Essay 1
Since I got a rousing "yes" to my question of whether to post my college essays (I am ignoring the fact that only escudero cared to read them, thank you escudero) I am doing so in these posts. This first's topic was to, and I quote, "write an esssay."
...thats it. So here was my humble endeavor:
There I was sitting in a cubicle with yet another self righteous so-and-so spouting godliness and homophobia in my ear, when a voice came from me I never knew I possessed. It was patient. It was kind. It was, dare I say it? - adult. Here I was, sixteen years old and sounding like my mother. The voice went on to explain that, no, this issue was not about gay marriage, special privileges or even gay adoption. It was about equal rights and equal protection under the law. Miami-Dade County’s Human Rights Ordinance was at risk. The County had passed a progressive Human Right Ordinance a few years earlier, making it illegal to discriminate on the basis of gender, race, religion or sexual orientation. A group of “concerned citizens” managed to get enough signatures for a referendum to remove sexual orientation from the Ordinance. Voting “Yes” on the referendum would make it legal to deny housing opportunities, job security, and generally discriminate against all manner of people, merely for being gay. I had doled out my speech day after day, hour after hour, name after name as I went down my rather long list of potential “allies” to the “Vote No” cause. When we hung up, we were required to mark the caller in terms of numbers: one meaning they were just aching to volunteer in our campaign, two meant they would likely vote in our favor, on and on down the number line until five, which were officially termed “hostile.” Unofficially, we called them “Satan.”
I remember the first time I stuttered through this speech, terrified I would get a “Satan”. I had to have one of the training staff sitting next to me, literally pointing to the script as I went down the list of all I was supposed to mention. There is something of a paradox in me in that I, the seven year drama student who thinks nothing of performing in front of a full house, cannot stand to telephone anyone for anything. Every time my family would ask me to call Canton Chinese, I would freak out and miraculously find I had to suddenly use the bathroom and it could not wait. Or, if forced, would stammer through the menu, unable to tell the impatient employee whether I wanted vegetable or pork fried rice. Thus, calling someone’s house and quizzing them about their knowledge of a particularly hot button topic was not my idea of an easy time.
Don’t even get me started on how beside myself I was when I first called inquiring for someone who had recently passed away. I was a rambling mess of “I’m so sorry’s” and “thank you for your time’s.” To hear it, one would think I had been the one to shuffle their loved one off the mortal coil.
Eventually I got savvy to it, used to getting yet another dead person on my list. At least I never got a “What are you wearing?” like my friend Maria, or a “You sound cute.” like my other friend Kyle. Perhaps the most disturbing call I had was with this old man who told me he would vote in our campaign’s favor “if he was still alive by then.” I tried to cajole him into a more optimistic mood, but he simply replied with “No, I’m very old. I’m probably going to be dead by then. If I don’t vote ‘No,’ it’ll be because I’m dead.”
To keep morale up, in the early days of the campaign, we had desk clerk bells that we were supposed to ring once whenever we got a one or two, and the people would politely golf clap their acknowledgement. After I had recruited enough of my friends to warrant our own Youth Calling Nights, however, we were never satisfied with this response and thus would keep ringing the bell until we could get a rather nice ovation going. The bells suspiciously disappeared the last few weeks of the campaign.
Most often I was shocked by the amount of misinformation people had about the issue. One day a pamphlet arrived in our mail from the opposition and, I, of course, could not help but look it over. Instead of mentioning anything about this being an issue of civil rights, it went into detail on how there is a Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender Mafia that is attempting to corrupt children by sexually molesting them and turning them to our sexually deviant, alternative lifestyle. The pamphlet went on, but I wound up just throwing it away as it gave me a metallic taste in my mouth to read. I got the same taste whenever someone I called listed their reasons for supporting the other side as those I had read in the pamphlet -most often word for word. At the risk of sounding cliche, nothing made me happier than to have a person adamantly opposed to our cause, talk with them, and eventually leave them with their words being to the effect of “I never realized that’s what the issue was about.”
Some of the most memorable encounters of the campaign occurred while we were standing outside the voting precinct on election day. My four hour shift had become a six hour marathon when the voting hours were extended due to voters’ confusion in using the new electronic ballots. There was a steady drizzle falling on us and the pamphlets we were passing out. One woman told us she was voting for God, pointing to her T-shirt emblazoned with a psalm quote and a neon cross. Interestingly enough, I never realized He was on the ballot in the first place. Another person called me a “fag,” which bothered me less in the spirit it was intended, and more as I wasn’t sure they realized that it was a masculine term. This other woman, who entered with a small child in tow, kept repeating that she knew the issue at hand, ‘thank you very much,’ and was resolute about the way she was voting (all this in a tone insinuating her vote wasn’t in our favor at all.) When she exited the poll, she stopped to, I assume, brag that she had voted in favor of excluding basic human rights to a minority group when we began to explain to her what the question on the ballot was really about. She soon turned sheepish and admitted she thought it was about legalizing gay adoption. We talked with her for a while and before she left she told us she felt she had made a mistake in the way she voted. As she drove off, Jeff sadly shook his head at me and said “If only we could have gotten her before she went in.”
Although I did regret we converted her after the damage was done, I still disagreed. I couldn’t help but think that, yes, it would be wonderful if everyone we talked to voted against the referendum, however, that’s not what would help us in the long run. Instead of converting or even, Heaven forfend, brainwashing people to “Vote ‘No’ on County Question 14,” I think its more important to open the voter to the possibility that we have a point. That way next time an issue like this arises, and it will, the voter can look at the propaganda a little more critically. Perhaps even start to weed out the absurdities from the truth. The next time, they may be a little more savvy, and the next, a little more confidant, until finally they are ready to think independently from the political machine and start to realize the truth.
These issues aren’t about the big, scary, gay presence that is threatening to infect us with their homosexual disease, Birkenstocks and Bette Midler. Instead, its about people - the woman selling you your SUV, the man behind you in the ATM line. Me, with my fear of conversing with strangers on the telephone, calling your house. Me, standing in the rain talking to you at this very moment. Those are the faces that should be associated with these issues because, really, isn’t that who these issues are affecting? People. And once other people recognize that, and they will, that’s when the real change is going to occur. A change in which there would be no need to protect a Human Rights Ordinance and, possibly, no need for a Human Rights Ordinance at all.
...thats it. So here was my humble endeavor:
There I was sitting in a cubicle with yet another self righteous so-and-so spouting godliness and homophobia in my ear, when a voice came from me I never knew I possessed. It was patient. It was kind. It was, dare I say it? - adult. Here I was, sixteen years old and sounding like my mother. The voice went on to explain that, no, this issue was not about gay marriage, special privileges or even gay adoption. It was about equal rights and equal protection under the law. Miami-Dade County’s Human Rights Ordinance was at risk. The County had passed a progressive Human Right Ordinance a few years earlier, making it illegal to discriminate on the basis of gender, race, religion or sexual orientation. A group of “concerned citizens” managed to get enough signatures for a referendum to remove sexual orientation from the Ordinance. Voting “Yes” on the referendum would make it legal to deny housing opportunities, job security, and generally discriminate against all manner of people, merely for being gay. I had doled out my speech day after day, hour after hour, name after name as I went down my rather long list of potential “allies” to the “Vote No” cause. When we hung up, we were required to mark the caller in terms of numbers: one meaning they were just aching to volunteer in our campaign, two meant they would likely vote in our favor, on and on down the number line until five, which were officially termed “hostile.” Unofficially, we called them “Satan.”
I remember the first time I stuttered through this speech, terrified I would get a “Satan”. I had to have one of the training staff sitting next to me, literally pointing to the script as I went down the list of all I was supposed to mention. There is something of a paradox in me in that I, the seven year drama student who thinks nothing of performing in front of a full house, cannot stand to telephone anyone for anything. Every time my family would ask me to call Canton Chinese, I would freak out and miraculously find I had to suddenly use the bathroom and it could not wait. Or, if forced, would stammer through the menu, unable to tell the impatient employee whether I wanted vegetable or pork fried rice. Thus, calling someone’s house and quizzing them about their knowledge of a particularly hot button topic was not my idea of an easy time.
Don’t even get me started on how beside myself I was when I first called inquiring for someone who had recently passed away. I was a rambling mess of “I’m so sorry’s” and “thank you for your time’s.” To hear it, one would think I had been the one to shuffle their loved one off the mortal coil.
Eventually I got savvy to it, used to getting yet another dead person on my list. At least I never got a “What are you wearing?” like my friend Maria, or a “You sound cute.” like my other friend Kyle. Perhaps the most disturbing call I had was with this old man who told me he would vote in our campaign’s favor “if he was still alive by then.” I tried to cajole him into a more optimistic mood, but he simply replied with “No, I’m very old. I’m probably going to be dead by then. If I don’t vote ‘No,’ it’ll be because I’m dead.”
To keep morale up, in the early days of the campaign, we had desk clerk bells that we were supposed to ring once whenever we got a one or two, and the people would politely golf clap their acknowledgement. After I had recruited enough of my friends to warrant our own Youth Calling Nights, however, we were never satisfied with this response and thus would keep ringing the bell until we could get a rather nice ovation going. The bells suspiciously disappeared the last few weeks of the campaign.
Most often I was shocked by the amount of misinformation people had about the issue. One day a pamphlet arrived in our mail from the opposition and, I, of course, could not help but look it over. Instead of mentioning anything about this being an issue of civil rights, it went into detail on how there is a Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender Mafia that is attempting to corrupt children by sexually molesting them and turning them to our sexually deviant, alternative lifestyle. The pamphlet went on, but I wound up just throwing it away as it gave me a metallic taste in my mouth to read. I got the same taste whenever someone I called listed their reasons for supporting the other side as those I had read in the pamphlet -most often word for word. At the risk of sounding cliche, nothing made me happier than to have a person adamantly opposed to our cause, talk with them, and eventually leave them with their words being to the effect of “I never realized that’s what the issue was about.”
Some of the most memorable encounters of the campaign occurred while we were standing outside the voting precinct on election day. My four hour shift had become a six hour marathon when the voting hours were extended due to voters’ confusion in using the new electronic ballots. There was a steady drizzle falling on us and the pamphlets we were passing out. One woman told us she was voting for God, pointing to her T-shirt emblazoned with a psalm quote and a neon cross. Interestingly enough, I never realized He was on the ballot in the first place. Another person called me a “fag,” which bothered me less in the spirit it was intended, and more as I wasn’t sure they realized that it was a masculine term. This other woman, who entered with a small child in tow, kept repeating that she knew the issue at hand, ‘thank you very much,’ and was resolute about the way she was voting (all this in a tone insinuating her vote wasn’t in our favor at all.) When she exited the poll, she stopped to, I assume, brag that she had voted in favor of excluding basic human rights to a minority group when we began to explain to her what the question on the ballot was really about. She soon turned sheepish and admitted she thought it was about legalizing gay adoption. We talked with her for a while and before she left she told us she felt she had made a mistake in the way she voted. As she drove off, Jeff sadly shook his head at me and said “If only we could have gotten her before she went in.”
Although I did regret we converted her after the damage was done, I still disagreed. I couldn’t help but think that, yes, it would be wonderful if everyone we talked to voted against the referendum, however, that’s not what would help us in the long run. Instead of converting or even, Heaven forfend, brainwashing people to “Vote ‘No’ on County Question 14,” I think its more important to open the voter to the possibility that we have a point. That way next time an issue like this arises, and it will, the voter can look at the propaganda a little more critically. Perhaps even start to weed out the absurdities from the truth. The next time, they may be a little more savvy, and the next, a little more confidant, until finally they are ready to think independently from the political machine and start to realize the truth.
These issues aren’t about the big, scary, gay presence that is threatening to infect us with their homosexual disease, Birkenstocks and Bette Midler. Instead, its about people - the woman selling you your SUV, the man behind you in the ATM line. Me, with my fear of conversing with strangers on the telephone, calling your house. Me, standing in the rain talking to you at this very moment. Those are the faces that should be associated with these issues because, really, isn’t that who these issues are affecting? People. And once other people recognize that, and they will, that’s when the real change is going to occur. A change in which there would be no need to protect a Human Rights Ordinance and, possibly, no need for a Human Rights Ordinance at all.