What I hope you will keep at the forefront of your mind in the wake of the end of Roe is that all this [motions to the entire culture] is of a piece. The reason you should care about justice for Black people, even if you aren’t Black; the reason you should be on the side of migrants and against detention centers; the reason you should support transgender people getting the health care they need and having the ability to flourish in their lives; the reason you should advocate for gay rights; hell, the reason you should advocate for liberty for all people — is that it’s all the same fight.
Who decides what you can do with your body? You or the state? Who decides what happens to your body? You or the state?
It’s funny to me how many blue-state people have taken to social media to express concern about people in red states right now. Don’t get me wrong. It’s lovely. But before Friday, there were only a handful of abortion clinics in Tennessee. Effectively, most people in Tennessee could not have an abortion if they needed it.
So maybe the sympathy should run the other way. Yes, this is scary. Yes, it is sad to think of how many people will have to travel far (if they can even afford to travel) to get health care they need. Yes, it is strange to realize you must be a safe haven. We have already been doing that.
If the country needs lessons on how to survive and sometimes flourish in a white supremacist theocracy that cannot be reasoned with, hello, welcome to Nashville.
What are some lessons we know and can teach the country?
- The biggest problem is not the assholes who do wrong, but the cowards who won’t stand against them. Staying out of fights is supporting the oppressor. If you oppose pearl-clutching censorship and really don’t give a shit what books are on school library shelves, say so, loudly. Staying silent because it’s “not your problem” merely gives the impression that you’re on the side of evildoers, and it emboldens them. But if you show them they don’t have the majority on their side, that you see them making mountains out of molehills, that’s important.
- Things take a long time to resolve, and we may not be around to see how it works out. Nashville was conflicted about slavery from the start. Starting in the 1820s, abolitionists had a real presence in town. Then there was a huge backlash against them, and more draconian anti-Black policies were put in place. A lot of people who were anti-slavery in 1800, who worked toward abolition, did not see the end of slavery. In fact, they lived through a time of worsening evil. We, too, may not see the end of this anti-liberty movement. It’s still worth working toward.
- Community can save you. If you haven’t read Jim Ridley’s iconic “Last Call at Juanita’s,” it’s a celebration of found community and the importance of sticking together during periods of persecution. It’s also a lesson in how people, like bar owner Juanita Bruce Brazier, can put their money where their mouths are and use their power to alleviate a little suffering. But it’s also worth noting that, when Jim wrote this piece for the Scene in 1995, many of the gay men who had found refuge at Juanita’s did not feel safe coming to her funeral. This ordinariness we take for granted now — where Pride is a huge citywide party and no one looks twice at two dudes grabbing a drink at a bar — is new.
This is not the end of the fight, nor is it the beginning. It’s the fundamental question at the heart of the American experiment. How far can liberty extend? The important thing to realize is that our answer to that question has always been inadequate. Thomas Jefferson believed that all people had an inherent right to liberty, and he enslaved people. John Adams the same, with the added benefit of deeply loving his wife Abigail. He still sold her out when it came time to possibly give white women the same voting rights as white men. We say we want and believe in liberty, but the people pushing hardest for it in the abstract are always horrified when Native Americans or Black people or gay people or women or religious minorities and so on say, “We sure would like some of that liberty you’re always talking about.”
What will it take for us to secure our own liberty? I don’t know. I’ve been reading commentary and listening to podcasts, and as is usual in our long history, these answers all seem inadequate. We just have to keep pushing toward what we want anyway.
Yes, times are scary, but times in America are always scary for someone. We’re just taking our rightful place in the fundamental fight at our country’s core.
