Disingenuous Hypocrisy

We live in an age of disingenuous hypocrisy. One example of which is, I can bash the bejeezus out of you and your kind for centuries but the minute you bash back I get all outraged and indignant that you would have the temerity to disagree with me and, worse, to hit back.

I think we all know who I'm talking about here.

There's a full page ad in today's NYTimes (click on image to embiggen it):

This ad does just that. You see, for over a 1,000 years certain groups of religious believers have bashed queers, burnt us at the stake, slammed us into prisons and iron maidens, tortured us on the rack, ran us out of town, shoved red-hot pokers up our asses and, when no one was looking, kidnapped young boys into indentured servitude, cut their balls off so they wouldn't lose their lovely soprano voices and, when no one was looking (i.e. most of the time) buggered the crap out of the adorable little cherubs until they were finally ready for the priesthood.

And nobody said a thing about it until this past century. Really, not until the last 50 years or so.

Now, the tables are turning and all of a sudden the bashers are fearful of being bashed. The bashers are typical schoolyard bullies, terrorizing anyone who doesn't stand up to them, running away in fear the minute somebody socks them in the nose and screaming bloody murder to the powers that be for protection from the victim.

It's always about blaming the victim. Hitler blamed the victims. Kristianity has always blamed it's victims ("If only Galileo would swallow his pride and deny the scientific evidence...").

And victims co-dependently go along with it by doing nothing. More people should turn around and sock the bullies in the noses. Literally. Figuratively. Immediately. Put up with no shit from anybody. Gay people are just as entitled to life, liberty and the pursuit of the American Dream, in full equality, as anyone else is.

And as MY God is MY witness, I will never again play dead for the heterosexist patriarchy which is about to find it's world turned upside down and it's worst nightmares coming true.

Rebel without a Clue.

I had another "ah-HA!" moment last week and it had to do with my anger. I spent a lot of my time in recovery digging into the past to look at "everything that had pissed me off." Like a lot of folks, I came up with a laundry list of people and events who and which had really annoyed me over the years. Had annoyed me enough to drink over, as a matter of fact.

But then, last week, I started to think, "wait a minute. I didn't get pissed off at those people or events. They were only the excuses I used to allow my inate anger to erupt!"

In short, I have come to believe that I was born pissed off and that I had spent a lifetime acquiring people and events to justify allowing my anger to erupt! Okay, maybe that isn't big news to anybody else, but it's big news to me.

I realized that when I was angry I felt powerful. I liked feeling powerful because most of my life I had walked around feeling pretty powerless (i.e., a "victim"). But when I was pissed off, I felt justified in not being the victim but, instead, in being the victimizer.

Anger gave me the illusion of control. "I'll show YOU, you SOB!" And then I'd go indulge in some inappropriate and/or dangerous behavior like (over) drinking or (over) spending or (over)eating or (over) f*cking.

All of which is like taking poison and hoping somebody else dies.

And how insane is that?

I spent a lot of my childhood pissed off because I felt like a victim of the alcoholism of the adults who surrounded me. When I grew up, and inhabited an adult body, the inner-child continued to behave like a victim and continued to act out because I had "found" sufficient reasons throughout my life to justify letting my inner anger escape.

Now I can laugh at my inner anger. Somebody, I forget who, once said that "my therapist wants me to nurture my inner-child, but my sponsor just wants it to grow the f*ck up."

I think I'm getting beyond nurturing my needy inner-child now. I think it's time for the little brat to grow up. And with that, I can laugh at it's temper tantrums.

It doesn't matter what happened to me in life... all that ever mattered was how I reacted to it.

Thankfully, I react better these days.