Camp Courage
It's been two weeks since I attended Camp Courage. I've been processing the results ever since, knowing that I would write about it at some point, which I guess is now.
For anyone who doesn't know, Camp Courage is an ongoing series of trainings put on by the Courage Campaign, centering around the issue of marriage equality for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people. It was a two day course in community activism and organization for this issue specifically, though the lessons were meant to be applicable to other progressive activism. The training consisted of some lecture and a lot of interactive, small-group exercises.
The training itself was excellent, on point and missing all of the stupid group dynamics games that I've experienced in other large group training settings. Time was limited, and the staff used it efficiently and intensely. But more than the quality of the training, I was impressed by the quality and courage of the people attending. Everyone had a story to tell, experiences to share and passion for the cause. The room fairly danced with the energy of 200 people who came as strangers and left having been changed by the weekend, with new connections and a renewed faith that we could make a difference both as a group and individually.
The central exercise of the training was the "story of self" which would become the "story of us". The idea is to tell the story of one's life, or the parts that are relevant, condensing it down to shorter and shorter lengths, to have available to use in conversations with people about marriage equality. Here is mine, more or less.
My name is Christopher Bartlett. I am a straight ally in the effort to bring marriage equality for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people in this country.
I was born blind and was a small child. As such, I had some hard times with other children. I was the natural victim; kids stole things from me, pushed and otherwise tried to physically intimidate me, feeling that they could do it safely because I couldn't see to retaliate. Children who did befriend me were savagely mocked by their peers, the one thing that made me react in anger.
I learned to close out my feelings about what was being done to me, because to show a reaction only made the teasing and bullying worse. if I didn't feed them, they'd leave me alone. I learned to despise them for their cruelty. I realized that I was a lot smarter andnicer than many of them were. But it was a mostly lonely time; I had few friends.
Time passed, and we all grew mostly out of that stuff. I found a set of fellow outcasts as friends, and even made inroads with children from the mainstream. I still kept my emotions tightly buttoned except to a very trusted few; the lessons of childhood are hard to unlearn.
I was not really aware of GLBT people until I became aware that a family friend was gay, and in the Ann Arbor of the eighties and nineties, I was sheltered from the horror stories; people were open, or at least more open than they might have been in other parts of the country. So it was only gradually that I became aware of the horrors perpetrated upon non-straight people by strangers and family members alike. I was outraged of course, here were some of the same bullies who had tormented me, finding other social outcasts, people who were vulnerable due to their otherness. Still, it was an issue for talk among friends, for safe outrage in the knowledge that I wasn't like that. I fumed. I voted, I even wrote the odd check when I could.
Moving to California, and in particular finding my fEri faith brought me in contact more intimately with all sorts of folk. Around the same time, California Proposition 8 came on to the ballot. I fumed. I voted. We contributed money to the No on 8 campaign.
And we lost. On the evening when I celebrated the election of President Obama, I watched as people who were dear to me were told that they were second-class citizens because of who they loved. As the shock wore off and I heard stories of people close to me, I realized that I had only done what was expected of me, the minimum, and that the minimum couldn't suffice anymore. I didn't know how to change that until I learned of the opportunity to get training from the Courage Campaign people.
My name is Christopher Bartlett, and I am now actively seeking to make a world where it is love that matters, not the combination of sexes or genders of the participants. I want my children to grow up able to love whom they will without fear or social or financial penalty. I want Colin and Zachary to be shocked when I tell them about the bad old times when you had to be straight to marry. I believe those days are numbered, but I can't just wait for that any longer.
For anyone who doesn't know, Camp Courage is an ongoing series of trainings put on by the Courage Campaign, centering around the issue of marriage equality for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people. It was a two day course in community activism and organization for this issue specifically, though the lessons were meant to be applicable to other progressive activism. The training consisted of some lecture and a lot of interactive, small-group exercises.
The training itself was excellent, on point and missing all of the stupid group dynamics games that I've experienced in other large group training settings. Time was limited, and the staff used it efficiently and intensely. But more than the quality of the training, I was impressed by the quality and courage of the people attending. Everyone had a story to tell, experiences to share and passion for the cause. The room fairly danced with the energy of 200 people who came as strangers and left having been changed by the weekend, with new connections and a renewed faith that we could make a difference both as a group and individually.
The central exercise of the training was the "story of self" which would become the "story of us". The idea is to tell the story of one's life, or the parts that are relevant, condensing it down to shorter and shorter lengths, to have available to use in conversations with people about marriage equality. Here is mine, more or less.
My name is Christopher Bartlett. I am a straight ally in the effort to bring marriage equality for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people in this country.
I was born blind and was a small child. As such, I had some hard times with other children. I was the natural victim; kids stole things from me, pushed and otherwise tried to physically intimidate me, feeling that they could do it safely because I couldn't see to retaliate. Children who did befriend me were savagely mocked by their peers, the one thing that made me react in anger.
I learned to close out my feelings about what was being done to me, because to show a reaction only made the teasing and bullying worse. if I didn't feed them, they'd leave me alone. I learned to despise them for their cruelty. I realized that I was a lot smarter andnicer than many of them were. But it was a mostly lonely time; I had few friends.
Time passed, and we all grew mostly out of that stuff. I found a set of fellow outcasts as friends, and even made inroads with children from the mainstream. I still kept my emotions tightly buttoned except to a very trusted few; the lessons of childhood are hard to unlearn.
I was not really aware of GLBT people until I became aware that a family friend was gay, and in the Ann Arbor of the eighties and nineties, I was sheltered from the horror stories; people were open, or at least more open than they might have been in other parts of the country. So it was only gradually that I became aware of the horrors perpetrated upon non-straight people by strangers and family members alike. I was outraged of course, here were some of the same bullies who had tormented me, finding other social outcasts, people who were vulnerable due to their otherness. Still, it was an issue for talk among friends, for safe outrage in the knowledge that I wasn't like that. I fumed. I voted, I even wrote the odd check when I could.
Moving to California, and in particular finding my fEri faith brought me in contact more intimately with all sorts of folk. Around the same time, California Proposition 8 came on to the ballot. I fumed. I voted. We contributed money to the No on 8 campaign.
And we lost. On the evening when I celebrated the election of President Obama, I watched as people who were dear to me were told that they were second-class citizens because of who they loved. As the shock wore off and I heard stories of people close to me, I realized that I had only done what was expected of me, the minimum, and that the minimum couldn't suffice anymore. I didn't know how to change that until I learned of the opportunity to get training from the Courage Campaign people.
My name is Christopher Bartlett, and I am now actively seeking to make a world where it is love that matters, not the combination of sexes or genders of the participants. I want my children to grow up able to love whom they will without fear or social or financial penalty. I want Colin and Zachary to be shocked when I tell them about the bad old times when you had to be straight to marry. I believe those days are numbered, but I can't just wait for that any longer.