on working for vote NO
On Saturday morning, Everything Guy and I canvassed for the Vote No on 1 campaign at Oktberfest in Germantown. I don’t generally like to canvas because when I talk to strangers I tend to over-analyze the interaction until it makes me crazy. When canvassing the problem is magnified exponentially because there are bound to be people who disagree and want to argue. I am generally pretty good about walking away from people who disagree with me and wishing them a good day, but this past Saturday we had a particularly bad encounter which I haven’t been able to get off my mind since.
The story will betray my own prejudices, but I’ll tell it anyway. The point of canvassing for us is more to make sure people are aware of the issue, not to change folks’ minds. Which means that, if someone is obviously homophobic or doesn’t want to talk, we let it go. This one guy on Saturday, however, wanted to talk. And wanted to disagree. His idea of “talking,” though, involved spouting some sort of Conservative Christian party line to us, not listening to our side, then responding with the next irrational non-sequitor queued up in his little brain.
One thing I suggested was that, even if he believes that Jesus says homosexuality is wrong and that gays should have no rights in society, this is a constitutional issue rather than a gay issue. The law already deals with gay marriage, but what place does the content of that law have in our state constitution? His response was that he felt it has to be in the constitution so that the homosexuals don’t come back the next year and amend it for their own purposes. The statement was so nonsensical that I was struck speechless. Did he really think that? Does he believe in some sort of “homosexual agenda?” Or does he just repeat whatever he has been told? I can’t think of a single feasible reason for the “arguments” that he was making. None of it made any sense to me. Were we not making sense to him? Or did he not care what we were saying?
Anyway, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the conversation (if you can call it that) since then. It’s difficult for me to articulate why it bothered me so much. Maybe it was that I couldn’t “win” the argument, since we seemed just to be talking past each other. Maybe it was being faced with the stark reality that there are real life people like that out there, allowed to vote and procreate. Maybe it was remembering that I am no longer living in a place where peer pressure leans toward tolerance and political correctness, where “Jesus says so” was never enough to finish a debate.
Last night, watching news coverage of Dobson’s hate rally at Two Rivers Baptist Church, I felt entirely deflated. I find it hard to believe that people hate me so much that they’d go out of their way to gather together, talk about how their values trump mine, and strategize to take rights away from me and my family. Rights that do not in any way effect how they would live their own lives. What makes people do such things?
More importantly, does this mean that I am not strong enough to fight for my people? Once done with my education here in Nashville, will I just run back to a safe space, leaving those living here to continue to be shat on by hateful, ignorant neighbors? Do I regret my involvement with this campaign, wishing I had just stayed in my safe university bubble, hiding from the Southern homophobic majority?
I admire and am grateful for those who can stand for what they believe in and fight the fight in the face of homophobic spitefulness. I’m coming to discover that I am not very good at it, and do not like it much. I’d like to do my part, and won’t discontinue my involvement in the campaign, but it is becoming very hard for me to feel charitably towards the people who work so hard to promote hate and meanness for no good reason.