Sometimes I really get disappointed in people.
I know it's not polite to say so, but I do.
Lately I've been in contact with a lot of people from my past - mostly through Facebook. It's funny how something that's 99% a waste of constructive time can have such a big impact on your daily life, isn't it? Funny and sad. Sad because I have known these people in real life, I sat in a high school classroom with them for six years or I partied with them in my hometown or I worked at the same company with them and sat with them at lunch. Yet the majority of those people never took the time to get to know me half as well as they do now simply by reading a few things I wrote (mostly in jest!) on a website that is half encoded pixels and half consensual hallucination. The fact that they are supportive and friendly now, when I am just a picture and a few lines of text to them, means so much less to me than a kind word or just a smile might have back then.
I'm glad that the world's moving on, don't get me wrong. I think it's an absolutely wonderful thing that young people today won't have to go through some of the things that a lot of my generation did - and boy, does it make me feel old to say that. It's just that I wonder: if it's so obviously my right to love whoever I'm moved to love, then why wasn't it obvious ten years ago... Or twenty? Does everybody have to recognize something to make it right? If tomorrow everybody goes back to hating the fags again does it mean that our right to love was never obvious and support for it was just a fad?
I'm sorry that this post isn't more positive. I keep thinking of all the really wonderful people I've known and how they've suffered and some of them have died just to lead us here. Then I look around at everything that's supposedly changed for us and I'm just not so sure. The door to acceptance that's supposedly swung open for us can swing the other way too. There's still plenty of oppression, hate and ignorance out there to go around. I heard it in the casual comments of people who watched the gay rights float go by in a local parade; I hear it every day when people say "that's gay," or see people who think their T-shirt saying 'I called your boyfriend gay and he hit me with his purse' is the height of hilarity. That's why I get a little bitter when I hear people saying that we should wait, that the president and Congress have Bush's mess on their plate and shouldn't have to be bothered with a little thing like legal protections and political promises. I feel as though we'll get nothing at all and the door will swing the other way if we don't do something here and now.
If you're reading this and you live in Pennsylvania take a moment to read this and then act on your conscience. It's not just something important to people like me, it's something real that you and I can do to make sure that what precious few gains we've made stay ours.
That's all.
Title lyric from "Someone Saved My Life Tonight" by Elton John.
Thursday, July 02, 2009
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3 comments:
There's also such an odd generational thing going on. I'm old enough to remember when Anita Bryant started the whole religious right political persecution of gays. And the fact that there are still factions in today's society -- in the legislature! -- who to this day feel that same way affects me to the core. And the gay bashings continue, even institutionalized gay bashings like what happened in Ft. Worth last weekend.
But the younger generation seems to ignore that reality and take it for granted that life is as easy as Lindsay Lohan and Adam Lambert. There may be a surface acceptance and taking-for-granted that some people are gay, but the hate and fear and "them vs. us" mentality is still very much alive.
My "favorite" T-shirt was at a restaurant I frequented when a popular waitress's boyfriend came in with a shirt that featured the Trix rabbit on the front. On the back, in Trix-style cartoon lettering it said, "Silly faggot! Dix are for chix!" And he thought it was okay to wear that in public, to a family restaurant!?! And she was okay with introducing him around to her regular customers wearing that!?!
And we have a President who, despite his rhetoric and a very vocal opposition, increments "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" by adding "Don't Rock the Boat," while people's careers are being destroyed. He vows to repeal DOMA but sits idly by while his administration uses bigoted arguments to let it stand.
Et cetera, et cetera.
"Consensual hallucination" - do I have your permission to use that somewhere? Beautiful!
Firethorne
I have heard your theme here and in other posts that the door that opens can close again. I completely agree with you. I rejoice in (what I consider) our forward movement and I pray it lasts, but I know for sure that there are others pushing on the door to swing back and close.
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