happy national coming out day

The Human Rights Campaign: The Coming Out Project helps LGBT, as well as straight-supportive people live openly and talk about their support for equality at home, at work and in their communities each and every day.

I just caught the end of an HBO documentary, OUTRAGE: Do Ask. Do Tell. From the synopsis:

An official selection of the 2009 Tribeca Film Festival, OUTRAGE investigates the hidden lives of some of the country's most powerful policymakers - from now-retired Idaho Senator Larry Craig, to former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevy - and examines how these and other politicians have inflicted damage on millions of Americans by opposing gay rights. Equally disturbing, the film explores the mainstream media's complicity in keeping those secrets, despite the growing efforts to "out" them by gay rights organizations and bloggers.

Through a combination of archival news footage and exclusive interviews with politicians and members of the media, OUTRAGE probes the psychology of a double lifestyle, the ethics of outing closeted politicians, and the double standards that the media upholds in its coverage of the sex lives of gay public figures. As Barney Frank, perhaps the best-known openly gay member of Congress explains, "There is a right to privacy, but not a right to hypocrisy. It is very important that the people who make the law be subject to the law."

true story

Someone told me a story a little while ago, about a black man who had gotten a ticket for driving 36 mph in a 35 mph zone. This is what happened when he appeared before a traffic court judge:

- Sir, why are you here?
- Because I am a black man and I drive a Porsche.
- I am so sorry, you shouldn't be here. Case dismissed.

health care (IV)

I was talking to someone about health care the other day, and I told her that it is hard for me, as a Scandinavian, to get my head around the fact that Americans are so reluctant to act politically on behalf of others. She agreed, and said something like, "and yet doing for others is what makes us human".

I think that is true.

There is a quote by Dr. King: "Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality."

That means, to me, that my freedom isn't worth much until it's shared by everybody.

The Lutheran Church of Sweden, where about 75% of Swedes are members, elected Eva Brunne to be the new bishop in Stockholm earlier this year. Eva Brunne is the first Swedish bishop to live in a registered same-sex domestic partnership. According to a National Catholic Reporter story Eva Brunne "is believed to be the first openly lesbian bishop in the world."

I am not a member of the Church of Sweden, but it makes me proud that my people not only acknowledges rights, but expands privilege.

Another quote by Dr. King states that, "An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity."

Maybe it's true that a society has not started living until it can rise above the narrow confines of individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.