"The Views To Love..."

Running through my head...

BTW: This video has not much to do with the images above, which I love for what they are... But this song immediately ran through my mind as I assembled these images for this post. When I searched for the song, I ran across this cover from the film, "Into the Night" which features cameos by numerous stars of the day and performed by none other than B.B. King.  I had no idea that B.B. King ever performed this song which was co-written and made famous by Detroiter Wilson Pickett.  

In one of my many "Forrest Gump-like" moments, I have a connection to B.B. King, the "B.B." stood for "Blues Boy." I knew of many of his songs and his signature guitar style as he was a favorite artist of my mother... And decades ago, when I was very politically active, I was tapped to make a run for state representative and of all people, B.B. King, who I'd never met, was my largest campaign donor... Quite literally out of the "blues," he sent me a check for $500 along with a lovely note wishing me all the best in the upcoming election.  Along with the check, he also sent me a video tape of his performance at the 1992 Republican National Convention. Yes, surprisingly B.B. King was a right-leaning independent, and at the time, I was a dyed-in-the-wool, "Nouveau Black Republican!" 

Thinking back, I can hardly reconcile my current political leanings (Liberal and Democrat) with those of my internalized homophobic, self-loathing younger self.  I was deep in denial about the truth of my heart and my sexual orientation and I think that spurred my desire to align myself with the Republican party, which at the time, was just moving towards the rabid homophobia that has plagued it ever since. Looking back on my own involvement with Republican politics of that era, I can say it seemed to me an easy choice to make... I thought to myself, "If I believe as these folks do about homosexuality, then I can't be gay myself (cognitive dissonance at its best). It didn't hurt that I had admired Ronald Reagan since his ascendancy to the presidency, and at the time, I even looked up to him as a "father-figure" in the absence of my own dad from my life then. Looking back, this seemed to be easy for me to do, even though I knew his party and politics made the plight of gays and many other marginalized groups including people of color exponentially worse.

It would not be until the rise to prominence of Barrack Obama and his later audacious campaign of "Hope" that I would seriously and finally reexamine my political beliefs.  For it was also around this same time that I would accept the truth of my heart and what I had always known, that I was gay. Slowly, I began to believe that there could be new hopes and dreams to replace the lies and self-deception that had marked the first four decades of my life.  By 2006, I had come out to all of my family. Following the death of my mother, and through an intense love affair with a man I still hold dear in my heart, I discovered that love and loss have nothing to do with sexual orientation and I finally realized that everyone, including myself, deserved the right to be who they are and to love who they love.  And with that, on November 7, 2006, I cast my first ever vote as a Democrat.