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Elizabeth Cassidy

Certified Life ,Transition and Intuitive Coach, Writer, Reiki Practitioner

I am a life and Intuitive coach for women who are looking to re-invent their lives or polish up the one the lives they are leading. Branching Out Life Coaching helps people to discover "Creative Solutions for Challenging Times." I also use humor and make offerings to the chocolate goddess if it wi...

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I want a divorce NOW!! Please join me!

I am sort of taking the day off from work today. Not a smartest move on my part. The economy has slammed into my life coaching business like a train out of control, but this issue is too important to my heart and soul and my sense of decency.

I got my hair cut today at a new place. Just a couple of inches off my unruly mop. My  hairdresser, Ruben, is deaf, but hears with the aid of a hearing aid. I went  there because he and his partner, Rafael are owners who are from Manhattan.  I am a snob when it comes to my hair. I can’t tell you how many times local hairdressers think I want to look like Joan Rivers or worse.  I don’t – just for the record.

As I sat there and this gentle man went about cutting my hair and checking in on me, I got a little teary eyed.  I thought of all the struggles that he has had to deal with in his life. People use labels to project hatred onto others. They take  perfectly fine words and twist it into something ugly, something to fear.  From what I could tell and see about Ruben, he is of a  slight built, deaf, Hispanic and gay.  All good words unless you are a hateful person.  He probably came into the world as a perfectly beautiful baby whose life was filled with possibilities until society decided to label him.

I always used to say that the most  hated people in the world have got to be a black, lesbians (woman, black and gay, oh my) and now I throw in “and who is a Muslim.”

  Wanda Skyes, a black comic/actress came out more publicly  because of Prop 8.  Guess you got to be afraid of a woman who makes people laugh, eh? Yeah, don’t give her the same rights we have. We’ll show her. Huh?

I think about discrimination a lot a lot of the time. I think about it a lot because for the life of me I don’t understand how it can exist. Everybody seems to have religion of some sort and still they hate. I left my parents church at 16 and have never looked back. I left because of the discrimination I saw at church and outside of church. I hate discrimination more than I hate the shape that my thighs are in. That is a white hot hate I feel.

So why do I want a divorce? Because of discrimination. Because of Prop 8 in CA. Because people feel they need to hold  people down. Because if I get a divorce because of Prop 8 than I can tell my gay friends that marriage ain’t all that.

What difference does it make to people who people love? Aren’t you happy that they love someone and want to spend their lives with that person as opposed to them going out on a shooting spree?   And who is in charge of allocating love? Isn’t it your God? Oh, no. God hates gays? I think not. God hates hate. She told me so.

Straight people need to get on board and help their gay sisters and brothers get the same rights that we have. Before I got married (remember I am getting divorced) Walter developed heart problems. He had to go to the emergency room and it was quite scary. When they bought him up to his room in the cardiac care unit, Nurse From Hell stopped me and asked if I was his wife. I said “No” and then she informed me that I could not enter the room. Well, needless to say, she did not get her way, but in the middle of all this upset, I was told to leave because he was not my husband. I had not rights. B.S. That just gave me another glimmer into the life of people who are not afforded the same rights as married people do.  It doesn’t matter if the wife poisoned or stabbed her husband, come on in, you married lady, you.

So who wants to join me and get divorced to show solidarity with our gay family members and friends? I know it is an absurd notion that I would get divorced to protest the repeal of gay marriages in CA....but what is more absurd – that or people being denied the same rights we take for granted and neglect?

Absurd notions need to fall by the wayside. My new president -elect (and I did call him my president long before election night) Barack Obama’s parents could have been arrested for being in a biracial marriage. God knows what some people would have done to his father. Isn’t that a crazy idea in this day and age? Well, so is denying gays equality and the right to marry.

There is an expression, “You’ve come a long way Baby.”  I’d like to add,” but Baby, we still got a long way to go.” Today would be a perfect day to start.