The 2014 Winter Olympics being held in Sochi, Russia has
helped again to bring to the forefront serious issues with official Russian
position on the treatment of gay and lesbian people. The laws and even more serious, the attitude
of law makers and police towards gays and lesbians is promoting hatred to an
unbelievable and appalling level. The
following is a link to a compilation video posted by one of these hate
groups. You may have already seen it. I must warn you I not only cried but became
physically ill.
There is one part in which you see a rather small man being
severely abused and his hands are trembling so badly with fear I become angry
all over again just thinking about it. I
try really hard not to be so full of rage and hate and to want to do to them
what they are doing to others. But no
matter how good it would feel momentarily, it would inevitably make me no
better than them.
With the Super Bowl hype and the annual parade of
commercials, I heard some surprise rumblings had occurred about some of the
advertisements. The one with Cheerios,
which was a follow-up to the original with the little girl piling Cheerios on
her sleeping father’s chest so he would have a healthy heart, apparently
stirred up issues involving mixed race marriages. My first reaction was, “What are they talking
about?”
I am very happy to say, I never noticed they were a mixed
race couple! Go figure. I just thought, as commercials go, it was
very cute. But, even after watching and
realizing it was in fact a mixed race couple, my next thought was, “So what?”
Also, there was apparently a big uproar about the Coke
commercial, maybe even two of them, that involved different people in different
languages. I really don’t get that one
as Coke was simply playing up their original theme of “I’d like to buy the
world a Coke….” Makes perfect sense to
me. Again what is up with the issue of
other nationalities, races and languages?
If all of this bombarding us last week was not enough, the
right wing French decided to announce the evils of homosexuality and that
homosexuals should never be allowed
to be parents. Combining this with the
other events, causes me to pause and wonder if humanity is sliding backwards.
When I look at the richness and diversity in my life, I am
so very thankful. I have family and friends
who pretty much run the entire spectrum of race, nationality, gender, sexual
orientation, religion, etc. I have
always found diversity to be of great interest to me and not something to
fear. To learn about others and in some
way experience their culture or world helps you grow, to understand how very small
our world is and how you are not the “norm”.
In fact, none of us are the norm.
Many years ago when I live in Tulsa (yes, as in Oklahoma),
one of my favorite places to visit in the summertime was a rose garden attached
to a wonderful park near a section of Tulsa called Utica Square. The rose garden was from one of the old oil
mansions donated to the city. In this
rose garden, there were giant roses, small roses, heavily perfumed roses,
thorny roses, roses of all colors, mixed roses, etc. I used to think how very much like the world
this rose garden is with its diversity and yet so very beautiful because it was
full of so many different types of roses.
Each was unique and begged to be explored.
If Nature, or God, or Allah, or Jehovah, or evolution, or
whatever you wish to call the force that causes us and all life to exist can
create roses of a vast and beautiful array, why is it so complicated and
fearful to believe that force can also create a beautiful and vast array of us?
Rage against the injustice people. Do not be part of the silent majority. Your uniqueness may be next.
Namaste
“Intolerance is itself
a form of violence and an obstacle to the growth of a true democratic spirit.” –
Mahatma Gandhi
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