I am just back from Los Angeles, where the streets were and are filled with conversation, passion, and outrage, regarding the State marriage amendment passed on November 4th. It felt good to be all pissed off and charged up. I have not felt that sort of passion since the Angel Action days surrounding Fred Phelps in Laramie, WY. Then what pissed me off even more was my lack of response here in Florida over PROP 2, which in many ways was much worse of a passage than PROP 8, in that it cancelled any and all rights, current or future for LGBT Floridians. Granted I work 60 hours a week at the coffee house and don’t get into Gainesville too much, I was still missing the outrage here in Florida. This is where PROPOSITION 10 came to life, as I realized our country is connected on this issue, and whether this WAVE began in California or Florida, it’s not IF, but WHEN it gets to a place like WALDO. I guess I just want to go ahead and begin enjoying our CIVIL RIGHTS by doing this here in this small town. Because it is these people here that must get used to the civil rights that lay ahead, more so perhaps, than the city dweller. So PROPOSITION 10 is a call for everyone to “GET ON THE 10, and GETER DONE” Let’s show the world we are evolving. Let’s be a generation of greatness, the new forefathers and mothers, sisters and brothers of an America where no one is left behind or put aside. Let’s also begin to look at CHURCH AND STATE, and how this could even be an issue in our country where provisions for this sort of thing have already been guranteed and forewarned by the original forefathers. Let's get the CHURCH into the business of religion, and out of the business of STATE. So get out there on the Interstate and connect with the WAVE that will be passing through you town soon. PEACE OUT!!

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While brainstorming how “we the people” might stand up and rebrand the civil rights movement for the 21st century, my mind kept going back and forth down the many roads the LGBT community has travelled in relation to this fight for equality. The nation’s infrastructure came to mind, and before I knew it, I was looking at a U.S. map and moving my finger back and forth and up and down America’s super highways, wondering which State will be next, and what their decision will be [about my fate].

Once upon a time, the Red, White, and Blue shield of the American INTERSTATE system was a shiny new symbol of hope. Posted high above the roadway, plastered on large green signs, these road markers were a recognizable mark to all travelers of the freedom of an open road. Now I see this interstate system as a proposition. One that will be used to move the good we seek freely, and without delay, to all whom this might concern. By far, the Interstate is the fastest way to get across the country, and I have exercised this right many, many times. And the idea behind Proposition 10 is for EQUALITY to prevail on the national level, and the eventual closure of these highways of HATE (FLA 2, and CA 8). So when you add it all up, what god has brought together let no man or woman or Christian or voter or State, put asunder.

As the song from the Movie, ‘Priscilla, Queen of the Desert’ goes, “I’ve been to Georgia and California, and everywhere in between, took the hand of a preacher man and we made love at a truck stop”. Opps, that’s memoir, but anyway, I have gone all over this good country, living and working in Dallas, Denver, Kansas City, New York City, Seattle, Boston, DC, Los Angeles, Jacksonville, and now the more rural version, Waldo, where I grew up, the ground zero of where all my misaligned self esteem began. And I have been to all these places seeing and comparing, letting life change me, seeking even more education, hoping to change even the changed versions of myself, again and again and again, all the while however, carrying this embedded sense of slavery, and not enoughness, and for what?

I would imagine there are those that think I am just bitching about equal rights once again, just like I did when Matthew Shepard was murdered 10 years ago, but this is deeper even still because I am freer than I was 10 years ago, not only because of Matthew giving his life on that fence that day (sounds a little familiar right?) but because these and many other things have change me since then, made me more aware, less judgmental, more loving to myself and others.

But why? Because that’s what humans do with their experience, they come to the planet and let any and all that happens here change them (and hopefully for the better)and with that said, I am not so sure if I am interested in fighting AGAIN in the fashion I have always fought this ERA fight. What I mean is that I feel stronger all of a sudden, and the old paradigms from whence I came are falling off me now like scales now that the vote against me has been cast.

I got to tell you folks out there, it feels good to be pissed off, and it took these preposterous PROPOSITIONS going the way they went, for me to see rightly. It all became clear to this very version of self that I am so very grateful to be in the mill of all this contrast and to [be] being churned to no end and to be in the machine that grinds me to a halt, shaping me into my becoming. Oh what a better Jesus is this for a human, the continual shaping of the heart, and the shedding of the old blood for the new. Far better than the has been Christ preached from sea to shining sea by Christians and their overbearing leaders, all of which male and female are under the gun of male domination. And for a preacher to suggest I invite this sort of thing into my heart? Something so clearly a deformed figment of his enslaved imagination, thanks, but no thanks.

So it’s funny too me how folks (like my mother) say “this is my belief, that marriage is between a man and a woman, and you can’t take that away.” What, is she going to break into a LEE GREENWOOD song? First of all, would not dream of taking anything away from Christianity, in that I have spent the last 20 years trying to drop some stuff off that belongs to you people. But the irony of her belief and subsequently, this debate, is that my desire and/or fight to be protected, and have the Constitution of this country ensure my civil rights will certainly also ensure ALL people the same rights. Right?

But let me tell you, this is not about Christian’s fighting for what they believe, this is about the shipwreck of what Christianity has become, and how these poor ignorant souls are slaves to an outdated book which would have been better categorized as a very long and drawn out novel, than to be touted as the word of God. They are slaves to a male dominated society. They are slaves to what they have been told to think, and say, and do, and act like. They are slaves to being told who to love, and how to fuck and who to fuck and so to speak. They are slaves most sadly to a low (if at all alive) self esteem.

Sadly the members of this faith cannot stand up and say I AM because that is the biggest NO, NO of them all, in that they are incestuously tied to a “love for Jesus” their supposed brother. Yet if JC were here, and any of them met up with him in the middle of a ten acre field, they would have no recollection of their Savior. So in the way that a school yard bully treats everyone, this [not so] Christ like hate stems from his (or her) own inadequacy, and Christians have a knack for this like no other beings on the planet.

Now I’m not suggested another inquisition, although with reality TV being in the slump that it is in, I bet I could sell the shit out of a inquisition series, or maybe just a documentary on how the church paid off the national debt when all of them across the land got a big fat tax bill in the mail. What I am suggesting is that we let this incestuous bunch of madness alone to chew at their digits, and focus on our own well being. Be grateful for them, even, thanking them in your hearts for their low self esteem that has made them, make you the target of their own hidden shame. Because you have higher desires and the contrast in life ALWAYS brings forth the new you, and let me tell you something all you beautiful fucking LGBT’s, you are on the winning team and I LOVE EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU, So let’s get on the 10, and let the WAVE begin…….