[Vision2020] A Start

[Melynda Huskey]

Tom and Carl and Dick, and the various folks they've quoted, all suggest that we need to find common ground, allow the President to lead us, get ourselves together.  For some people, maybe that's possible.  For me, looking at 11 successful anti-gay initiatives around the country supported by a President who wants the U.S. Constitution amended to harm my family, it's hard to imagine how that might work.  The President, and most of his supporters, have made it painfully clear that they don't want me, and Joan, and our kids, and the other millions of gay and lesbian citizens and their families, in their world.  In fact, they used those anti-gay initiatives as a way to turn out voters.  Gay and lesbian families were demonized to get white Evangelical voters to the polls.  Is it surprising that we're not too eager to get in line behind the men who sold us down the river?

Luckily, I'm not discouraged.  We're not going anywhere.  This is my hometown, even when it descends into a nightmarish imitation of national hatemongering and dirty tricks--and what a pitiful spectacle, to see Barrett Schroeder, whom I have met with pleasure at a local Republican fundraiser after helping his dad beat back a weirdo challenger in the primary, accusing Shirley Ringo of evil attendance policies, or Tom Trail, for whom I have had a great deal of respect, hawking his Christianity as a qualification for public office.  How awful to know that someone tried to discredit the MCA by making threatening phone calls apparently on its behalf.  This *is* my country, whether it wants me or not.  And pretty soon, when our Middle Eastern wars claim the lives of too many U.S. men and women, when more of us are poorer than ever before, when Social Security is gone, our national debt is unimaginably large, and we're divided by class, by race, by religion, by language, by sexual orientation . . . something *will* change.

I can wait.  And in the meantime, I can try to clean up Moscow a little, and see if we can't get some hungry people fed, some poor people clothed, and some freedom proclaimed to the captives here and abroad.

Melynda Huskey

----- Original Message -----
From: Tom Hansen
Sent: Wednesday, November 03, 2004 12:47 PM
To: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: [Vision2020] A Start

You are absolutely correct, Carl.  We must look to tomorrow as a united people.  If President Bush is true to his word, he will find a common ground for both liberals and conservatives.  This country desperately needs someone to provide solidarity not in spite of our differences, but because of them.  It has always been the case that our differences are what makes this country strong.
  
Don’t get me wrong.  I am not suggesting a national “group hug”, merely an understanding by each of us that those attributes that divide us should be fostered into a bond that unites us.
  
Simply put, you cannot unite the whole by segregating its parts.  In the interim though, keep your powder dry.
  
Take care,
  
Tom Hansen
  
A good friend will come and bail you out of jail.  But a true friend will be
sitting next to you saying, "Damn . . . that was fun!"
  
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