One of my duties at my 8 hour a week fake job at KCTS, Seattle's public television station, is to capture and encode videos of their local current affairs program, KCTS Connects. I'm sorry, their Emmy award winning local current affairs program.
It might sound fancy, but all that means is that I sit at a computer and watch tv, occasionally pressing a few keys. It's much like what I do at home, except that there are other humans around, and I have to pass through the outdoors for a brief time to both get there and then to get back home. These two things -- being in the company of humans and so-called "fresh air and exercise" -- are purportedly beneficial, and I must admit that they do sometimes lead to social and/or outdoor situations.
Usually I don't mind the tv watching; the show is pretty decent, and it's my only real source for local news. My news focus tends to be more national, especially since I've only recently moved and don't feel much connected to this area yet. It is public television though, so sometimes it really sucks, as in the week they discussed the Green River Killer, the Pacific Northwest's very own serial killer. The killer, Jeff Goldblum, had recently been found guilty but spared the death penalty, with the attendant public bloodthirsty hand wringing.
Sorry, it wasn't Jeff Goldblum, it was Gary Ridgway. I'm always doing that to Goldblum. Sorry Jeff!
Anyway, that episode sucked because the victim's brother was the worst television talk show guest in the history of the world. He never said anything. The host would ask an excruciatingly sensitively phrased question, and he would respond, "Mmmm... Yeah .... I guess so ... Mmmmm .. I don't know.." It was enough to drive someone insane, and the other guests, an awkward policeman and a newspaper reporter, weren't taking up the slack at all. I'm sensitive to the guy's loss, naturally, but come on, I'm trying to watch television here.
Often, though, they do have compelling and lively discussions of local and national events. One of the episodes I watched today concerned the Gay Marriage Amendment. The guests were from all sides: a gay rights activist, a conservative minister, and two lawyers - one for, one against. (When's the last time you saw that balanced a panel on CNN?)
This issue continues to depress me, and this show didn't help. The news from Tennessee below, this story about gays being denied job protections by the federal government, and countless others, have really got me upset about the state of things around here.
On the show, the anti-gays' arguments were horrible, as usual. They trotted out the usual "terrible consequences," without being able to name one that was in any way tangible. They came closest with the "next comes legal polygamy" argument; furthest afield was one caller's assertion that before we know it someone will want to marry their pet. They talked about god and the bible, apparently being prepared to amend the Constitution despite having never read it. They argued that civil unions should be good enough, ignoring the more than 1000 federal benefits that would be denied under such a system. One, the preacher, even threatened a kind of blackmail, saying that if gays weren't careful with this push, they'd lose what rights they already enjoy.
The "for" argument, on the other hand, was all about equality, justice, and tolerance. How is it that we've found ourselves having a serious public debate where one side has to defend such ideals? It's a shame that we haven't moved beyond arguing about the basic idea of treating everyone equally.
I was most of all struck by the attitude of the preacher, who was a black man with a white wife. Despite repeated attempts by other panelists to show him, he failed to see the connection between this issue and the issue of his own marriage. Less than 50 years ago, he could have been jailed in 15 states for marrying his wife, yet he fails to see why anyone would see this as a similar situation. It was amazing how both he and the anti-gay lawyer would make the exact same arguments as had been made against mixed race marriages, and then claim to not see the connection at all.
But this is different. These are gay people we're talking about. They're, you know, icky.
The preacher also neatly dodged any suggestion that there was some lesson to be learned from realizing that most churches today (chances are his own is included) tolerate many things which were once considered shameful or worse, such as divorce and women. He failed to see the hypocrisy in his side citing scripture as the basis for this particular discrimination while ignoring many other biblically forbidden acts not only in their churches but in their own homes.
In the end, I felt very sad that people hold these views at all. I don't understand them and find it hard to relate to them as of being the same kind of thing as myself. (Note, however, that I would never ever suggest that they be denied a single solitary legal right that is granted to the more enlightened).
On the positive side, I'm actually optimistic in the long term, because I think this is the beginning of the end of legal discrimination against gays. All human rights issues reach a crescendo of emotion before freedoms are inevitably won, and this is no different. When discrimination is brought to the surface, it doesn't last long. There is already some backlash, and there will be more, and it will still take a lot of fighting, but it will happen.
And if it doesn't, there's always Canada.
