I forgot this thing was even here. But I need an outlet, so here it is.

This past Wednesday, George W. Bush was elected President of the United States for the first time. It took me a minute, but I'm calm again. I don't like the fact that he's in office and I don't like the fact that this time I actually have to start calling him President, because now he actually is. However, no matter how I feel about W, (I hate him, incidentally) that wasn't what upset me the most about this past election.

Eleven states had a vote on whether to ban gay marriage. Eleven states passed it overwhelmingly, including my home state of Mississippi (shocker!) and Georgia, where I currently reside. It's not a surprise, but it is disheartening to see how easily it went through.

My fellow Americans...you are a bunch of bigots.

I can't believe that you really can't see that through all of your religious spouting and moral posturing. The "Christian right" saw to it that this thing got passed and for what? So gay people can't get married. I fail to see how that's a problem to anyone. Christians, however, feel that it is their religious duty to discriminate and exclude a group from all the rights and privleges that they are entitled to as an American. Gay people go to work and pay their taxes. They laugh, they love, they cry, they pray, they do everything that straight people do except have sex with the opposite sex. I have yet to be convinced how someone's sex life is anyone else's business.

What these people fail to see is that they are taking a bigoted stance in the name of a man who was anything but. This is why Jesus (assuming he's real) is in Heaven and at the right hand of God and you are nothing more than a meatbag who's only a few thousand miles away from a fiery death at the business end of a meteor. Now, since Christians were the ones who got this thing over, I'm using their language to talk to them. You like to say what would Jesus do? Well, what WOULD Jesus do? Do you really think Jesus would have voted for that amendment in 11 states? What happened to love? What happened to tolerance? Weren't some of Jesus' last words before he left this earth to love one another? What happened to that? You people aren't following Jesus, though. You aren't heeding his teachings. You're sad, evil, people being led around by other men. Pat Robertson, Creflo Dollar, T.D. Jakes....TV evangelists. You worship man, you don't worship God. If you were heeding anything Jesus said, you'd love one another because that should come before almost anything else. Love God, love each other. Then, everything else, because if you're loving God and loving each other, everything else should fall into place. You're also judging your fellow man, which if I understand it correctly is something that's reserved for The Lord and The Lord alone. That means you're trying to take the place of God and last time I checked, that was a Hell-worthy trespass. And don't tell me anything about what The Bible says, because it was written BY MAN. And if you haven't learned by now, man has an agenda. If you love each other, what else do you need to know? All you people need to do is love God and love each other. That's it. Discrimination doesn't work into the equation.

Now...minorities. Especially black people. What are you thinking? My fellow black people apparently feel that they need to vote discrimination into the Constitution, too. Well, apparently, my black people haven't learned anything over the years. It wasn't that long ago that our people were on this end of the equation. Remember, when white people came to Africa, they thought we were heathens because we didn't worship their God. So they justified their wholesale capture of us by saying they were saving our souls. And it wasn't just us...they did our Native American brothers (North and South America alike) the same way. We were told we were half a man and things like that. We were told that God made us to be less than a man. Once again, discrimination was justified through religion. Wasn't even our religion. This mentality is still with us today, though racists who believe that the white man is king and everyone else is lesser and that God made it that way. So it baffles my mind to see that black people, who were so unjustly treated for a good 500 years (still hasn't stopped, really) by white Anglo-Saxon Protestants under the heading of religion would so quickly side with them to discriminate someone else. You saw how it was wrong when it was YOU, but when it's someone else you, conveniently forget.

All in the name of religion. You people need to drop religion. Isn't spirituality good enough for you? Can't you just have a relationship with God or Allah or Yahweh or Jehovah and not bother anyone else with your mess? Can't you go to a foreign country without trying to convert everyone? Can't someone live a totally foreign lifestyle than you and have it be okay? Everyone doesn't have to look or act or dress or think the same. It's really okay. Apparently God doesn't mind, because he made it that way, right? If you truly have faith in God, then you'll know that he's got it under control. He doesn't need your help and it's not your job unless he informs you otherwise. Your job is to worship him and act right. Hating people is not acting right. Making discrimination a part of government is not acting right. Leave people alone. Live and let live. Not live and stress others. Besides, pestering people isn't exactly the best way to help people see your side. If you come at them right, they'll see it on their own. Or not. And if you weren't so busy trying to tell everyone how wrong they are for being different, perhaps you'd see that you weren't so right yourself.

Look, there's a lot going wrong in this world. There's too much hate, too much anger. Things like this don't help any, and we're not going to make it if we keep on like this. Whether it's something like kicking out your gay son or whether it's flying planes into buildings, we can't keep on like this. It's not going to be long before we're all dead because of hate or fear or just dislike of things that are different. It's a lot easier to just let everyone get on with their lives. No one's trying to hurt anybody and we all want the same things. Just because we look or sound different or sleep with other men or women doesn't make us bad. And it's not like it hurts you in any way. If it does, please explain it to me. In the meantime, just know that it takes more energy to hate than it does to just shut up and go about your own life, because what it all boils down to is, it's no one's business what goes on in someone else's bedroom. That's between them and, I guess in the end, God. And really...if you don't care what goes on in a straight man's bedroom, why should you care what goes on in a gay man's bedroom?

Unless, there's something about yourself that you need to figure out...

Love everybody, ya'll...

Thad