Albert Camus, The Plague

In March, I was working the front desk at work (at the Dickson Street Bookshop) when I received an email on my phone. It was from the University of Chicago and was notifying me that I could log into my account to view a message regarding my admissions status. It was terrible. I was so nervous, and I didn’t want to check while I was at the front of the store, in case I had a breakdown in front of customers. Once I got back to my office, I logged in to discover I’d been offered a position in their Master’s program. I was ecstatic. Jumping up and down in my chair kind of happy.

A couple of weeks later, I hitched a ride to Chicago with my roommate’s girlfriend and another friend of ours (who happened to be going for their spring break). A friend of mine in Chicago offered to set me up with a job interview at his company, so I decided to go with it. Interview goes well, and on the morning of March 22, I receive a phone call offering me the job. And they wanted me to start on April 2nd. In the timespan of a 10 minute phone call, without talking it over with anybody in my life, I accepted the position and effectively committed to moving to Chicago on nine days’ notice. 22 years in Arkansas (with a few months in Tulsa and Rome each) ended in one ten minute phone call.

I toured one apartment and nearly immediately signed a lease. I came back to Fayetteville to finish things up, although I had to go to Dallas for two days to audition for Jeopardy (I think I did well but I don’t know if I’ll be on the show; they only tell you that you made it if and when they want you to appear, and my window is for another year). I managed to say goodbye to most people, and somehow got everything I needed packed away, and then off to Chicago I went. My first few weeks in Chicago were fine. I was enjoying work. I met a boy and we started dating. I was falling in love with the city.

And then everything changed. Again. I was in Union Station, waiting for my good friend Carlos to arrive on a visit. All of a sudden, my phone notified me of an email. For those of you unfamiliar with AT&T service in Chicago, it’s horrible. All that loaded of the email was the subject: “Exciting news from the Institute of Fine Arts!” I started to panic. A month previous I’d received an email simply titled “News from the Institute of Fine Arts.” It informed me that I was on a very short waiting list for admissions. Suddenly, three weeks after moving to Chicago to go to school there, they dangle this carrot in front of me—”Exciting news.” Commence panic as I wait for the email to load. And there it is: the one program I prioritized over the one at Chicago had finally let me in. It felt like a punch in the stomach. My reaction was visceral and highly negative. But I couldn’t run from that news.

This raised the question of what to do with Chicago. After committing to come to New York, I did the only thing I could: I enjoyed Chicago to its fullest. I jokingly called it summer camp. I made some really great friendships with some really great people. And while I was there, my mother sold the house I grew up in and moved (which wasn’t on the radar when I left), one of my sisters got pregnant, there were deaths in my family.

I love Chicago. It’s an amazing city. As one of my out-of-town friends said, when I was showing him around, “for someone who isn’t going to stay here, you’re still investing a lot into local pride.” It was a city I’d always heard lauded and never expected anything from. And it delivered. But it also felt weird knowing I’d be leaving so soon. Eventually it developed a sort of limbo quality, where near the end I was avoiding making connections I’d otherwise have loved to make.

And then as quickly as I came, I left.

I’ve been in New York a little over a month now. I haven’t taken to it like I took to Chicago. It’s a bigger city, and I don’t have a job or a fixed routine yet, so I haven’t been very social. I’ve been meeting people where I can but it’s still been pretty scattershot. And just like in Chicago, life at home is going on without me: my only unmarried sister is now engaged. Another death in the family.

To restart everything once is a big enough ordeal. And I’ve done it twice in six months. Never would I have predicted this, but I’m glad I’ve done what I have: when faced with several life-altering decisions, I made my choices quickly, stuck to them, and executed them all. It was almost shockingly easy. Some stuff just fell into place.

It’s not the first time I’ve made a huge change in my life (although it’s by far a rapid succession of those most huge), and underscores what I learned the first time: creating change is not difficult, but committing to it is. But once you’re committed, once you accept that change, putting it into action is the easy part.

Truman Capote

In this so-called ‘real world,’ people apparently live on less than $12,000 a year. While many college students don’t make enough to pay enough taxes to cover their idealistic visions of the future, is this really reason to deny them their experiences? I’m an idealist, and a lucky one at that. Here’s what I understand: in the ‘real world’ I won’t keep getting money to study in Europe. That doesn’t invalidate what I’ve seen, though.

I don’t travel to go see Big Ben and the Eiffel Tower and the Colosseum. Sure, I’ve see all of those things, but my experiences wouldn’t be any less without them. I travel to learn. To see how cities operate that aren’t based around automobile traffic, but foot traffic. To experience getting from point A to point B using 4 forms of transit; not the 1 of an automobile. To talk to the people living under the policies that I believe in and espouse, to see if they’re as good as I believe they are.

At this point in my life, my experiences lead me to a frightening conclusion: I don’t want to be in America. It isn’t a petty cultural thing; as Anglophilic and Italophilic as I am, all cultures have pitfalls. Mine has upsides.

There’s a word you hear quite frequently applied to failed nations: hubris. This is exactly what I see deteriorating America. We are the sole world superpower. We will lose our dominance. Our refusal to believe that we will lose our position of superiority is only accelerating the process. The house Republicans are so smugly destroying American infrastructure in their self-righteous quest to somehow fix the country.

I could talk for hours on Republicans. It’s no surprise to any of you how much I loathe their ideology. It’s based on that age-old quest to prove the moral superiority of selfishness; a quest which will never yield success. In their hegemonic drive to do so, countless souls get hurt. And as painful as it is for me to watch the problems right now, as programs like WIC and funding for safe sex get slashed, that possibly worries me the least. We are destroying our future.

Yes, there’s credence in the belief that our debt will cause significant headaches for our future. But the solutions being offered are to cut precisely those projects which aim to enhance our future. Endless wars halfway across the earth are given funding cuts as the Republicans seek to remove the ability of the EPA to issue environmental regulations. Florida’s Republican governor has decided that federal water-quality standards need not apply to his populace. That kind of insanity is as maddening as it is misanthropic: a man, elected by the people to protect the people, instead seeks to destroy their health for the material gain of few. And people are so blinded by ideology that they protect him.

And then, we have the past month. The storms across the American south have caused unprecedented damage. Fayetteville got half a meter of rainwater in one day. Alabama was ravaged by tornadoes. As I type this post, the rising waters of the St. Francis river are threatening to break the levee keeping my brother-in-law’s family farm from being flooded. I’ve barely seen the sun in two weeks. And we take these things as normal while we continue to enable politicians who oppose any sort of environmental regulation and choose to simply ignore science because they don’t understand it and it’s more advantageous for them not to.

Graduation is supposed to be a joyous event, but I’m terrified. I’m watching the world fall apart and people do all the wrong things to fix it. Republicans, in their blind quest to enforce their ideology, have forgotten how to do the most requisite part of politics: compromise. And slowly, by their actions, the world burns.

We are literally dismantling our future. Refusing to build high-speed rail because we don’t need it now. Refusing to abandon oil because it’s too profitable to keep it. Refusing to protect the environment because the savings over the long run aren’t as tangible as the costs affected today. And refusing to do what we claim is our main priority as a country: promote democracy. We daily prop up China, the worst and most systematic human rights offender in the world. We sell them our debt, practically begging them to eclipse us as the world power. All because we refuse to believe that we can do no wrong; can never fail.

Hubris.

Those words, written by Thomas Jefferson were officially adopted on this day, July 4, of 1776. They are, of course, the introduction to the Declaration of Independence—alongside the Constitution, the most important and revered document in the history of our nation. Knowledge of our own history is woefully declining, but with hope most Americans know the phrase “Taxation Without Representation:” one of the most salient cries of the American revolution, it embodies the American struggle for self-determination and nationhood.

While dissolution from union with the Crown was not the immediately preferred option, it was the necessary one: for, when those who hold power refuse to extend their power, their right, and their privilege to those without power, it becomes incumbent upon those who, not having equality of representation, or of self-determination, or of freedom, no longer desire to live a life wherein others enjoy liberties and responsibilities not applicable to themselves to stand up for their right and to assert their dignity before the face of Man in their demand for equal treatment.

There is a trend as of late (especially among those who seek to restrict freedoms to a certain pool of similarly-aligned individuals) to revert to the founding fathers, and to produce various quotes which rectify and strengthen their positions. And while unfair taxation was indeed a significant catalyst for American independence, it in no way represents the taxes of today; for those taxed in yesteryear were done so with no legal representation in Parliament; their only ability to refuse taxes was, in fact, to revolt. We have today an incredibly vocal, if not disproportionately small minority who, holding a worldview contradictory to the path of our Nation, hold taxes legally enabled by politicians elected to represent at least a narrow majority of Americans to be indicative of the kinds of abuses which our Forefathers suffered at the hands of the British. They seek to enact legislation giving preference to those of their own race and creed, and to circumvent the First Amendment to our Bill of Rights by introducing into our government a certain Christian ideal used to justify at various times such things as anti-immigrant feelings and the oppression of the LGBT community.

To them I would like to identify the epitaph that Thomas Jefferson crafted for himself:

“HERE WAS BURIED THOMAS JEFFERSON

AUTHOR OF THE DECLARATION OF AMERICAN INDEPENDENCE

OF THE STATUTE OF VIRGINIA FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

AND FATHER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA.”

Even more highly than his tenure as President of the United States did Jefferson value religious freedom, an unfortunate fact for those who wish to use the words of our freedom fighters to oppress. But perhaps even more indicative of Jefferson’s zeal for individual liberty is the quote chosen to represent him to eternity. Lining the frieze immediately below the dome of the Jefferson Memorial in the Federal City lies a quote of his so perfectly emblematic of his philosophy that it has been impossible to extract it from my mind henceforth:

“I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

Given our founding fathers’ admiration of classicism, including the unescapable architectural parallels between the Jefferson Memorial and the Pantheon, it seems only appropriate to cite Plato’s definition of a tyrant as “one who rules without law, looks to his own advantage rather than that of his subjects, and uses extreme and cruel tactics—against his own people as well as others.” Therefore, tyranny over the minds of man would seem to be any imposition upon an individual’s freedom that is not derived from their consent, but, rather, to the advantage of the individual doing the imposing.

Laws banning freedoms selectively because a majority or powerful minority desires that another minority not have said freedom are as anti-Jeffersonian as I can imagine. Of course, I am currently the victim of such Tyranny: to varying extents and in various locales are imposed the will of a misled and frequently hateful crowd who, disagreeing with the conduct I engage in as a wholly naturally predilection seek to curb my freedoms as a Gay Man to love, to have a family, to have equal freedoms and protections.

Indeed, as Jefferson penned in that most famous of quotations in the Declaration of Independence, all men are in fact created equal. It is unfortunate that so many should seek to ignore this, and in the vein of that great oppressor George III impose tyranny over the minds of man.

The true American spirit lies not in love of this land but in the love of its ideals; Patriotism comes not from knowing that America is the best, but rather, that knowing that every individual is the best, and as such, deserves the same rights and freedoms as ourselves. This is not limited to every American, but extends to every human alive, for the words Jefferson used are not “all Americans are created equal” or “Tyranny over the minds of Americans;” but rather are extended to every man.

The American spirit is an indomitable acknowledgment of the universality of freedom. Any attempts to limit freedom to a select group, be it Christians, or heterosexuals, or Americans, or Caucasians is in unavoidable opposition to the ideals upon which this country was founded and lie more significantly in vein with those whose oppression inspired the developments of such beliefs.

And so, with that: Happy Fourth of July. May you all seek to bring about freedom and equality to every human everywhere.

Well way back in October, in a world of memories I barely remember, that clap began. And boy, has it been gathering speed. For those of you unaware, google Will Phillips. I mean, hell, the kid has his own wikipedia page. In such a simple act as not standing for the pledge, because, face it—we aren’t a land of liberty and justice for all—he tapped into a vein that just about everyone has some opinion on. He’s quickly become a spokeskid for the LGBTQ movement, traveling around the country with his two wonderfully supportive parents, Jay and Laura.

Being a board member of the organization closest in proximity to Will (the NWA Center for Equality), I’ve had the fortune of getting to work with the “Phillips Phamily”—planning protests, organizing fundraisers, even being on the Center’s kickball team together—and having that cooperation turn into a friendship. Anyone who knows the Phillips will tell you that Will isn’t some anomalous, rebellious child. He’s the child of two of the most wonderful and supportive allies I’ve ever met.

This past Sunday, an article was published on the front page of the NWA Times, talking about All OUT June, the Center’s month of activities. We were, naturally, elated at the publicity and exposure. Our elation, however, was soon tempered; not only was the article somewhat dismissive of our community (rather than saying “LGBTQ,” the article merely used “Gay;” while seemingly innocuous, the verbiage swiftly alienates a whole swath of our wonderfully diverse community and denies them of the identity they’ve worked their whole life for) but it raised several misconceptions about the event.

For, you see, All OUT June received $4,000 in funding from Fayetteville’s Advertising and Promotions committee, for the exact purpose of that commission—advertising and promotions. The commission is overseen by several community members who are all part of the hospitality industry—restauranteurs and hoteliers—and awards grants from taxes levied on their own industry. To the best of my knowledge, the grants are awarded to organizations and events in the hope that they will use said money to draw people to events within the city, which will, in turn, bring in more than what was awarded.

But that’s kind of a complex matter to explain, especially to sensationalized crowds who see that “THE MAYOR IS FUNDING SODOMY;” a charge more or less levied every day since that article came out. Being one of the most stereotypical and publicly visible embodiments of Pride, the nay-saying community has turned to the Pride Parade to be held this Saturday, June 26th, at 10 AM, and have sensationalized it by claiming the city is throwing the parade for us. First off, this is a complete fabrication. The Parade is organized by NWA Pride, an organization separate (though no less important) from the NWA Center for Equality. They received no money.

Furthermore, the money we received from the city was not voted upon by the Mayor nor the City Council, and was not intended to promote any agendum—gay or otherwise. Its purpose is to bring money and business to the city. Today, however, the American Family Association has started an email bomb to the Mayor and City Council, with, I believe, the word “GOD” all in caps and something about vengeance. The Mayor, however, has indicated he still supports the parade, and will still issue us a proclamation. (For more information on how to contact the City Council and thank them for their support, see this post on the Center’s blog)

Of course, this all comes around full-circle. We couldn’t forget Will Phillips. He did the grand tour; now he’s doing our tour: he’s the Grand Marshal of the Parade. Begin the onslaught of claims of horrid parents brainwashing their children. And this is, of course, evidence of that most insidious of gay plots—to recruit children. But among all of the hatred spewed at Jay and Laura, none of them seem to acknowledge that, perhaps, Will made this choice on his own and is standing by it. Because they don’t believe that a ten-year-old can have thoughts of his own.

Every morning, I wake up, and the first thing I do is check my email, on my iPhone. Because that’s the world that we live in. Usually, I have three or four, but this week it’s been 12 or more each weekend, updating me of the latest streams of vitriol and hate directed not only at the LGBTQ community of Northwest Arkansas, but at Will Phillips and his family. And why at them? For the audacity of supporting the rights of others.

It’s been kind of stressful, and there have been a few moments that brought me to the edge of tears. But I’ve only received the secondary brunt of it. And I’ve received it because I have to: I’m gay; this is my battle. Jay and Laura, though, have no stock in this: they’re being called horrible parents, daily, by people who do nothing but shout hate. Why? Because they stand up for us, and for their son. Because they stand up for what is right, even though it doesn’t have to affect them.

This whole week has just been going crazy. Lots of mudslinging. Thankfully, they’re mostly all groups far away, and we’ve got tremendous local support. This year’s Parade promises to be bigger than ever, and it’s all because people are willing to stand up. We’re getting stronger, and they’re getting scared.

Let’s use this trouble to become stronger as a community; they’re afraid of us, so let’s be a lot to be afraid of.

And for the first time since I left Campus, I can be fully pedestrian now. I don’t need to extol the virtues of that. It has, regrettably, however, dulled my interest in the pay-parking debate. I just park at home now.

It’s still anti-student, though.

Yeah, it’s a short post.

A few weeks later, I go on a vacation to metropolis, and WOW—they have ALL kinds of restaurants. So I go to a Japanese restaurant, and a Thai place, and a Korean restaurant, cause I know that I like Asian food, so I figure I’ll try some more kinds out. And it turns out that Japanese is nice, but it’s no Chinese, and I’m not really a big fan of Korean, but WOW, Thai is truly amazing—it’s my favorite so far. So I go back home, and I tell you about Thai food, and you’re intrigued but you don’t understand why I’m not so hot on Chinese food anymore. Because you can’t have tried Thai food, so you can’t know if you like it or not. You just don’t have the opportunity.

Well, this past weekend, I had the opportunity to attend the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force‘s conference on Creating Change as part of the delegation of the NWA Center for Equality. I was expecting that what I would get out of it would largely be training—this is how you lobby for this, this is how you respond to this kind of discrimination, this is how you get your center operating efficiently. To this respect, I was not at all disappointed. I received all forms of helpful training.

But that wasn’t what I took back from the conference. The name of the conference, “Creating Change,” is as much about changing the people who come as it is changing the world they come from. All of the bathrooms at the conference are gender-neutral, to create the most comfortable environment for transpeople. However you may feel about a Gender-Neutral Restroom, it is truly a different experience walking into a bathroom and seeing a row of such different people. You just don’t see that in Fayetteville.

But, let’s get to the workshops. I tried to split my time between workshops that interested me (mostly on queer youth) and workshops that would benefit my leadership as a newly-elected member of the Board of Directors for the Center (mostly on volunteering, leadership, etc…). Very first workshop I attend, they ask me to introduce myself, where I’m from, and my preferred gender pronoun (PGP). Not quite sure what a PGP is and being the first person to speak, I introduce myself as “Mister Jon Cox.” I feel like everyone is looking at me weirdly. They probably weren’t, but I was right to feel odd: everyone else introduced themselves, saying “I go by she/hers, he/his, they/theirs, vi/hir.” By the end of the conference, it seems that most of us had pencilled our PGPs onto our name tag. I went by he/his.

It was odd to me. We don’t do that in Fayetteville. It’s not that we don’t have transpeople here, as I know a few, but we just don’t think about it—we’re not to that point yet. (Now, I don’t think that when two New Yorkers meet, they ask what the other’s PGP is, but I figure two queer New Yorkers very well might, whereas two queer Arkansans probably wouldn’t.)

Furthermore, there were many workshops on sexuality, and not just the various dichotomies of straight, gay, bi, whatever. There were workshops on leather, on polyamory, on kink. My initial reaction to these was rather conservative: “Wow, I can’t believe they’re having workshops here on polyamory.” After all, people frequently say that gay marriage will lead to polygamy (among others). Shouldn’t we be avoiding these hot-topics?

Of course, I soon came to realize that the answer is absolutely not. Think back to my story about burgers and Asian food. Burgers represent heterosexuality. Most people try it, because it’s what’s generally expected, and they find that it works out for them. They’re happy with burgers, so they don’t try anything else. Some people don’t like burgers, though, so they try the other option—Chinese food (representing in this case, homosexuality). Chinese food, they realize, is what they prefer to burgers. They stick with their Chinese food.

That’s where we are in Fayetteville. We’re pretty small, we’ve got (mainly) the two restaurants.

Of course, when you go places that are bigger, there are more restaurants. You’ve already figured out that you might not necessarily like what you have more than everything else, so you try other food. You might realize that you’ve been eating Chinese this whole time, cause you like it, but once you have Thai food for the first time, that’s your food. You could never have it before, so you never thought about it.

That’s what Creating Change was for me—a bigger selection of restaurants. I never really thought about the other types of food, because they were never there for me to think about. But in bigger cities, they are. And so it suddenly makes sense to me that there would be sessions on polyamory at a conference on LGBTQ rights: it’s not that queer people are more likely to be poly, it is that we have had to experiment from the beginning to find out who we are. Some of us are poly. Because most heterosexual people aren’t dissatisfied with their first experiment, they have no reason to try anything else. They could just as easily find themselves as polyamorous. They’re just not used to finding out which options fit them best.

As a caveat, my restaurant analogy makes it sound like you pick whichever orientation you like the most—that’s not it, at all. You don’t pick. It’s who you are. You just discover it.

When I went to Creating Change, I had a pretty standard LGBT view of sexuality. I didn’t use the word ‘Queer,’ which you will now notice me using. The change? Queer isn’t really found much in Fayetteville yet, because most of us didn’t know too much about it. My experience at Creating Change has shown me what queer is, and I’ve come to realize queer aspects of my own personality.

I have come out of the conference with a new look at myself (and others), and a renewed commitment to serve the center, this time in a way that is much more open and which will hopefully allow others to realize whoever they are.

While it is true that Dr. King is probably the most influential (and definitely most remembered) leader of the Civil Rights movement, it is important to remember the he was assassinated in 1968—after the passage of the Civil Rights act of 1965, but a decade before the passage of the Community Reinvestment Act. And though history may seem to show that the Sixties are the defining decade of the Civil Rights movement, it surely must also show that the Sixties didn’t fix everything.

We have this notion in America that the Civil Rights movement is historical—it is something we study, it is something we have a museum dedicated to. This is an utter fabrication. Inequality in America is still widespread. Though we have, for the first time, an African-American President, we also have just one African-American in the Senate (Roland Burriss, the controversial appointment to fill President Obama’s empty Senatorial seat). To this day, there have only been six African-American Senators. There have been two African-American Justices of the Supreme Court, and, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor, one Hispanic. There is still racial inequality in education, in prison, and economically.

And that’s assuming that Civil Rights is just about race. Women are still, to some extent, marginalized in politics. And, as a gay man, I am subject to some of the few existing constitutionally viable discriminatory laws. Whatever your rationale is for opposing Gay Rights, it is fundamentally denying a right to someone—exactly the problem that has always plagued marginalized groups in America. You may not think that I deserve the right to marry a man and adopt a child, you may know it to be a fact. But 100 years ago, people knew for a fact that African-Americans were inferior and thought that women did not deserve the right to vote. To say that no one believes these things today would be false, but to say that to believe them publicly is to cast oneself in a light of ignorance and hatred would be true.

And yet, it is a lesson that no one ever seems to learn—you may deny people in this country fundamental rights, you may enforce against them an increasing number of oppressive laws, but they will fight, and they will win, and history will view you as hateful, oppressive, bigots.

By celebrating Martin Luther King Jr., Day as a remembrance of his service to the minorities of this country, you are acknowledging that the fight for Civil Rights is over. It isn’t, and it never will be. Don’t just go to a vigil for Dr. King. Keep alive his message by fighting oppression everywhere—discrimination is still enshrined in law in this country.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’

Let’s help make them equal.

See also my post on the Civil Rights Museum

To whom that my lips have uttered those words,
I meant them. But when I feel them today
I just worry and fret, because to say
them now is to mean them, and hope they’re heard,
hope they’re internalized, hope that they’re known,
and hope that they resonate somehow, for
it is all I can say. I wish no more
than to mean them, and to make them my own.

But for me to say them, you must listen.
Listen, for now I speak: what once was a
quest, a game, has shown me many things
and given me a life I can’t hasten.
You must know that when I think, when I say
those words, they are from the joy you bring.