Temp outside – 16
Temp inside – 61 – Totally out of propane and the furnace is not working anymore. I’m supposed to get some delivered today. But the house is holding the heat well with a few space heaters. I’ve always accused it of being a heat sieve but maybe it isn’t as bad as I thought.
I watched Iron Jawed Angels yesterday. It is a fictionalized account of Alice Paul and the women’s suffrage movement. Alice Paul and the women working with her started picketing the White House to protest not being able to vote. They were arrested and charged with obstructing traffic even though they were on the sidewalk. They went on a hunger strike in prison and ended up swaying public opinion. It was a very interesting movie. It made me want to read more about the period.
Here are some links to transcripts of letters from jail and interviews with women who took part in the hunger strike.
Ruza Wenclawska – portrayed in the movie
I’ve been wanting to be more of an activist. I think that gay rights will be seen as the decisive civil rights campaign of our time when historians look back at this period just like suffrage in the 1910s and African American civil rights in the 1960s. Besides the fact of the moral rightness of the cause, I’d like to be able to say 50 years from now that I did my part. But besides voting against anti-marriage bills (and losing) and speaking out to people I know, what else can a straight person in a rural area do? Yesterday I found something. Lobby Day 2007 is a state activity. I’ll take a class on how to lobby my state senators and representatives. Then on May 16 everyone will be put into teams to go talk to their assigned representatives. What can I contribute? Well, I’m a prospective adoptive parent in a state where I wouldn’t have that right if I was a lesbian. The court rulings in other states that define marriage as one man and one woman for the sole purpose of bearing biological children would invalidate my marriage too. I don’t know if anyone will listen but at least I can say that I was there.
When I was in high school learning about the discrimination against women and later the descrimination based on race in our history, I wondered what the next thing would be. I didn’t want to fall into the discrimination.
It only took a couple of years for me to realize it would be gay rights. I have several gay/lesbian friends in very good relationships, and I do what I can through talking to people.
If they are religious and conservative, I used the argument, why are you risking the government telling you who your religion has to recognize as a married? Why not let the goverment leave that up to the churches? Then I tell them that they should have civil unions for all people for things like taxes and stuff like that – all the legal stuff. But, civil unions have no religious or spiritual significance.
I’ve found this argument works well. It would allow them the freedom to claim that people not married Christian are not really married (which Catholics do already, but many Christians don’t). I really don’t care what they think about my marriage. 🙂
“The court rulings in other states that define marriage as one man and one woman for the sole purpose of bearing biological children would invalidate my marriage too.”
Mine too. Good on ya!