It’s mutual respect. Yes, that’s what it is.
This is why Proposition 8 will simply not hold out in the long run. The people who would deny the rights of gays are siding with those who supported slavery, denied women the right to vote, allowed rape within marriage, backed Jim Crow, organized lynchings, and still go onto reservations to rape native women.
Sooner or later, our side wins. We’re the Good People. We don’t mistake animals in the woods for the people we want to kill. We don’t invade. We don’t sneer at the sick and crazed on the streets, as though we’re better than them.
We have Mirrors we look in every day, to ask if what we’re doing is the right thing. We give up possibilities of wealth because we know where it comes from, and there would be enough for all if we could all be as decent as my cat, Hector. We gnaw ourselves over the compromises we have to make to try to make the planet a better place for all of us, including our animal relatives — and everything alive on the planet IS our relative. The DNA shows it.
But the only reason Nearest and I clean up the garbage on the beach is because we don’t want to look at it. The guy who invented the six-pack plastic holder is going to hell.
Actually, all humans are going to hell. This planet was a test, and we blew it. If you believe in an afterlife, WE’re not getting in. How anybody can clearcut a forest and dump poison on the remains — and they still do, I’ve got the photos — and then think they’re getting into the Garden by just going to church is beyond me. If you don’t believe in an afterlife, then we’re making hell right here.
We’re not going to get the little angel wings for what we did to the BUFFALO, let alone the great sea mammals and the sharks. If there is a heaven, maybe hell will be us hanging around in a burning desert outside the golden fences watching all the animals we killed enjoy themselves in paradise, while none of them can pick up a cup to hand us a drop of water.
Well, maybe a monkey. But not a lab monkey, that’s for sure. I used to say no humans would get in unless an animal would vouch for us, but why would any of them BOTHER with us?
If all this world is based on numbers and chemicals and accidents and time, then is is a wondrous, marvelous, miraculous place. If a god consciously created it — and then added humans — all I can say is, “WHAT WERE YOU THINKING??”
