After Tennessee's governor signed a law banning local LGBT discrimination ordinances, I was really pissed at the South. How can this large part of America resist social change and be so backwards?, I thought. Well, there are a lot of reasons for this that I won't go into now.
What I feeling was a tremendous amount of anger and frustration with Tennessee, its business community and citizens. Rather than denying that or amplifying it, for me the best course of venture is to sit with that feeling when I can, and then wisely choose my next course of right action. From what I can tell, Lincoln did this and Obama does it too. They managed their emotions for the public good, and do not make decisions when they are angry.
The really ironic thing last night is that I came across this video of the TV show "What would you do?" which recently filmed in a small rural town in Texas. Two actresses posing a lesbian couple with two young kids are verbally attacked for being gay by another actress who is playing the role of an intolerant waitress. The people in the restaurant don't know that this is a set-up to see how they react to drama. The bottom-line, half of the people in this deep South restaurant came to the aid of the lesbian couple while, when the show was filmed in more liberal New York state, only a fraction of the people stood up for the lesbian couple. Mea culpa.
So I have to forgive myself for my judgments as well as the South for being so conservative, and I will continue to be a passionate and fierce advocate for LGBT equality and other forms of human rights.
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