I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

storytelling for truth lovers

  • First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage? Ask The Supremes


    The dust has settled after the media frenzy surrounding the Supreme Court hearings on two cases affecting the future of same-sex marriage in the United States. Whew! The gays and gay-friendlies partied. Jon Stewart skewered DOMA and its supporters on Comedy Central. The Republicans tried desperately to find someone – ANYONE – in their party to explain their position on marriage on CNN in a way that the general citizenry wouldn’t characterize as narrow-minded at best or bigoted at worst. That search is ongoing and a generous reward is offered to the finder.

    The hearings are over and the rulings expected in June. Eight Associate Justices and the Chief Justice hold the key to opening doors of equality that have been slammed shut since the founding fathers held these truths to be Self-evident in the Declaration of Independence in 1776. “…That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

    I am amazed to realize I have seen all of these Supremes don the robes of the Court at the end of the required appointment process. Clarence Thomas is the only Southerner. He was born in Georgia and is a Yale law school graduate. He is 64 years old and the only appointee of President George H.W. Bush. His appointment process was ugly, nationally televised and his robes permanently tainted. He is the only Supreme who is African-American.

    Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotamayor and Elena Kagan were all born in New York. Justice Ginsburg is the oldest member of the Court at the ripe age of 80. She is a Columbia law school graduate but studied at Harvard for a time. She was appointed by President Bill Clinton. Chief Justice Roberts was appointed by President George W. Bush and is a Harvard graduate. He is 58 years old. Justice Sotomayor is also 58 years old and is a Yale graduate who was appointed by President Barak Obama. She is the sole Hispanic Supreme. Justice Kagan is another Obama appointee and is 53 years old which makes her the youngest member of the Court. At the time of her appointment she was Dean of the Harvard Law School.

    Three other Associate Justices were Harvard law school graduates: Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Stephen G. Breyer. Both Justices Kennedy and Breyer were born in California and are in the same age brackets. Kennedy is 76 and Breyer is 74, but they had different presidential appointments. President Ronald Reagan appointed Kennedy and President Bill Clinton appointed Breyer. President Reagan also appointed Justice Scalia who was born in New Jersey and is now 77 years old. He is the father of nine children which puts him in a category all by himself on the bench and how he ever had time to be a Supreme is beyond me.

    The final Associate Justice Samuel Anthony Alito, Jr. shares Scalia’s home state of New Jersey and is the third Yale graduate on the Court. He is 63 years old and was appointed by President George W. Bush.

    In summation, Your Honors, I find that the fate of same-sex marriage in the United States in 2013 rests with folks who graduated either from Yale or Harvard law schools and were born in the New York/ New Jersey area on the East Coast or California on the West Coast with one stray Southerner thrown in for good measure. Well, maybe not good measure, but certainly thrown in.

    The question before us today is whether this hodgepodge of political appointees will take its place in history as the Court that restores the unalienable rights of a minority of its LGBT citizens who have been made to feel “lesser than” and treated with discrimination that often threatens their Lives and their Liberty and always endangers their pursuit of Happiness.

    I respectfully ask the Court to stand and deliver on the promises that have been the hopes and dreams of all Americans for more than two hundred years.

    I rest my case.

  • The Philosoper Winnie The Pooh


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    How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.

    —- A. A. Milne

  • Takin’ Any Comfort That I Can


    Takin’ Any Comfort That I Can.

    via Takin’ Any Comfort That I Can.

  • Something Old, Something New – Something Special


    “I no doubt deserved my enemies, but I doubt I deserved my friends.”
    —— Walt Whitman

    Yesterday I visited with my favorite Aunt Lucille who lives in Beaumont which is ninety-nine miles east of Montgomery on Texas Highway 105. I always enjoy my visits with her. She’s got spunk, and contrary to Mr. Grant’s opinion of spunk on the Mary Tyler Moore show a gazillion years ago, I like spunk. She refuses to give up her independent living apartment in a retirement community that offers assisted living and other levels of care for which she would qualify. Instead, she keeps her mind active with crossword puzzles and word games in the daily newspaper, and her knowledge of current events acquired through the TV and conversations is as good as it gets. She pushes herself out of bed and showers and dresses and puts on makeup every day. My aunt will be ninety-three years old in May and has a list of ailments and a personal pharmacy to treat them. A recent setback makes movement even more difficult for her, but she has rebounded and makes a determined effort to rejoin her friends at their reserved dinner table downstairs almost every evening. It’s a long walk from her apartment on the third floor to the lobby of the next building for meals. Trust me.

    Yesterday she told me one of her friends was coming by in the afternoon for a visit. I recognized the name because she had talked about Jan for as long as I could remember. She told me Jan was recovering from a stroke and her caregiver would be bringing her by. When Jan arrived promptly at two o’clock, Lucille got up from the sofa in the living room and pushed her walker toward Jan’s. When they met in the middle of the room, they both smiled and hugged each other with genuine joy on their faces. After introductions all round, we sat down to talk.

    Lucille and Jan met in 1953 when they both lived with their husbands in an apartment complex in Beaumont. They first talked when they were outdoors hanging clothes on the clothesline behind their apartment building. Both women were new to Beaumont and Jan’s daughter was born in the spring before Lucille’s was born in October that year. They were new mothers and became new friends. Their husbands luckily liked each other, too, and the couples got together often. Lucy’s husband Jay died in 1979 and Jan and her husband Otis shared a sixty-fifth wedding anniversary before his recent death.

    What struck me as I listened to them talk about their families and what was going on in their lives now was how remarkable it must be to have a friendship that stretches across sixty years of change and challenges. Their bond survived everything life threw at them. Hot and cold seasons came and went for six decades, but their loyalty to each other never got too hot to go up in flames or too cold to freeze and wither away.

    In a separate happening this week I was reminded of friendships I’ve lost and the pain of losing them. We are a mobile society and our moving parts rarely stay in the same place for very long. We change our homes and jobs and the people in our lives that go with them. Sometimes we just change the people in our lives. Regardless, a true friendship for sixty years is worthy of a tribute and this is mine for Lucille and Jan.

  • Independence Day


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    Lone Star flies again on Worsham Street

    Texas Independence Day was yesterday March 2nd. and I didn’t remember until today so I am turning back time and celebrating today.  My Lone Star flag has been in the garage since December when my neighbor across the street rescued it from being blown away by hurricane force winds while I was in South Carolina.   Tonight my new next-door neighbors rescued me from certain disaster on my ladder and returned the flag to its rightful position on the garage.  But, I didn’t stop there…

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    Worsham Street lit up

    I knew there was a good reason I didn’t totally take down the Christmas lights yet and what could be more appropriate than firing up the lights in March for Independence Day?   For all of my readers who weren’t required to take Texas history in the fourth grade, March 2, 1836, was the day a group of disgruntled men met in a small frame building in a remote place called Washington-on-the-Brazos and signed a Declaration of Independence from Mexico.  Needless to say, the Mexicans were as fired up as my lights and a short war ensued.  And I do mean short.  On April 21, 1836, the Battle of San Jacinto was won by the legendary General Sam Houston over his adversary General Santa Ana and the Republic of Texas was born.

    And such is the stuff dreams are made of.  Words like independence and equality roll off the tongue as easily as chocolate and marshmallows for me today and I need to slap myself periodically to guard against my personal archenemy, Complacency.  I had a good lesson last week from a PBS documentary called Makers: Women Who Make America.  From Bella Abzug to Betty Friedan to Shirley Chisholm to Geraldine Ferraro to Barbara Jordan to Billie Jean King to Ruth Bader Ginsberg to Sonia Sotamayor to Elena Kagan to Sandra Day O’Connor to Gloria Steinem to Oprah Winfrey to Ellen DeGeneres to Nancy Pelosi to Patricia Schroeder to Hillary Clinton to Rita Mae Brown to Meryl Streep who narrated the program, I re-lived the significance of these pioneers in American history and the contributions they made to my own opportunities in the 1960s and beyond.   Personal s-a-c-r-i-f-i-c-e, and I have to be careful to say this word slowly so as not to underestimate its importance, and dogged determination to move the cause for basic human rights for gender equality forward made these women true heroines and  the past sixty years a tumultuous time of two steps forward and one step back.

    And yet, while I was in the process of earning degrees from universities to enter a workplace where I was worried about equal pay for equal work and domestic partner benefits for lesbians or other social justice issues, my sisters in  countries outside the United States worried about a crust of bread for their daughter or shelter from the elements or a chance for any education at all.  If you are one of my regular readers, you know I can hardly resist the urge to quote the great western philosopher Garth Brooks and tonight is no exception.

         “When the last child cries for a crust of bread, when the last man dies for just words that he said,  when there’s shelter over the poorest head, then we shall be free…When the last thing we notice is the color of skin and the first thing we look for is the beauty within, when the skies and the oceans are clean again, then we shall be free…When we’re free to love anyone we choose, when this world’s big enough for all different views, when we all can worship from our own kind of pew, then we shall be free…”

    So tonight I celebrate Texas Independence and the heritage I have as a native and, thanks to the genealogical research of one of my cousins, daughter of the Republic of Texas.  Freedom and liberty and equality have exacted a price and require my ongoing commitment and diligence.  Compassion and empathy and courage will define my character.   As my daddy used to tell me,  you can take the girl out of Texas, but you can’t take Texas out of the girl.

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