(While I won't promote every post, this is the start of a project and it's detailed over at the local blog where it originated for those interested. - promoted by Karl-Thomas Musselman)
Like most progressive Texans, I found myself caught up in Barack Obama's historic run to the presidency. I followed the struggle over California's Proposition 8 only fleetingly, as the polls indicated that the effort to make same-sex marriage unconstitutional there was going down to defeat.
Nov. 4 was bittersweet. Gay couples are some of my closest friends. At least two from my Aggieland UCC church had taken advantage of the five-month window of opportunity to be married in California, and now they fear their nuptial rights would be nullified.
Postmortem consensus identified the need to make converts, one person at a time, as gay rights in California had fallen -- albeit by a small margin -- to the plague of ignorance. But before that could take place, one other admonition seemed preeminent: Sun Tsu's advice to "keep your friends close, but your enemies closer." There's a hazard in building up an army if you don't know the insurgents in your midst.
Using the San Francisco Chronicle's convenient search engine, I entered "Bryan" and "College Station." The results for anti-Prop. 8 contributors were predictable: a few scattered donors who gave modest amounts.
But I was in for a shock when I selected the option to see who in Aggieland had donated in favor of taking marriage rights away from my LGBT friends. Two Texas A&M academics gave thousands of dollars, hardly a response I had expected from the intellectual community.
Here's my response, detailed on my own personal political blog, in a post entitled: Aggies Do Not Lie, Cheat nor Steal, but Breaking Up Other Aggies' Marriages is Apparently an Honorable Endeavor: Prop. 8's Long and Intrusive Reach to Texas A&M
Here's the link: http://theaggieinsurgency.word...
I hope this will inspire other progressive Texans to do their own amateur investigative reporting in their own community. Root out the agents of intolerance near you, expose them, and then we can start working -- one neighbor at a time -- to lighten the darkness. |
