Dear Blog,
Evan is coming in five days and sixteen hours.
WHY DOES WAITING FOR FIVE DAYS SEEM WORSE THAN WAITING FOR A MONTH?
Signed,
Missing my boyfriend. Sheeesh.
P.S. I have come to the conclusion, over the past couple of weeks, that I am surrounded by a lot of people who haven't had (or at least don't seem to have had) much exposure to the outside of the white, upper-middle class, American experience. I have found myself increasingly grateful for experiences in my life that, at the times they occured, were either ill-receieved or else just unrecognized as being important to my own personal worldview. There have been experiences in my life as mundane as attending a high school that was pretty much as multiracial as it gets, to having close friends deal in an array of different ways with homosexuality, to summer reading assignments that forced me into learning a little bit about other people (namely Muslims.)
Here's when my "P.S." becomes the meat of the post. Ooops. Don't say you're surprised.
Last week, I spent my Thursday morning sitting in a political science lab. We were discussing an article that had been published in the...darn. Wanna say it was the Wall Street Journal, but it might have been the NYT. Anyway, it was written by a non-LDS man about the discrepancies between our (meaning "Americans'") reaction to the recent controversial (and intentionally offensive) movie which portrays the prophet Mohammad (PBUH. I'll be correct) in a very unflattering manner- and the reaction of many Americans to the Book of Mormon musical.
In discussing the article, the following issue was raised: why didn't Mormons react the way that Muslims have?
There are lots of reasons- one being that the Book of Mormon musical is pretty much understood to be an object of humor, rather than direct offense- no matter how offensive it IS, I don't think Mormons have perceived it as any kind of real attack on us as a culture, whereas the Mohammad film was absolutely directed at giving offense and making a negative statement. Additionally, for the musical to even be on the same playing field as the film, I think we would have to exchange Joseph Smith for the Savior Jesus Christ- and
then we might better understand why the Muslims felt so upset about it.
However, neither of these- nor anything remotely close in intelligent thought- came from the mouth of my lab-mate. Oh, people. I can't even type it without wanting to yell at him.
A few rows over, some guy raises his hand and in this ridiculously pretentious tone, he said:
No lie.
"Well. The Muslims reacted like that because they just didn't have anything better to do. Here in America, we had to go to work...we had to go to school... we were preoccupied with other things."
Really?
Along the same vein, Darian shared with me an experience from her family life class. Her professor put up a headline- just a headline- and asked the members of the class to comment on their feelings about it.
The headline: "Children Raised by Lesbians Perform Better."
Feelings reported by the class:
- "Horrified."
- "Disgusted"
- "Sorry...for that child, because (s)he will never experience a real family."
This is not a happy thing, blog-sters. It is not a noble thing; it is not a "right" thing. To those fellow students who were probably acting out of the notion that they were defending religious beliefs (as, undoubtedly, some of them were)- is there ever a time when it is appropriate, and when it does not make our Heavenly Father pretty sad and pretty disappointed in us- to look at another human being that is doing the best they can with what they have been given, and say, "disgusting?"
I don't know what it's like to be gay. I
do know how badly I want to be a mom someday, and how excited I am to be able to have a loving relationship with my husband and children. I don't know how well that child will perform on standardized tests, with two moms instead of a mom and a dad. I
do know that the process for lesbians to adopt is long and difficult, and that children of lesbians therefore have a pretty good chance of being wanted, loved, and cared for much more than they were pre-adoption. I don't know how Heavenly Father helps gay and lesbian people to feel of His love. I
do know that He loves them- and that He would not point his finger at his own creation- at his own daughters- and say, "disgusting." He would not do that.
I don't know everything, but I do know that it never hurts to try and look at someone else the way He does.
And..as far as that kid in poli sci is concerned... it never hurts to liiiike...
read a book, read the paper, watch the news, and/or give established societies credit for doing more than twiddling their thumbs and staging uprisings. Yeah.
Goodnight.
TBF
