Would Tennessee Hire Paul Bunyan If He Was Gay?

Posted on May 30, 2011

Someone on Twitter gave me a nice compliment the other day. He said that I give things a nice twist when I talk about them and that I should keep expressing myself about things that go against what the masses think. It’s food for thought. The masses certainly go against me from time to time. They liked The Hangover and I never bothered to watch it until this weekend despite being told how funny it was–and I laughed my ass off. Certain masses in Tennessee don’t agree with me right now, either. Or is it me who doesn’t agree with them?

I’m going to sum this up fairly simply and just say that things have gotten ridiculous. I swear I never, ever expected to find myself on this side of the fence and being a gay man. I identify as a man. The gay bit doesn’t define me, and yet it does. For purposes of dating or being in a relationship, it does. For everything else? I didn’t think so. It should be a non-issue. It’s not. Why isn’t it? Why did certain parties in Tennessee decide that the next logical step in the battle against GLBT folks was to prohibit local municipalities from enacting local anti-discrimination polices greater than the state?

The state of Tennessee does not protect GLBT people from discrimination. The opposition will say that all people are protected, but if I worked there, I could come in to work tomorrow and be told “You’re gay. Your services are no longer required.” And it would be perfectly legal for them to do that. How is that being protected? How is that remotely fair? It’s not and that’s exactly the way certain parties, including Governor Bill Haslam, want it. Wanna know how they got the word out asking people to contact their representatives to vote in favor of the bill?

Did you notice that FamilyActionTN disabled comments on their site about how to vote for the bill? Gee, I wonder why? Could it be because someone has once again pulled out the card that GLBT folks will prey on children? Dear God…it’s so old. We’ve got pastors of mega-churches being sued for sexually preying on children, senators having sex with their pages and stop me if you’ve heard the one about Catholic priests… Can you see where I’m going with this or am I being too subtle?

I’m tired of it. It makes me sick to my stomach that the same state is also making it illegal to discuss any alternative to heterosexuality until high school. It’s not that people have to go out of their way to discuss it, but it should be available to them since there are same-sex households. We exist. We’re not the devil’s work. We’ve always been here and we’ll continue to be here.

Okay, we might be a little on the sarcastic side of things.

My mother asked me to come by and cut down some branches Sunday morning. ‘Some’ branches. That’s like when my partner told me he could go out to dinner with me one evening once he finished sanding ‘a’ door at his dad’s house. I found out after arriving that it was a garage door. A 2-door garage door. I arrived Sunday morning to take care of a few branches with a manual handsaw to discover it was multiple trees with branches at multiple heights in multiple locations between the front and back yard. It looked a little grim.

Things weren’t helped when we started snipping a bit with each other; I wanted to start early before it got warm, she couldn’t get the household moving an hour prior, and I wanted to go in an orderly manner that made sense in relation to where I could place the ladder and she wanted to point and have me saw. It finally got to the point where she growled “If you keep it up, you can go home and I’ll finish this myself.” My response? “Oh, really, Paul Bunyan? Have at it.” And then we cracked up.

A neighbor fortunately stopped by a few minutes later and offered to let us borrow a battery operated saw. It ended up saving us at least two hours additional work, but more importantly, it saved a fragile afternoon from becoming bitchfest 2011. That man is getting some cannolis next time I stop by the bakery!

And how did you spend Memorial Day weekend?

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Kristoffer Gair (who formerly wrote under the pseudonym Kage Alan) is the Detroit-based author of Honor Unbound, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To My Sexual Orientation, Andy Stevenson Vs. The Lord Of The Loins, Gaylias: Operation Thunderspell, several short stories featured in anthologies (to be combined in a forthcoming book), the novella Falling Awake, its sequel, Falling Awake II: Revenant and Falling Awake III: Requiem.

2 Responses to “Would Tennessee Hire Paul Bunyan If He Was Gay?”

James Taylor Jr says:
June 2, 2011 at 11:53 am
Just so you know, we don’t have Workplace Discrimination laws for LGBT identified persons here in Michigan. Although, some counties, cities, and municipalities have their own… but Statewide, LGBT persons are not covered.

Reply
Kris says:
June 2, 2011 at 6:52 pm
Fortunately, some businesses have it built into their HR policies, which is always nice to see.