Things That Piss Me Off Tuesday - the gays are coming, the rampant ignorance and the dark side of the fastpass edition

No introduction today. I'm too fired up. FIRED UP.


The gays are coming! The gays are coming!
No, seriously. The gays are coming. I mean, they've been here since the dawn of time and all, but now they are demanding to be treated equally.  AND PEOPLE AGREE WITH THEM.

This is happening.

Like it or not, this whole equal rights movement is happening. You can choose to fight it, throw bible verses at it, tell the LGBT community that they're all sinners.

Fine. They just want to be sinners that can get married.

With really fabulous receptions.

(Oh, by the way, hiding behind a handful of bible verses while you conveniently ignore a whole bunch of other ones seems a little hypocritical. If you want to claim total allegiance to a book, then claim total allegiance. I'm pretty sure that Jesus guy proclaimed loving our neighbors as ourselves. I'm pretty sure we are all sinners. I'm pretty sure we aren't supposed to judge each other, but go ahead and ignore all that stuff. Sure. God said you were different. He/she gave YOU permission to judge other people and tell others how to live their lives. Right.)

You'll have to forgive me. I'm in a mood today.

I was told by someone yesterday that I've already given up on my hypothetically gay children because I said that I would love them unconditionally, regardless. 

Someone who knows me. Someone who knows my children. Someone who is hiding behind that book.

I haven't given up on anyone.

If one of my kids is gay, I will love them exactly the same. In fact, I'll probably be pretty outspoken and obnoxious about my love for them. I'll march for them, I'll hold up signs, I'll write elected representatives, I'll demand equality and nothing less. I'll bitch about it until it happens. I'll stop talking about it when it does.

Because that's what parents are supposed to do.

Period.

Thinking that you can dictate who your children are, that if we just pray hard enough, if we just try hard enough, if we just want it badly enough, that we can ensure they will be straight, is flawed logic.

It's not logic.

Logic says that who we are is hardwired into us from birth.

And there's not anything wrong with being gay. They don't need cured or fixed or prayed for. Go pray for someone else.

If you believe that God creates us in his image, as the version of humanity he chooses for each of us, then accept the fact that God makes some people gay. Unless you're going to try and tell me that you know better than God does.

Good luck with that.

Let me know how that works out for you.

In the meantime, you'd better keep praying that none of your kids or grand kids come out as gay. Because that would mean, based on what you told me, that you failed. That you gave up. You're the failure as the parent. They aren't the failures as humans. You are.

They are who they are, and it sucks that you choose not to love them unconditionally.

Someday, they might be like the guy who walked into my office all those years ago with tears in his eyes because his family disowned him. I helped him change his name. I helped him find the strength to move on with his life after his family stupidly rejected him. He was better for it, and they missed out on knowing an amazing human being.

That's not going to get them closer to heaven, and it's not going to work for you either.

This is the part where underlying racism gets ugly
So, yesterday, I saw a piece about the numbers of immigration that aren't reported on much. I found myself nodding along, as I've been a person with an interest in this for decades now.

I've written about it before, most recently last week, so I won't go rehashing things.

What got me fired up with this article, aside from the actual numbers themselves were the comments.

I had to stop reading them. They made my blood boil.

Logic and reason are trying to do battle with hate.

Signs I don't want to live on this planet anymore
I love Disneyland. I do.

I've been there more times than I could even count.

A few times, I have been there with a family member in a wheelchair. We used the disabled passes during those visits to shorten the wait times, to allow everyone to go on the rides, to make it easier for all those in our group to be able to enjoy the experience.

The park was built in the days before ADA accommodations were mandated, and many of the line queues are designed so that getting a chair in them wouldn't even be possible. To accommodate those visitors, the disabled passes were created.

I've seen people abuse the system, teenagers who rent a chair, bring a leg cast and trade off who's wearing it so they can sneak onto the rides faster. I've seen far more people use the system because they need it.

What came out today, though, makes me so sick that I can't even begin to really process it. Wealthy parents are hiring disabled tour guides in an underground black market, paying them hundreds of dollars an hour so they can pretend to be family members and avoid standing in lines with the riff-raff. 

I wish I was making this up.

Rich people paying to abuse a system designed to help the disabled, simply because they can. Never mind that there is already an option for the super rich to buy hourly unlimited fastpasses.  Using the disabled people is just cheaper.

What the hell is wrong with these people?

Money, apparently, can buy anything.

Even an uncle in a wheelchair.