don't care where the poll number came from because polls are useless.
I want to know what other issues We The People aren't going to be allowed to vote on simply because a liberal "labels" opposition to a certain issue "intolerance".
So the NCD's made gay people in San Francisco walk down those steps of city hall? Man, the power we hold...
What other issues....let's see....whether or not the Iraq War is worthwhile (majoirty of which oppose the war), gun control (majority of which want most guns banned), stem cell (majority of which want federally funded research), abortion (majority of which think it should stay legal and safe).
You say polls are useless but that is what you are basing your information on in regards to gay marriage. Liberals are not the only ones who don't let people vote...conservatives would be a mighty unhappy lot if any of the above issues were put to a vote to We The People.
Wrong.
I'm basing my info on support/opposition of gay marriage on the voting results, you know, where all 12 resolutions put on ballots were voted down in the last election. The support/opposition may have changed since then, not really a major issue to me.
A majority of Americans were initially against getting involved in WWII also, 89% against I believe. So you'd base the decision of whether or not to go to war on a poll? What visionary leadership.
The majority of people want most guns banned? That's a whopper. I'd celebrate the results of that vote...you'll win a few big cities where all the hippies live and nothing more.
I'd love to have a referendum on stem cells, I'd vote for the research. Private corporations can do whatever research they want to with regards to stem cell research. The research just isn't funded by the government. It's like saying softball is illegal because the government doesn't pay for my league fees.
I'd welcome the abortion vote, I'm pro-choice.
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