Independence Day

I realise that this is a day early, but since I'm writing a play for most of tomorrow, I'm posting today.

Suffice to say that I have an odd relationship with the land of my birth. On one hand, I feel truly uniquely American. My father was a Choctaw, my mother's ancestry includes African, Irish, and Cherokee peoples. Were it not for this ethnic mix, I would not exist today.

And yet, I feel at the same time like an outsider in my own country.

As a gay man, the federal government denies me equal parity with heterosexuals when it comes to marriage and the rights and benefits accorded to it. It also refuses to acknowledge sexual orientation under the hate crimes law, despite the best efforts of some politicians (of which I can say proudly that the two Senators from Wisconsin and New York are some of them) to include me. As a gay man, I am still the whipping boy of bigoted "Christians" who while professing to love to sinner and not the sin, seek to effectively extinguish me from the landscape. By the way, not just myself, but also any woman who chooses to have an abortion, any minority still struggling with the shackles of many years of oppression, and anyone who believes that church and state should be separate.

As a black man, I feel oddly disconnected from this country. My ancestors were brought here as slaves and while many strides have been made, the slave mentality still persists amongst many blacks: "Because I'm black, I shouldn't try," "because I'm black, I can't possibly be gay, "because I'm black, I don't need to assimilate." At some point, we have to realise that we are Americans. While we should definitely realise that our origins are in Africa, our own culture is most definitely unique and worth celebrating as well. We are distinct, but we are no better than Italian-Americans, Greek-Americans, German-Americans, and so on. No matter what ethnicity proceeds us, we are Americans and only we can shape our country. I'm not advocating forgetting the first part of the hyphen, but I think we should also never dare neglect the latter as well.

Chris Rock once said that "America is like the Uncle that abused you, but also sent you to college." I feel the same way. When I graduated high school, I tried to run away as far as possible from the US--all the way to Luton. Although, I wanted to stay in the UK, circumstances dictated that I had to come back to the US. I am here, and I know that in the immediate future, I am here, so I will fight to make this country live up to its ideals of "Liberty, Justice, and the pursuit of Happiness." Where does "the pursuit of Happiness" imply that "I'm right, and because I'm right, you're wrong?" Maybe I'm interpreting it incorrectly, but I don't see that anywhere. "The pursuit of Happiness" to me suggests that one find their own path to Happiness and another finds their own, and as long as their path is at the detriment of another's then what is wrong? I don't see where giving gays, lesbians, and minorities a fair chance (when it has been denied them for so long) is contradictory to the precepts that this nation was founded upon.

Since I left grad school in 2004, I've been debating immigrating to Canada, and to be honest, I still have it on the back burner. Yet, I find it tragically bizarre that Canada is living up to the ideals that were once [US] American. Where did we go wrong? When did we choose that bigotry would trump all else. It seems like there is this streak in the United States wherein people think "thank you for letting me in, now keep everybody else out." I know that there are people who are quite literally killing themselves to get to this country (and other countries as well). However, when it comes to the US, what country are they risking life and limb to get to? This is not the same country of the 1880's, 1900's, or even the 1970's. This is a country that has stopped saying "you can be yourself" and encouraged "you must be like us." It's almost eerily similar to Invasion of The Body Snatchers. Why are we afraid of differences now? The Norman Rockwell days are gone, if indeed they ever existed.

Listen, I'd like to envision myself sitting at a table with my family and waving "hi" to my neighbours before sitting down to dinner, but that just does not happen anymore. Both father and mother are working to the bone to just merely put food on the table. The kids are not even allowed to be children anymore because they are exhausted from extracurricular activities all in the hope that maybe, just maybe, they might get a scholarship to college and Mom & Dad won't have to work even harder (and be more absent) to get them there. When the kids do actually reach college, what do they do? They repeat the same cycle and happy memories are few and fare between.

So have we built upon the ideals of the declaration of Independence and Constitution? I don't think so. In fact, on some level, it seems like we are promoting our lifestyle based upon the thought that if we're not happy, nobody should be.

And it should never be like that.