  Fear: "Let's have a war" "Let's have a war! we could all use the bread! ...let's have a war! jack up the dow jones! ...let's have a war! sell the rights to the networks! " Open letter to the Massachusetts Legislature: Don't you find it just the tiniest bit ironic that the Puritans, who were fleeing religious tyranny in England, landed upon your shores nearly 400 years ago -- and by voting today to amend the State's constitution to ban gay marriage, you have endorsed precisely the persecution the Puritans were escaping?
Aohvay! What is next? Identity theft is all the rage these days. “Keep or destroy your receipts,” “Beware of camera phones when standing in the grocery checkout line with your credit card.” Billions of dollars are lost every year to identity thieves who gain access to an individual’s social security number and date of birth, open a few fraudulent credit accounts, then go on freewheeling Internet shopping sprees.
But as damaging as financial identity theft is there is another, more insidious form those strips one of their identity entirely, not to be rediscovered for years. And other forms cause harm that isn’t apparent for a generation or more. An example of the former is mental, physical or sexual abuse: endured as a child, the psyche defends itself by shutting down everything not absolutely essential to basic survival.
And the mechanisms that block the hurt also shut out … everything else. The ultimate cost is calculated in the years spent in vain attempts to recover what was irretrievably lost, all the while losing out on opportunities for lack of knowing how to handle them and losing friends because they never understood. Te theft of identity that evades discovery for generations is just as costly. In late 1941, my friend’s grandparents were living in Stockton, California; her maternal grandparents were in Los Angeles.
They and their families were among the 120,000 Japanese-Americans who were forced to leave behind their homes, businesses and lives for uncertain futures in internment camps surrounded by barbed wire. The majority of evacuees were second-generation (Nisei), most in their late 20s or early 30s with young children. Their parents, being the first generation (Issei) in the country, spoke little or no English and relied on their children to explain why everything they had worked for was suddenly gone.
The end of the war saw their release from the internment camps but not from the prevailing anti-Japanese sentiment. Some Issei elected to return to Japan, and many Nisei renounced their U.S. citizenship to join their parents; and many more renounced Japanese culture altogether, refusing to speak the language or hand down the traditions, even refusing to give as yet unborn children Japanese names.
Apples In Stereo: "The rainbow" "...so when you look at me I wonder who you see and who I am to you..." An interesting thing about falling within three distinct demographic categories - gay, White and male - is that each category has unique proscriptions which preclude acceptance of the others. Hence, being gay means being distrusted by straight males; being White means being rejected by your own race because you're gay; and being a male who is femme not butch pretty well eliminates acceptance by everyone.
But then, I've spent my entire life trying to fit in somewhere. Fitting in with my family of origin was impossible because of childhood mental and physical abuse. Eventually, the learned distrust interfered with healthy interactions with people outside the home; that is to say, I was so fearful of anyone outside the home "finding out" that I became painfully withdrawn around others.
But it comes out as being standoffish, so that no one really knows how to take me. I suppose I've gotten better about fitting in, but it still takes a long time for people to get to know me. And then there's that thing about one group shutting out the other. Why is it so hard for people to just accept others, to realize that every one of us has a story worth telling and none of us is better than our neighbor?
A local alternative newspaper recently published a column about lesbians who do visual evaluations of each other, taking stock of a person's potential worthiness based upon what their appearance conveys. (The only reason the columnist wrote of the subject is that she was subjected to it herself ... and isn't it true that one doesn't fully understand another's situation until they've experienced it, too? ) But, I honestly can say that I haven't experienced racism, classism and sexism from others to the degree I have from homosexuals. It's sad when you aren't even accepted in your own subculture(s). 
