On Tuesday, Americans went to the polls and in the state of Maine, in the otherwise lovely state of Maine, to cite but one example, some of those among us saw fit to strip the rights of others. They felt it was their responsibility to limit these rights, or to take them away, but only if some of these “other” people happen to be gay.
I don’t mean to mix these two events, or so much as suggest that the one is parallel with the other, but by now we’re likely all aware of the tragedy that transpired on Thursday, when a soldier and psychiatrist unleashed a torrent of fear upon Fort Hood, Texas. The suspect is alleged to have killed thirteen of his fellow Americans, and to have wounded 30 others.
Just this afternoon, I caught a headline saying that someone marched into an office building in Orlando, Florida, wielding a gun. According to news reports, at least one person is dead. Five more are apparently injured.
The first of these instances is troubling. It is disappointing—dismaying, even—but as for the second and the third? They are horrific, grotesque displays of violence, of which the rational and sane will struggle mightily to understand.
In the aftermath of the shooting at Fort Hood, I have been reading from the stories of loved ones and survivors, of the friends and fellow soldiers of those who fell. To what has been said and all that has been reported, I can offer only the following: “We are the stories that we choose to tell, minus those that no one wants to hear any more.”
After Dallas, Memphis, and the Ambassador Hotel; following Columbine, Blacksburg, and now Fort Hood, I don’t want to hear any more the stories of shootings and of homicides, of madmen and their actions. I grow weary of reports that try to delve into the motives of murderous individuals, as if there could be even a reason enough to justify the cold-blooded killing of another living being. These actions take place within situations that we cannot predict, and for which we can’t prepare. What is it that we expect to learn? What makes this one any different than the last?
***
My family did not grow up with guns. We did not hunt. Our community was small, and the kind of place where it wouldn’t have surprised me if some people left their doors unlocked at night. Personally, I have no need for a rifle or a handgun, let alone something described as semi-automatic, or capable of spraying a barrage of bullets.
There are those that feel differently, who disagree. I respect their right to do so, but after the instances of these past few days, in the wake of the massacres at Columbine and Blacksburg, I am ever so tempted to suggest: Repeal a portion of the Second Amendment. The militia you can keep, but take out that part about the right to bear arms.
Two hundred thirty-four years ago, we were a people, a nation, and a collection of states, a Republic borne from the wake of a revolution. It made sense to make certain that citizens could defend themselves. When they did, it was understood that they’d be doing so with a muzzleloader, a pocket filled with lead pellets, and a small bag of gunpowder tied to their waistbands.
While that collection of states has grown from thirteen to fifty, we are still very much an infant nation. On any number of issues, the world may look to us to lead, but on plenty of matters, we’re still trying to figure things out for ourselves. Just look to the docket of the Supreme Court, during any given session. Our brightest minds are constantly turning to the Constitution, reading the words as they are written, looking carefully at the question of intent, and trying to interpret what that document can and should mean today for these United States.
No one would suppose that our Founding Fathers, so many years ago, could have had the foresight or prescience required to dream of the reality we face now. It is why, with all their knowledge, in all their infinite wisdom, they designed the Constitution to be a living, breathing document. It is the reason they made it possible for our nation’s charter to grow and expand, through any number of subsequent amendments. It also explains why an amendment to the Constitution cannot be passed without considerable effort.
With any new revision, else every time the justices of the Supreme Court rule on a case, when they offer an opinion, the action is intended to uphold our civil rights. By birth, we were all bequeathed with rights both equal and unalienable. That very premise is the bedrock of our nation. All men are created equal, and over the years, our infant nation has come to recognize that it means every man, woman and child, of every color and every creed.
I believe in a Republic that is intent on providing for its people every right that they deserve, or those that are fundamental to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If anything, the objective should be more freedoms, not less. Yet still, on days like today and in the wake of the events that have just transpired, I am half-tempted to dial up my lawmakers and suggest that they take another look at the Second Amendment.
If nothing else, then context should be taken into account.
We are miles away from the muzzleloader, and all of the Glocks in the whole, wide world will never be able to topple the might of the American military industrial complex. For all of those inclined to feel that it is their right to keep and bear arms, I suggest that you buy a baseball bat. You can pick one up for about $30. To those who feel impinged by the terms of this proposal, based on the contention that it interrupts your need to hunt? Allow me to present to you the slingshot, the bow and arrow, or (and here’s a novel thought), Whole Foods.
In truth, I am not serious about suggesting that we consider a revision to the Second Amendment. I recognize the peril in taking so exacting a swipe at any article within the Bill of Rights. Besides, the Constitution was designed to expand with the times. It is the role of the judiciary to decide on such matters, and as recently as 2008, a 5-4 ruling in the case District of Columbia v. Heller upheld the rights of an individual to possess a firearm for private use, at least on federal grounds. The states may decide differently, but again: The Constitution exists to establish the charter for our nation, and to grant the individual with certain rights. It does not seek to limit them.
The language and intent of the Constitution is not something to trifle with, and the Second Amendment is not the issue, any more than it’s the reason for violence or unrest. While I may not always agree with the opinions and the efforts of this lobbying body, it is absolutely right what the NRA will often say: Guns do not kill people. People kill people.
In that, we expose the fundamental problem in this whole discussion, the stumbling block that we just cannot get around: You can take a gun from a person’s hand, but you cannot extract from their heart the propensity for violence. You cannot banish hate or bigotry, or racism, or sexism—not unless you start right away, at the point of consciousness.
The truth is, none of us are born to hate. We are not brought into this world wishing harm upon another. Rogers & Hammerstein had it right, so many years ago and on a stage meant to replicate the South Pacific. “You have to be carefully taught.” That’s the way that song goes, isn’t it?
Whether parents, teachers, friends or family, even the ordinary, everyday Americans who quietly pass each other on the street, we all have a role in that. We all have an opinion and a voice by which to make it heard. It may not always happen that we find common ground on issues like health care or like-kind exchanges, but when we find examples of our basic rights being impinged; when we sense the possibility of our God-given civil liberties being trampled by the electorate, it is our responsibility to speak out.
With that in mind, perhaps you will understand why I am deadly serious about my grief over this bullshit in the otherwise bucolic climes of Maine. The same goes for California. With the state of Washington, however, I’m honestly quite pleased. In voting as they did for Referendum 71, they actually expanded upon the rights of not only gays and lesbians, but of elderly couples, too. So, if those friends and family of mine who are gay or lesbian (or, for that matter, any randy grandparents not concerned with getting hitched) decide to move to Washington, then at least they can be assured domestic partnership rights.
Every man, woman, and child who is straight can have them. Why not the same for people who are gay?
***
This afternoon, when I sat down to write, it was with the hope that I might be able to work out how I feel about these matters. It was with the intent of developing for myself a better set of answers, so as to help to make the events of this week somewhat easier to stomach. In that, I am not certain I’ve succeeded.
A fair portion of our population seems hell-bent on the matter, and simply cannot move quickly or decidedly enough to restrict, rescind, or remove altogether the rights of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people. It’d be fair to suppose that at least a portion of those quickly moving people are probably pretty strident with their views on gun rights, too. Fine and good, if they are, but explain to me this: How can people be so eager to regulate the rights of those who only want to love each other, be then so apoplectic, the moment anyone so much as dares to suggest that we think to do the same for those who seek to acquire a handgun?
It may seem far afield, to discuss within a single post the hot button issues of murder and gay marriage. Perhaps I’m taking too large a leap, jumping from one topic to the next, except I don’t believe that is the case. You see, when you strip away all of the politics, the hyperbole and (frankly) fear, guns and gay marriage both concern the very same thing. They are about a single, fundamental issue—our rights as individuals, as Americans, as human beings.
When we uphold the Constitution, we assure for our fellow Americans the right to the freedom of religion, to free speech, to a free press. We grant them the right to congregate freely, and yes, we maintain for them the right to keep and bear arms. In doing the latter, we knowingly tempt fate. We open the door to the possibility that one or more among us may not be responsible with the right that they’ve been given. God forbid, but they might take the guns that our laws allow them and use them to do harm to others. As it happened in Orlando and Fort Hood, they might take those guns—the right to which they are guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution—and use them to cause harm to their fellow Americans.
The part of this that is so hard to comprehend, so very difficult to get my head around, is that if we allow gays and lesbians to marry—if we do nothing more than grant to them the rights equal to those of other Americans—then there is no fate to tempt. There is no other shoe to drop. We don’t risk anything. Plain and simply, there is nothing to fear.
If every state in the union suddenly opened their doors to gay marriage, what would be the harm? I mean, let’s be honest about this. What would the majority of gays and lesbians do, except keep on leading decent lives, the same that they’ve been doing all along? What are they going to propose, except to love one another? Are we worried that under certain circumstances, in the most unfortunate of cases, our gay and lesbian brethren might divorce? God knows they would have a struggle on their hands, to do in greater numbers what their straight compatriots have accomplished already.
If there is one thing for certain, it is what gays and lesbians would not be doing, under any circumstances: Killing marriage.
***
When we think of the violence that occurred this week, whether in Orlando or at Fort Hood, Texas, we rightly mourn the loss of innocent people. The conversation turns, as it invariably does, to thoughts of what might have been, and to the full and complete lives that these Americans might well have been able to lead, to the contributions they could have continued to make, if not for the actions of a person with a gun.
Many years ago, when our Founding Fathers went forth to ratify the living, breathing document that is our Constitution, there were provisions made for certain portions of our population. Some of us were counted as less than whole people, and as wrong and as inhumane, as morally repugnant as that may have been, Americans eventually took action to fix what was wrong. They made amends the document, and took the first steps in making all of us whole, just as we very well should be.
In this day and age, by saying no to the rights of gays and lesbians, we are doing nothing more than slovenly repeating the sins of our past. We are refusing to grow as a people, as a nation. What we are doing cannot be justified, for in denying these people the very rights that so many of us take for granted, we are telling gays and lesbians that they are not whole people.
When thinking of the violence that has occurred this week, I realize just how fortunate I am, to have never been touched on a personal basis by a tragedy of this degree. My heart and my prayers go out to those who have, but in the way that it was with 9/11 and with Oklahoma City, similar to the days that followed the senseless death of Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming—even now, with what has happened in Maine—we didn’t have to be there in order to feel something. No matter our particular points of view, we have all been affected. Either we have chosen to persecute, or we know what it’s like to be persecuted.
Due to the fact of our shared human condition, there will soon be another choice to make. We can elect to allow these events to pass on by, and drift softly into the ether of our recollections; otherwise, we can choose to act based upon what’s right, and on all that we are feeling at this moment.
***
I harbor the belief that when we reach our deathbeds, we are faced with one responsibility. No matter rich or poor, young or old, gay or straight, we had better have an awfully good story to tell.
Whether we are parents or children, teachers or students, or just another in a long line of ordinary, everyday Americans, the responsibility is ours. Let us be the ones to lead the charge, in offering up a more open discussion on the differences between right and wrong. Let us impress upon our friends and neighbors the importance of non-violence, and let us be the ones to repeat the histories of how that mindset has succeeded in affecting change. To all of those that we do know and especially to those we don’t, let us be sure to value love over hate. Let’s share a little more of it than we might be used to, than we might think to do otherwise, because if nothing more, Lennon and McCartney had it right. Above all else, let us hope to make the choices that will move us one step closer to becoming the people that we aspire to be, and to shaping the world in which we want to live.
Once upon a time, I heard someone say, "We are the stories that we choose to tell, minus those that no one wants to hear anymore."
I believe that to be true, and it is an effort that is constantly evolving. It is one that begins anew, right now.
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