We know this is closer to the truth of the matter (Graphic: mine)
Let’s be real. We all know what California’s Proposition 8 is about. It’s not about protecting marriage; it’s about the radical religious right’s ongoing battle to keep gay people in, what they think of as, our place. Our place, in their holier than thou opinion, is the back of the bus (i.e. Rosa Parks) with less than immediate full civil rights (i.e. the poet Langston Hughes’ A Dream Deferred) for honest, hard working, tax paying American citizens. Our dream, the unanimous dream of my all my queer brothers and sisters, is of unconditional and equitable civil and human rights. We are, at this juncture, of one mind: this dream, our collective dream, will not dry up like a raisin in the sun, because we call bullshit on their damned lies, and we recognize their extremist agenda as both deceitful and manufactured of consummate evil.
Their true aganda (Graphic: mine)
We are first and foremost a peaceful, non-violent people, honestly seeking nothing more than justice, fairness and equality. Heed the words of activist and community organizer César Chávez: “In some cases nonviolence requires more militancy than violence.” And so we stand, apart from violence, proud, militant and hopeful that, in the company of our brothers and sisters of all colors and creeds, we will triumph once and for all over bigotry and religious tyranny.
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You’re right of course. If “protecting the sanctity of marriage” was really their true agenda there would not be so much adultery within their ranks.
Period.
Please tell me you’re joking! There are plenty of LGBTQ people who don’t share this dream. I personally find equal rights a pretty lame and constricted terminal goal, and I know there are quite a few other queer people who disagree for whatever reasons (like conservaqueers, radical queers, etc.).
Dream bigger! Dream more creatively!
Although your language is over-the-top enough to make me think that this is irony and I’ll be the goat in a few minutes….
Yes, there are queers, especially younger ones, who oppose everything under the sun. I caught a glimpse of that mindset during a trip to Barcelona a few years ago. I found the idea of queers against everything almost as amusing as the idea of queers opposing equal rights for queers. Perhaps “amusing” is not the right word.
I confess I just snuck over to Bilerco to read some of your work, to try and get a sense of where you’re coming from. You write intelligently about a wide range of subjects, and you frequently and eloquently attack racism and sexism.
Well, just what’s wrong with racism and sexism? Who are these uppity women and people of color to even imagine they deserve equal rights and fair treatment? Who are they to think they shouldn’t be discriminated against in housing, employment, military service, etc. How dare they demand that our white-male-dominated culture respect their relationships?
Now this is the part where the really old queer reminisces about the bad old days: I grew up in the 50s and 60s when women were told their place was in the home, and blacks had separate drinking fountains and toilets and certain white people liked to hang them in trees, and WASPs didn’t mix with the Jews, and gays and lesbians risked arrest, public humiliation and confinement in mental institutions every time they went out to have a drink in the company of other gay people.
Aside from the WASPs, all of the groups mentioned above have come a long way by focusing on and insisting upon nothing less than equal rights. The WASPs? They got Rush Limbaugh, the radical religious right, a “rescue” in excess of 600 billion dollars, and Sarah Palin.
You are right, and I admit that I overstated my case on one point, Alex. The LGBTQ movement is anything but monolithic. Were it not moving kinda-sorta in the same direction, I’m not sure we’d consider it a “movement.” 23% of gays and lesbians willingly handed George W Bush a second term in 2004. (Isn’t it queer that Green candidate Ralph Nader got the blame?) Queer-identified anarchists hate affluent gays for their spending power and nice sweaters. Religious gays don’t like queer atheists ranting about the silliness of believing in imaginary sky fairies. Radical faeries don’t like the assimilationists. Straight-acting gays don’t like the femmes. Et cetera.
Just out of curiosity, exactly what do queers, who aren’t interested in NOT being hauled off to mental institutions and re-education camps, dream bigger and more creatively about?
I didn’t read “unconditional and equitable civil and human rights” as “NOT being hauled off to mental institutions and re-education camps.” If that’s all that you meant, then I’m not worried about being silenced, but in the state of the movement! I hope that we’re working on more projects than just stopping ex-gay camps.
I can’t speak for everyone who dreams differently, but something I’ve come to know through working with the LGBT activist community is that there is a sector of center-left to centrist gays (typically white and male, but not always) who assume that their political agenda is something that everyone in either the gay or LGBT community agrees with. That goal is basically ensuring that those LGBT people who could have ignored social justice if they weren’t LGBT can return to that state of apathy.
I realize that I over-assumed here too, thinking that you had something specific in mind when you were talking about our collective dream. I can’t speak for every queer, obviously, but instead of an equal right to marry, I hope that eventually the rights associated with marriage will be opened up to everyone so that the institution becomes essentially worthless. Instead of hoping for an end to ex-gayism, I dream of a day when we’re seen a full and equal collaborators and human beings by everyone and a day when everyone can express their sexuality freely without fear of violence or disrespect.
Thanks for responding to my comment!
“a day when everyone can express their sexuality freely without fear of violence or disrespect.”
THAT is precisely the dream to which I was referring in the original post. Further, we need to work concurrently to make sure that our non-queer brothers’ and sisters’ dreams are also not deferred. I think you called this “social justice.” In the world I dream of, there’d be more than enough to go around. Apathy is out of the question.
BTW: the only people I’ve ever “silenced” on my blog have been those copying and pasting Biblical citations in all caps telling me that I’m going to rot in a Hell I don’t believe exists. Sometimes that’s amusing. Mostly it’s not.
How did ex-gays and ex-gay camps come up?