The past and coming weeks are rife with matters of peculiar public display.
Picture this: An evening starts with lip gloss, mints, a pink throw-covered couch and a whole lot of kissing and ends with two arrests and three citations.
And I thought I'd be done with courts for a while after Ben Tucker's trial this week. Guess that's what happens when people kiss on the sidewalk in front of the Copper Lounge. At least, if those people are trying to make a statement: We should be free to love whomever, whenever and wherever we want.
On campus this week, we're going to be seeing another, very different kind of display. Some folks will be setting up camp with an anti-abortion exhibition. From what I hear, it's going to be pretty graphic -- big pictures of fetuses and that sort of thing.
So no one gets any wrong ideas that I'm going to advocate having this exhibit kicked off campus, I'll preface by saying, I'm not. Everyone's got to say what we believe, right? Besides, I much prefer this tactic to killing doctors.
On the other hand, it probably won't come as any surprise that I'm pro-choice.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
Having been pregnant and given birth, I can say from experience that it's really hard work. For myself, I wouldn't have it any other way. I can't even imagine what it would be like to know that I could have brought someone to life and chose not to.
But I also could never force my choice on anyone else. Pregnancy is hard. Giving birth is hard. Even if there are no complications, it'll change your body for the rest of your life. No one should have that decision made for her. Life just isn't that simple.
Still, we'll have free speech at work on campus this week. Maybe someone who just found out she's pregnant will happen to pass by and decide not to have an abortion after all. Maybe somebody will get inspired to protect life by going on an abortion clinic killing spree. Maybe there'll be big, intense protests that will put freedom of speech to the test.
A lot of people probably will just get really disgusted and change their route to class.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure nobody involved with the grisly display is going to get arrested. Funny how that works.
Lip gloss, mints, and kisses ... sounds so much better than your usual protest or grisly photographs, for that matter. Even if you generally think activists are violent, would you really expect anyone who's been hanging around making out for the past hour to be much of a threat to anyone? Well, maybe if the kisser has a cold. I would think a good kiss would put all dangerous thoughts out of my head, if there were any there to begin with.
I can't say I have any grand theories about why public displays of affection - for explicitly political purposes or otherwise - are so much frowned upon. Maybe it has something to do with the bonobos and chimpanzees.
Those are the two species on the planet that are genetically closest to humans. Chimpanzees tend to be pretty warlike. Bonobos, on the other hand, when they get into a tense situation, instead of fighting, they just have sex. After that, everybody's apparently too relaxed to worry about their quarrel.
I kind of like the bonobos' option better. If we paid more attention to love than to war, our world might look like a very different place.
So I have a homework assignment for you this week, in the genre of display: Make love public.
Now, I'm not talking about having sex on the bridge over the Duck Pond. You could, and you probably wouldn't be the first, but that's not what I mean.
I mean: Kiss your lover. Hold hands with your friends. Call out "I love you" to your parents loud enough for everyone to hear. Let everyone around you know that love of every kind is a statement worth making.
Sounds like a much lovelier sort of display, doesn't it?
by Sari Krosinsky
Daily Lobo
You talkin' to me? Then write to Sari Krosinsky at michal_kro@hotmail.com.
