I was wearing my Cease Fear Instructor t-shirt at aerobics class tonight and someone commented on it (and the other ‘interesting’ shirts I wear to class).  I explained what Cease Fear (I was a founding member and instructor for them) and Pink Pistols (I was a founding member of the Palouse chapter) are about but it occurred to me that it was really a much bigger issue.  A lesbian friend of mine is all wound up about the elections and had this to say to me recently:

well, let’s see why i might be hurting:

• i’m gay, and the village idiot is opposed to my continued breathing, but he won’t say so directly…
• i’m atheist, and the village idiot is born-again, in a country he’s trying to make into a theocracy…
• i’m female, and we all know what he thinks of women…
• i can think, which is heresy in this adminstration…

i’m trying to leave this country before i can’t, because this country’s administration believes i’m an abomination in many ways…

Heavy sigh.  If the above were really true then she should be thanking me and others for standing up for our right to keep and bear arms and training gays and other minorities to defend themselves.  But for some reason I’m not hearing that from her or any others in her particular minority group who fear being so oppressed.  My opinion is that things aren’t nearly as bad as she thinks they are.  I have some objections to some of President Bush’s positions but the only realistic alternative to him was John Kerry.  And there was no way Kerry could be trusted to protect gun rights and it was unlikely that he would do the right thing to defend us against Islamic Jihad.  As long as we have our guns there isn’t going to be a genocide aimed at any minority.  At least in every other genocide there has always been strict gun control prior to the implementation of the genocide and I can think of no reason why this country and time should be any different.

Here are some news stories that involved me and the above pro-freedom groups:

Lewiston Morning Tribune
AP Version of the above story
Seattle Times Editorial