Here in Nebraska LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender) issues have been in the news quite a bit recently.  Last week a jury in Omaha found a man guilty of a hate crime because he punched a marine who was trying to usher two gay friends safely out of a bar.  And UNL has announced that it is planning to provide “gender-inclusive” dorm rooms for transgender students.
Nebraska is considered one of the more hostile states to the LGBT community.  In 2000 Nebraska voters passed one of the most restrictive bans in the country, not only banning gays from marrying but also denying them any form of legally-recognized family status.
This isn’t particularly surprising.  Nebraska is a highly conservative state, and most conservatives consider homosexuality a sin.  Our newly elected governor, Pete Ricketts, opposes gay marriage even though his sister is a lesbian, and conservative business groups, like the Omaha and Lincoln Chambers of Commerce, have stood staunchly against extending legal protections to people in the LGBT community.
That’s starting to change, though.  These and other groups are now realizing that Nebraska’s hostility towards gays is costing our state money.  Quality workers aren’t moving to (or staying in) states like Nebraska that still allow job discrimination based on sexual orientation.  This leaves Nebraska at a competitive disadvantage and business leaders are taking notice.  According to the chairman of the Omaha Chamber of Commerce, “Talented employees want to work in an environment that is open, welcoming and nondiscriminatory.”
And so our Legislature is considering prohibiting job discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.  Yet only a day after a bill banning this discrimination advanced to the floor it appeared headed back to committee.  Last year a similar bill fell to a filibuster and this year religious groups are demanding an exemption.
Another recent bill would have allowed the same-sex spouse of a nonresident military member to apply for a concealed weapons permit.  But it has been withdrawn in part out of fear it could be construed as supporting gay marriage.  Prior to its withdrawal, though, 37 state senators had supported it.
Editorial writers and business leaders are praising efforts to attract quality employees by banning discrimination.  And everyone seems to think selling guns to gays is a good idea.  Nebraska’s intolerance of the LGBT community appears to be lessening and only our religious leaders seem to be seriously objecting.
Yet prohibiting workplace discrimination and extending concealed carrying rights to satisfy the business and gun lobbies while still prohibiting gay marriage is morally inconsistent.  Nowhere have I read that banning discrimination and extending gun rights to gays is simply the right thing to do in a country that boasts of equality for all.  It appears that in Nebraska prohibiting discrimination is acceptable only when money can be made or it gets more guns on the street.
It’s been said that “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of the small mind” and I’m sure there are many people who see no problem extending rights piecemeal to the LGBT community when it suits their own financial interests.  But public policy does need to be consistent – otherwise equality and justice become impossible.  The concept of justice stands in stark contrast to the concept that “might makes right,” whether that “might” is physical violence or self-serving discrimination by the majority.
Regardless of where one stands on LGBT issues, we should all be alarmed when civil rights are extended and withheld to benefit special interests.  Such actions only affirm the worst perceptions of our political system and one way or another threaten the rights of us all.

My family recently watched The Wind Rises, an animated Japanese movie about the early days of airplane design. Many of the early attempts at flight didn’t work very well. There were so many failures, in fact, that the movie ends with an Italian airplane designer remarking that “Airplanes are beautiful, cursed dreams waiting for the sky to swallow them up.”

The next day my son William asked me if all dreams were like this – beautiful but cursed to fail. I told him no. We were downtown at the time and I pointed to the businesses around us – every one of them is the realization of someone’s dreams. In fact, everything humans have accomplished is the result of pursuing our dreams. And one need only look up at the jet contrails crisscrossing our sky to see that even the dreams of airplane designers can come true.

But I could see why William might wonder – it’s rarely easy to make our dreams come true. Dreams come in all shapes and sizes, and the dream of starting a business is one of the most widespread. A recently released poll conducted by UNL shows that self-employment is on the increase in Nebraska, especially in small towns. Yet according to IRS tax filings, only 1 in 5 new businesses is still going after five years. Starting a business is a lot more difficult than many people realize, and despite their best efforts, many fledgling entrepreneurs fail.

Failure is so common that I’ve heard it said it’s only after four or five failures that most entrepreneurs succeed. That’s because the lessons taught by failure are often more valuable than those taught by success. Having to fail first in order to succeed is daunting, but it shows how many business people keep going despite their setbacks. It takes a lot of character to start over four or five times. But that’s how powerful dreams can be – as the old song goes, a strong dream empowers you to “pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start all over again.”

Dreams are so fundamental to being human that even our nights are filled with them. And while it isn’t customary to compare our conscious, deliberate dreams with our random nighttime dreams, both arise from deep within us. The difference is that our conscious dreams involve an active interplay with the world around us. The world around us is a difficult place, and we must struggle against it to make our dreams come true.

But our nighttime dreams don’t have this problem. At night the rules of the waking world don’t apply and as a result our dreams often transform nonsensically in place and circumstance. Yet these dreams aren’t just random images; strange as they often are, our sleeping dreams have a storyline, and though it can change without rhyme or reason, we are pursuing goals even as we slumber.

To be human is to dream; perhaps because in struggling to achieve our dreams we are transforming not only the world around us but ourselves as well. Pursuing our dreams teaches us many things, and though these lessons are often hard, hardships force us to grow.

Dreams can be so elusive as to sometimes seem cursed, but dreams are not a curse. In working to realize our dreams we are also working to realize what is best within ourselves. As long as we pick ourselves up after each failure, we have succeeded. For dreams, whether waking or sleeping, come from within, and their ultimate realization is the inner growth that pursuing them brings.