Another restaurant, another fifteen years…

So I heard it again today. This time I was in pancake house in Richmond, Virginia, rather than a hoffbrau in Daly City, California. Again I found myself in a time capsule of a restaurant (one that had a juicing machine that invoked the spirit of the Florida Sunshine Tree).

Fifteen years have passed since that odd moment in Daly City, but I still remember the sensation of wonder at how I came to be in that place at that time. It wasn’t a negative thing, really. I think I was just a bit bemused.

Yeah, that’s a good word…

A hell of a lot has happened since then, and I like to think I’m a little less baffled now. I’ve bounced around a good bit more and I did much of that bouncing with a partner. But I’m alone again, as I was this morning, and I pretty much think that fits. It works for me and doesn’t cause anyone else problems. I have a bit more direction now, and maybe my life is a bit more “orderly” but I still have a lot of fun. Granted, I define “fun” a little differently now, but I still love more than anything else to explore…which is why I was in a pancake house in Richmond, Virginia, this morning.

Yes, I’ve found several more occasions to think the world was ending since 1999, and yes, things have still not always worked out according to plan. And all in all, the world has still not really ended, no matter how much I thought it might. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve developed a little more perspective; even though I still start bawling from time to time, and even though I’ve known a whole new world of stress the past few years, I also know it’s not a terminal condition and that I will eventually get through whatever is causing me trouble.

I have no idea where I will be fifiteen years from now. Im dying to find out.

Wow…

So that article about which I was so stressed went through peer review and was accepted with minimal revisions in four days. That’s a pretty enviable turnaround time for an academic journal, some of which take many months for a decision (a good example being the other article of mine that got accepted this summer). Even better, this one was accepted in time for me to add it to the tenure package, giving me two extra publications to include.

And I’m already done with the revisions.

Pretty good way to start a long weekend, methinks.

Not perfect. Just forgiven.

Thirty years ago, I was working part time as a DJ in a gay bar. I enjoyed it because I was very into music and I was especially happy about getting to play something other than the miserable disco schlock that is mandatory in 99.25% of all American gay bars.

One night, several heterosexual friends came by to hear me. Two of these friends were a couple (of the male-female variety, obviously). At some point during the evening, they kissed. And that finally pushed my boss over the edge. He was already offended by their very presence in the place and when they had the audacity to engage in a very tame public display of affection, he came up to the booth to tell me he thought they should leave.

I was appalled that a fairly sophisticated gay man would not ultimately realize the irony and hypocrisy involved in his actions. Ethically, I felt that I could no longer work for him.

So I quit.

That very night.

You see, that’s what you do when you face such moral outrage that you can no longer justify doing your job.

And that’s what Kim Davis needs to learn. She needs to do the job she swore an oath that she would do. Or she needs to quit. Right now.

For her to continue accepting her salary amounts to theft and misappropriation of public funds. For her to continue refusing to do her job amounts to criminal misconduct. Her beliefs don’t matter one infinitesimal damn. She’s free to believe whatever she likes. She is not, however, free to continue collecting her salary while not doing her job.

A lot has been written today about the hypocrisy of “sanctity of marriage” claims being made by a woman who has been married four times and divorced three, and who seems never to have cared very much whether or not her children were fathered by her husband at the time. It’s a fair criticism, but one that her supporters feel is a moot point since her sins happened before she was “washed in the blood” (or in the Holy Windex). Too many conservative Christians use the “not perfect, just forgiven” excuse as a way of refusing to take responsibility for any of their own actions, which is particularly ironic in that so many of these same conservatives very much stress the concept of personal responsibility in others.

But even being the biggest hypocrite on the face of the earth would not disqualify Kim Davis from keeping her job–although her double (triple? quadruple?) standard does make her a pretty wretched human being.

What disqualifies Kim Davis from keeping her job is the fact that she refuses to do it.