"Sorry We Missed Church" Great, great, read....

[TomInTib]

Driving 19th Street in Lubbock alongside the sprawling edifices of Texas Tech, the little tin-can car in front of me sported quite a bumper sticker: SORRY WE MISSED CHURCH, WE WERE BUSY/LEARNING WITCHCRAFT AND BECOMING LESBIANS.

That bumper sticker won't cost you in Los Angeles or Austin, but it takes rare nerve to paste those words on your tail in the Bible Belt. (Lubbock has, I am told, more churches per capita than any city anywhere.) The tin can had Texas plates, and any Texan knows that sticker won't be taken lightly around here. I had to see who was driving that car. I pulled up alongside. The driver and her passenger were women of about 18, maybe 20. They wore tractor hats or maybe baseball caps, with brims pulled backwards, and they were laughing. They didn't notice me salute them, and they couldn't know that I was thinking, Next to these kids, I'm a wuss.

I write under the ever-flimsier protection of the First Amendment. They drive around a famously right-wing town daring anyone to say them nay.

Those young women surely know that cops may pull them over on any pretext. And they must know that – coming out of a movie, say – they might find their car surrounded by a gaggle of repressed guys in desperate need to prove themselves real men. To the surprise of many, Brokeback Mountain is playing in Lubbock – the sight of a cowboy hat will never be quite the same, will never quite mean what it used to mean. There are lots of cowboy hats hereabouts, many no doubt a little less sure of their image because of Brokeback Mountain (they won't see the film, but they'll see the previews). Insecure cowboy wannabes won't take that sticker lightly. But, unlike most Americans these days, those young women weren't letting fear set their limits.

Your freedom may be backed by law, but your freedom can't be given you by law. You give it to yourself by how far you're willing to go. You give it to yourself by what stakes you're willing to play for. Do your loved ones – or your town, or your country – limit how free you are by what they can and cannot tolerate? How much of that are you willing to take? Is your freedom limited by your own fear? In this case, the freedom we're talking about is basic: the freedom to be oneself. That's what these women were putting to the test – testing themselves, testing their society. And risking all kinds of hell to do it. East and West Coast writers pontificating about "the red states" don't imagine that those very states are also places of the purest rebellions, where rebels walk their talk on tightropes.

More of this wonderful, hopeful, inspiring essay at:

http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/nav/print_or_email.php?URL=http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2006-02-17/cols_ventura.html

[Warren DeMontague]

1. In the 80s, I did lots of cross country driving- including through

Texas and Oklahoma- in a little hatchback plastered with various left-wing sentiments, not to mention Grateful Dead stickers. Ah, youth. The most angry confrontation, if you can call it that, happened in Southern Illinois, where a guy came up to me and my buddy at a gas station and was like "What Aint ya against?"

I had more than one cop follow me to various state lines late at night, and caught a lot of weird looks. But in some ways, I think the US of a couple decades ago was a more tolerant, less angry place. (My car now is much more respectable looking, although it's clear where my views lie- and I had a amped up, aggro pickup truck literally run me off the road last year in Sacramento... for what I can only surmise were political reasons)

Maybe it's the wisdom of age, maybe it's something else- but there's no fucking way I would try drving through Texas in my old car, now.

[HockeyMom]

2. I almost got run off the LIE for my Independents for Kerry sticker

In Blue, DOWNSTATE New York by two 20 something men in a red pickup truck. They blared their horn at me and gave me the finger.

If that can happen here, I shudder to think what other parts of the country would be like. We need MORE young people like those young women.

By the way, I just got off searching cafe press for "Impeach Bush"; all 312 pages. I liked the one which said "HONK for Impeachment." I guess, even at my age, I still like living dangerously. I will just have to see what that gets me.

Wish me luck.

[Warren DeMontague]

3. Yeah, I'm starting to refer to them in my own head as

"Pickup Truck Nazis". They're generally twentysomething (how come yer not in Iraq, boys?) shaved heads, oversized tires, double digit iq points. Extra points for a "Bad Boy" sticker or Calvin peeing on anything. I live in one of the most liberal parts of the country, and we've got 'em all over the place here, too. Hee Haw.

[Peanutcat]

6. Southern Illinois?

Do you remember which town? SoIL is my part of the country!

[Warren DeMontague]

8. No- this was decades ago... but don't take it personally!

Some of my best friends spent some hazy, crazy years in Carbondale.

[Peanutcat]

11. Not a problem!

Ah, good ol' C'dale! I live only 45 min. away form there!

[tularetom]

4. They don't always fuck with you

In '03 my dad died in OK. We went back to take care of the arrangements estate, etc. At the time I had a "Buck Fush" sticker on my pickup. And I never got the finger, tailgated, hollered at, egged or anything else. Of course it was a pickup, also had a "2nd Amendment Supporter" sticker on it, and I looked fairly rednecky (big hat and gray beard), plus being 6'2 and 225 lbs. But I got a fair number of thumbs up signs driving around town (maybe it was for the 2nd amendment sticker). I salute these young women for having the cojones (ovaries) to do what they do.

[cdsilv]

5. I want a 'Calvin peeing on W' bumpersticker - n/t

[Ksec]

7. The bumperstick .....Im still laughing..

The moderates are the real problem IMO.

They are considered down to earth, too wise to succumb to becoming rabid or extreme, and legit.

Meanwhile has there ever been anything the fundies proposed that 90% of the moderates didnt jump onboard with? I mean if the fundies are so dangerous then the ones with the common sense who agree with them must be twice as dangerous. They are the ones who "arent" extreme so how could they be dangerous?

[Straight Shooter]

9. Those girls are now famous in their hometown, I hope.

Leading by example. That's the best way. :thumbsup:

[bmbmd]

10. Ex-Lubbockite here.

That once great, Godly city has lost its way-lost its sense of fair play, of right and wrong, lost its sense of live and let live. Every one is certainly free to be themselves in Lubbock now-but only if everyone conforms to the Lubbock way, the Trinity church way, the west Texas way. Different is evil, conformity is good. I have forwarded this editorial to all my west Texas friends. Kicked and recommended.