Ok..I need a break

I find myself drifting too often to this election. I take it too seriously I guess.

I just can't believe that people would seriously choose McCain over Obama after the last eight years. It blows my mind when I hear that women are shifting over to Palin. Are they serious? Do they realize that what she stands for would represent a set back for women everywhere? A woman who supports giving the government control over your choices rather than trusting you to make them yourself? Please, who honestly WANTS an abortion? But who gives her the right to make that choice for you? I think my blood pressure is up right now.

So, I decided today that I will not listen to progressive talk radio on the way to or from work for a while. And, I will not watch CNN or the local news because even the images of the political process while I was at the gym (with no sound!) made me cringe.

I wish I knew why I take this so personally. Maybe it's because at middle age, I'm really really tired of living a second class life. At least in the eyes of straight people.

When I was a kid, and I knew I was gay at an early age, I knew that I could not be myself. My mother told me herself before either of us knew anything about me, that being gay meant that you were shady, a pervert, and slinked around in dark alleys. I spent a lot of time trying to run from that part of myself. In my early pubescent mind, I could not be gay and have a family. It didn't take a rocket scientist to know where they stood on the issue. And listening to fundamentalist preachers twice on Sundays and at Wednesday night prayer meetings, I heard a lot of stories about what happened to people who didn't follow the narrow and "straight" road.

Fundamentalists use fear as a motivator as much as joy. Republicans scare me because they use fear too to motivate. They tell the rich that the poor want to dethrone them. They tell the poor that the Dems will tax them more. Gays and African Americans are irrelevent, other than tools of threat. I felt irrelevent as a gay boy in the South. Maybe that's what scares me the most. My country thinks what I think or feel doesn't matter. You have to pay taxes like straight people, but you're not entitled to full citizenship.

I've held my breath for almost eight years, hoping that Bush didn't have a chance to replace Souter, Ginsberg or Breyer. The wait was almost over. My faith in this country remained strong that people would finally see the false promises, the lies and the destruction that our most right wing administration ever heaped upon us.

I know that what matters most are the electoral college votes and that Barack is still ahead. But I almost cry when I hear that McCain is even close and that a right wing liar like Palin has helped boost him in the polls. Are people really that dumb? Are we really a cult of personality?

Ok...enough about all this. Time for a break. My next post will NOT be about this stuff. Do I actually have anything else to talk about?