I asked my mom last night how she felt about the Roe v Wade decision. She’s catholic but she’s also gay. So clearly she’s cherry picking her religious beliefs. She went with her catholic beliefs on this one. It wasn’t a long discussion but she believes abortion is the right to murder. When I said they’ll be coming for gay rights next her response was basically we’ll get there when we get there.
My mom isn’t the activist type. She’s been with her partner since I was born and I consider them both my mom, but they didn’t officially come out until I was 40. I wouldn’t say a lot of people were surprised but probably also weren’t expecting it. As shocking as it sounds, I wasn’t even really certain until they came out. They’ve never really shown any romantic affection even within our household. The reason I’m sharing this is she’s about to turn 80 and has lived a closeted life for most of it. I think to her she’s perfectly comfortable being back in the closet if need be and other gay people’s rights aren’t her concern. Also we live in CA where she believes (at least for now) that she’s safe and she’s got no interest in roaming the country. But who knows, she may change her opinion when it actually becomes real.
This also made me think of an episode of That Damn Michael Che show where he said the black community’s response to covid was mostly seeing it as another thing to add to the list of bullshit they’ve had to deal with as black people. On some level minority and marginalized groups are probably seeing all us white straight people freaking out and going “So now you don’t trust the government or think they are going to protect you? You’re a little late to the party.”
