Ya gotta watch the left as much as you watch the right

I learned a long time ago that you have to watch the left as much as you watch the right.

A few years ago I was married to a woman whose sister is a radical lesbian feminist. Once, we visited her and stayed at her house for I think it was for about a week and a half or so. While we were there just as a normal course of the day her friends would stop by for visits, and as you would think they were mostly lesbians. And, as things go, sometimes she’d mention this person or that one, and once I asked if we were going to meet a particular person. Well, we wouldn’t because this person wouldn’t come into the house because I was there. Because I was a man.

Oh, I thought.

And this is what I figured: If her friend wouldn’t have come into her house because I was black or some other person of color, if I had been a Jew, or if they had any other reason like my country of origin or my age, the liberal feminist lesbian would have been all over her like a tall dog. But because I was a man, it was ok.

And that’s wrong.

That’s when I learned that the most liberal people in the world have a lot in common with their conservative counterparts. None of us, no matter how open we think we are, are immune to hate and prejudice.

I understand that politics is how we get things done in our world. But the problem is, as soon as you politicize an issue, there is the danger of polarization. AIDS becomes a gay issue. Domestic violence a woman’s issue. Crime in urban areas is seen as a black issue. These problems cease being human issues, about all of us, men, women, black, white, Jews, Christian, Muslim. Until we see things on human terms, we’ll always fight amongst ourselves.