Vive La Difference

Who are we as humans? What is it that makes us hate others who are not just like us? I remember in my undergraduate years taking a course from the famous social psychologist, Carolyn Sharif. She and her husband Musafer Sharif (forgive me if I have spelled it incorrectly) conducted this great study of teenage boys called the Robber's Cave Study that I think was the foundation for some of the scenes in The Lord of The Flies. The net of the study was that is was regular behavior to define one's own group by the "out-grouping" of another. In other words, we are who we are because we are not "them." And so social scientists since the 50's and the Robber's Cave study had a way of describing what we do to each other. Read that as in "it is normal and regular to do that." Hey that is no news. Humans have killed off the "other" for as long as we have had tribes. But does it make it right or normal? I think not and in fact I am getting sick and tired of reading justifications of outgroupings whether they are based in biblical mistranslations or out of context quotations or hocus pocus bullshit made up by some egocentric narcissist too terrified of his own shadow to step into the light on his own. Well I am tired of it. What is straight or gay or whatever anyway? Who decided that mattered in determining your humanness? When I was a junior in college (that is a loooong time ago) I had a room mate who was gay (still is). And how he explained it to me was asking me if I decided to be 6'3". I said of course not, I just grew that way. Well, he said, I never decided to be gay, I just grew that way. (Thanks Peter, I still love you for all you taught me.) States and churches are falling into sides around same-sex marriages as if it is their right to legislate how tall a person should be to be considered a person. Cut me a break. It is not our decision! It is up to each individual to act on and become all he or she is meant to be irrespective of the local norms and mores of the dominant group. Despite what the Sharifs observed, it is neither right or normal to place a moral judgment on another because he or she is not like you and your group. That kind of clique behavior is as distasteful in adulthood as it was in junior high school, only the adults in question should have outgrown it! It is time we grow up as a society and face the fact that the human experience is not a unified or singular experience. Being human has about six billion different ways of manifesting and each one is as great and beautiful as the next. Thank god you are unique, and that the person next to you is unique and that I am not you. We need to stop bonding about how we are the same and rejoice in and bond around our array of differences. The human experience is a wide rainbow of colors and the boundaries are indistinguishable yet ubiquitous. I don't want to be you and you should not want to be me. So why do people think that someone else should have the same preferences as you and I do. I really don't know when it was that I knew I liked girls, but I do remember that it was after I had my boy experiences. We boys loved each other. We were inseparable and we learned about sex from each other, told tales to each other, gaped at our dad's Playboys together, and we were tighter than anything. Then one day, I noticed that girls smelled different, sounded different and I was uncontrollably attracted. I did not choose that. I just was. My room mate did not choose to stay with his boys, he just did. There is nothing more to it than that. Two of us manifesting two of the six billion ways to be a human. Praise god for that! And for god's sake, cut the crap about making differences wrong. It is what is right about being human - we are all uniquely different. Amen, amen, let it be so.