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Simply being right on an issue is mostly a matter of luck, mixed with a
little insight. It is not an honor to be right. It does not command respect. It
does not elevate. It does not inspire. And worst of all, being so certainly
right about something is often the fertile ground from which spring the great
wrongs of arrogance, ignorance and dogma--the heart of the Holocaust, and
the wellsprings of the greatest suffering and injustices the world has ever
known. Certainty may satisfy, but it transcends nothing.
On the other hand, giving others the space to be right, experiencing
the phenomenon of tolerance for points of view unlike your own, thinking it
possible that you may be mistaken about something, is an act of intelligence,
and even wisdom, because it opens the mind. People whose minds are still
alive, as yours is, realize that they live only at the brink of the known,
feeling forward for what is to be hoped, and dealing openly with uncertainty
every step of the way. The one thing an intelligent mind can be certain
about is that every judgment it makes stands on the edge of error, and is
personal
So when those around us do make mistakes (and it happens) what is
our response? As I was once told, and as I tell my associates now, if you're
not making mistakes you're probably not doing anything. Cheer up -- so you
goofed. So what! So maybe you won t goof that way next time. People who
make mistakes are not nearly the danger as those who concieve of
themselves as error free.
And so I have to decline joining any meeting to discuss the problems
mentioned in recent letters from both sides. No one needs to prove anything
to me. Who was right and who was wrong is a controversy without meaning
or substance. Besides, surely we are all by now operating on a scale too
large to address such trivial questions as whether or not DGA should have
adopted a school some years ago, etc. Happily, there are no problems there
that cannot be solved by a simple human choice to "lay down arms".
It is said that we can win this war, by waging peace. I don t know if
that is true, or at least if we will ever live to see it, but if it is true, it will be
because at some point along the way we will have learned to wage peace,
first, among ourselves. We will have wished eachother well as we face a
largely hostile and ignorant world. And until that day we will go on standing
in the way of the world's wishing us well, and will ourselves be guilty of the
two things we would never have dreamed we could be accused of doing:
prolonging the tragedy of AIDS, and delaying the Day of Victory for our
community...when equality for gay people is no longer an issue in our
societx
