Garden State Equality says state's only blind congressional candidate "should go"
Identity politics is a funny thing.
From the statement issued by Christian Fuscarino, the young and very healthy executive director of Garden State Equality (GSE), if you enjoy sex with members of your own gender (if, indeed, we even recognize such things as gender anymore) you are superior and can apparently pass judgment on every other "identity" on earth. And you can make such judgments, free from any human consideration or courtesy -- what in less certain times we called "the benefit of the doubt."
Imagine the hee-haw that would be going on if the state's only gay candidate for Congress was being bullied from an election because someone had accused him of having said someone was "blind as a bat" a dozen years before?
And yet, based on an unproven allegation, by an individual who (as the basis of a law suit brought against the man he accused) has been totally discredited by an actual court of law, young and healthy Christian Fuscarino wants to throw a road block in the way of the state's only blind candidate for congressional office. We have to ask Christian -- shouldn't we be promoting such candidacies? Isn't this a victory for everyone concerned about diversity?
Think of the unique perspective that a blind candidate will bring to Congress, if he is fortunate enough to be elected. Instead of discussing disability in the abstract, there will be someone in the room who actually lived it. That's a positive thing, isn't it?
Now Christian and his fellows at GSE make much of -- to use a curiously Christian term -- the "crosses" they had to bear while coming of age. Many say that it is ongoing. We must be charitable and take their word for it, even though there is a certain subjectivity involved. But blindness is not subjective, and we wonder how many would trade "crosses" with the human being who they are trying to deny the exercise of his civil rights?
We live in a very vicious time that will be followed by a more vicious time and one more vicious after that. That is the trajectory. It is made so because we no longer look into each others' eyes but instead contemplate a screen. In a way, our society suffers from its own form of blindness, in that we fail to see the human.
Unlike the blindness suffered by GSE's target, it is correctable, but does Christian Fuscarino wish to correct it? He is young. Time will tell. Time will tell.
In the meantime... try to not be offended so much by everything. And when you are offended, extend to the fellow human being offending you some charitable consideration. Presume the best. Instead of throwing a meaningless name at him, extend to him the benefit of the doubt. Let the fires of your own hatred and of pride burn low... and perhaps... out.
Please enjoy this video... (lighten up)
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