The Third Side to Every Story
Summary: Text of a letter to Naomi from Blair. First in a series. Each stand-alone letter will feature a case or event in Blair's life after the dissertation fiasco.
Warning: Blair as a cop. Discussion of homosexuality (not slash and no sexual content) and religious prejudice and activism. If you’re religiously or personally offended by gay lifestyle choices, this is not the story for you. While this story reflects my personal feelings about the events portrayed, I think that Blair would agree with my opinions. I hope so, since this is told from his point of view.
Note: This is loosely based on a recent protest in my home town. Only the protest and the event leading up to it actually occurred, subsequent events are my invention based on what could have happened. Names and personal details have been altered or omitted to protect the privacy of the parties involved, and because I have no desire to give the protest group involved any publicity. Their views and actions are reprehensible, in my opinion.
Originally written as Dues on the SentinelAngst Mailing List
December 2001
December, 2000
Dear Naomi,
I hope wherever this letter catches up to you, you are happy and safe. It’s been two years now since you were last here in Cascade and I miss you. Hopefully someday when you’ve finished processing the idea of your son as a cop, you’ll come back to visit me. I hope you know I understand.
Jim and I are both doing fine. It’s funny; I realized a while back that your fears for my safety were more valid before I became a detective than after. B.D. (before dissertation), it seems like I averaged a trip to the emergency room once every two months. Now that I carry a gun and have an obligation to put myself in the line of fire, the bad guys don’t seem to want to hurt me nearly as much. If you can believe it, I haven’t even had to draw my gun for over a year. Well, except for once when I used it to clock a bad guy from behind, but that doesn’t really count because he didn’t even know I was there.
Anyway, something happened today that I just had to share with you. I attended a protest. I know, not something out of the ordinary for either one of us, but every other time I’ve been to one, it’s been either as a protester or as a…what would you call it? An anti-protester? A rebutter? Anyway, either as a supporter of the protest or as a protester to the protesters. Today, though, I was there as a police officer, a keeper of the peace.
Never has it been so hard to be a cop as it was today. All those times when we were so angry with the police who protected or broke up the protests we participated in, the pride I felt that time when I was 14 and got arrested for cuffing myself to the gate at that nuclear missile site, I never considered what it must be like for the policemen and women who had to be there to keep everything peaceful. The personal feelings that had to be set aside in order to do the job without prejudice weren't anything I ever thought about. Until today.
Remember I told you in my last letter about that art student at Rainier that killed himself a couple of months ago? I don’t know if I even mentioned it when I wrote, but he was gay. He’d just graduated from Cascade High School, and wonder of wonders, the students there were actually sensitive enough to judge him on his own merits instead of his sexuality. He was popular, on the Student Council, and class valedictorian. Anyway, when he committed suicide it came as a shock to everyone who knew him. It wasn’t in the papers, but the reason he did it was NOT because he was gay. Can’t tell you how I know that, but there was enough evidence to give us another motive.
It’s almost too bad that he was well-liked, because otherwise what happened today probably wouldn’t have. The Berybrook Church decided that his death was a perfect example of how the evils of homosexuality destroy your chances for salvation. Bullshit and defective reasoning based on interpretations of biblical passages they use to support their own unreasoning fear and prejudice. I can’t believe their entire missionary goal is to use their hatred of gay people to try to create more hate. And what’s more, extend that hate to our country for not condemning the people they don’t like. Maybe someone should remind them why people came to America in the first place. Nah, it’d be a waste of time. People like that don’t understand things like logic and tolerance.
The point is, there we were, trying to keep peace at a protest with these fanatics pacing back and forth in front of Cascade High School, toting placards with sayings on them like ‘Faggots burn in hell’ and ‘Joe Kinney’s sin killed him’ and ‘All fags must repent or die’. Then some idiots at a radio station decided to come down and boost their ratings by setting up their own little protest against the protesters, and then the gay right activists showed up, and some kids came out of the school and began yelling at the Church groups and a couple of the male students kissed each other to piss off the protesters, and it was a huge mess. Jim’s trying to keep an eye on them and me at the same time, and I’m about ready to throw Jim my badge and join the gay rights activists just on principle, when the proverbial shit really hit the fan.
We found out later at the station that Joe Kinney’s father, Burt, was listening to the radio station that was at the protest. He heard one of the Church members yelling about how Joe deserved to die, that he was defective and an unredeemable sinner in the eyes of the Lord. Burt Kinney just snapped. He drove his car to the protest, then just kept driving, right into the protesters from Berybrook. When Jim and I pulled him from his stalled car, which luckily missed the surprisingly agile church members, he was crying and screaming about what a good and loving son Joe had been, and how the anti-gay group deserved to die, not his son. Snapping handcuffs on the man was one of the hardest things I ever have had to do. What I really wanted to do was let him slip away while I got in his car, backed it up, and tried to run those bastards down again, for him.
The protest finally wound down, and the Cascade PD was left to clean up in the aftermath. Four arrests for assault, two for indecent exposure (a couple of high school kids who mooned the Berybrook Church members), and Burt Kinney, arrested for attempted murder. Simon told me the D.A. has already approved plea bargaining the charges down to reckless driving, and this is one time when I heartily endorse the plea bargain process. Not one Berybrook member was arrested or stuck around in town after the protest. They came, they incited hate, they left.
I’ve never thanked you until now for raising me to appreciate everyone for who they are, not what they are. Labels never meant anything to you, sexual orientation, color, religion, none of them ever influenced you. So, thank you for teaching me that love is more important than hate, that standing up for others is more important that keeping yourself safe, and that the world is a better place with a wide diversity of people.
Well, except maybe for the prejudiced ones.
Love,
Your son Blair
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Jim watched Sandburg carefully tuck his latest letter to Naomi into the pale blue envelope, address it, then walk slowly to his room. Sighing, he closed his eyes against the sight of Blair once again opening his desk drawer to add the envelope to the thick stack of unmailed letters to his mom.
Maybe someday the silence between mother and son would be breached, but apparently that day had not yet come.
Fin