Land of Hope

From Wikipedia: Countries colored orange, brown, or red are those

where homosexuality is punishable by imprisonment or death.

Over on Pam's House Blend, where I occasionally leave a comment, someone who's now visiting in The Netherlands blasted the U.S., her native country, as "the Land of Hate." I felt a need to make a little response to that, which I'm reposting here:

I know the hurt, I know the feeling. I'm a native Southerner, a Texan, I've lived in the Bible belt all my life. And in important ways, my life has been very seriously derailed and damaged by all the homophobia - and utter hypocrisy - I've had to deal with, as I've written about in my blog. It's easy to get very bitter, very angry about all that. Sometimes I find it difficult to keep a civil tongue in my head when discussing these issues with older relatives whose minds are stuck in 1950.

But the homophobes, the haters, and the just plain ignorant are not all there is to America, and I have to keep reminding myself of that fact. Like Mr. O. has said so eloquently, the glory of America is that it can change, that we can keep on perfecting our union. And when I step outside my little box of hurt and resentment, I see the bigger picture: the steady progress down the years towards liberty and justice for all, though sometimes it's one step forward and two steps back.

Still, it's wrong, very wrong, to call America the Land of Hate. There are some haters, yes; but they are not the sum total of America. And I think there's actually more fear than hate, and even more ignorance than fear. Fear and ignorance we can work on, we can change. And we will.

You want to talk about a Land of Hate, just go look at the map of homosexuality laws of the world on Wikipedia. There are still plenty of countries where being gay will get you a long stay in prison, or even the death penalty. Government leaders, bishops and imams, major newspapers openly call for the death, imprisonment, and persecution of gays. We aren't even close to all that in America, not by a long shot.

So I have to remind myself, no matter how frustrated and upset I get over the progress of equality here, it's still an awfully damn good place to live. And now with Obama's election, all kinds of new changes can and will happen for the better - for everyone. It's a new day, a new world here. America is the land of hope and change now.

I hope you can see that too.