4:30 AM Saturday morning. I awake and roll over to try to go back to sleep. It feels like I take the roll at just hair slower than the speed of sound. Then I notice the nausea. Sitting up (again, feeling like I sat up 20x faster than I’m sure I actually did and certainly 20x faster than I intended to), I noticed another neat trick. The room was spinning. Seriously, spinning and spinning fast. I’ve felt this way a few times before, but those times were in college and only after consuming large quantities of adult beverages, and I the last time I had even a single drink was many weeks ago. Getting up to get a glass of water, I was so off balance that I was having trouble walking, in fact I began to fall at least twice between the bedroom and the kitchen and had to catch and steady myself on the wall or table. Good thing we don’t have stairs in the new place! I had a glass of water and tried to go back to bed, but the damn room wouldn’t stop spinning, so I went out on front porch to get some fresh air. We haven’t got any furniture for the front porch yet (I’m thinking a little bistro set, once we’re past the initial financial stress of the move), and so I literally laid down directly on the porch in nothing but a pair of sweat shorts I’d thrown on (disoriented though I was, I figured I ought to put something on before going outside on the off chance that any of the neighbors were up at 5 in the morning on a Saturday). Eventually, things kinda slowed their spinning enough that I was able to get to bed and actually get to sleep, though things still weren’t right and body knew it so it woke me up regularly with nightmares.

Once I got up for the day, I was still nauseous, and slightly dizzy, but much less dizzy that the night before. I didn’t know what was wrong, but after I’d had a bowl of cereal, a glass of water, and taken a shower, I was feeling better (still slightly nauseous but no longer dizzy), so TheBoyfriend™ and I went to Home Depot to get some plants for the garden he’d made the day before. Standing out in the sun was a bad idea. By the time we left Home Depot I was once again having trouble walking in a straight line and the nausea was back in a big way. We stopped and got some food on the way home, but I couldn’t eat it. I put it in the fridge for later and, taking my drink with me, went to sit down, watch tv, and more or less feel sorry for myself. About an hour later I was feeling better and was able to eat. From that point on, still not realizing I was dehydrated, I began drinking a bit more water. By the time I got in bed that night, I was doing pretty good and went to sleep easily.

So far today, I’ve been pretty good (and have been keeping a glass of water in my hand all the time). I’m assuming yesterday’s episode was just dehydration as it fits the symptoms and once I really thought about it, the symptoms would ease each time I had something to drink. Take my advice, water is more important than you know. I have not felt as bad as I did yesterday in a long long time, and I plan to never let myself get dehydrated again.

Now we don’t have to worry about defending ourselves against the stereotype of the anti-gun liberal. It was never true anyway, but now it doesn’t matter. Thank goodness that’s over! Whew. Now we just have to say, “hey, even if we wanted to, we can’t. End of discussion.” The point is moot.

It’s not an unreasonable notion and, in fact, I’ve predicted the same thing regarding abortion (I’m betting that if Roe v Wade were to be overturned, the Republicans would lose a quarter of their voters, those who only actually make it to the polls to vote “pro-life” in the first place, overnight). But, in this instance, I don’t really think it’ll make that big of a difference. The reason is that, if you listen to them long enough, you’ll see that when gun use advocates say “they’re gonna take away our guns!!!” they aren’t referring (exclusively) to outright bans on gun ownership, but rather to any regulation of gun sales and ownership whatsoever. Waiting periods, “fixing the gun show loop hole,” prohibitions on felon gun ownership, allowing guns to be prohibited on private property, etc. is all included in “taking away our guns.” The SCOTUS decision doesn’t necessarily do anything about any of those things. It leaves plenty of room for such regulations and restrictions.

While (as I said above) I’m content to let others argue for where the line of such regulations should fall, it’s unlikely that such regulations (or the potential for them) will ever cease to exist, and so “they’re going to take away our guns” will always be a campaign issue. The regulations will always exist because ALL our rights are subject to some degree of regulation. Think you have free speech? Try yelling “FIRE” in a crowded theater. Freedom of religion? Ask a fundamentalist Mormon if the government allows them to take as many wives as they’re religion commands. It seems a bit ridiculous to suggest that the 2nd Amendment deserves some total deference that isn’t extended to the rest of the Bill of Rights, and that ridiculousness becomes outright hypocrisy if you happen to also vocally support even unreasonable regulation of other rights (how many gun use advocates out there also feel we should suppress free speech with flag-burning laws?). So until such time as we devolve into total anarchy (at which point the 2nd Amendment really won’t be in effect anyhow), there will continue to be some kind of regulation of gun sales, ownership, and use. And so long as such regulations (or the potential for them) are in place, guns will continue to be an issue in American politics.

This isn’t a post to unravel her arguments against gay and lesbian adoptions in part because she gave none in any of the footage they aired (from what they showed she either got angry and stormed off, started crying, or both, every time someone asked her to defend her position). Something else stood out to me as I watched. She seemed genuinely surprised that gay-headed families would be upset that she wanted to take their kids away. The clip below is the first time she mentions it, while attending a picnic for lesbian mothers and their children, but she mentions it else where (and with more apparent sincerity) several times through out the rest of the show.

Shortly after that clip ended she asked the camera, tears streaming down her mascara-stained face, “Why do they have to take it so personally?” And that bewilders me. We know from the beginning of the episode that she has two adopted children of her own. If someone marched into her home and declared themselves an advocate of having her children taken from their home and her family left in pieces, would she not take that personally as well? Yet, I think the inability to walk a mile in another’s shoes is the reason (or defense mechanism by which) opponents of gay and lesbian adoption (or marriage equality for that matter), are able to say (and often sincerely believe) that there is no “hate” in their position. For them, “losing” means no change in their daily lives. They may not like it much, but without a change to their lives, the soreness of not being on the “winning” side will wear off and they’ll mostly forget all about it. It’s just an “issue” not all that different from deciding whether the state cat will be a Siamese or a Persian; sure you might have a preference but is it really that big of a deal if you don’t get your way? For many of them, as appears to be the case with the woman in this episode, they’ve managed to convince themselves that it is more or less the same for folks on the other side of the argument.

But it’s not. Gay people (and their allies) are not fighting to “win” and they’re not fighting to be “right.” They are fighting because their families are in danger, and not in the nebulous vague “gay people are going to destroy marriage” way, but in the very real and concrete “I don’t want social services knocking on my door to take my children from our home and toss them into foster care” way. They’re fighting, first for the very right to even have a family, and secondly for the right to protect that family. If they lose, it’s not a simple matter of “aw shucks, better luck next time,” but rather a devastating blow to nearly every aspect of their lives. In the case of gay adoptions, the hardest hit victims are often the children, who are being torn away from everything they know and love; something that can truly have a permanent negative impact on the child’s life.

As an aside, I have a few issues with this particular episode of the show. If an adult sharp-shooter wants to invite an adult gun control advocate into his house for 30 days, it’s one thing, but in this case I don’t think the situation was very fair to the children. Children of gay couples are exposed to people like the woman in the show, who think the very existence of these kids’ families is wrong, out in the “real world.” Home should be a place where they are safe from that kind of thing.