Think With Me

This morning I went to see the start of the Gay Pride Parade. This afternoon I went to see the movie A Mighty Heart, the true story of Danny and Marianne Pearl.

To be honest, I don't normally think about tolerance very much. It doesn't occur to me to dislike or distrust someone for their race, gender, religion or sexual orientation. I dislike people who are stupid, invade my space, are mean to others, and who smell badly.
But in San Francisco, people love to talk about tolerance almost as much as they love to talk about food. And just like discussions about food, discussions about tolerance eventually have an undercurrent of bragging. Oh, I guess I dislike when people brag, too. People brag about having friends over who smoke weed. So somebody else brags their friends growing weed in their house. A third person brags that their black friend grows weed in their house. The winner is friends with a black couple who is gay, adopted a Chinese baby, and grows weed in their house.

I can't stand it. The majority of my friends are white. So what? Trixie is Indian and the majority of her friends are Indian - yet I've been called racist but she hasn't. Why is that? How is that fair? Why is somebody even judging at all? I've heard people brag about having been one of the only or few white kids in their class one year. That's not an accomplishment. An oddity? Maybe, but not something worthy of bragging about.

People in the Bay Area brag about being tolerant of all kinds. I think that unless you're tolerant of people who are NOT tolerant, you're not all that tolerant. How hard is it to understand that not everyone is raised to seek out those unlike themselves? How hard is it to realize that not everyone is drawn to what is unfamiliar to them? Not everyone is like you. That goes both ways.

Sometimes it's hard for me to understand the Gay Pride Parade. Why are people proud of being gay? They were just born that way. I was born straight - it would never occur to me to have a parade to celebrate my straightness.

But then I watch movies like A Mighty Heart, and see that there were rumors Danny Pearl was killed for being jewish. And I realize how very spoiled I am. There is no place more jewish in the U.S. than New York. There were so many kids and teachers who were jewish in the town I grew up in, that schools are closed on Yom Kippur. Even the non-jewish kids brought their sandwiches on matzah during Passover.

So it's hard to fully understand a world that dislikes someone for something they were born into so deeply, something they can't change. How could I dislike all the people in Pakistan? I couldn't. All of those people didn't kill Danny Pearl. They just happened to be born in a place where many murders took place. Hell, many murders have taken place almost EVERYWHERE.

When Gavin Newsom slowly rolled by waving to the crowd this morning, a hot guy standing in front of me squealed like a girl, "Oh, he's so hot!" We all laughed. Maybe it's not pride that the Gay Pride Parade is celebrating. Maybe it's relief. Relief at being somewhere where it's okay for a guy (who had a girlfriend by the way, so maybe he's bi-sexual) to admire another guy's looks openly. Maybe I do understand after all?