Romney: The Scariest Thing This Halloween

Yes, I know that Obama has been a war-monger who has curtailed civil liberties and protections for everyone and yes, I would rather see a third party offer a true choice for all Americans. A Romney presidency would privatize life here in the USA and survival or the fittest would be our new national slogan. But as horrible as his “leadership” would be for immigrants, women, working and poor people in general, but it would be absolutely devastating to the well-being of LGBT Americans.

Romney has stated that the right to hospital visitation by a significant other would be up-for-grabs on a state-by-state basis under his administration. There would be more incidents like the Florida case where in April of 2010, Janice Langbehn was denied access to her dying partner of the past 18 years, Lisa Marie Pond.

Mitt has stated he will enshrine a marriage equals one man and one woman clause in the US Constitution and do everything in his power to take away same-gender marriage rights in those few states that have them.

He will ensure that the children of LGBT couples are discriminated against by noting on their birth certificates by striking out the words mother and father and writing in parent one and parent two. He resisted the printing out of gender-neutral birth certificates because this would be “detrimental to the family unit.” What would become of these “detrimental” families and their children is anybody’s guess but certainly not his concern.

When it comes to the issue of bullying in schools, Romney has opposed any administration-based efforts to oppose this practice or even to educate people about homophobia and gender-based bigotry.

Queer folks will need to kiss goodbye any hope of ending immigration and green card discrimination, housing discrimination, discrimination in access to “public” facilities, job discrimination and any other kind of anti-gay prejudice you can think of because Romney would try to take this country back to the days when gay sex itself was illegal.

In this era of hyper-nostalgia when all rights of women, religious and anti-religious minorities and immigrants are at stake it is important to draw the line somewhere. Yes, I know that the Obama administration is problematic in a multitude of ways, but the election of Mitt Romney would be an absolute nightmare.

Now as we are witnessing the effects of climate change first hand, we have a presidential candidate who has proposed to end FEMA funding too. Romney is a walking nightmare. I lived through the oppression of the fifties and have zero desire to repeat that experience now!

Class Consciousness and Pride

Mitt Romney's obnoxious plutocratic ramblings combined with the one year birthday of the Occupy Movement have got me ruminating about rising class consciousness in America, specifically my own. 

I was raised to believe that ours is a classless society and anyone at all can make it here with a little elbow grease and some sturdy bootstraps. My father was a salesman and my mother, a secretary. I knew that my family was deeply in debt because whenever they gave me a credit card to buy clothes, it would get repossessed by the cashier. 

Yes, like most Americans,  my family spent a lot of time worrying about money and how they would pay their bills. But we lived with most of the trappings of middle class society: a mortgaged house, financed cars, a refrigerator full of food and a large wardrobe of second-hand and bargain basement clothing. Looking back on it now, I see a lower middle class (upper working-class?) family that had bought into the American dream at the expense of their own personal peace of mind.

The upper middle class kids at school did not accept me or my group of friends but, with my rebellious nature, I perceived that as a badge of honor. It's only recently that I have begun to explore the feelings of inferiority that I've harbored and internalized. 

In personal terms, coming to terms with class and vowing to fight for equality for all is a positive thing. It is true that the early acquiring of awareness sometimes translates into resentment of those whose situation was cushier, more supportive, different. In any movement for liberation, a degree of hostility always plays a role in the early stages of consciousness.I experienced this both as an activist in the women's movement and the LGBT movement. Awakening is often born with pain. Later, realization dawns that feelings of inferiority do not indicate actual inferiority. Hopefully then it becomes possible to move on. 

The scars of our early lives follow us everywhere. Sometimes, when I'm depressed, I believe that part of me still lives in high school. The trick is to acknowledge those feelings when they arise, let them wash over me, and then to let them go. Or let them provide the impetus to do something even more productive like write about them.