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Last night I volunteered at a phone bank for Equality For All, the campaign to defeat the evil proposition on the California ballot this November to ban marriage between same-sex couples. We were trying to raise money and recruit volunteers.
The organizers cleverly suggested that we begin by calling people we know before moving on to lists culled from "contact me" sign-up sheets. I would not have thought of that, but I used personal contacts to raise $300 (my totals were the group's highest overall; I think I am good at fundraising) and obtain one volunteer, and the guy next to me called his college buddies and assembled a team of volunteers.
Before we began, we introduced ourselves and our reasons for being there. One woman said that as a black woman, she would have been legally denied civil rights in earlier times, and this struck her as a similar battle. A bunch of the men said they hoped to get married some day, either to a particular man or just in general. One of the people I spoke to on the phone said that her church had organized a campaign to raise awareness against the amendment in local farmer's markets! Others mentioned being strongly affected by this pro-marriage equality commercial.
As I drove home, I thought about how causes seem to choose us as much as we choose them. I don't like weddings. I don't like how you really have to fight to make them not commercialist, frou-frou and frilly, about enforced creepy gender roles, insanely expensive, incredibly depressing to single attendees, and long and boring. I don't like attending them, and the thought of ever having one myself does not exactly fill me with glee. As for marriage itself, I don't abhor the institution, but neither does it thrill me. So what is the single cause that has engaged me the most in the last five years or so? Marriage equality!
If I were to choose which cause I intellectually think is most important, it would probably be global warming and other potentially catastrophic environmental issues. Followed by world poverty, global inequality, famine, disease, war, and other issues that kill people in large numbers every day.
Out of all of those, the only ones that I've ever actually hit the streets for are AIDS-related issues and anti-war activism over specific wars. (And suspect that I am becoming even more of a peacenik than I was before due to now having a particular person whom I would like to keep out of the war zone.) The other causes that I've been seriously involved in over a span of years are GLBT rights, mentoring children, and emergency preparedness.
Though people can and do die as a direct or indirect result of being deprived of their civil rights, marriage equality, like mentoring children, seems a bit like small potatoes in the grand global "so many preventable deaths per minute" scheme of things. But every individual life is small potatoes on that scale.
Having grown up among people who were devoting themselves to grand ideals (union with God) while not noticing or caring about the very small-scale, but very real human suffering going on right in front of them, I think that even if the ideal is to tackle the biggest issues first, there's also value in fixing the things that you actually have the capability of fixing.
And passion lends capability. While swimming might be the ideal exercise for me, I don't enjoy swimming, so I never get around to actually doing any. Whereas I am willing to go do less ideal exercise if I actually enjoy it. Likewise, my passion, rather inexplicably, is leaping up and shouting, "Hit the streets to promote more marriages! Yeah brides!" and passing out on the sofa at the thought of global warming or malaria. Marriage equality it is!
What causes personally engage you guys? Is it clear why, or is it slightly inexplicable to you too? Are they different from what you would consider ideal or primarily important, or are they the same?
The organizers cleverly suggested that we begin by calling people we know before moving on to lists culled from "contact me" sign-up sheets. I would not have thought of that, but I used personal contacts to raise $300 (my totals were the group's highest overall; I think I am good at fundraising) and obtain one volunteer, and the guy next to me called his college buddies and assembled a team of volunteers.
Before we began, we introduced ourselves and our reasons for being there. One woman said that as a black woman, she would have been legally denied civil rights in earlier times, and this struck her as a similar battle. A bunch of the men said they hoped to get married some day, either to a particular man or just in general. One of the people I spoke to on the phone said that her church had organized a campaign to raise awareness against the amendment in local farmer's markets! Others mentioned being strongly affected by this pro-marriage equality commercial.
As I drove home, I thought about how causes seem to choose us as much as we choose them. I don't like weddings. I don't like how you really have to fight to make them not commercialist, frou-frou and frilly, about enforced creepy gender roles, insanely expensive, incredibly depressing to single attendees, and long and boring. I don't like attending them, and the thought of ever having one myself does not exactly fill me with glee. As for marriage itself, I don't abhor the institution, but neither does it thrill me. So what is the single cause that has engaged me the most in the last five years or so? Marriage equality!
If I were to choose which cause I intellectually think is most important, it would probably be global warming and other potentially catastrophic environmental issues. Followed by world poverty, global inequality, famine, disease, war, and other issues that kill people in large numbers every day.
Out of all of those, the only ones that I've ever actually hit the streets for are AIDS-related issues and anti-war activism over specific wars. (And suspect that I am becoming even more of a peacenik than I was before due to now having a particular person whom I would like to keep out of the war zone.) The other causes that I've been seriously involved in over a span of years are GLBT rights, mentoring children, and emergency preparedness.
Though people can and do die as a direct or indirect result of being deprived of their civil rights, marriage equality, like mentoring children, seems a bit like small potatoes in the grand global "so many preventable deaths per minute" scheme of things. But every individual life is small potatoes on that scale.
Having grown up among people who were devoting themselves to grand ideals (union with God) while not noticing or caring about the very small-scale, but very real human suffering going on right in front of them, I think that even if the ideal is to tackle the biggest issues first, there's also value in fixing the things that you actually have the capability of fixing.
And passion lends capability. While swimming might be the ideal exercise for me, I don't enjoy swimming, so I never get around to actually doing any. Whereas I am willing to go do less ideal exercise if I actually enjoy it. Likewise, my passion, rather inexplicably, is leaping up and shouting, "Hit the streets to promote more marriages! Yeah brides!" and passing out on the sofa at the thought of global warming or malaria. Marriage equality it is!
What causes personally engage you guys? Is it clear why, or is it slightly inexplicable to you too? Are they different from what you would consider ideal or primarily important, or are they the same?