I watched a powerful and touching documentary the other night--For the Bible Tells Me So.
I wept.
Earlier in the day, after class, I saw Devon and he continued his intense work on my shoulder, then I saw an excellent MD who gave his affirming opinion that I probably don't have a rotator cuff tear but rather tendinitis with some calcification in my upper right shoulder along with some impingement. Prescription: evaluation and physical therapy 3x a week for 8 weeks! (and a cortisone injection if I want one). No painkillers and no anti-inflammatory prescriptions! I like this doctor! I was so excited about his referral to a clinic that specializes in shoulders only to learn they do not accept my primary insurance carrier and therefore my secondary insurance carrier won't cover me at all. Just another Catch 22 in the American system of escalating medical costs and dramatic decreases in insurance payments, hence the epidemic dropping of many insurance carriers, especially Medicare.
So what now? Find a clinic that accepts my insurance, if there is one, get another referral to a different clinic, or work out a payment plan and pay out of pocket. This system is really broken. It's just shocking how many doctors and clinics no longer accept Medicare. What in the world do retired people do if they can't afford to pay out of pocket? (We should all know the answer to that if we simply watch the evening news or know retired people who paid into Social Security and MUST accept Medicare as their primary carrier).
How does this tie in with the documentary? Maybe it doesn't, but clearly the ignorant and uneducated leaders of the influential christian right propagate the totally false notion that the Bible, being the word of god, condemns homosexuality. It is hatred in action, which is rooted in fear, that's been used for centuries to condemn women, Jews, blacks; to justify slavery, to justify concentration camps, to justify condemnation of fellow humans. It's the opposite of love and acceptance. It's selective perception, literalism of a few select passages from the bible yet ignoring all the other passages that are equally absurd when interpreted out of the context of the time, the culture, and the language in which they were written.
"It's okay to have a 5th grade understanding of the bible so long as you are in 5th grade" stated one Biblical scholar. As a result of this preaching of hatred against gays, families are torn apart when they learn of a gay family member. Parents reject their children based on what their church leaders have been telling them--it really is brainwashing at its worse. Gay teens are 5 to 7 times more likely to commit suicide than their peers, and 20 times more likely to attempt suicide. It gets me all riled up, and brings to memory the homophobia I've had to deal with in the past. The homophobia that begins with oneself. The shock and total rejection that this could be happening to me. The painful loneliness and isolation. The excruciating fear, followed by the months of conversion therapy I underwent, thank goodness not with a fundamentalist, but with a misguided Freudian shrink, a Rhodes Scholar, who thought he was doing what was best for a frightened 16 year old who could barely utter a word. To be honest it wasn't so much conversion therapy as it was a means to get me back into high school, back into my home, stop the "incipient delusional formation"and get back into some semblance of normalcy in a typical small town high school filled with people I felt totally alienated from.
Years later, out of the closet and in a long term relationship, I learned how homophobia can be rampant in the workplace, and how it finally, in it's relentless berating and humiliation can bring you about as far down as you'd ever want to go. In a most dramatic exit, like a scene from high drama, I left my workplace on a stretcher, surrounded by medics wheeling me down the long corridors of learning, with throngs of curious onlookers, many of them sympathetic fellow co-workers, watching the scene unfold. Yet another crowd awaited outside, as the ambulance, with sirens screaming, headed for Breckenridge Hospital. I just didn't have the energy to wave at all my fans. :-). Act II, the hospitalizations, the therapy, the consultations with shrinks, social workers, psychologists, tests and more tests, and lawyers. Act III--he's totally nuts, he's so fragile, he brought this on himself, we were rather mean to him, he didn't have a clue how to take care of himself, it's all his parents fault, let's donate 12 months of paid sick leave from the pool! It's Religion! It's the worse of institutional bureaucracy gone awry! What do you expect from a deviant? Let's say he's mentally ill!
If only we can be taught to learn to love and accept ourselves and others as we are, as they are. It sounds so simple, it seems so easy, and in fact it is. But people are taught otherwise by people in positions of authority and the cycle of hatred begins falling like a long row of dominos, gaining momentem, spiraling out of control, and is easily justified because our great leaders told us so.
(As one of Hitler's henchmen said, "If you tell a lie long enough, people will begin to believe it." )
I like to think the same theory applies to telling the truth, and that ultimately it yields far more power. I hope so.
