The republicans in the United States right now are absolutely insane. Let me get that out of the way, first.
The republicans in the United States right now are absolutely, certifiably, not operating in the realm of reality. They have taken batshit crazy to a new level. From candidates who not merely talk to their deity, but take dictation from Him, to people who think that our president is responsible for the wacky use of the filibuster, to people who claim the President wants to take our guns when he's been the most gun-friendly president in my voting age son's lifetime...the republicans are crazy. In fact, the republicans are so crazy that I (who once had drug-induced mania from a prescription) don't want to call them crazy because it insults people with genuine mental illness. The republicans, right now, are so distanced from reality that all the sane republicans I know preface their description of being republican with "I don't agree with so-and-so's crazy comments on rape/guns/god/Obama's birth certificate."
I hope I've made it clear I do not respect the current republican ticket's opinion on much of anything. I am in a blue state, in a blue district, and I am probably voting Obama. There is a small chance I might give my vote to a 3rd party candidate, but probably not. I will probably vote Obama on a 3rd party line, however. This is something people in other states don't have an option of doing. The party I originally joined as a young voter has almost no power in New York State anymore, and I became a democrat, officially, because while I agree with most of the Green Party, I believe it is wrong on Nuclear Power and it's GMO stance is so broadly and stupidly written that it would accidentally outlaw everything we eat, and while I agree with a lot of the Working Families Party, I think it was invented to kill my own political party when we didn't say how high whenever EVERY UNION says jump. (Not all unions are created equal.) The lies about what a Liberal is killed my real party, and I can't do diddly about it, but the democrats welcomed us (sort of) and since even the chewy red center of New York State (where I was born) agrees with what our party stood/stands for: Equal rights, equal pay, fair work laws, fair healthcare laws, etc., I can live with it.
I won't say people don't lie about what the Liberal Party is/was. You can read the platform here. It was formed in part to fight communism, but people call us communists. It promotes the idea that your doctor, not your government or your tax bracket, should determine how your healthcare is handled. It says your kid should get a good education if you choose public schools, and if your kid makes a mistake and gets arrested, he should face a fair family court system. It is literally the only party in New York State that gets hydrofracking right, saying that instead of curling up in a ball and saying "no, no, no, no, no" we should have rules that protect water, air and people in place before hydrofracking is allowed. The Liberal Party IS the party of subtle, reasoned, thoughtful political views based on science, math, and reason...after all, since people lie about the very meaning of the word Liberal, no one is going to use the word unless they already have the ability to listen to more than soundbytes.
I was asked why I was not a democrat (before I was one) and I said something that is still true today: The democratic party doesn't want me. The democratic party makes it very clear they don't want me. They are happy to crush reasoned, subtle, thoughtful political views for Jingoism and pandering to an American electorate that has been duped into thinking they are center-right when they are all center left...but let me give you an idea of the difference between a liberal and a center-right democrat with two things that happened:
George W. Bush wrote me a check. Not literally, although he liked to take all the credit for it. My neighbor at the time, the sort of woman my Arkansas-bred Mother in Law would say "well, bless her heart," about, asked me if I had received my check yet, and what I was going to do with it. I was obviously not pleased about it, and I said something along the lines of this: "Sending this check kills the economy. We need to save this money for a rainy day, it might feel good now, but it won't when we're all jobless and homeless."
My neighbor thought I was joking. She was jobless and homeless a few years later. I want to make a quick diversion here. Republicans say democrats are the party of hand-outs and spending that kills the economy. When I say they are removed from reality, this is what I mean. This was not a democratic handout, this handout was from a republican, the party of 'gimme, gimme.'
The other thing that happened happened a few days ago. My wife went to the library and it was closed. They'd cut the hours back to three days a week, and I was sitting there not paying enough attention when she came back and told me and I responded "your lower taxes at work." Since it was during the RNC, basically my wife said something along the line of "I know someone not voting Romney" in a playful way. It got me thinking about how a republican might view that library-a waste of space, a waste of money and a waste of time. I see it as a waste of time, money and space for it to be sitting there *closed.* My neighborhood is pretty poor, it's blue-collar, and yes, many of my neighbors work in the few factories left around here, yet that library has people in it every time it is open. Many of the kids come in to that library in the middle of summer just because it has air conditioning and they don't. Some of those kids seeking the cool sit down at a computer or pick up a book because they are bored...and some of those kids never put the books down, afterwards.
I don't think a democrat would respond to the library being closed with disgust that taxes aren't being apportioned properly and probably could stand to be a few cents higher to support the library (I would prefer, personally, that they go to things like libraries first, and a shiny new van for the SWAT team second, rather than raise taxes, but that's okay, we don't have to agree on everything.) I don't think most democrats responded to the hand-outs of tax and spend conservatives like George W. Bush with disgust and knowing exactly what that kind of crap led to. A Liberal, however, does respond like that, because the liberal position is the position of worrying about what we're leaving to our kids and grandkids. Do we scrap the public utilities that make America great for a new washing machine when we could afford to keep the old?
[We bought a washing machine with our handouts from Uncle Sugarbush, by the way. We wanted to spend extra to get one made in the USA. We ended up settling on one that was assembled in the USA, and built by a USA-owned factory, from a small chain appliance store owned locally. The only wholly made in the USA one we could find didn't come in the kind of machine we wanted. We had to have a reasoned, subtle, thought-out, science-based process of determining who our money went to...that's the Liberal way. Before the washing machine, we went to a laundromat. By the way, we also bought an American Made dryer with those checks. It doesn't match the washer, but it WAS 100% made in the USA. ]
I am not, we are not, "Obama democrats." In fact, everyone I know is aware that I was perfectly willing to support Obama for president....in 2016. I felt that he was not experienced enough, and I felt that his 'No Drama Obama" persona would let the GOP roll over him. I was given a choice between Obama and batshit insane. I voted Obama. I am given the choice, again, between Obama and batshit insane, and I am probably still voting Obama. Obama is like my dryer...not the model I wanted, but the best option I had, and 100% made in America... I guess you can call us Clinton Liberals, or Cuomo Liberals, but that's not accurate. We're Americans without a party, under the big tent of the democrats, because the other option is insanity.
So after this half-hour of writing, which is all I can do most days, I come to what started me on this. The democrats don't want me. They know they can get me because my other option is tax-and-spend conservatives who favor big government loans to companies that turn around and claim to have 'built it' themselves (my view? If you built it yourself, you didn't need that loan, so we'll be taking the money back now, thanks). These republicans favor letting infrastructure fall down by not maintaining it, then spending more to replace it, all the while claiming infrastructure doesn't work. (Seriously, how stupid can you be? Our bridge that we refused to invest in and allowed to collapse collapsed because we refused to maintain it! This shows government doesn't work! Well, yeah, it doesn't work when you are trying to kill it, duh.)
The democrats can depend on me to vote for them because the other option is crazy, and the democrats demonstrate that they have me over the proverbial barrel by having their convention in a state that would GLADLY KILL ME.
I'm not exaggerating, actually. As long time followers and friends know, I'm dying slowly of an autoimmune lung disease, a disease so rare that it doesn't have a name. Right now, I'm at a stasis point where we give me drugs to keep my lungs from damage, and I'm so good about protecting my lungs and taking my pills that we actually manage to reverse some of the reversible damage. The problem is that every time I get a cold, instead of just coughing and hacking, I run the risk of developing more scar tissue in my lungs. Since I'm a never-smoker, and since I have worked as a professional singer, I have some of the strongest lungs around, which is one reason why we don't know how fast this is killing me. The last-gasp (ha ha) medical care for the end-stage of this is transplant, and one reason we treat me with aggressive therapy is that I've already refused transplant. I'm not even really sad about it. I think I've lived a pretty awesome life, and I know I've got a few years left (unless I develop pneumonia again, in which case all bets are off.) I would like those last few years to be lived in more comfort, and it looks like I'm stuck with poverty, but I've had an awesome kid grow to be an awesome adult, and I married the love of my life, and the things I do to prolong my life (stay inside when air quality isn't good, avoid the hell out of smokers and car exhaust, not scream even if I am furious, do lung 'stretching' breathing exercises for hours a day, watch what I eat, avoid the hell out of drugs and alcohol, stay on top of bloodtests, monitor my blood pressure [too low], and my blood sugar [too low] and my oxygen [way too low], monitor my platelets [too high], my cholesterol [better than most vegans], and my water intake [2 gallons a day] and my, uh, the other end of the spectrum [not going there], watch my weight [I'm weirdly supposed to be 50lbs lighter but have been told to NOT try to lose weight because most people with this are or end up underweight, and it used to be *75* extra pounds...], give up some of the raw foods I love because the drugs I'm on compromise my immune system [bye, sashimi, bye real caesar salad, bye tartare, etc.] avoid stress, pray [if I think it helps, and for me it does], meditate [if I think it helps and I think it does], not exercise but also exercise [I'm having a hard time with this one] and sometimes sob like a baby because it isn't fair and holding it in isn't healthy) are things I can live with. It is not easy, but I am pretty hard to kill. At about 3 years in with this, I still probably have less scar tissue in my lungs than anyone over the age of 18 reading this. I'm not allowed to work, or go far out of my house, but the other option is dead, so I can live with this.
Sorry for that diversion, every time I say I am dying of this disease and spend my time fighting it, people don't believe me. I literally have to take about 30 things into account deciding what I want for breakfast, everything I do has to be carefully planned...it's hard, but it's not terribly hard. It isn't easy, at least.
Well, geeze...now it's been an hour of writing.
So, my point. Let me see if I can find it. Oh, yes, the democrats, who can count on my vote because they are the only choice I have, are showing their 'respect' for that choice by having their convention in a state where the laws of the land could kill me. The points above are to show you why they have my vote, and why the laws could kill me, but let me clarify.
North Carolina.
I'm not a lesbian, but I'm married to one. I love saying that to conservatives, because I've actually studied human sexuality and am comfortable with mine. I am a Kinsey 3. I am the rarest, most awesomest, least studied of the human sexuality flavors. I don't fall in love with people's genders, I fall in love with people's people. I don't lust in my heart after the presence or absence of boobies, I lust in my heart over the whole package. It's not accurate to say I'm pansexual, because I know people who are, and there are gender flavors in the world that I don't respond to. People lacking all or most secondary sexual characteristics confuse my brain...I don't know why. To put it in terms others can understand, I can respond to man parts on a lady, or lady parts on a man, but I can't respond to no parts on an I'm not sure. I had a friend, several years back, who described hirself as just that. This friend thought it was funny as hell that I didn't have any response to hir attempts to hit on me (part of this is why we're no longer friends.) I honestly understood (I think) what it was to be gay or straight, then. So, instead of my body saying no way to men, or women, my body says no way to people it can't categorize as adults. If you have a waif-like, hairless, teenager body with no hips or boobs, with big, anime-girl eyes and protruding ribs, my brain says you're a kid even if you are 30, and that you should not hit on me until after puberty and several sandwiches. Most fashion models, for example, gross me out. Since they'd probably see me as a disgusting fatty fat, I guess it is fair. My sexuality, like my politics, does not fit on a little box, it takes a paragraph....and even in a paragraph, there will be people who are offended by it. (I'm not threatened by, and I don't dislike androgyny, it just has zero sexual response from me. It took me almost 6 months to realize an androgynous person was hitting on me. If there is a gender that doesn't work for you, it's exactly like that...exactly.)
So, I'm not a lesbian. It's not accurate to say I am, in sheer number of lovers in my life, men outnumber women, but in length of relationships, I've been with my wife almost half my life at this point. Sometimes I am angry with her or just unhappy, but that's part of marriage, some days you get frustrated, but when you total the sums at the end, you find in a good marriage that the good days far outnumber the bad, and the positive emotions are stronger than the negative. What a lot of people don't get is that when you and your spouse are different sexual orientations, just like when you and your spouse aren't the same IQ, or have different amounts of schooling, or make different amounts of money or come from different social classes, that can be a source of friction. About once a year we have a 2-3 hour fight over the fact that I'm not gay, and that's one reason I'm disclosing that. If the person I love now were to go away, there is a 50% chance that the person I would come to love (if any) in the future would be a guy, and no one would know by looking at me that I wasn't straight, so some people in my community view that my same-sex marriage is somehow lesser than their same-sex marriage. Imagine that, hard to believe, right?
The love of my life, the person I've been with for almost 20 years, the yin to my yang, the peanut butter to my jelly, the mint to my chocolate chip ice cream, is a woman.
That woman is the second best informed person about my medical condition. She knows the names of all the doctors and who prescribed what. She knows what I'm allergic to and what drugs could kill me. If I were to pass out, unconscious, which is unlikely but possible, she knows to check my pulse and give oxygen, and that if I smile it's a crooked smile, with dimples on one side, and that when I'm semi-conscious one of my eyelids droops from a damaged muscle I got as an infant...that it's not a stroke. She knows to get between the door and the hospital respiratory therapist when I'm hospitalized...albuterol doesn't make my condition better, it makes it worse, and jeopardizes my health. It's not asthma. I can beat any of you on a PFT any day. The oxygen just can't do anything once it's in my lungs. She knows my platelet count is off the chart and my cholesterol is low and that some fairly benign bloodthinners they give for protective benefits to suspected stroke and heart attack victims could, paradoxically, cause a bloodclot for me.
That woman knows I don't use recreational drugs, that my current weight is the result of having almost no thyroid left but that I can't be given artificial sweeteners and I'm not diabetic-I'm hypoglycemic. She knows my blood pressure is low, but that steroids will make it skyrocket. That woman knows the medicine I'm on for my tremor is also a blood pressure medicine, and that if they pull me off it because my blood pressure is low and I clearly 'don't need it,' it won't affect my blood pressure at all, but it will cause my tremor to become incredibly severe, even if I am asleep. (This actually happened at a hospital here, they thought I was having some sort of withdrawal...I was, beta blocker withdrawal.) She knows that the only thing my body can't do is homeostasis, the easiest thing for most animals to do.
That woman is my legally recognized, married in my state, marriage certificate holding wife. She also holds my healthcare power of attorney, and every similar thing that we can afford. Since I'm no longer permitted to leave the house freely, I have nearly no money, and I can't afford to get a new set of documents for everywhere I could theoretically go if I managed to be in remission. In North Carolina, the law tells the hospital that they are free to ignore her, because my marriage is less valid than someone married in their state. Our relationship is a non-relationship to them, and therefore even the healthcare proxy and other out-of-state paperwork is suspect, and one administrator in the hospital who decided to be an asshole would have legal reasons to push his agenda and punish the dykes. The law is wrong, and the vast majority of people who work in a hospital would not think about not listening to someone clearly informed and on the ball about an unconscious woman, but the law says that they could, and such a law could result in my death. That death could happen in a matter of minutes, before a judge could be summoned to rule or the cops called or anything. It could happen in the moment the person treating me decides to not listen to "the dyke." One homophobe, one choice, and my life is done.
And that is where the democrats are holding their convention. In the state that could kill me with their patently illegal laws. Sure, after I died my wife would sue the hell out of them and win, but I would still be dead...and, even though I'm not dead, there is not diddly I can do about it. My other choice is to vote for the crazy people who would kill me on purpose, not the careless people who'd accidentally let me die.
Thanks, democrats. Thanks for nothing.
The republicans in the United States right now are absolutely, certifiably, not operating in the realm of reality. They have taken batshit crazy to a new level. From candidates who not merely talk to their deity, but take dictation from Him, to people who think that our president is responsible for the wacky use of the filibuster, to people who claim the President wants to take our guns when he's been the most gun-friendly president in my voting age son's lifetime...the republicans are crazy. In fact, the republicans are so crazy that I (who once had drug-induced mania from a prescription) don't want to call them crazy because it insults people with genuine mental illness. The republicans, right now, are so distanced from reality that all the sane republicans I know preface their description of being republican with "I don't agree with so-and-so's crazy comments on rape/guns/god/Obama's birth certificate."
I hope I've made it clear I do not respect the current republican ticket's opinion on much of anything. I am in a blue state, in a blue district, and I am probably voting Obama. There is a small chance I might give my vote to a 3rd party candidate, but probably not. I will probably vote Obama on a 3rd party line, however. This is something people in other states don't have an option of doing. The party I originally joined as a young voter has almost no power in New York State anymore, and I became a democrat, officially, because while I agree with most of the Green Party, I believe it is wrong on Nuclear Power and it's GMO stance is so broadly and stupidly written that it would accidentally outlaw everything we eat, and while I agree with a lot of the Working Families Party, I think it was invented to kill my own political party when we didn't say how high whenever EVERY UNION says jump. (Not all unions are created equal.) The lies about what a Liberal is killed my real party, and I can't do diddly about it, but the democrats welcomed us (sort of) and since even the chewy red center of New York State (where I was born) agrees with what our party stood/stands for: Equal rights, equal pay, fair work laws, fair healthcare laws, etc., I can live with it.
I won't say people don't lie about what the Liberal Party is/was. You can read the platform here. It was formed in part to fight communism, but people call us communists. It promotes the idea that your doctor, not your government or your tax bracket, should determine how your healthcare is handled. It says your kid should get a good education if you choose public schools, and if your kid makes a mistake and gets arrested, he should face a fair family court system. It is literally the only party in New York State that gets hydrofracking right, saying that instead of curling up in a ball and saying "no, no, no, no, no" we should have rules that protect water, air and people in place before hydrofracking is allowed. The Liberal Party IS the party of subtle, reasoned, thoughtful political views based on science, math, and reason...after all, since people lie about the very meaning of the word Liberal, no one is going to use the word unless they already have the ability to listen to more than soundbytes.
I was asked why I was not a democrat (before I was one) and I said something that is still true today: The democratic party doesn't want me. The democratic party makes it very clear they don't want me. They are happy to crush reasoned, subtle, thoughtful political views for Jingoism and pandering to an American electorate that has been duped into thinking they are center-right when they are all center left...but let me give you an idea of the difference between a liberal and a center-right democrat with two things that happened:
George W. Bush wrote me a check. Not literally, although he liked to take all the credit for it. My neighbor at the time, the sort of woman my Arkansas-bred Mother in Law would say "well, bless her heart," about, asked me if I had received my check yet, and what I was going to do with it. I was obviously not pleased about it, and I said something along the lines of this: "Sending this check kills the economy. We need to save this money for a rainy day, it might feel good now, but it won't when we're all jobless and homeless."
My neighbor thought I was joking. She was jobless and homeless a few years later. I want to make a quick diversion here. Republicans say democrats are the party of hand-outs and spending that kills the economy. When I say they are removed from reality, this is what I mean. This was not a democratic handout, this handout was from a republican, the party of 'gimme, gimme.'
The other thing that happened happened a few days ago. My wife went to the library and it was closed. They'd cut the hours back to three days a week, and I was sitting there not paying enough attention when she came back and told me and I responded "your lower taxes at work." Since it was during the RNC, basically my wife said something along the line of "I know someone not voting Romney" in a playful way. It got me thinking about how a republican might view that library-a waste of space, a waste of money and a waste of time. I see it as a waste of time, money and space for it to be sitting there *closed.* My neighborhood is pretty poor, it's blue-collar, and yes, many of my neighbors work in the few factories left around here, yet that library has people in it every time it is open. Many of the kids come in to that library in the middle of summer just because it has air conditioning and they don't. Some of those kids seeking the cool sit down at a computer or pick up a book because they are bored...and some of those kids never put the books down, afterwards.
I don't think a democrat would respond to the library being closed with disgust that taxes aren't being apportioned properly and probably could stand to be a few cents higher to support the library (I would prefer, personally, that they go to things like libraries first, and a shiny new van for the SWAT team second, rather than raise taxes, but that's okay, we don't have to agree on everything.) I don't think most democrats responded to the hand-outs of tax and spend conservatives like George W. Bush with disgust and knowing exactly what that kind of crap led to. A Liberal, however, does respond like that, because the liberal position is the position of worrying about what we're leaving to our kids and grandkids. Do we scrap the public utilities that make America great for a new washing machine when we could afford to keep the old?
[We bought a washing machine with our handouts from Uncle Sugarbush, by the way. We wanted to spend extra to get one made in the USA. We ended up settling on one that was assembled in the USA, and built by a USA-owned factory, from a small chain appliance store owned locally. The only wholly made in the USA one we could find didn't come in the kind of machine we wanted. We had to have a reasoned, subtle, thought-out, science-based process of determining who our money went to...that's the Liberal way. Before the washing machine, we went to a laundromat. By the way, we also bought an American Made dryer with those checks. It doesn't match the washer, but it WAS 100% made in the USA. ]
I am not, we are not, "Obama democrats." In fact, everyone I know is aware that I was perfectly willing to support Obama for president....in 2016. I felt that he was not experienced enough, and I felt that his 'No Drama Obama" persona would let the GOP roll over him. I was given a choice between Obama and batshit insane. I voted Obama. I am given the choice, again, between Obama and batshit insane, and I am probably still voting Obama. Obama is like my dryer...not the model I wanted, but the best option I had, and 100% made in America... I guess you can call us Clinton Liberals, or Cuomo Liberals, but that's not accurate. We're Americans without a party, under the big tent of the democrats, because the other option is insanity.
So after this half-hour of writing, which is all I can do most days, I come to what started me on this. The democrats don't want me. They know they can get me because my other option is tax-and-spend conservatives who favor big government loans to companies that turn around and claim to have 'built it' themselves (my view? If you built it yourself, you didn't need that loan, so we'll be taking the money back now, thanks). These republicans favor letting infrastructure fall down by not maintaining it, then spending more to replace it, all the while claiming infrastructure doesn't work. (Seriously, how stupid can you be? Our bridge that we refused to invest in and allowed to collapse collapsed because we refused to maintain it! This shows government doesn't work! Well, yeah, it doesn't work when you are trying to kill it, duh.)
The democrats can depend on me to vote for them because the other option is crazy, and the democrats demonstrate that they have me over the proverbial barrel by having their convention in a state that would GLADLY KILL ME.
I'm not exaggerating, actually. As long time followers and friends know, I'm dying slowly of an autoimmune lung disease, a disease so rare that it doesn't have a name. Right now, I'm at a stasis point where we give me drugs to keep my lungs from damage, and I'm so good about protecting my lungs and taking my pills that we actually manage to reverse some of the reversible damage. The problem is that every time I get a cold, instead of just coughing and hacking, I run the risk of developing more scar tissue in my lungs. Since I'm a never-smoker, and since I have worked as a professional singer, I have some of the strongest lungs around, which is one reason why we don't know how fast this is killing me. The last-gasp (ha ha) medical care for the end-stage of this is transplant, and one reason we treat me with aggressive therapy is that I've already refused transplant. I'm not even really sad about it. I think I've lived a pretty awesome life, and I know I've got a few years left (unless I develop pneumonia again, in which case all bets are off.) I would like those last few years to be lived in more comfort, and it looks like I'm stuck with poverty, but I've had an awesome kid grow to be an awesome adult, and I married the love of my life, and the things I do to prolong my life (stay inside when air quality isn't good, avoid the hell out of smokers and car exhaust, not scream even if I am furious, do lung 'stretching' breathing exercises for hours a day, watch what I eat, avoid the hell out of drugs and alcohol, stay on top of bloodtests, monitor my blood pressure [too low], and my blood sugar [too low] and my oxygen [way too low], monitor my platelets [too high], my cholesterol [better than most vegans], and my water intake [2 gallons a day] and my, uh, the other end of the spectrum [not going there], watch my weight [I'm weirdly supposed to be 50lbs lighter but have been told to NOT try to lose weight because most people with this are or end up underweight, and it used to be *75* extra pounds...], give up some of the raw foods I love because the drugs I'm on compromise my immune system [bye, sashimi, bye real caesar salad, bye tartare, etc.] avoid stress, pray [if I think it helps, and for me it does], meditate [if I think it helps and I think it does], not exercise but also exercise [I'm having a hard time with this one] and sometimes sob like a baby because it isn't fair and holding it in isn't healthy) are things I can live with. It is not easy, but I am pretty hard to kill. At about 3 years in with this, I still probably have less scar tissue in my lungs than anyone over the age of 18 reading this. I'm not allowed to work, or go far out of my house, but the other option is dead, so I can live with this.
Sorry for that diversion, every time I say I am dying of this disease and spend my time fighting it, people don't believe me. I literally have to take about 30 things into account deciding what I want for breakfast, everything I do has to be carefully planned...it's hard, but it's not terribly hard. It isn't easy, at least.
Well, geeze...now it's been an hour of writing.
So, my point. Let me see if I can find it. Oh, yes, the democrats, who can count on my vote because they are the only choice I have, are showing their 'respect' for that choice by having their convention in a state where the laws of the land could kill me. The points above are to show you why they have my vote, and why the laws could kill me, but let me clarify.
North Carolina.
I'm not a lesbian, but I'm married to one. I love saying that to conservatives, because I've actually studied human sexuality and am comfortable with mine. I am a Kinsey 3. I am the rarest, most awesomest, least studied of the human sexuality flavors. I don't fall in love with people's genders, I fall in love with people's people. I don't lust in my heart after the presence or absence of boobies, I lust in my heart over the whole package. It's not accurate to say I'm pansexual, because I know people who are, and there are gender flavors in the world that I don't respond to. People lacking all or most secondary sexual characteristics confuse my brain...I don't know why. To put it in terms others can understand, I can respond to man parts on a lady, or lady parts on a man, but I can't respond to no parts on an I'm not sure. I had a friend, several years back, who described hirself as just that. This friend thought it was funny as hell that I didn't have any response to hir attempts to hit on me (part of this is why we're no longer friends.) I honestly understood (I think) what it was to be gay or straight, then. So, instead of my body saying no way to men, or women, my body says no way to people it can't categorize as adults. If you have a waif-like, hairless, teenager body with no hips or boobs, with big, anime-girl eyes and protruding ribs, my brain says you're a kid even if you are 30, and that you should not hit on me until after puberty and several sandwiches. Most fashion models, for example, gross me out. Since they'd probably see me as a disgusting fatty fat, I guess it is fair. My sexuality, like my politics, does not fit on a little box, it takes a paragraph....and even in a paragraph, there will be people who are offended by it. (I'm not threatened by, and I don't dislike androgyny, it just has zero sexual response from me. It took me almost 6 months to realize an androgynous person was hitting on me. If there is a gender that doesn't work for you, it's exactly like that...exactly.)
So, I'm not a lesbian. It's not accurate to say I am, in sheer number of lovers in my life, men outnumber women, but in length of relationships, I've been with my wife almost half my life at this point. Sometimes I am angry with her or just unhappy, but that's part of marriage, some days you get frustrated, but when you total the sums at the end, you find in a good marriage that the good days far outnumber the bad, and the positive emotions are stronger than the negative. What a lot of people don't get is that when you and your spouse are different sexual orientations, just like when you and your spouse aren't the same IQ, or have different amounts of schooling, or make different amounts of money or come from different social classes, that can be a source of friction. About once a year we have a 2-3 hour fight over the fact that I'm not gay, and that's one reason I'm disclosing that. If the person I love now were to go away, there is a 50% chance that the person I would come to love (if any) in the future would be a guy, and no one would know by looking at me that I wasn't straight, so some people in my community view that my same-sex marriage is somehow lesser than their same-sex marriage. Imagine that, hard to believe, right?
The love of my life, the person I've been with for almost 20 years, the yin to my yang, the peanut butter to my jelly, the mint to my chocolate chip ice cream, is a woman.
That woman is the second best informed person about my medical condition. She knows the names of all the doctors and who prescribed what. She knows what I'm allergic to and what drugs could kill me. If I were to pass out, unconscious, which is unlikely but possible, she knows to check my pulse and give oxygen, and that if I smile it's a crooked smile, with dimples on one side, and that when I'm semi-conscious one of my eyelids droops from a damaged muscle I got as an infant...that it's not a stroke. She knows to get between the door and the hospital respiratory therapist when I'm hospitalized...albuterol doesn't make my condition better, it makes it worse, and jeopardizes my health. It's not asthma. I can beat any of you on a PFT any day. The oxygen just can't do anything once it's in my lungs. She knows my platelet count is off the chart and my cholesterol is low and that some fairly benign bloodthinners they give for protective benefits to suspected stroke and heart attack victims could, paradoxically, cause a bloodclot for me.
That woman knows I don't use recreational drugs, that my current weight is the result of having almost no thyroid left but that I can't be given artificial sweeteners and I'm not diabetic-I'm hypoglycemic. She knows my blood pressure is low, but that steroids will make it skyrocket. That woman knows the medicine I'm on for my tremor is also a blood pressure medicine, and that if they pull me off it because my blood pressure is low and I clearly 'don't need it,' it won't affect my blood pressure at all, but it will cause my tremor to become incredibly severe, even if I am asleep. (This actually happened at a hospital here, they thought I was having some sort of withdrawal...I was, beta blocker withdrawal.) She knows that the only thing my body can't do is homeostasis, the easiest thing for most animals to do.
That woman is my legally recognized, married in my state, marriage certificate holding wife. She also holds my healthcare power of attorney, and every similar thing that we can afford. Since I'm no longer permitted to leave the house freely, I have nearly no money, and I can't afford to get a new set of documents for everywhere I could theoretically go if I managed to be in remission. In North Carolina, the law tells the hospital that they are free to ignore her, because my marriage is less valid than someone married in their state. Our relationship is a non-relationship to them, and therefore even the healthcare proxy and other out-of-state paperwork is suspect, and one administrator in the hospital who decided to be an asshole would have legal reasons to push his agenda and punish the dykes. The law is wrong, and the vast majority of people who work in a hospital would not think about not listening to someone clearly informed and on the ball about an unconscious woman, but the law says that they could, and such a law could result in my death. That death could happen in a matter of minutes, before a judge could be summoned to rule or the cops called or anything. It could happen in the moment the person treating me decides to not listen to "the dyke." One homophobe, one choice, and my life is done.
And that is where the democrats are holding their convention. In the state that could kill me with their patently illegal laws. Sure, after I died my wife would sue the hell out of them and win, but I would still be dead...and, even though I'm not dead, there is not diddly I can do about it. My other choice is to vote for the crazy people who would kill me on purpose, not the careless people who'd accidentally let me die.
Thanks, democrats. Thanks for nothing.