My (second) 1000th post.

[Mike 03]

I remember when it used to be a huge deal to reach your 1000th post here on DU; now it means little. DU has grown incredibly.

In my first 1000th post (my first account), I thanked DU and everyone here, and its creators and moderators. This place has been my refuge since 2003, and you all have gotten me through this horrific nightmare of the Bush administration. You have soothed me when I had personal issues. You have made me laugh when I was depressed. You have changed my mind on dozens of key issues through your well argued posts.

But I want this post to be the kind of post my mother would have written when she was a young women in the fifties, and she was obsessed with the rights that should be accorded to African Americans. She was white and came from a troubled background. Her mother was an alcoholic and her father died at a very young age from a heart attack. But her obsession was that she saw black people being mistreated and she was a bit before her time in that she was haunted by this and did everything she could to remedy a wrong.

My Mom was horrified when she saw people mistreated or treated differently than others.

I'm older, and I live here now, and thanks to DU, I have come to realize that we have a similar issue now, only it's not Black people but Gay people.

So my wish, on this one thousandth post, would just be the prayer, the hope, that if you feel some bad feelings towards gay people that you do as I did and sit and think, reflect, and recall if maybe you have know GLBT people in your past who have meant a lot to you, like a teacher or a doctor or just a good friend, and on that basis you want the rights for them that are guaranteed under the Constitution, just as African Americans and Females and everyone else deserves. I wasn't always the most sensitive person in the world, but reading the posts on DU these past weeks has changed me a lot and caused me to remember a lot of things.

I never in a million years thought I would ever use one of my "major" posts for something like this, but times change, and issues surface that deserve immediate attention.

Thanks for reading this.

DU has been THE most important website I have ever found in my life.

Agree, disagree, this is my home and has been since before the Iraq war broke out.

I love you all.

[TomInTib]

1. I am proud to be the first to recommend this post.

Now, if everyone else here can just take a deep breath, shut your eyes for a few minutes and clear your head.

Thanks, Mike,
Tom

[Mike 03]

3. Thank you, that means a lot! NT

[lapfog_1]

2. Hey, I just remembered...

dang. 10,172 (now 10,173). Missed the magic 10,000th post.

Oh well, given the Rick Warren fiasco, I probably burned it on some post or other about that homophobic POS.

Sigh.