Mom. Dad. I'm a Liberal.

I've spent most of the last few days watching movies on demand on Netflix...lot of stand-up comedy and documentaries. If you haven't seen John Waters: This Filthy World yet, order this documentary...pirate it...I don't care. I thought it was fantastic. It's just a recording of a talk that Waters gave about society and his movies and I thought it was fantastic. I usually hate movies like that (I didn't care for either of the Evening with Kevin Smith films).

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I have no idea why I'm a liberal. I don't know if many people can sit down and sass out (I've obviously been watching way too much Buffy) why they believe what they do. I guess that people who sit on issues from a socially conservative standpoint can point to their religious doctrines. People who have been successful under the status quo can always sit under the idea that the way things have been done is the way that they should be done from here on out.

But the more I learn about politics, and the more I study the issues that I feel passionately about, I learn that the issues are not really about the issues. It's about the way that the issues are framed. I was reading this book on the history of the abortion debate from the mid-1980's to the present day, and it's central thesis is that the initial pro-choice stance of the 1980's was protected by re-framing the issue as an issue of governmental regulation instead of as a women's rights issue, because limiting government interference is a more sellable subject than protecting women's rights. This same re-framing is what has led to pro-life victories on requirements of parental and/or spousal notification and the limiting of access to abortions to impoverished women.

I'm pretty liberal. By that, I mean I was the most liberal person in both the English and Theatre Departments at Shorter. I'm certainly the most liberal preson in my family...and probably in my wider social circle. Somehow, I've become the opposite of the majority of my family politically. And I don't know how I got there. All I know is that my positions make sense to me, as I imagine other people's stances make sense to themselves, even if they can't determine how they initially arrived at their position.

I know that I'm pro-gay rights because I'm gay. I'm pro-choice because I've seen a lot of lives of both children and adults ruined by unexpected and unwanted pregnancies. I'm anti-death penalty. I'm pro-state funding for the arts. I'm anti-censorship. I'm pro-women's rights. I'm pro-civic rights. I'm pro-corporate responsibility. Piece-by-piece I have accepted the entire leftist agenda. But, and maybe this is because of my youth, I don't agree with "soccer mom liberalism."

I've got an aunt who used to be a lot of fun. And then, she had her second child and suddenly she went off her trolley and started checking the sodium content on food and comparing the prices of pencils on a unit basis and all of these sorts of things. Suddenly, mixed into her private choices was an overwhelming amount of protectionism that I hadn't seen before. I see this happening in a lot of liberals. They want to allow everything to exist, and then they want to protect people (children especially) from anything that they're uncomfortable.

I'm sorry, two quick truths about life:
-Anything newsworthy or artistic should make someone uncomfortable.
-Everything worth doing leaves bruises.

You can't make everything safe, and by limiting the distances people can go to achieve this "safety," you undermine the principles that defended these limits in the first place.

As a child, I was told that I was free to be whatever I wanted to be because this was America and that was the American Dream. And, because I was a smart child, I wanted to know everything. I came to the conclusion that to explore and to break new ground, I had to do away with limits. And then, in high school, I went through a period where I wasn't honest to myself or anyone else about who I was or what I liked...and afterwards, when I finally began speaking for myself, it was so much better. To have a day without limits...maybe that's my goal.

But I've remained pleasant and approachable politically...and I hope to always stay that way.