Repeat Offenders

One of the peculiar things about being a haole here in Hawai`i is that I am a foreigner. Frankly, most people here are, but it's only a few generations ago this island really did belong to the Hawai`ian people who arrived thousands of years ago. They had their own language and culture, and it was wonderful, unique, beautiful, and even cruel.

But of course, the white men took it. We take a lot of things. Like North America, or South Africa, or Hong Kong. We're conquerors. It's nothing personal, it's just how we are. Everybody else does it too, we've just historically been the best at it. And besides, if the Polynesian people who live here now didn't speak English, they'd be speaking Japanese, right?

You know what? None of that makes it OK. Really, it doesn't. Saying "Oh, well, somebody else would have done it if we hadn't" doesn't make the Trail of Tears OK, and it doesn't make the overthrow of Lili`u`okalani all better, either.

Head Chef and I and a cadre of other haole friends had the (oddly) rare occasion to hang out with a man the other night who is half Samoan and half Hawai`ian, and he was a beautiful, gentle person who embodied Aloha. He blessed us in the ocean, and told us not to worry about the Hawai`ian people, as they'd be just fine.

And of course, he's right. Hawai`ian blood may be diluted now, and the culture may have gone through astonishingly rapid change over the past one hundred years, but the people are still here. Still here, in the form of men like him, gently or even sometimes not-so-gently reminding us that we're blessed to be here, but that they were here first. And letting us feel welcome anyway.

No Votes For Renters

It's an interesting experience being the target of the President’s Hate Of The Union Address. It gives me a sick feeling and makes me angry - it makes me doubt the greatness of this country, and drapes everything else the USA does in shades of selfishness and harm. I don’t feel like a threat to the nation, and I don’t see how my would-be-husband is a threat, either. And so I can’t understand how our successful, loving relationship is worthy of changing the Constitution to discriminate against us, unless that action is based solely on hate, greed, and, fear.

I guess I shouldn’t feel too singled out or shocked about it – arguably less despotic men than George Bush still engage in genocidal binges from time to time, and black men are still lynched in the South. But it still hurts, knowing that I am so hated by so much of America that while the rest of the world acknowledges my human rights, this country’s President can get away with pedaling discrimination in front of Congress. I can’t imagine another scenario in which Bush could advocate for blatant hate-based discrimination without facing immediate impeachment.

I mean, really, can you imagine if he’d said that the nation needs to revoke inheritance rights for widows, or voting rights for people who don’t own land? Or that Latinos should be denied access to public education? He’d be immediately censured by Congress and demanded to resign. He would go down in history as a horrible embarrassment and an example of what to never, ever do. But stand up in front of television cameras and say that my partner and I don’t deserve the same rights as widows, renters, and Latinos, and that’s just fine. That’s just public discourse.

I realize it’s a rallying cry and something that the Republicans are using to “energize their base,” but if it is successful, it also heralds the end of the great American experiment. The President’s Amendment, not two men building a stable home and a loving family together, is the single greatest threat to what it means to be the United States of America, and what it means to say “I am an American.” Because if he is successful, it will mean that America is no longer the beacon of freedom.

And you’d think someone who invokes freedom so much would realize that.