March 28

Somewhere along the way here I will be a hypocrite.  You will see it when it comes along (or I will highlight it for you)

I am very naive'.  I believe that the world, at least the part that spans the Atlantic to the Pacific and two other sections, is maturing, growing, learning.  My belief has been shattered.  

You see I think that everyone who inhabits this world is equal.  I am one of the very few who do.  Let's talk entitlement and privilege.  I feel I have walked among those who follow that path, the ones who see others not as just different (in a good way) but lesser or even non-human.  Yes, my friends I was part of the elite, the top, the head of the food chain.  I was a white, Teutonic, middle aged, professional male.  I know it is hard to understand why anyone would give that up.  I could shop almost anywhere.  I could drink where I wanted to drink.  I could get the attention of the waitstaff and NOT be placed in a corner, usually next to the kitchen.  I could go to a car dealership and not be patronized.  Yes, it was wonderful and I enjoyed that game.  There, I said I was a hypocrite, because I was like that and probably still harbor a little.  But I want to make that right.  In my case I have truly been born again. No I didn't find YOUR God...My God was never lost.  I found the smiling faces that hide behind their "truth".

I am now part of three different "lesser" (according to more than a few of my "friends" in other parts of this country) groups.  I am part of the LGBT community or the gays as we get called.  Even though I may not be gay (we will have to discuss that in a later blog) but I am and embrace that.  I have many many friends who love partners who have the same genitalia.  Doesn't bother me because, they don't tend to flash said genitalia in public or have sex on the tables.  I am a transwoman (please take note the modifier there of woman because that will become important in a minute).  That is an even smaller minority than the LGBT community.  And I am now part of the LARGEST "minority" of all.  Women.   I am still professional, albeit evidently less so in the eyes of some.  I am unfortunately still middle aged although that moniker will soon be taken away also as I enter "senior" years.  My religious beliefs haven't changed with my gender.  I am still a Theist. (some of you may want to look that up...note that is a hypocritical snarky comment). 

The point of all that is I have "new" eyes.  I pray that I never had the rose colored glasses of some people but that maybe I was a bit myopic.  I thought that in this great "melting pot" (please forgive me here for quoting tha almighty Wiki but "In the 18th and 19th centuries, the metaphor of a "crucible" or "(s)melting pot" was used to describe the fusion of different nationalities, ethnicities and cultures. It was used together with concepts of the United States as an ideal republic and a "city upon a hill" or new promised land.^{[citation needed]} It was a metaphor for the idealized process of immigration and colonization by which different nationalities, cultures and "races" (a term that could encompass nationality, ethnicity and race) were to blend into a new, virtuous community, and it was connected to utopian visions of the emergence of an American "new man." That is how I wanted to see the world.  That isn't how the world is.  People still fight just to get on the same level as others who get placed there because of their looks or background or gender.  I knew it still existed but held the belief that we were progressing.  I was wrong.  And all it took was a simple change in name on an online forum.  First lesson was that many men still see women as sexual objects whose purpose to to serve them.  Well having been schooled in the ways of guys, I didn't like that much.  Still don't.

But recent legislation in many areas of the country are making prejudice legal.  Going in the face of what our forefathers must have envisioned for the country.  A country who has made inroads although it has not completed the task to make all citizens equal (Ah ha!  There is one person out there who is saying "Communism"...I disagree, it is freedom and equality).  Here is the gist of all this.  I see the country passing laws to PREVENT someone from taking advantage of another person, not laws to keep people down or allow one person to mistreat another.  I don't really care what body, color, language, religion they have.  If you want to call everyone being equal communism, then we need to say the opposite is a dictatorship, an autocracy.  That is what will happen when people are subdivided into disagreeing factions. (It already is with money driving what should be a utopian society)

Why would any civilized person refuse service to a law abiding person?  We all have our quirks right? We all don't fit the same mold.  How boring is that you would marry your mirror image...no wait that would be gay right? So this week, states have said it is OK for a business to refuse to serve a (place your favorite hated group here).  Germany did that in 1935 by the way...for some reason Americans found that reprehensible...OK back to the story.  Now lets just say green people cannot get cakes from the blue baker.  You may find that OK after all blue and green make turquoise and we all know turquoise is a sign of lower intelligence.  But now the blue baker thinks, I won't serve pastels, only watercolors because they stay on the paper better.  So no green pastels will be used...and so on.  I know it sounds silly but really whenever I see anyone discriminate against anyone else I ask myself a question.  I change the one word in the statement to something I am.  "we don't serve _______s"  We don't serve middle aged white male professionals.  You laugh but think about it.  They are the majority here.  In other parts of the world not so much.  So in those places you will become the target of hate.  In my world now that statement is "We don't serve transwomen here".  Even if not said there could be a physicality used and my life can be in danger.  No one's life should be in danger over who they are.

We are all one big group here.  Instead of fighting each other we need to try and make the world a safer place in general.  I am a human.  That is the bottom line.  And if we do meet our God, and I suspect that  said God is probably the same entity no matter where you are just has different nick names, I suspect that the GOD I will meet will look upon me and say "That'll do.  Ya done the best you could and I am proud of you."  If that god says "You blew it...you know I hated blue watercolor bakers"  then I will step away.

Love you all, you are all my friends unless you decide that you are better than I am or that you think I am going to hell because I won't play your game of belonging to a buffet religion.  Take me as I am.  Treat me as an equal, be my friend, don't judge me, I won't judge you.  We are all on the path together and there will be parts where we need to help each other.  Let's make that path smoother.  Life is short and hard enough without adding obstacles