Pod People

Apologies for the lack of posts this week. The shock still hasn’t worn off. You know that totally disconnected feeling you get every once in awhile like you’re the only *real* human being on the planet and everyone else you see are players in some kind of play created solely for your benefit by a cruel superior being? It’s been like that, only this time, I don’t feel quite so alone. I know there are actually millions of others just like me who are feeling the same inredulous feeling of alienation from their countrymen. How could we grow up in the same place, sometimes even in the same family and think so completely and utterly different? They’ve got to be pod people. Or maybe, a freak genetic mutation has occurred and we’re in the process of witnessing the emergence of a second sentient offshoot from the human race. Let’s call them Homo Religiosus. Or maybe, just maybe – there’s a psychotropic virus that’s gone around that alters the basic brain functionality of people. Some variant of mad cow disease. Those are my theories, anyway. I don’t care if Gene Roddenberry thought of them first. Brilliant man, he was!

I started in with the "I told you so's" the minute I read the headlines about Bush planning to reward his Evangelical minions with a resurrected federal Same Sex Marriage Ban. I want nothing more than to throw them in brother's face - along with every other security-obsessed Democrat who told me "Oh, Bush is actually a religious moderate... you're just paranoid to think he'll try to legislate Fundamental Christian values into law!" and marked their ballot for the Chimp. Unfortunately, my committment to not talk politics with him anymore is still in place. A selfish side of me hopes the next four years will prove me right, even though the rest of me realizes what a nightmare it will be if my predictions come true. I hope for the sake of every gay, lesbian, bi & transgendered family out there - as well as all of us straight heretics that I am wrong.

So what to do? I’ll admit, like hundreds of thousands of other Kerry supporters we’ve tossed around the idea of getting the hell out of Dodge. B.C. does look attractive. And I’ve always said I’d move to New Zealand in a heartbeat. The Kiwi’s, have very strict immigration requirements, though I’ve been told. But for the time being, I do feel pretty safe in my mostly liberal corner of the country (Definition of Marriage Amendment notwithstanding). I’m not quite ready to give up the country to the fascists just yet. For the next four years, these are my guiding thoughts:

"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." (Thomas Jefferson)

First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up, because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak up for me.
by Rev. Martin Niemoller, 1945

So this time around, they're coming for the homosexuals first. Who do you think will be next? Pregnant women or peace activists?