Don't Start the Revolution Without Me! - Jesse Ventura [80]
We take a look inside the stone church with its whitewashed façade. An effigy of Saint Ignatius of Loyola glares down at us from the altar. When the first priest came here in 1716, our guidebook says, the Jesuit order was still among the most powerful in Rome. Most of the work of founding this mission, which for a while was the biggest and most prosperous in Baja, fell to a priest who used to tell the local Indians: “Come to the faith of Jesus Christ! Oh! If only I could make all of you Christians and take you to paradise.”
That sounded familiar. The missionaries founded schools and took the native children away from their parents to indoctrinate them in the Christian religion. One historian wrote of the mission system: “There was nothing voluntary about it.... Every mission had its whipping post, its jail cell, its set of iron shackles, its stocks.” Not to mention all the Baja Indians who died from new diseases the Europeans brought with them—smallpox, typhoid, measles, even the flu. They just had no immunity. From disease or from persecution. It wasn’t a matter of choice. And I couldn’t help but be drawn back, once again, to my time as governor—and the increasing intolerance I saw sweeping the country. My home state was not immune from that.
The Christian right wing in America is a polarizing force when it comes to gay rights, abortion, and patriotism. To me, these aren’t “issues,” they are matters of individual freedom of choice. But the militant Christians, like the Baja missionaries of several centuries ago, are just about ready to burn at the stake those who disagree with their fire-and-brimstone approach. They especially don’t like anything beyond their idea of the “normal”—like the percentage of our population who happen to be gay.
To me, gay rights is simple: it’s about equality. We’re all supposed to be equal under the Constitution, which doesn’t say anything about the “Hetero States of America.” (Granted, I often wonder how our forefathers could have written a document about everyone being equal under God and the law when they owned slaves.) Gay rights hit home to me personally, through the world of pro wrestling, believe it or not. I had a good friend who was gay, and he had a partner. They’d been together for as long as any married couple, probably well over twenty-five years. At one point, my friend’s partner became ill and had to go into the hospital. He was in the intensive care unit, and my friend was not allowed to sit bedside—because the hospital rules stated explicitly “spouse” or “next of kin.” In the eyes of the law and of society, he fit neither category. I thought, that’s just plain cruel and inhumane.
I fought hard during my four years as governor to get equal rights for Minnesota state employees who happened to be gay. We were losing some of the best and the brightest to the private sector, simply because they were gay and not receiving the benefits that should be provided. Most of the major corporations in Minnesota—General Mills, IBM, and others—provide health care and other benefits for gay couples. It’s a known fact that you get paid less in the public sector. The most I could pay any of my commissioners was $115,000 a year. In the same position in the private sector, you can bet they’d be making a quarter-of-a-million. Generally speaking, you entice people to work in government because the state provides a better benefit package.
As part of the settlement of a state employees strike in 2001, I finally achieved this for gay people. The benefits didn’t last long beyond my time in office, though. When the contract came up for renegotiation, and there was no strike,