Carol and I ran up in the foothills this morning. Frozen sandy trails thread up along ridge tops for miles. We found ourselves in snow, brilliant white in the sun, cold on our tennis shoes.
Rough week trying to decide where to go from here as human rights issues appear so clearly to be slipping backward in Idaho.
There is irony in all this. Bryan Fischer says my election to the legislature means there is no problem with discrimination in Idaho. I had to laugh and then cry this morning on the trail running behind Carol on the frozen ground because that is so much like saying that, because we elected a fine man who happens to be black as our 44th president of the United States, that it follows logically that there is no longer racism or racist people in the United States, that we can just take black people out of Idaho’s Human Rights Act or federal anti-discrimination laws because no American will ever again perpetuate acts of racism, violence or discrimination against black people in schools or businesses or anyplace in our nation ever again.
....
So to that end I am going to ask a favor.
If you care that gay people are ever fired from our jobs, denied raises
or promotions, kicked out of our apartments, are harassed as teens and
made unwelcome in school classrooms anywhere in this state, please do
something about it this year.
1. Email your friends these two links and ask them to help.
Support your gay friends: http://www.4idaho.org/HumanRights/
POST THIS WINDOW SIGN: http://www.4idaho.org/vote/OurGayFriends-WindowSign.pdf
2. Post a “Protect Our Gay Friends” Window sign in your car, house or workplace.
3. Let YOUR three state legislators know that you feel it is time to end discrimination against gay people in employment, housing and education.
4. Write a letter to the editor.
5. Get involved this year when there is a chance to help an organization on this issue. (Show up, donate, take action.)
.....
It kills me that my work on sentencing or health care may suffer because it is not really the role of a legislator to be a community organizer. It kills me that some of my colleagues have said I have to make a choice, be a gay activist or have no future in politics in Idaho. Really I have no choice.
I think of the straight people I meet who clearly care and want to help.
The burly firefighter who told me he buttonholed Senator Fulcher at a recent reception to say firmly but politely how upset he was as a constituent that Fulcher had opposed the Human Rights act. I think of the man who came to me to talk about health care issues and, as he was leaving, mentioned how wrong it was that some radio talk show hosts were say such awful things about me and gay people.
I think of my friend Emilie Jackson-Edney and her wonderful conversations about gender identity with Senator Coiner.
I think of Mountain Goat, the blogger in Canyon County whose partner fears being fired from her job. I know this woman only by her pen name and her posts and I picture her these days settled next to a radio watching the hate stream out day after day because she knows someone has to say that this is wrong. She is so right. How can we as a state stand by when others incite violence and hate. Why are we not outraged? Or maybe we all are outraged and we don’t know how to express it.
Well, I’m offering some ways to express it. And I’m asking for your help. Because I can’t do this alone. The tiny cluster of under-funded, human rights oriented, non-profit groups who have worked on these issues for over a decade and have three staff between them, they can’t do this alone.
We all need your help this year because if we don’t have your help things will keep getting worse, not better. And like you, I just can’t bear that.
