Been really unfocused lately, and the heavy questions inside my head have been fast and loose. Today, I was thinking about gay marriage as I did my patrol rounds of the building. I've always said that I support the new movement on principle. but in actuality, I'm not for gay marriage. Oh, there was this "huge" anti-gay marriage church-sponsored rally at SafeCo Field here in Seattle on Saturday, only a number of blocks away from my site. When I left work that day, I found myself making more light of it all. There was also the traditional workers' May Day rallies at the other side of downtown, so I watched the weekend crowd going by and played a rousing round of "Socialist or Evangelist: You Make the Call." To me, you can leave marriage to the religious and secular traditionalists who claim the preemption of heterosexual ritual sanctity will lead to the disintegration of moral culture. It's their language they are bickering over. Civil Unions that provide the full spectrum of benefits and securities that mark civil marriage are practical, and trying to gain acceptance by gaining cultural marriage from a culture isn't. Mainstream Western culture isn't all that worth it to adopt. Mainstream marriage is nearly a joke now, falling apart along with long-accepted family standards. Much of gay and lesbian culture already works full-steam at trying to define itself by heterosexual values like materialism. It's throwback thinking instilled by those trying to maintain the status quo, who use marriage as some great indicator of being in good with God. Why would anyone want this from the same source that has been rejecting them wholly as "wrong in the scheme of things?" This is not an insensible argument, I think to myself as a I jiggle doorknobs.
Yet, I looked at the issue of gay marriage from another angle, and it made sense that way too. Many gays simply want to live as everyone wants or does, and be a part of the culture they live within. Marriage is an institution of merit and value, as a sign of living morally and practically. The joy gained from the act of marriage is something real to them. Acceptance is deeply important to a lot of human beings, isn't it? So, I think to myself, this is also a sensible argument. Then why did I reject this argument's values so strongly that I tossed aside the whole validity of the issue? Then I started my last few floors with a minor pain behind one eye.
I rejected the issue because I reject the value of the culture. So was this political, philosophical, or simply personal? Why was it so personal? I was arguing passionately for my side of the issue that was based in my negative reaction to gay culture. It was a view founded in a false non-conformity that was no more than me shifting blame for my failure to enmesh with others on... Well, others. The pain behind the eye did not abate. The specter of hollow identity struck again. Well, how is it, I asked myself inside my head, that I am so Jewish-identified, yet I reject being a believer in Judaism as a religion? Didn't Judaism as an institution, clash with me mostly because how strongly I rejected my parent's brand of Judaism? Was I creating my identity through external conflict with larger social elements that I perceived that I cannot make myself a part of?
One of these days, I'll figure I should carry around some pain relievers on my person at all times, for when I get these glorious brainstorms.
It's bad to be able to deduce what is coming sometimes with a relative assuredness. I knew what cutting the strings from what I knew to where I could be would start shredding my identify faster than a cat finds the new leather sofa. I'm still too much the center of my world. Who I am now is much expressed in how strongly I think everyone else is wrong. How I fight and buck against a world which lives on, no matter how I feel it should be. I'm just another human being who is fighting for the same thing.. what I believe are my natural rights: To feel safe, but to be free. To suffer, but also know joy. To be myself, but to be a part of something bigger. To believe. To hope. To love.
Still... food for thought as I bed down, and probably mulled over when I chain patio tables tomorrow evening, is what do I do to be, but also do. I can't be a part of these cultural expressions, in the end. It's not who I am. But how is who I am, or will be, compatible with the world that I live in? I know there is something inside me, meant to be different, so that I can bring difference to the lives of others. It's one of the few things I've ever really believed in. And lastly, I must ask myself.... Where is my Advil?