Even the Grinch Had a Heart, Haters

Try as I might, I still utterly fail to understand why any Californian--let alone 52% of the people with whom I share a state--could have voted for the bigotry, hatred, and small-mindedness that was Prop 8. This past week's ridiculousness (Ken Starr--WTF??) just makes it worse. And Rick Warren? I can't even go there.

Yes, I live in the skewed world that is San Francisco, and yes, I have the benefit of having many gay friends, some of whom are among the most important people in my life. So of course I get alternately weepy, grumpy, indignant, pissed off, and a combination of all four when I hear the hate and lies that are spewed by those who oppose marriage equality.

But the stupidly hopeful part of me has to believe that there people out there who maybe voted for Prop 8 because their religious community told them to (Mormons, I'm looking at you) or because they were pressured into it by someone else in their life or because they temporarily lost their good sense and believed the stupidity about same-sex marriage opening up the floodgates to polygamy (Mormons, I'm looking at you) and incest and men trying to marry young boys--that these people, these otherwise good people (many of whom voted for Obama, as we know) might actually be able to look at the photos of the Courage Campaign's Please Don't Divorce Us project and feel their hearts soften a bit.

Because surely these otherwise good people know that there's enough hatred in the world, and enough bigotry (Mormons--and Latinos, and African-Americans--I'm looking at you), enough lying, enough instability, enough of all of it without having to write it into the state's Constitution.

Surely these otherwise good people, many of whom would never even think of adopting the kids many same-sex couples adopt, and most of whom can chatter on about the importance of a whole, stable family, find it ludicrous and illogical to think of denying gays and lesbians the right to marry, and thus to provide their families with all of the wholeness and stability they possibly can.

(As an aside, I've never understood the right-wing Christian argument that marriage is primarily for the purpose of reproduction, as that would make illegitimate any heterosexual pairing that did not produce a child. Because, what? You're a good, upstanding, god-loving Christian who happens to be infertile and suddenly your marriage is a sham? Tell me, Christians, how that works.)

(Aside Part 2: Florida, what's your damage? A statewide ban on adoptions by gays? How short-sighted and biased can you be? Also, are there, like, thousands of opposite-sex couples lining up just waiting to adopt these children? Oh. No. There are not. Which means that apparently you think foster care is a much better option than stable, life-long adoption. At least Miami thinks you're wrong.)

So, OK, Prop 8 supporters, just do this for me: for a moment, set aside whatever you might think about gays and lesbians, or whatever ill will you might have toward them because you think they're not like you. Set aside whatever you might've heard in church, or on the news, or in the pro-8 campaign ads that claimed that your kindergartner would be forced to learn all about the ins and outs of homosexuality if marriage equality remained California law. Set aside any hate you might feel (especially if you're a Christian, given that "love thy neighbor as thyself" thing).

Is all of that off in a corner somewhere for a few minutes? Good. Now go look at these photos of same-sex couples, their families, their friends, and their neighbors, and see if you don't get at least a little teary-eyed.

Because here's the thing: in those photos, there's nothing but love. Maybe it doesn't look like the love you know and are used to, but I think you can agree that it's love nonetheless--so much love that it might make your heart as achy as it makes mine. So much that maybe, after you've spent some time looking closely at those photos (especially the wedding shots), you'll feel something in yourself start to soften. So much that maybe you'll understand where people like me are coming from--people who wonder, sadly or angrily or just plain incomprehendingly, what anyone thinks could possibly be gained by making hate and intolerance the law of the land.

We Are So Much What We've Come from: Part 1

I come east and, for a while, my world rockets backwards.

I.
Last Thursday we go to see Ian's jazz trio play at the local winery. (Not a typo--there are indeed wineries in Connecticut, and the one in question is actually quite good.) Ian is quite possibly the sweetest, kindest, happiest person I've ever had the luck to know. We were good friends in high school, and although I've seen him only sporadically in the ensuing years, every time I do, it's as if no time at all has passed. Years and miles collapse, and I'm as close to him as I ever was. We laugh, call each other E-N and M-A, say over and over, "It's so weird," referring to a Black Point night several worlds back, the full details of which have long since fallen away.

But this much about that night we remember: for a while we go along with someone's vaguely ridiculous idea and find ourselves in Old Black Point, on a road we don't know, probably searching in vain for whoever we were meant to meet out there, for whatever it is we were meant to do. We likely never meet who we're supposed to or get where we might've been going. Instead, the rest of the group goes ahead and Ian and I start talking--about my ill-advised tangles with Dave, probably, about the darkness of the road we're on, about the unfamiliarity of wherever it is we are. We deem it all weird. Our conversation is by turns profound and heartfelt, light and goofy. It's so weird, we keep saying. So weird.

There was something about that night, our walk, that discussion, those few inky hours--something that, as pat as this will sound, yanked Ian and I together in a way we hadn't been for the rest of the summer. I went home at the end of that long evening feeling like I knew him better than I ever had, and he me, despite our long years of friendship. So weird.

We were so far from that night last Thursday, and yet, as we hugged and talked after he finished his set, as he told me about his daughter and asked me about my business, as we kept up a stream of It's so weird! and It's so good to see you, it felt like there was so little separating then and now, as if, at any moment, Jeff or Jason or Chris might call to us from down the road--What's taking you guys?--and we would quicken our pace to reach them, agreeing with their claim that the night had been a wash rather than letting on--because how could we explain?--that it hadn't. Weirdly, it hadn't.

In Defense of Organizers and Civil Debate

Al Gore was the guest on Tuesday's Fresh Air. He'd been invited on the show to discuss his book The Assault on Reason, which, from what I gathered from Terry Gross' description, is about how Americans' increasing unwillingness (and inability?) to engage in reasoned, thoughtful, civic debate, preferring instead the combative and dismissive Fox News/CNN/Bush Administration model, is ultimately leaving us less informed and less capable of sustaining a healthy democracy.

It was fascinating to hear Gore speak, both for what he had to say and for the way he said it: if ever there's been an aural definition of "reasoned, measured tones," this was it. He spoke calmly and unflappably, with pauses between his words and rarely even a hint of a raised voice. It was as if he were, solely by his tone, defying the yellers and the absolutists to take issue with his message.

Tuesday also happened to be the day that Merlin Mann, whom I respect and admire quite a lot, posted to 43 Folders about the NSGCD and its resources for the chronically disorganized. In describing the NSGCD (short--if barely--for the National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization), he referred to it as "primarily a trade group for 'professional organizers'". That's true enough to a certain extent, but I wondered why Merlin had put professional organizers in quotes. So I posted a comment and asked.

Then he posted a reply, and I posted a reply to his reply, and I asked some of my colleagues to read the whole kit and caboodle, and some of them left comments, too. It was all--from my perspective, at least--very Al Gore-ish: no yelling, no flaming, lots of general calmness and well-reasoned attempts to argue varying viewpoints.

But it's interesting: in the wake of the first point/counterpoint Merlin and I had, the message I most wanted to get across was not so much that professional organizers are worthy of a level of respect that quote marks deny, but that his apparent view of what we do--put crap in boxes, go to the Container Store, and try to make things look pretty without doing anything at all to address the underlying issues of overconsumption and unexamined keeping--is way, way off the mark. I said as much in my second comment, as did several people who commented after me, POs and clients alike. Yet what a few of the commenters who didn't identify themselves as either being organizers or working with organizers seemed to latch onto was that initial sense of being taken aback by the quotes.

Let's channel Al Gore, people, and move beyond the punctuation to read the rest of the discussion. It's about having your profession sort of maligned through an inaccurate and incomplete description, and about trying to explain why you take issue with those inaccuracies and incompletes. But beyond a point, there's only so much you can do or say to ask people to read (or hear) and absorb your words. Is it inevitable that, no matter how logical, calm, or well-reasoned the other side's argument might be, we'll always revert to our own bunkers, determined that we're right (or at least not wrong)? Do we ever really have the capacity to bring someone around?

I wish I could convince Merlin Mann that the work I do is no more fluffy, inconsequential, or unimportant than the work he does, and that although professional organizer might be a funny-sounding title, it's a serious profession. I hope he takes me up on my offer to help give him a clearer sense of what POs actually do, and how, in many ways, it's not a far cry from what he does.

But all of that is beyond my control: he's the only one who can choose what he thinks and does. Ditto for the people who can read all the smart, insightful, thoughtful things written in that comments stream and only take away that a bunch of POs have their label makers and binder clips in a snit over nothing more than the use of a bit of punctuation. In this, as in any discussion or debate, all I (or anyone) can ever do is put my words out there in a calm, balanced, and (I somewhat hate this term, but, alas) constructive way and hope that they fall on at least a few appreciative and open pairs of eyes and ears.