It IS Going To Happen

While you’re sitting there listening to Limbaugh, or watching Beck – while you’re carrying a mis-spelled placard around with words like No amnety! or Make English our Offical Language, or some other slogan that slaughters the language you allegedly hold so dear – while you go teabaggin’ with your equally ill-informed neighbors, leaving no doubt in anyone’s mind about how ignorant you are – while you’re railing against the immigrants who are ruining the community you live in – while you’re tossing around words and phrases you think denote your superiority over non-White, non-Christians that actually demonstrate your inferior intellect, it’s going to happen.

Your son is going to meet some slope-eyed gook in his high school science class, and think she’s the most beautiful, articulate young woman he’s ever met. He’s going to dream about taking her to the prom – and eventually, he will. And your ravings about it will fall on decidedly deaf ears. He’ll start wondering why you’re such a bloviating idiot, incapable of seeing in her everything that he sees, plain as day.

Your daughter is going to go away to college. She’s going to room with a dorm-mate she finds fascinating and witty. When she finds out her roommate is a lesbian, it’s not going to change her affection or admiration for her one iota. She’s going to question exactly what it is about this lovely friend, and people like her, that you find so offensive. She’s going to start finding you and your ideas to be more offensive than anything her roommate has ever said or done.

Your youngest brother is going to follow in the footsteps of his father, his grandfather, and his uncles, and join the military. He’s going to be stationed somewhere in the Middle East. He’s going to become best friends with an Iraqi translator who shares his love of the same books, the same music, the same art. He’s going to wonder why you think his new friend is so vastly “different” because they don’t practice the same religion – when, in fact, they are so similar in so many respects. He’s going to realize that you’re a narrow-minded jerk – and a lot less of a “good Christian” than you’ve always professed yourself to be.

Your favorite cousin is going to “come out” at a family reunion. He’s going to introduce his partner to everyone in attendance, and proudly so. Some of your family members will embrace the idea – some won’t. But those who do will start seeing you as a mindless homophobe, and will be grateful that their favorite cousin didn’t wind up with someone as blatantly narrow-minded as you take pride in being.

Your best bud at work is going to invite you to a meeting about joining a union. He’s going to explain to you why unions exist to protect workers’ rights, while you go on and on about socialism and communism (and all the other terms you don’t understand, but spew anyway by rote), and how the country is going down the toilet because workers are demanding safe working conditions and an honest wage. He’s going to realize you’re too deafened by talking points from the very people who don’t care whether you earn enough to look after your family to hear the facts that are in your own best interest.

And if you are religious, your wife is going to stop attending the church you and she have been members of for as long as anyone can remember, (at first with some sense of reluctance, and later with great enthusiasm), because she’s come to realize that the preaching of politics from the pulpit is as un-American as it is un-Christian.

She’ll remember that the story of Jesus taught his followers to look after the poor, the homeless, the sick, and the helpless in His name – and she’ll recognize that these simple truths have been supplanted by political persuasion that preach the exact opposite behavior as being so called “Christian family values” to be adhered to.

She’ll start wondering when the man she has shared a bed with for all of her adult life became too far removed from your Bible’s  teachings to recognize that they are being turned into something hypocritical, something so contrary to their purpose. She’ll recognize that the man she looked up to for years has turned out to be someone to be looked down upon – an easily-manipulated sheep, as opposed to the manly shepherd she once thought she’d married.

Oh it IS going to happen. And this is how.

The world, and the nation we live in, changes every day – sometimes by inches, often in movements too small to be detected in the great scheme of things.

But it is changing – one citizen at a time, one moment-of-truth at a time, one life-long friendship at a time, one realization at a time, one mixed-race baby at a time, one inter-faith marriage at a time, one welcome to the community regardless-of-where-you-came-from at a time, one I-love-you-no-matter-what-comes-our-way at a time, one I-will-stand-with-you-and-uphold-your-rights at a time, one Nation Indivisible by those who would divide us for their own purposes, whatever their purposes might be.

To say that it’s going to happen is to predict the inevitable. It is happening as we speak.

And it is as righteous and pre-destined as it is wondrous to behold.

This country has, from its inception, been shaped by those who refused to be identified with one religion, one ethnic background, one political persuasion, one opinion, one language, one culture, one perception, one way of thinking, being, or believing to the exclusion of all else.

The tapestry we have become is enhanced by its many colors, and strengthened by its many threads.

That’s the way it always has been and that’s the way it will always be.

Like it or not.


It IS going to happen.
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