Uniting American Families Act and Other thoughts on America

If you have been reading my blog, than you will know that I have spent the last three months traveling in the US with my love, a woman I met while I was volunteer in the Peace Corps in Kazakhstan. We went to Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, New Jersey and Orlando, Tampa and Bradenton, Florida (where my family lives). It was an amazing summer, and one of the best parts was where I asked Diana to marry me. (She said yes!) Now we just have to find a country that will allow us to legally marry as well as reside there after we marry. She left yesterday to return to Kazakhstan, and we will not be able to see each other again until Christmas. (This is assuming that we can get her a tourist visa to visit me in England, which is not as easy as you may think- Americans can easily go into and out of England, but from developing nations, you have to prove in some way that you have no desire to live in England. Same with the US.) My heart is with her now, and I feel a little lost without her… So hopefully we will get this worked out soon, because I love her and want to spend my life with her… on that note…

In May, a bill was introduced called the Uniting American Families Act, which would allow American citizens with foreign same-sex partners to apply for green cards for their significant others just like a straight couple would. Yes, it's true that marriage is not required, but that is because we are not legally allowed to marry. Give us the right and we will do it!!! I do not think that in this country today this bill will pass, but I am hoping, and putting my energy in a positive way that it will, because it would mean that I don't have to immigrate to another country to be with the woman I love. If anyone reads this blog and feels compelled to talk to their senators, congressmen and women or other representatives, you can find links on HRC.org…. it would be so great, and I would thank you for it.

Being back in the US is…interesting. Luckily for me, I am leaving in a month to go to school in the UK. Between the tabloids while I am waiting on line to buy food to the advertising that seems to fill in every space of life in America my head hurts and I know information that I am not really sure how I know (are Angelina and Brad really breaking up? Or is it just rumors? Is Nicole Richie really going to stop using drugs? Will Britney really loose custody of her children to a wanna-be rapper?) The question is why do we care so much? I don't even know what it is that Nicole Richie and famous for, much like Paris Hilton, except being a rich party girl. Surely, there is more going on in the world that is more important than that? What about the genocide in Sudan? Even the war in Iraq? If we as Americans became as familar with these important events as we have with the personal lives of people who really don't do much more than make movies or sing songs, (or do drugs, party and drive under the influence) maybe this war in Iraq wouldn't be happening. Maybe if we knew the faces of the Iraqi civilians who were dying, and understood what their lives were like before and during this war, we would get as worked up about their deaths as we do about whether Paris Hilton deserved to go to jail, and did she really change in prison?

Right before I left Kazakhstan, the shooting at Virginia Tech happened. It was a horrible tragedy. I read online, as did many people, about the situation, and asked myself how this could happen. News websites like CNN and MSNBC had their whole homepage covered with the stories and images. “Thrity something dead in school shooting”. (I made up the headline. I can not remember exactly how many died that horrible day. But you get the idea.) Right under that story, in the tiniest font possible on a webpage, was a list of other stories you could read about. The first one that caught my eye said “89 civilians dead in Iraqi bombing”. Is it because as Americans we care more about Americans? Or is it that we just can not find sympathy for those whose lives and beliefs seem so different from ours? Our government and media have tried to tell us about the “otherness” of those in the middle east - to the point where we should look at any Arab or Muslin as a potential terrorist - but those 89 people were like we are: they had dreams of peace, dreams of prosperity, dreams of seeing their kids grow up and have their own children.

When I was in Kazakhstan, I had to constantly defend Americans to almost everyone I met. I pointed out that American businesses donate to charitable organizations more money yearly than the GNP of many countries. American citizens voluteer millions of hours yearly to help others. Americans protest and march and fight for change, not only in America, but in other countries. But this is not the part of America that the world sees…

They see the crazed fanatical religous zealots who (are running the country apparently and who) want to tell everyone else who they should believe in, how they should live, who they should love and build their lives with. They see hypocrits who try to put sanctions on other countries for human rights abuses and then illegally transport “suspected terrorists” to secret prisons where they are treated like criminals, without trials and without protections. I marched in a protest one time in San Francisco for the over 3000 people (at the time, it might be more now) who went to “special registration” and never returned to their families. How do we let this happen, and still have front page news on what politician is sleeping with which prostitute? We shake our heads at politicians who can not be faithful to their husbands/wives, but don't even blink when politicians fail to pass laws that would protect Lesbian, gay and transgendered people from hate crimes. This notion of right and wrong as we have developed it in this country continues to astound me. To say that Americans are ethnocentric would not be an exaggeration. We so strongly believe that our way of life is the right one, that anyone who does not agree with us is no longer worthy of compassion.

This has been an extremely political blog, and although I know that many people in America are not as narrow minded - many are doing a lot to create change- there are many many more (and I seem to have run into all of them in the last three months) who are still on that wavelength where they think that because of the terrorists attacks of 9/11, we are owed the right to do anything we see fit without reference to how it impacts the lives of millions of people on the planet. This entitlement has caused untold horror around the globe, and I pary that it stops so we can begin to change our image in the world. I strongly feel that our actions since 9/11, far from “stopping terror” have actually encouraged people who might have otherwise been pro-America or indifferent, to become either verbally or even violently anti-American, and perhaps even created new terrorists. We need to expand our consciousness beyond our own borders, outside of our own experience, to encompass all beings on the planet. We are all related, and the harm we are doing is harming us as well.