Oh Al!; or It's about time.

So Al Gore has "changed his mind" about the whole gay marriage issue. After spending, according to CNN most of his v-p-hood fighting for the Defense of Marriage Act (an act named so as to sound benign, as though it is good for married people when in fact it is an attack on the civil rights of as much as 10% of any given population--and possibliy more in the US.

Al has seen the light, now that he doesn't have the camera lights pointing at him. Marriage, and gay marriage in particular, is not a religious, moral, ethical, or even value issue. The ability to marry--as far as any state should be concerned with it--is simply an issue of civil rights.

Marriage laws do not create, nor do they define, issues of sexuality and morality. Marriage is a set of laws pertaining to money, health, insurance and inheritance. The state has no say in who is or is not a family--take, for example, a woman living alone with her two children, or grandparents caring for their grandchildren because their children cannot. The state, in allowing marriage, simply has a say in who can be in the ICU, who gets to sign up with whom for health insurance, and who gets the house should the family member in whose name it is held should die.

Those against gay marriage claim it is a moral issue, with the now famous, "If we let homosexuals marry each other, then anyone can marry anyone or anything. Next, they'll want to marry animals, or children!" Hmm...what an odd argument. And yet, this argument is not a new one and homosexual marriage is not its first iteration or use.

Compare the above to this argument, "If we let women vote, then children will want the vote, too!" Next, Fido might ask for a seat in congress.

And yet the gay community has yet to argue for gay marriage in terms of civil rights. The argument currently in use is that two consenting adults should be allowed to pursue their lives as they wish--and they should. But until gay men and women begin to sue for the civil rights and create the next wave of the civil rights movement in this country, there will still be an extreme denial of those rights. Until those who believe in human and civil rights stand up and back our fellow humans in their right to pursue life, liberty, and happiness, we will continue to agree to live in a country that claims to be progressive but is, in fact, stagnant.

On the idea of a Woman President...

I said it before and I'll say it again; that we even talk about Hillary's gender and Barack's race shows the underlying (and extreme) sexism and racism still extant in this country.

Israel had a woman head of government in the 70s--Golda Meir is still revered as one of the best prime ministers in that country's history. Britain had Margaret Thatcher for 12 years! Germany has a female Chancellor right now. In Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto, a former prime minister was recently assassinated--not for being female in that closed, sexist and often extremist Muslim country, but for being anti-terror and anti-fundamentalist.

A woman head of government is not a new idea, it is not a radical concept and it is not proof of a non-sexist society. That we marvel at the possibility, that our media deigns to ask "is America ready?", that we have people who don't look past Clinton's breasts to her heart and mind is a terrifying reminder that women do not have equality in this country. People still worry about the president having PMS--we don't seem to worry about the president having an anti-intellect attitude or a chip on his shoulder about his daddy, but really, deeply, we worry about hormones?!?

And a black man as president?!? Yikes! Could it be possible that we might one day catch up to the understanding even South Africa has reached? Is there a possibility that the great United States of America might someday have the forethought and egalitarian mindset of more than half the world? How can we even begin to maintain the pretence that we have civil rights in our country when we worry about a presidential candidate's race before we worry about his platform. There are people, tell me if this sounds familiar, who don't think we're ready for an African-American in the White House--heck, it is call the White House after all.

This election, no matter how it turns out, will not prove to the world anything but how backward this country is. If we don't elect one of these two, we will face the internal and external accusations that race and gender were the cause. If we do elect them, we will revel in our own open-mindedness and pat ourselves on the back for finally catching up with a decades (and that's because I'm only considering the modern world) -old concept that all people are created equal and are endowed by their creator with...

And so while we are not all of equal talent, ability, intellect, interest or strength, we are certainly all of equal value. We will have to go through this ugly campaign, one way or another. We will have to go through the underlying meanings. We will have to face who and what we are.

I, for one, will look forward to the day when this race will become a joke. I look forward to a US in which there is no need for Black History Month, in which a women's movement is a human's movement, in which these issues are not.

On writing...still

I have to sit down and work on some stories. I suppose that's what should be happening now, rather than blogging. But I must also blog, so I think, this time, I'll blog about writing.

I consider myself a writer. I work on writing. I'm trying to get published (and have been published before). I write daily (and not just emails).

Yet writing, though I find it very fulfilling, is one of the toughest things I do. There are writers who say it's the easiest thing they do. I know a few who simply plan a novel and then write it...and then publish it. I look up to these people. They make me wonder if I'm just a delusional idiot with a laptop. There are, to keep me from giving up, writers who have described writing as a form of self-sacrifice and personal torture. I look up to them, too. I know what they're writing through.

For me, it's not totally a matter of just sitting down and pounding it out nor a matter of opening veins. For me, it's a matter of forcing myself to work. I must talk myself into sitting down and starting. I have to block out all the things I'd rather be doing. I have to rid myself of the niggling need to have a cup of coffee-- only a professionally made coffee from whatever coffee vendor is the farthest from me--right now. I have to get myself comfortable enough that I have no excuse to get away from the computer. And I have to have all my other responsibilities for the day complete or the overwhelming guilt of doing something else will come smashing into me as soon as I get to the zone.

So as to be clear, I do get to the zone. Often. (That's one of the things of which I remind myself when I'm talking myself into writing.) I love the zone. I don't actually exist in the zone. Leah, as it were, disappears. The writer in me goes away. It's much like singing (when that happens in the zone). I become a simple conduit of energy. I am being told the story I am telling. It's magical.

And that's one of the reasons I admire the people who can do it for long stretches at a time and with little or no seeming conflict. I imagine they simply live in the zone. Maybe these writers have to yank themselves out of that zone to spend time with us mere mortals. Maybe their lives are all magic. This, of course, is the musing of a child. It is the little kid in me who believes that only her life is outlandish and difficult who can hold these thoughts in her head. The adult in me knows better. She's smarter and more experienced, of course. She's also completely bewildered about those magical folks who can simply float into the zone and get it done.

Guess I'll have to live in my own world of writer-ness. It'll be tough, but not as tough as it could have been.