Where We Agree

I attended diversity training again a couple days ago.

This is about the fourth class I've attended in about 2 years. No, I don't keep on slapping the secretary on the behind for a job well done. It's relevant to one of my volunteer responsibilities where I interact with a whole host of other cultures. I have indeed made some mistakes along the way; there's a lot to learn.

One thing we had to do was break into the groups which we felt society would pigeonhole us into, and answer a couple questions:

1. What do I never want to be called again? (I'll just put my contributions, so as not to get near another's privacy):
--fag
--faggot
(With cruel intent. If there is no doubt the intent is benign and is just meant to be, say, a friendly jab between friends, I have no problem, but others will disagree.)

But then I realized there's now a bunch of new words for "fag" that get to me just the same, if not more nowadays:
--anti-family
--anti-marriage
--anti-traditional marriage

These are the PC words our opponents use today, sometimes directly and sometimes indirectly by advertising themselves in their fight against us as "pro-family" and "pro-traditional marriage" or as "defending traditional marriage".

Anyway, that realization caused me to opine on what unbelievably horrible people homosexuals are, yesterday. We're terrible: uncivil, sore losers, religiously intolerant, disrespectful of the rights of others, and a lot more. I've heard gays called all that recently... I kind of miss the good old days of "faggot" ;-).

2. What do I never want done to me again?
--I never want to lose legal rights for my family again; this one hurt more than the others added together and it's still negatively affecting me, physically even.
--I want to never be threatened with bodily harm again, especially with my kids there.
--I never want to work under a boss' anti-gay bigotry again.

3. How do I want to be treated?
This was the point of this exercise. Everyone's answers to #1 and #2 were all very different. But here, from the woman's group to the LDS group to the Hispanic group, everyone's answers were the same, almost word for word.

We all want to be treated "how others would want themselves to be treated". We all wanted to be treated "fairly" and with "r-e-s-p-e-c-t".

The LDS group wrote down exactly what the GLBT group wrote down.

So why, in practice, is this so difficult? I really do want their families to have every right and responsibility ours does, no more and no less. I want them to be able to decide in their own homes and in their own churches what a marriage is. I don't want to publicly label their unions non-ideal or their children as deficient.

I heard the Golden Rule on their list and it was actually kind of jarring, though I know it shouldn't be. I just don't understand why it doesn't go both ways, when we both know how the other would want to be treated and how we'd want to be treated. It's frustrating.

We were asked to make a single goal to change ourselves as we left, and write it down and keep it in our pocket. I'll admit, such symbolic acts strike me as silly. But I did it, and in my wallet right now is a piece of paper telling me that I will drop my resentment towards the LDS organization. The tough part is going to be doing that while still being denied and fighting for those answers to #3. It seems new wounds are being opened each news cycle and many LDS are still fighting to take away even meager rights for our families (I'm looking at you, Mrs. Ruzicka).

Eh, I'll start with my unfair resentment :-).