It's over.
We lost.
I guess it's a good thing we hadn't set a date.
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
we lost
it's after midnight and we're down by more than 20,000 votes. In Maine, that's more than we can recover from the remaining 20% of precincts left to report.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
put up or shut up time
This is it.
The big day.
Election day 2009.
Our chance to make history.
Our chance to march to Selma.
Here in the Dowling-Fortune household, we're starting to get twitchy.
We slept in and rested, but I think we've had just about all of that we can stand. We need to get to campaign headquarters soon or Laura might explode.
I've made my big tracker board thing with all the towns in Hancock and Washington Counties on it so we can write down the results as they come in. I made two dozen cupcakes that are now cooling in anticipation of frosting. And I made lunch, which we are eating. I will shower soon, get dressed, and we'll head out.
Before we return home, the voters in Maine will have decided whether we should be allowed to get married. I expect we'll have enough of the results in before midnight that it will be called one way or the other. That makes my stomach just a little bit sick, to be truthful.
Tonight we'll be watching the results online. I know some of my readers are not here in Maine, so here are some links to Maine television stations so you can follow along if you are so inclined.
And here is a link to the Bangor Daily News, where all election results are called in by each town clerk. I presume they will be doing some sort of live update thing through the evening.
And here is the link for Maine Public Radio, which I also imagine will be doing some kind of live update thing throughout the evening.
and here is the link for the campaign website, which will also be doing live updates all night:
And finally, for those of you who are familiar with her, Louise from Pam's House Blend will be live-blogging from the party in the Maine Ballroom at the Holiday Inn By the Bay in Portland. I don't know if everyone can join the live chat or not, but she'll be keeping us all up-to-date on what's going down at the statewide campaign headquarters.
I have no idea if I will be able to write anything later tonight or not. I'll have my laptop at the party, but chances are good that I'll be kinda busy tracking returns and such.
I will report in as soon as I am able. In the meantime, please keep your fingers crossed for us. We've all worked awfully hard on this for it to not go our way now.
Monday, November 2, 2009
It's all over now but the voting
We've done what we came here to do. We identified voters, we encouraged voters, we recruited volunteers and raised money and raised awareness and took the high road and didn't hit (that's my own special rule. Apparently I needed that rule.).
We called and pestered and knocked on doors and put up yard signs and worked and worked and worked. We ate a ton of pizza and goldfish crackers and veggies and dip and potato chips and nachos and salsa. We ate moosemeat chili and egg salad sandwiches and gourmet preparations.
We did our best to treat our volunteers well and to make the shift enjoyable enough for them to agree to come back. (I think that's where the no hitting rule came in.)
I gave pitches and talked on the radio and answered questions about the same things over and over and over again. I wrote a newspaper column and blog posts and even delivered a sermon before it was done.
I am toast.
I have given all that I had to give. That's it, I'm done.
Tomorrow is voting day here in Maine, and the polls will close state-wide at 8 p.m., which means that in 25 hours of me sitting here writing this, it will be decided whether Laura and I can be legally married in the state we call home.
We've just spent four days in Portland, some 150 miles from home, staying with a friend who is more gracious than I could ever be, because Laura's mother was in the intensive care unit at Maine Medical Center. Friday morning she was unresponsive and her kidneys had stopped functioning. She had surgery earlier last week, and apparently it was all too much for some of her organs to handle, so they had a little lie-down-take-a-nap-kind-of-break. Fortunately, the doctors managed to coax them back into action without having to do dialysis, but Laura had to be nearby in order to make whatever medical decisions needed making. She's the eldest daughter, and thus next of kin. I cannot imagine how stressful this must have been for her. I have been watching her negotiate the myriad of bureaucratic levels at the hospital and run interference between the doctors and the rest of her family, and well, let's just say she's done it all with a lot more patience and grace than I think I would have been able to muster in similar circumstances. Tonight, she is my hero.
We are exhausted. We won't be doing the election-day running around get-out-the-vote madness that happens. We are on orders from the campaign team to lay low and recover a bit. I had the flu for nine days before we went to Portland, so we're both pretty wiped out. I expect we'll go to bed tonight and not set an alarm. We'll wake up when we wake up and forage in the house for breakfast. I may or may not make some cookies to bring to the party tomorrow night. We'll head up to Ellsworth in the late afternoon to set up for the party that we're having when the polls close at 8. It's at a local Internet cafe. They're letting us have the place for free and bring in our own snacks. They'll make their money on the cash bar. Laura and I will do what we can to make the place spiffy and prepared for the invasion of multitudes of election geeks and their laptops.
See, there are no big candidate races in Maine this year, so the television news people will be doing very little in the way of coverage. We had considered getting a big TV for the event, but it seemed silly if there isn't going to be live coverage through the evening. So we'll do it all on our laptops. I'll post all the links and stuff tomorrow. For tonight, I need to eat my spaghetti-o's with meatballs and snuggle my sweetie and head to bed. We've earned this night's rest.
We called and pestered and knocked on doors and put up yard signs and worked and worked and worked. We ate a ton of pizza and goldfish crackers and veggies and dip and potato chips and nachos and salsa. We ate moosemeat chili and egg salad sandwiches and gourmet preparations.
We did our best to treat our volunteers well and to make the shift enjoyable enough for them to agree to come back. (I think that's where the no hitting rule came in.)
I gave pitches and talked on the radio and answered questions about the same things over and over and over again. I wrote a newspaper column and blog posts and even delivered a sermon before it was done.
I am toast.
I have given all that I had to give. That's it, I'm done.
Tomorrow is voting day here in Maine, and the polls will close state-wide at 8 p.m., which means that in 25 hours of me sitting here writing this, it will be decided whether Laura and I can be legally married in the state we call home.
We've just spent four days in Portland, some 150 miles from home, staying with a friend who is more gracious than I could ever be, because Laura's mother was in the intensive care unit at Maine Medical Center. Friday morning she was unresponsive and her kidneys had stopped functioning. She had surgery earlier last week, and apparently it was all too much for some of her organs to handle, so they had a little lie-down-take-a-nap-kind-of-break. Fortunately, the doctors managed to coax them back into action without having to do dialysis, but Laura had to be nearby in order to make whatever medical decisions needed making. She's the eldest daughter, and thus next of kin. I cannot imagine how stressful this must have been for her. I have been watching her negotiate the myriad of bureaucratic levels at the hospital and run interference between the doctors and the rest of her family, and well, let's just say she's done it all with a lot more patience and grace than I think I would have been able to muster in similar circumstances. Tonight, she is my hero.
We are exhausted. We won't be doing the election-day running around get-out-the-vote madness that happens. We are on orders from the campaign team to lay low and recover a bit. I had the flu for nine days before we went to Portland, so we're both pretty wiped out. I expect we'll go to bed tonight and not set an alarm. We'll wake up when we wake up and forage in the house for breakfast. I may or may not make some cookies to bring to the party tomorrow night. We'll head up to Ellsworth in the late afternoon to set up for the party that we're having when the polls close at 8. It's at a local Internet cafe. They're letting us have the place for free and bring in our own snacks. They'll make their money on the cash bar. Laura and I will do what we can to make the place spiffy and prepared for the invasion of multitudes of election geeks and their laptops.
See, there are no big candidate races in Maine this year, so the television news people will be doing very little in the way of coverage. We had considered getting a big TV for the event, but it seemed silly if there isn't going to be live coverage through the evening. So we'll do it all on our laptops. I'll post all the links and stuff tomorrow. For tonight, I need to eat my spaghetti-o's with meatballs and snuggle my sweetie and head to bed. We've earned this night's rest.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
strange bedfellows indeed!
OK, so this is not anything I ever imagined that I would be saying, but I preached a sermon this morning. I was tagged by a friend when a call went out for a guest speaker on the Sunday before the election.
Maine's having an election. You may have heard something about that. Something about marriage equality. Yeah. Something like that.
So anyway, I went to the Unitarian-Universalist church in Belfast this morning. I worked for several days crafting my sermon, and choosing hymns and readings and a children's story. I was a bit of a nervous wreck, but I got through it. Here's what I said:
It is just two days before the election, and I am in a pulpit, a place quite frankly, I never pictured myself short of some kind of trial. Politics make strange bedfellows, though. And despite the fact that our democracy was founded on the principle of the separation of church and state, we as Unitarian-Universalists, are called to speak out for justice, and in this season, that means we end up mixing our faith and religious practices with secular concerns. And that, I suppose, explains how this grumpy middle-aged, lesbian, ex-Catholic semi-failed UU ended up in a pulpit two days before an election to not quite talk about politics.
As Unitarian-Universalists, what do we believe? What makes us what we are?
I remember when I was young and I was at that stage in a Catholic girl’s development when I began to realize that not every one of my friends was Catholic. I asked my aunt about different families we knew, and I remember when I asked about the Bennetts, she told me “they’re Unitarians.”
That stopped me for a moment. I had begun to learn a little about the various stripes of what had previously been a monolith of “Protestants” in my mind. I knew of Baptists and Episcopals (“Catholic-lite” I was told) and Pentecostals and Lutherans, but Unitarian-Universalists were a new thing to me.
“What do they believe?” I asked.
There was a pause, as my Irish Catholic aunt searched for her answer.
“Not much, as far as I can tell.”
More than thirty years later, I find myself here, asking the same simple question. The answer is far more complex than that first one I received.
What is it that we believe?
What is it that drives us?
We can cite the stuff that is written in the front of our hymnal and in all the literature, the lines about the inherent worth and dignity of each person, the bits about the interconnectedness of us all, the appreciation for our diversity and how we value each search for truth and meaning, but what DRIVES us? What makes us DO stuff? What makes us move?
What gives us passion enough to put aside the things that we do every day and invest a little bit of ourselves? And perhaps the more telling portion of this equation is this: how do we explain it to ourselves, and to others?
There are beautiful and intricate essays woven by theologians to explain why UUs are different from other Protestant sects, but for me, the thing that makes it real is what I call the “put up or shut up” principle. It is unwritten anywhere in our texts, you won’t find it in our creed, or in any hymnal or pamphlet, but it is something that runs through me that resonates within these walls.
We are people of action. We are people who put our money – and so much more – where our mouths are.
We do not only wail about hunger, we feed people.
We are saddened by oppression and seek to stop it and lift up the oppressed.
We do not just lament injustice, we work to fix it.
We prefer action to novenas.
Put up or shut up.
We exemplify faith in action.
The key thing, it seems to me, is that we like to be challenged. We like to have our ideas and beliefs challenged, else why would we show up every Sunday? Certainly not to be told repeatedly that we are right. Certainly not to have illogical things drilled into us by rote until we believe and chant it all back like so many automatons.
We want, nay, we DEMAND to be challenged, in all aspects of our lives. We need to hear “so what are you going to do about it?” We need to hear “please explain.”
Ours is not a faith of passive obedience, but one that demands rigorous action. As much as we need to be challenged, we challenge each other and the world around us. As often as we hear “please explain,” we say those same words.
“Please. Explain.”
“Show me.”
“Teach me.”
For what is it worth? To go through a day – or a lifetime?
never learning,
never growing,
never risking,
and never accomplishing a damned thing?
What kind of life is that? Where is the joy in being sedentary? Passive? Isolated?
When I first encountered UU-ism as an adult, it was at the Universalist-Unitarian Church in Waterville, Maine. I attended a service there as part of an assignment in a college class on modern religious movements.
I was overwhelmed.
The people were welcoming.
The readings were about love and sharing and helping and doing right, and you can only imagine my amazement when I flipped through the hymnal to find Holly Near!
I couldn’t go back for over a month. It felt so affirming -- it was more than I could stand.
I had never been in a church where I had been told that I was worthy. Indeed, as a part of the Catholic masses I used to attend weekly - sometimes daily – I repeated “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed” countless hundreds of times through my developing years and into adulthood.
To stand among people who did not ask me to hide my orientation or my politics was amazing. To converse with people who did not judge me because I had ideas that were different from theirs was enormous. To be welcomed and introduced to other, out queer people in a church was all a bit much for this embittered ex-Catholic to handle. I had no idea church could be like this. And it scared me.
What kept me coming back – initially – was the social and political action stuff. I was impressed by how active the people at the UU church were in politics. I was surprised to see people actually doing things – as opposed to just writing a check. In 1995, when I really became involved with the church there, it was because of the number of people from those pews on Sunday morning that I saw at the Maine Won’t Discriminate phone bank all the other nights of the week. We were fighting a No On 1 battle back then to protect the anti-discrimination law that had been passed by the legislature and signed by the governor.
Sound familiar?
You knew I’d get to this part.
The No on 1 part.
And it’s true. That’s why I am here.
My job today is to challenge you, within the context of what we know of our faith, and ourselves, to be all that we can be, to do all that we can do. And to give of ourselves. I mean really give. Not the easy stuff, the check, the single shift at the phone bank, going to the polls and casting a ballot. I mean the tough stuff.
The put up or shut up kind of stuff. The ‘how much does this thing called equality mean to us really?” stuff.
We’re UUs. We’re already active. And, truth be told, we’re usually pretty smug about how active we are.
When was the last time you gave everything you had?
I mean everything?
When was the last time you stayed up late, got up early, worked tirelessly, round-the-clock, putting aside everything else for a thing that was bigger than yourself? And what was that cause? An event? A war? A campaign? A big project? A movement?
What is it that is worth that much of us? Is marriage equality worth that? Some say yes, some say no.
Let me tell you what happens sometimes when my partner Laura and I visit an emergency room. Laura suffers from chronic back pain and chronic migraines. Sometimes we end up in the emergency room for acute care. She is in pain, blinded by her pain, often crying, sometimes being physically ill, barely able to speak. I am nervous. I am scared for my beloved. I want to stop her pain, but I am powerless. I want the doctors to respond NOW to make her better. I am frantic with worry.
And then a nurse steps in front of me and says, “you can’t be in here. You’re not family.”
I could cite case after case of similar instances, both in Maine and around the country, but I am only here to tell you about my experience. My truth. My reality. Where I live every day. And this is it. Unless we are married, by law, I am not a part of my partner’s family.
The hospital cannot release Laura’s medical information to me. I cannot have input or ask questions about her treatment or how I should care for her after I get her home. Under the law, we are strangers.
To me, then, this fight is worth everything I’ve got. And honestly, I don’t recall a time when I have poured more of myself into a thing than now.
I have devoted myself to causes and projects over the years. Some were logistical challenges, like conferences or retreats or weekend activities, but some were bigger than that.
Some, like this campaign, are about something that goes deeper than coordinating a weekend of picnics and hiking. This is about equality. And rights. And security. And dignity, and justice, and all of those things that are hard to describe but so important to us.
So important is this battle that I have devoted what some would call an unreasonable amount of my life to it in recent months. I am a small-scale contractor, specializing in home maintenance and repair. With the economy in a downward spiral, I have taken a leap of faith and thrown myself into this campaign. I have abandoned my business except for the most peripheral obligations and have begun to rely on the kindness of friends and strangers to pay my rent and other bills. I have not applied for public assistance, although it may come to that after the election.
I go to sleep each night and wake each morning thinking of the campaign. I think of how I can help, what I can do, where I can go to raise money, to recruit volunteers, where can I put yard signs, how can I get a house party put together in Bucksport or Stonington, or Ellsworth? How do I get my mug in front of voters and potential volunteers in Sedgwick or Gouldsboro, or Belfast?
Lately I have been having a recurring nightmare. I awake with a start from a dream in which it is November 4 and I am reading the election returns in the newspaper. Only I learn that if we had two more votes in each town, we would have won.
We UUs often talk about a faith-lived life, but what does that mean? To me it means living my life as closely in line with the things I believe as I can possibly get. It means put up or shut up.
It means doing what it takes to do what is right. It means giving of myself, laying myself on the line, taking a risk, speaking out, standing up and stepping forward.
It means volunteer. Put a shoulder to the wheel, stand and haul in line with the others, and do the work that is real.
Some of us are burned to a frazzle. Some are too overwhelmed by the enormity of what must be done to even begin.
And I am here, feeling just a little of both. Like many of my friends, have been fighting the long battle for equality for years. Many of us are more than just a little burned out. We feel as though we have been throwing ourselves at this particular wall for a very long time and we can see no sign that our efforts are doing anything real.
In the past few months, my role in the campaign has been to inspire people to give of their money and their time. I make ‘em cry and then I make them write checks and volunteer. It is what I seem to be good at, so it is what I do.
Not everybody can ask a group of strangers for money, and fewer still can ask their friends; but I can, and it needed doing, so that’s what I did.
The time for house parties is over. We are down to the sprint for the finish.
I stand before you with a complex agenda. I am here as a fellow Unitarian-Universalist, knowing what it is to be a cat who resists herding, and resenting mightily the suggestion that I might not be as enlightened and politically active as I ought to be already, thank-you-very-much.
And I am here as an organizer who knows just how much more there is to be done in the next 58 hours and who wants to inspire you to do it.
And I need to somehow wrap it all in a not-quite-political message that will both challenge and appeal to the pantheon of spiritual traditions and beliefs that fill the room.
Frankly, a house party would be a lot easier right now.
We all know what is involved in a political race. We all know what is involved in the last hours of a campaign. There’s a lot of grunt work to be sure, very little glamour, and much confusion and sometimes some shouting. But it is as necessary to democracy as air and sunlight and free speech. It is the stuff that makes our nation what it is – free people working hard for justice.
A faith-lived life is a light that can change the world. Gandhi taught us this.
How much is it worth to us, this thing called equality? What does it demand of us? What are we willing to give? How much faith do we have?
Are we willing to give our time? Our energy? Our talents?
Our hearts?
So now I challenge you:
What are you willing to do on faith?
How much of yourself are you willing to put on the line?
Are you willing to give of yourself?
Are you willing to give a day?
One day of your life?
Tuesday? Election day? Can you take that off to help drive people to the polls?
Maybe Monday, too? To make get out the vote calls and help people who want to vote early?
Two days?
Can you offer that much on faith?
It’s a lot, I know.
Are we willing to step out on that high wire and trust that we are doing the right thing and that the fates, or some higher power of our own definition, will preserve us?
Are we willing to put ourselves on the line?
Not as civil rights workers have in the past, stepping into the path of police dogs and fire hoses and riot batons; but to put ourselves on the line in a different way.
Personally, I’d love to see everyone here rush up to our volunteers after the service and sign up to work all day both Monday and Tuesday.
Not all of us can take two days off. But we can all give something.
Through this fall’s campaign, I have been using some basic math to inspire people to write big checks.
When a donor makes a one-time contribution of $100, that is a very good thing. But what does that represent? How much of that person is offered in that donation?
If the donor makes $30,000 a year, that $100 check represents one-third of one percent of his or her income.
One third of one percent.
How much are we willing to give of ourselves?
How much of our resources, whatever they may be, are we willing to put into this battle for equality?
One day of our year is – in easy math – one three hundred sixty-fifth of our year’s allotment of days. In easier to comprehend math, that’s something just over one fourth of one percent.
If we break it down into working hours, for those of us with day jobs, let’s say we offer up a whole workday. Based on 50 weeks of full-time employment, one eight-hour day is four tenths of one percent of what we pledge to our employer each year.
How much are we willing to give of ourselves?
The time for writing checks is past. Now is the time when justice asks us to give of what is real, to give of ourselves.
We talk in lofty terms about democracy and equality and justice, terms our Unitarian and Universalist forbears held so dear and suffered so to preserve, but how much of ourselves are we willing to sacrifice for those things?
What is equality worth to us? What value do we place on being able to visit a spouse in the hospital? How much of ourselves are we willing to give so couples will never have to hear again “you can’t be in here, you’re not family,” or worse yet, from a funeral director, “I’m sorry, you can’t sign for the body. We need a family member for that.”
This IS the single most important civil rights issue of my lifetime.
Marriage equality is going to happen on a state-by-state basis, creating a patchwork of equality until we arrive at a Loving vs. Virginia – type decision that will decide for all the land whether same-sex couples deserve the same basic civil rights as our heterosexual counterparts.
Maine is the only election this year dealing with marriage equality. 34 times the issue of same-sex marriage has gone before voters in one form or another in this country, and 34 times it has failed.
The task before us is enormous and is of a level of importance that I cannot describe, but can only hope that you comprehend.
This is our chance to march to Selma.
The world is watching.
I have taken that step out into the ether and trust that the world and its people will not let me down.
*****************
Then we stood and sang "This little light of mine". And then we signed up 14 volunteers for shifts tomorrow and Tuesday. I've done what I can do. Next step: Tuesday.
Maine's having an election. You may have heard something about that. Something about marriage equality. Yeah. Something like that.
So anyway, I went to the Unitarian-Universalist church in Belfast this morning. I worked for several days crafting my sermon, and choosing hymns and readings and a children's story. I was a bit of a nervous wreck, but I got through it. Here's what I said:
It is just two days before the election, and I am in a pulpit, a place quite frankly, I never pictured myself short of some kind of trial. Politics make strange bedfellows, though. And despite the fact that our democracy was founded on the principle of the separation of church and state, we as Unitarian-Universalists, are called to speak out for justice, and in this season, that means we end up mixing our faith and religious practices with secular concerns. And that, I suppose, explains how this grumpy middle-aged, lesbian, ex-Catholic semi-failed UU ended up in a pulpit two days before an election to not quite talk about politics.
As Unitarian-Universalists, what do we believe? What makes us what we are?
I remember when I was young and I was at that stage in a Catholic girl’s development when I began to realize that not every one of my friends was Catholic. I asked my aunt about different families we knew, and I remember when I asked about the Bennetts, she told me “they’re Unitarians.”
That stopped me for a moment. I had begun to learn a little about the various stripes of what had previously been a monolith of “Protestants” in my mind. I knew of Baptists and Episcopals (“Catholic-lite” I was told) and Pentecostals and Lutherans, but Unitarian-Universalists were a new thing to me.
“What do they believe?” I asked.
There was a pause, as my Irish Catholic aunt searched for her answer.
“Not much, as far as I can tell.”
More than thirty years later, I find myself here, asking the same simple question. The answer is far more complex than that first one I received.
What is it that we believe?
What is it that drives us?
We can cite the stuff that is written in the front of our hymnal and in all the literature, the lines about the inherent worth and dignity of each person, the bits about the interconnectedness of us all, the appreciation for our diversity and how we value each search for truth and meaning, but what DRIVES us? What makes us DO stuff? What makes us move?
What gives us passion enough to put aside the things that we do every day and invest a little bit of ourselves? And perhaps the more telling portion of this equation is this: how do we explain it to ourselves, and to others?
There are beautiful and intricate essays woven by theologians to explain why UUs are different from other Protestant sects, but for me, the thing that makes it real is what I call the “put up or shut up” principle. It is unwritten anywhere in our texts, you won’t find it in our creed, or in any hymnal or pamphlet, but it is something that runs through me that resonates within these walls.
We are people of action. We are people who put our money – and so much more – where our mouths are.
We do not only wail about hunger, we feed people.
We are saddened by oppression and seek to stop it and lift up the oppressed.
We do not just lament injustice, we work to fix it.
We prefer action to novenas.
Put up or shut up.
We exemplify faith in action.
The key thing, it seems to me, is that we like to be challenged. We like to have our ideas and beliefs challenged, else why would we show up every Sunday? Certainly not to be told repeatedly that we are right. Certainly not to have illogical things drilled into us by rote until we believe and chant it all back like so many automatons.
We want, nay, we DEMAND to be challenged, in all aspects of our lives. We need to hear “so what are you going to do about it?” We need to hear “please explain.”
Ours is not a faith of passive obedience, but one that demands rigorous action. As much as we need to be challenged, we challenge each other and the world around us. As often as we hear “please explain,” we say those same words.
“Please. Explain.”
“Show me.”
“Teach me.”
For what is it worth? To go through a day – or a lifetime?
never learning,
never growing,
never risking,
and never accomplishing a damned thing?
What kind of life is that? Where is the joy in being sedentary? Passive? Isolated?
When I first encountered UU-ism as an adult, it was at the Universalist-Unitarian Church in Waterville, Maine. I attended a service there as part of an assignment in a college class on modern religious movements.
I was overwhelmed.
The people were welcoming.
The readings were about love and sharing and helping and doing right, and you can only imagine my amazement when I flipped through the hymnal to find Holly Near!
I couldn’t go back for over a month. It felt so affirming -- it was more than I could stand.
I had never been in a church where I had been told that I was worthy. Indeed, as a part of the Catholic masses I used to attend weekly - sometimes daily – I repeated “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed” countless hundreds of times through my developing years and into adulthood.
To stand among people who did not ask me to hide my orientation or my politics was amazing. To converse with people who did not judge me because I had ideas that were different from theirs was enormous. To be welcomed and introduced to other, out queer people in a church was all a bit much for this embittered ex-Catholic to handle. I had no idea church could be like this. And it scared me.
What kept me coming back – initially – was the social and political action stuff. I was impressed by how active the people at the UU church were in politics. I was surprised to see people actually doing things – as opposed to just writing a check. In 1995, when I really became involved with the church there, it was because of the number of people from those pews on Sunday morning that I saw at the Maine Won’t Discriminate phone bank all the other nights of the week. We were fighting a No On 1 battle back then to protect the anti-discrimination law that had been passed by the legislature and signed by the governor.
Sound familiar?
You knew I’d get to this part.
The No on 1 part.
And it’s true. That’s why I am here.
My job today is to challenge you, within the context of what we know of our faith, and ourselves, to be all that we can be, to do all that we can do. And to give of ourselves. I mean really give. Not the easy stuff, the check, the single shift at the phone bank, going to the polls and casting a ballot. I mean the tough stuff.
The put up or shut up kind of stuff. The ‘how much does this thing called equality mean to us really?” stuff.
We’re UUs. We’re already active. And, truth be told, we’re usually pretty smug about how active we are.
When was the last time you gave everything you had?
I mean everything?
When was the last time you stayed up late, got up early, worked tirelessly, round-the-clock, putting aside everything else for a thing that was bigger than yourself? And what was that cause? An event? A war? A campaign? A big project? A movement?
What is it that is worth that much of us? Is marriage equality worth that? Some say yes, some say no.
Let me tell you what happens sometimes when my partner Laura and I visit an emergency room. Laura suffers from chronic back pain and chronic migraines. Sometimes we end up in the emergency room for acute care. She is in pain, blinded by her pain, often crying, sometimes being physically ill, barely able to speak. I am nervous. I am scared for my beloved. I want to stop her pain, but I am powerless. I want the doctors to respond NOW to make her better. I am frantic with worry.
And then a nurse steps in front of me and says, “you can’t be in here. You’re not family.”
I could cite case after case of similar instances, both in Maine and around the country, but I am only here to tell you about my experience. My truth. My reality. Where I live every day. And this is it. Unless we are married, by law, I am not a part of my partner’s family.
The hospital cannot release Laura’s medical information to me. I cannot have input or ask questions about her treatment or how I should care for her after I get her home. Under the law, we are strangers.
To me, then, this fight is worth everything I’ve got. And honestly, I don’t recall a time when I have poured more of myself into a thing than now.
I have devoted myself to causes and projects over the years. Some were logistical challenges, like conferences or retreats or weekend activities, but some were bigger than that.
Some, like this campaign, are about something that goes deeper than coordinating a weekend of picnics and hiking. This is about equality. And rights. And security. And dignity, and justice, and all of those things that are hard to describe but so important to us.
So important is this battle that I have devoted what some would call an unreasonable amount of my life to it in recent months. I am a small-scale contractor, specializing in home maintenance and repair. With the economy in a downward spiral, I have taken a leap of faith and thrown myself into this campaign. I have abandoned my business except for the most peripheral obligations and have begun to rely on the kindness of friends and strangers to pay my rent and other bills. I have not applied for public assistance, although it may come to that after the election.
I go to sleep each night and wake each morning thinking of the campaign. I think of how I can help, what I can do, where I can go to raise money, to recruit volunteers, where can I put yard signs, how can I get a house party put together in Bucksport or Stonington, or Ellsworth? How do I get my mug in front of voters and potential volunteers in Sedgwick or Gouldsboro, or Belfast?
Lately I have been having a recurring nightmare. I awake with a start from a dream in which it is November 4 and I am reading the election returns in the newspaper. Only I learn that if we had two more votes in each town, we would have won.
We UUs often talk about a faith-lived life, but what does that mean? To me it means living my life as closely in line with the things I believe as I can possibly get. It means put up or shut up.
It means doing what it takes to do what is right. It means giving of myself, laying myself on the line, taking a risk, speaking out, standing up and stepping forward.
It means volunteer. Put a shoulder to the wheel, stand and haul in line with the others, and do the work that is real.
Some of us are burned to a frazzle. Some are too overwhelmed by the enormity of what must be done to even begin.
And I am here, feeling just a little of both. Like many of my friends, have been fighting the long battle for equality for years. Many of us are more than just a little burned out. We feel as though we have been throwing ourselves at this particular wall for a very long time and we can see no sign that our efforts are doing anything real.
In the past few months, my role in the campaign has been to inspire people to give of their money and their time. I make ‘em cry and then I make them write checks and volunteer. It is what I seem to be good at, so it is what I do.
Not everybody can ask a group of strangers for money, and fewer still can ask their friends; but I can, and it needed doing, so that’s what I did.
The time for house parties is over. We are down to the sprint for the finish.
I stand before you with a complex agenda. I am here as a fellow Unitarian-Universalist, knowing what it is to be a cat who resists herding, and resenting mightily the suggestion that I might not be as enlightened and politically active as I ought to be already, thank-you-very-much.
And I am here as an organizer who knows just how much more there is to be done in the next 58 hours and who wants to inspire you to do it.
And I need to somehow wrap it all in a not-quite-political message that will both challenge and appeal to the pantheon of spiritual traditions and beliefs that fill the room.
Frankly, a house party would be a lot easier right now.
We all know what is involved in a political race. We all know what is involved in the last hours of a campaign. There’s a lot of grunt work to be sure, very little glamour, and much confusion and sometimes some shouting. But it is as necessary to democracy as air and sunlight and free speech. It is the stuff that makes our nation what it is – free people working hard for justice.
A faith-lived life is a light that can change the world. Gandhi taught us this.
How much is it worth to us, this thing called equality? What does it demand of us? What are we willing to give? How much faith do we have?
Are we willing to give our time? Our energy? Our talents?
Our hearts?
So now I challenge you:
What are you willing to do on faith?
How much of yourself are you willing to put on the line?
Are you willing to give of yourself?
Are you willing to give a day?
One day of your life?
Tuesday? Election day? Can you take that off to help drive people to the polls?
Maybe Monday, too? To make get out the vote calls and help people who want to vote early?
Two days?
Can you offer that much on faith?
It’s a lot, I know.
Are we willing to step out on that high wire and trust that we are doing the right thing and that the fates, or some higher power of our own definition, will preserve us?
Are we willing to put ourselves on the line?
Not as civil rights workers have in the past, stepping into the path of police dogs and fire hoses and riot batons; but to put ourselves on the line in a different way.
Personally, I’d love to see everyone here rush up to our volunteers after the service and sign up to work all day both Monday and Tuesday.
Not all of us can take two days off. But we can all give something.
Through this fall’s campaign, I have been using some basic math to inspire people to write big checks.
When a donor makes a one-time contribution of $100, that is a very good thing. But what does that represent? How much of that person is offered in that donation?
If the donor makes $30,000 a year, that $100 check represents one-third of one percent of his or her income.
One third of one percent.
How much are we willing to give of ourselves?
How much of our resources, whatever they may be, are we willing to put into this battle for equality?
One day of our year is – in easy math – one three hundred sixty-fifth of our year’s allotment of days. In easier to comprehend math, that’s something just over one fourth of one percent.
If we break it down into working hours, for those of us with day jobs, let’s say we offer up a whole workday. Based on 50 weeks of full-time employment, one eight-hour day is four tenths of one percent of what we pledge to our employer each year.
How much are we willing to give of ourselves?
The time for writing checks is past. Now is the time when justice asks us to give of what is real, to give of ourselves.
We talk in lofty terms about democracy and equality and justice, terms our Unitarian and Universalist forbears held so dear and suffered so to preserve, but how much of ourselves are we willing to sacrifice for those things?
What is equality worth to us? What value do we place on being able to visit a spouse in the hospital? How much of ourselves are we willing to give so couples will never have to hear again “you can’t be in here, you’re not family,” or worse yet, from a funeral director, “I’m sorry, you can’t sign for the body. We need a family member for that.”
This IS the single most important civil rights issue of my lifetime.
Marriage equality is going to happen on a state-by-state basis, creating a patchwork of equality until we arrive at a Loving vs. Virginia – type decision that will decide for all the land whether same-sex couples deserve the same basic civil rights as our heterosexual counterparts.
Maine is the only election this year dealing with marriage equality. 34 times the issue of same-sex marriage has gone before voters in one form or another in this country, and 34 times it has failed.
The task before us is enormous and is of a level of importance that I cannot describe, but can only hope that you comprehend.
This is our chance to march to Selma.
The world is watching.
I have taken that step out into the ether and trust that the world and its people will not let me down.
*****************
Then we stood and sang "This little light of mine". And then we signed up 14 volunteers for shifts tomorrow and Tuesday. I've done what I can do. Next step: Tuesday.
Monday, October 26, 2009
delirium diffused.
OK, so I have the black death.
I don't know if it is H1N1, the Swine Flu, or the actual bubonic plague, but I have been flat on my back since last Thursday. I did a house party yesterday afternoon and I looked so bad that the hosts sent me home right after my pitch. They even bundled up my buttons and bumper stickers and the donation basket and sent them home to me with one of the guests when the party was done. Oof. That's pretty bad.
Late last week I got a note on facebook from one of the big shots with the campaign asking if I'd be around to take a phone call Monday morning. Sure, says me. I'm always available to take a call when the No On 1 people call. I may be a renegade of sorts, but I do try to be a team player when I can.
But then I got paranoid. Years of insecurity, coupled with a delirious brain from this flu conspired to get me to think the worst. I wondered if I insulted someone, if I filed something wrong, if I screwed up a pitch or got something backwards and I was about to be bawled out. I searched my (fevered, remember, I'm sick as hell through this) memory for instances, real or imagined, that might cause the big shots to be upset. Exhausted and still not sure what I might have done to be called to the principal's office, I resigned myself to whatever chastisement was coming my way and set my alarm to be by the phone.
I woke up and made coffee for the first time in four days. I sat on the sofa, wrapped in a blanket sipping some orange juice and squinting at my computer for the day's news when the phone rang.
Flu-addled me: Hullo?
Very perky woman: Hello is this Dawn?
Me: Yes, this is Dawn.
Very perky woman: Hi, Dawn. This is (Maine 1st District Congresswoman) Chellie Pingree calling from the No On 1 Campaign to thank you for all you've been doing.
Me: stunned silence
(tick, tock, tick, tock, tick)
Me (startled to life and scrambling for my mental feet) : Oh wow! Hi Chellie! Wow!
Chellie (still very perky): I understand you've been pretty busy up there with the campaign.
And so we chatted, somewhat awkwardly, for a minute or two. I have no idea what I said. Something about house parties and having the flu. Something else about thanking her for helping out, being busy in Congress, that kind of thing.
And then it was over.
I sat and stared at the phone.
Nobody yelled at me.
In fact, someone pretty important just thanked me for the stuff I've been doing. Wow.
I rapidly called a person or two who might be interested in such a thing and updated my facebook status to reflect the morning's events. Wow and damn. That's pretty cool. I'm not her constituent, but it was amazingly cool to have a phone call from Chellie Pingree to start my day. Hot dog!
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Time marches on...
We're down to 16 days before the election now.
This campaign has taken over my life.
Our side is out-stripping our opponents by nearly a 3-to-1 margin in the fundraising arena.
The polls still have us in a statistical dead heat.
No matter how right we are, no matter how just our cause, no matter how high-minded and ethical our methods, this thing is not going to be won on those merits.
Voter turnout will win this thing, plain and simple.
We're in an off-year election cycle. People just don't come to the polls in off-years like they do when there is a big race on the ballot, like President or Senate or Congress or Governor. The only things on the ballot this year are some citizen initiatives and a couple of bond issues.
Which means the only people who are going to vote are those who vote every year, no matter what or who is on the ballot, and those who have a dog in the fight, namely the activists on either side.
So truly, it comes down to which side can mobilize their people better on November 3.
I am nervous, but I have hope. In the campaign finance reports for the third quarter, our side had 12,000 donors ranging from large to small. Their side? Well, not so much.
I read through all 450-some pages of our donors when they were posted on line. An interesting thing I noticed was that our campaign staff is donating to the cause. From the executive director to the temp field organizers. They almost all give. The opponents? I didn't see that at all. Oh, I'm sure there are a couple doing just that, but not like I have been seeing on our side. Every two weeks on average, our staff will donate some portion of their earnings back into the campaign.
We believe in this. And it's personal.
I'm doing all I can here in my little end of the world. I am organizing house parties. I think I've raised somewhere in the neighborhood of $20,000, or I will by the time the election rolls around. That's not bad for a volunteer who's unemployed and trying to make ends meet.
We're transitioning now into get out the vote (GOTV) mode, so my pitches involve more about volunteering than giving money, and that's OK. It's what needs doing right now.
I'm going to be preaching a sermon (yes, you read that right) on November 1 at a nearby Unitarian-Universalist church. It being a UU church, I am going to trust that the structure will not cave in upon my head when I step up to the pulpit, but I have endured no small amount of teasing and hilarity at my new found speaking engagement.
This could all turn into something different for my life when this is over. It's still in the air. I'll write more about it as it develops, you can be sure. For now, I am just going to concentrate on getting through the pile of thank-you notes I have to do, and maybe watch some football this afternoon. Stay tuned.
Oh, and if you want to donate, HERE is where to do it. Thanks.
Oh, before I go, take a look at this commercial released this week. For those from away, this woman's accent is French-Canadian. Her family is probably one of the thousands who migrated to the mill towns that sprung up along Maine's rivers during the industrial revolution. She may still speak French at home -- many of our Franco friends do. They are proud of their culture and their heritage, and their church. And many have been very very torn by the Catholic Bishop's venomous involvement in this battle, and they are standing up and speaking out for justice. I do love Yolande Dumont. She is everything that is right about memeres in Maine.
Friday, October 9, 2009
newspaper column
I got to write a guest column for my local weekly newspaper this week, the Mount Desert Islander, published in Bar Harbor. What follows is the edited version as it appears in this week's paper.
It's all about equality
By Dawn Fortune
Why marriage? Why full equality? That really answers itself, doesn’t it? Full equality.
That’s what it is about. Not partial equality, not kind-of equality, not separate but equal, not half-measures. I want the real deal. I want my full rights as a citizen. I want access to the full array of benefits and responsibilities that come with a civil marriage contract. I want what everyone wants – to be recognized and valued by my community.
I don’t want to have to produce reams of expensive legal paperwork to accompany my partner in the hospital emergency room. I don’t want to have to explain that when I say “partner” I am not talking about business or tennis. I don’t want to be a woman in my mid-40s referring to my “girlfriend” of the better part of decade as though I am no more emotionally developed than a teenager or as though I am referring to a chum with whom I get together every morning to drink coffee.
I want the dignity and security that comes with a marriage. I want to hold a ceremony that is legal and binding as well as beautiful and full of meaning. I want my spouse to be recognized by my doctor, insurance company, and my employer. I just want to be able to say, “Yes, I am married. My wife’s name is Laura.”
I want to be able to walk into my town office and get a marriage license. I don’t ask the Catholic Church of my childhood to approve or disapprove or do anything. The fact that I get the license at the town office makes the contract a function of the state, not a church. I don’t need a priest or rabbi or any other clergy-type person to authorize, bless or sanctify the contract for it to be real.
Yet somehow, lots of religious institutions and individuals seem pretty worked up over whether I should be able to get a civil contract.
The way L.D. 1020 was written was very clear. It eliminated discrimination in civil marriage while upholding and affirming the right of any person or religious entity to refuse to perform any marriage of which it did not approve.
So what is the problem? It seems very simple: if you don’t agree with same-sex couples getting married, don’t marry them. If your church does not agree with it, then nobody’s going to force that church to do something that violates its beliefs.
Those rules are already in place. Priests in the Roman Catholic Church don’t have to marry a Catholic and a Jew, they don’t have to marry divorced people, Protestants, pagans, Hindus or anyone, even if the law says those people can legally marry. Churches and individuals are exempt. Period.
The Legislature and the Governor recognized the fairness in the bill that was L.D. 1020, and that it allowed for those opposed to same-sex marriage to opt out, so they passed and signed it into law. Now some are trying to repeal the law and take away the right given to me by the legislative process.
That’s what this whole referendum hoopla is about: taking away the right of some couples to take out a civil marriage contract.
The Maine way of doing things is pretty “live and let live.” So long as you don’t interfere with anyone, go about your business. People want to live their lives a certain way? We pretty much let ‘em. Is anything they’re doing any of our business? Unless they’re doing harm, we pretty much stay clear.
Which is why the involvement of so many church groups in this campaign just baffles me. It seems so unlike the Maine I know. If anyone wants to point a finger at things that are really a threat to traditional marriage, they should look at domestic violence, poverty, lack of education and opportunity, and the 50% divorce rate.
What harm my desire to get married is doing to the institution of marriage is not clear.
The arguments we are hearing now against the idea of marriage equality have been recycled from the time when there were laws against inter-racial marriage. They are based in the same arguments used for centuries to uphold slavery and against women’s suffrage, the right of black people to vote and the integration of public schools.
The sky has not fallen in any of the places around the world and the United States where same-sex couples have been allowed civil marriage. Massachusetts is still there. So is Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and even Iowa. Canada, too. No falling sky. No dire indications of end times. No court systems swamped with lawsuits. Just people doing what people have been doing for centuries: choosing a mate, standing up before friends and society and declaring a lasting commitment to that person, and then going about the business of life. Going to work, raising kids, paying bills, going on vacation, all the normal stuff people do.
So what is the point of denying us equality? To reinforce some kind of idea that we are less than everyone else? To send a clear message that we are second-class citizens? To say directly to us “you don’t deserve what the rest of us have”? That is just mean, and profoundly unfair. And it does not sound like the Maine where I grew up and live today.
People have asked me why I don’t move to Massachusetts or New Hampshire or somewhere else that has marriage equality. Maine is my home. I grew up in Windsor. I went to high school at Erskine Academy in South China, and graduated from the University of Maine at Farmington. Maine is a part of me, and I am a part of Maine. I am active in my community and I have friends and relationships here. I just want the same thing my sisters have. I want the same thing my neighbors have. I want equality. I want the dignity, security and affirmation afforded to those who are married. I don’t think it is unreasonable.
On November 3, voters will be asked the following: “Do you want to reject the new law that lets same-sex couples marry and allows individuals and religious groups to refuse to perform these marriages?” Protect equality. Join me in voting NO on Question 1.
It's all about equality
By Dawn Fortune
Why marriage? Why full equality? That really answers itself, doesn’t it? Full equality.
That’s what it is about. Not partial equality, not kind-of equality, not separate but equal, not half-measures. I want the real deal. I want my full rights as a citizen. I want access to the full array of benefits and responsibilities that come with a civil marriage contract. I want what everyone wants – to be recognized and valued by my community.
I don’t want to have to produce reams of expensive legal paperwork to accompany my partner in the hospital emergency room. I don’t want to have to explain that when I say “partner” I am not talking about business or tennis. I don’t want to be a woman in my mid-40s referring to my “girlfriend” of the better part of decade as though I am no more emotionally developed than a teenager or as though I am referring to a chum with whom I get together every morning to drink coffee.
I want the dignity and security that comes with a marriage. I want to hold a ceremony that is legal and binding as well as beautiful and full of meaning. I want my spouse to be recognized by my doctor, insurance company, and my employer. I just want to be able to say, “Yes, I am married. My wife’s name is Laura.”
I want to be able to walk into my town office and get a marriage license. I don’t ask the Catholic Church of my childhood to approve or disapprove or do anything. The fact that I get the license at the town office makes the contract a function of the state, not a church. I don’t need a priest or rabbi or any other clergy-type person to authorize, bless or sanctify the contract for it to be real.
Yet somehow, lots of religious institutions and individuals seem pretty worked up over whether I should be able to get a civil contract.
The way L.D. 1020 was written was very clear. It eliminated discrimination in civil marriage while upholding and affirming the right of any person or religious entity to refuse to perform any marriage of which it did not approve.
So what is the problem? It seems very simple: if you don’t agree with same-sex couples getting married, don’t marry them. If your church does not agree with it, then nobody’s going to force that church to do something that violates its beliefs.
Those rules are already in place. Priests in the Roman Catholic Church don’t have to marry a Catholic and a Jew, they don’t have to marry divorced people, Protestants, pagans, Hindus or anyone, even if the law says those people can legally marry. Churches and individuals are exempt. Period.
The Legislature and the Governor recognized the fairness in the bill that was L.D. 1020, and that it allowed for those opposed to same-sex marriage to opt out, so they passed and signed it into law. Now some are trying to repeal the law and take away the right given to me by the legislative process.
That’s what this whole referendum hoopla is about: taking away the right of some couples to take out a civil marriage contract.
The Maine way of doing things is pretty “live and let live.” So long as you don’t interfere with anyone, go about your business. People want to live their lives a certain way? We pretty much let ‘em. Is anything they’re doing any of our business? Unless they’re doing harm, we pretty much stay clear.
Which is why the involvement of so many church groups in this campaign just baffles me. It seems so unlike the Maine I know. If anyone wants to point a finger at things that are really a threat to traditional marriage, they should look at domestic violence, poverty, lack of education and opportunity, and the 50% divorce rate.
What harm my desire to get married is doing to the institution of marriage is not clear.
The arguments we are hearing now against the idea of marriage equality have been recycled from the time when there were laws against inter-racial marriage. They are based in the same arguments used for centuries to uphold slavery and against women’s suffrage, the right of black people to vote and the integration of public schools.
The sky has not fallen in any of the places around the world and the United States where same-sex couples have been allowed civil marriage. Massachusetts is still there. So is Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and even Iowa. Canada, too. No falling sky. No dire indications of end times. No court systems swamped with lawsuits. Just people doing what people have been doing for centuries: choosing a mate, standing up before friends and society and declaring a lasting commitment to that person, and then going about the business of life. Going to work, raising kids, paying bills, going on vacation, all the normal stuff people do.
So what is the point of denying us equality? To reinforce some kind of idea that we are less than everyone else? To send a clear message that we are second-class citizens? To say directly to us “you don’t deserve what the rest of us have”? That is just mean, and profoundly unfair. And it does not sound like the Maine where I grew up and live today.
People have asked me why I don’t move to Massachusetts or New Hampshire or somewhere else that has marriage equality. Maine is my home. I grew up in Windsor. I went to high school at Erskine Academy in South China, and graduated from the University of Maine at Farmington. Maine is a part of me, and I am a part of Maine. I am active in my community and I have friends and relationships here. I just want the same thing my sisters have. I want the same thing my neighbors have. I want equality. I want the dignity, security and affirmation afforded to those who are married. I don’t think it is unreasonable.
On November 3, voters will be asked the following: “Do you want to reject the new law that lets same-sex couples marry and allows individuals and religious groups to refuse to perform these marriages?” Protect equality. Join me in voting NO on Question 1.
Laura and I are headed off for a weekend workshop with the Human Awareness Institute and will be back among the world sometime on Monday. Try to stay out of trouble over the weekend, hmm?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
