I have to do more — plain and simple.

I’m loud and in the last few years, it’s gotten louder. When I rage, Cleveland can hear me. I don’t apologize for my temper any longer; I used to. I used to throw things: vases, bottles, cats, anything that was close and accessible. And then I’d say I was sorry. I didn’t think before I raged; I try to now. I try to take a breath before text comes rolling out my mouth. It doesn’t always work and I sometimes end up with a size 9 pump sticking out of my face — but I speak anyway. And yesterday, my wife and I had a lengthy and heated discussion on just what I was saying and how much good that was doing.

I do what I can.

I’m busy. I have things going on. I have a schedule and I have places to be and things to get done. Bills to pay. Scripts to learn. Papers to write. Books to study. I have a big life. And my marriage to the person I’ve loved since I was fourteen-years-old is usually at the top of that list. Marriage to the right person isn’t work for me. I’ve been in relationships that were work and this one isn’t.

It isn’t always sunny in our house, but those people whose houses are constantly filled with sun seem to be squinting most of the time: their eyes aren’t open and, just saying, no one’s that happy.

I lived through President Regan keeping the word AIDS locked up for so long that we lost years of research and most all my friends. I lived through President Bush’s insane ramblings of wanting to put an amendment in our Constitution that required every marriage be between one woman and one man. I’ve lived through Carter’s ineptitude and Clinton’s lies. But

never in my life did I ever think it was possible to have a clump of possible candidates that were driven so completely by the Bible. This current group is obsessed with the gay movement on a level that borders on the psychotic. They are ill informed, misguided and all together factually retarded.

And just recently, Bachmann, Romney, and Santorum have signed yet another pledge to:

‘ -establish a presidential commission on religious liberty to investigate and document reports of Americans who have been harassed or threatened for exercising key civil rights to organize, to speak, to donate or to vote for marriage and to propose new protections, if needed.’

My marriage makes them viscerally angry. So angry in fact that they’ve had to attempt to make new laws on the books in order to annihilate it. They are sending out a clear message that they’re ready to gather and collect our community in ways they’ve yet to establish. They’re armed and they’re no longer lying in wait. And although I pride myself on trying not to be an alarmist, I feel we’ve lived through this as well. We’ve seen governmental officials seek out minority groups under the guise of religious liberty. We’ve seen leaders hide behind what they believe to be the word of God and take over families, homes, and law abiding citizens and strip them of their voice and their country. We’ve seen this and we’ve lived through this. It may not have been in this country before, but we still reverberate from it.

So my wife and I argued: we debated each other about what our civic duty was and we debated about what the rest of the country was doing while these Republican maniacs slept soundly and dodged questions and were let off the hook by reporters and are taken seriously as actual Presidential hopefuls in a country where I assumed everyone had equal rights. The last group of people that fooled a country into blind leadership, and ended up shocking the rest of the world with a movement that murdered millions, was Hitler and his regime. I’m fully aware that with the help of Glenn Beck and his ilk, that the word ‘Nazi’ has lost its luster, that it’s thrown around like a baseball. I’ve steered clear of saying this out loud because I know the instant ramifications of making a statement like this; this is no longer a tactic for me.

These candidates are taking what is supposed to be a country of freedom and equality and turning it into a dirty, lie-filled, politically hijacked death hunt. These aren’t Americans; these are fascists.

So what do I do now? Do I keep writing and blogging and going shopping and studying for classes and teaching and reading scripts? What’s my responsibility? And why isn’t every single person in the United States not absolutely furious that instead of policies and plans, we’re hearing about the Bible and the God fearing land the founding fathers bore? Why aren’t we taking to the streets?

Maybe everyone’s like me. Maybe everyone is telling themselves it’s impossible for people like this to actually rise to power. Maybe we’re all having the exact same conversation in our heads and instead of acting on impulse; we’re sitting back and praying. We’re simply tossing the notion that this couldn’t happen. Not here. Not in the United States of America. We’re smarter than this. We’re more progressive. We’ve come too far. We know McCarthyism doesn’t fly here. That’s simply impossible.

And I sit here and I rage and I write and I’m flabbergasted and I’m praying and I’m sick of myself and I feel helpless and hopeless and insane. I feel like I’m yelling into a big hole in the ground and my voice is being shut out by the bullhorns above my head. I feel that God is weeping. I feel that America is sick and tired of hearing about change and hope and needs desperately to receive new text from someone with new ideas and a new plan and because of that, we, like Germany in the 1930s, will follow with blind eyes, the clearest one on the biggest mountain with the loudest voice. I feel us headed for something unholy and unbridled in American history, and I want with all my heart to stop it from happening.

So I write.

And I know soon, I’ll have to do more than simply write to be heard. I’m going to have to get out of here, get out of my schedule, leave my haven and take my power out into the Universe where I can collect other humans who are as frightened and as mortified as I am. I know my wife and I are just as beautiful and ugly and scared and joyous as any other holy union in our country. I know we deserve to be heard and not rounded up by fanatics in Armani suits and discarded, humiliated and shuffled off into cages. I know I have to do something to stop this because what I’m doing now isn’t enough.