Second Stonewall: One gay man's rant on the state of Queer Equality
Q Notes, November 29, 2008, Matt Comer
Nope...
not...
going...
to...
laug.....
Oh, hell 
Posted on 11/29/2008 12:21:07 AM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
It’s a national turning point. A figurative call to arms for the queer community. The cross-country response to the passage of California’s Proposition 8 and other anti-gay ballot initiatives is among the greatest and loudest rallying cries for equality ever heard from the LGBT community.
Journalist Rex Wockner is calling it “Stonewall 2.0” Others are talking about a new wave of inspiration and the death of a “passive era” of LGBT lobbying and advocacy. Writer Andrew Sullivan says groups like the Human Rights Campaign are becoming increasingly irrelevant in the face of the need to adapt to new realities and challenges.
On Nov. 15, untold hundreds of thousands of citizens in more than 300 cities across the nation took to the streets to proclaim a new movement for equality. Twenty-six-year-old, Seattle resident Amy Balliett’s JoinTheImpact.com — the informal “organization” behind the call for a national day of protest — created a powerful, national coalition of young and relatively inexperienced activists the likes of which the LGBT movement has not seen in decades.
With just a few clicks of the mouse and the dedication of local, self-appointed organizers across the country, Balliett tapped into the growing frustration and stirred more passion than the national LGBT movement has been able to muster since the days of ACT-UP and Queer Nation. The visibility and level of public debate created in the firestorm of Nov. 15’s public outcry over California’s, Florida’s, Arizona’s and Arkansas’ patently offensive violations of civil equality is priceless.
If only we’d seen such a movement before the election. Or perhaps before the other 27 states in the union defined me as a second-class citizen. I guess now was the appointed time for the bubble to burst.
The Carolinas’ almost 3,000 protesters pale in comparison to the thousands-strong protests in cities as far flung as New York and L.A. But for a region of our size and political climate, our local participation in this national moment of anger, frustration, hope and Pride — joining the protests in other rural, conservative regions — was nothing short of a revolutionary moment in LGBT activism.
As I sat and watched NBC National News more than three weeks ago, witnessing thousands take to the streets in West Hollywood and San Francisco, I knew we were in for something big. I just couldn’t imagine how big it might be.
In Raleigh, 1,400 braved the rain and wind to hear politician Jim Neal and activist Jimmy Creech speak out for queer equality. They marched to the Capitol. They marched to the Governor’s Mansion. In Wilmington, more than 100 people gathered with only days notice and listened to “One Tree Hill” star Sophia Bush condemn the passage of Proposition 8.
In Asheville, 300 crowded into downtown Pritchard Park. Hundreds attended a rally and march in Charleston. With only 24 hours worth of planning, 150 attended a one-hour vigil outside the South Carolina State House in Columbia and 60 marched through the campus of Appalachian State University in Boone.
In Greensboro — the city where the internationally historic Woolworth sit-ins were spawned almost a half century ago — more than 300 attended a rally and made their call for equality heard across the Western Piedmont.
Why didn’t we see this action and passion before the election? Why now? Why here? Why did it take almost 40 years since our first brave stand at Stonewall?
For the first time in the history of our nation, a state left the already-present civil rights of a minority up to the whims of public opinion. Our rights were left out to dry, without a hope, as they were slaughtered by a simple majority vote. In the words of columnist and gay activist Wayne Besen, we were left victim to mob rule.
The courts — the institution charged with protecting the minority from a tyranny of the majority — surely have their plates full. (As of my deadline, the California Supreme Court had yet to rule on the legality of Proposition 8 and its passage at the polls.)
This is America. The majority doesn’t have the right to vote out of existence the civil rights of the minority. In other words, your so-called “right” to “majority rule” ends where my nose begins. We’re a Republic — with constitutionally-guaranteed equality and protections for those who always need it the most.
The sense of utter disappointment and anger is no doubt fueling this new wave of round-the-clock online and on-the-street activism. It’s the sense of the unfairness of it all — situations and events completely antithetical to the principles laid out in our founding documents — that’s pushing formerly complacent queers and their allies to lift their collective voices together in national strains of “We shall overcome.”
Now, activists are calling for a “day without a gay.” Just one day, on Dec. 10, when LGBT people and their friends and family stay away from work and society, driving home the fact that we are, indeed, an integral and much-needed part of this nation and world. Too bad I work for a gay company, or else I’d stay home, too.
In 1969, gay and transgender citizens had to fight against the overbearing police abuse in a seedy Greenwich Village bar. Now, our movement makes another dramatic move from our once dark and shadowy existences onto America’s Main Streets — and quite literally so.
“Out of the closets and into the streets!” That was the refrain heard from activists in years past. It’s reality now.
We’re here. We’re queer. And we deserve equality. How dare you take it away? That’s why we’re pissed. California’s Supreme Court did its job interpreting their state Constitution. In the most sweeping state court ruling ever on the equality of queer Americans, the California Court finally applied its state’s equal protection clause and the full weight of state government to the protection of our civil rights. In legal mumbo jumbo, sexual orientation, like race, gender and religion, is a “suspect class” — a minority experiencing real, everyday and institutionalized discrimination, and in need of the highest levels of protection.
Boy, did that piss of the theocrats or what? The forces of the Religious Right think they have won their great “Moral Armageddon.” They think they’ve out-smarted the Founding Fathers — great men who saw the promise of America and knew that, one day, all people might be privy to its great ideal.
The Right will come back for more. They’ll keep taking until there’s nothing left to take. First marriage. Then, domestic partner benefits; they tried that in Alaska. In Arkansas, we already see where they’re headed — no adoption and no foster parenting. Next we’ll see our love banned; Lawrence v. Texas overturned. Like the right to reproductive choice, our right to privacy will be slowly usurped by misguided “states’ rights” courts and legislatures.
If the Religious Right — something of which they are neither — can take away one civil right, why not others? If the Mormons can organize to force their religious beliefs on an entire state, why not ours? What will be taken away next? What religious group will step up next to organize against the principles that have made our nation that great shining beacon for the rest of the world?
As for radical fundamentalists’ claims of violence targeting them — so what? Of course, that’s not how I really feel, but it is my first reaction. For all these years, gay and transgender people have been bashed and victimized and killed and now — only now when the “Christians” are the target — is the issue of hate and violence something we’ve got to stop. Where were these voices condemning the violence against our queer brothers and sisters? These self-righteous, sex-obsessed theocrats weren’t interested in saving any dirty, old queer’s life. Now that they’re the targets, now is the time for warning and caution? I call bullsh*t.
All of these questions, these raw emotions, our unknown futures — all of this and more are guiding our movement now. I’m not naïve enough to presume I know what the future will bring or what our movement will look like or accomplish in the next few months, much less the next few years. All I know is that it feels like everything has changed.
When my rights are put up to simple majority vote — everything has changed. When conservative and misguided religious forces organize to strip away my human dignity and equal protection under the Supreme Laws of our states and nation — everything has changed. When propaganda and lies lead my family and friends to vote against me — everything has changed. When it looks like those who quite possibly broke the law to strong-arm their way into violating my civil rights will go unpunished — everything has changed. When radical Christian Dominionists continue to march into gay neighborhoods and force their stifling, inhumane lies and deception on gay people already hurt and pained by the sins of the church — everything has changed.
A new day has dawned. An era has come and gone. Fresh faces and new voices are being added to the cry for equality everyday. I hope and pray like hell that our momentum doesn’t die. Go to the streets! Drown out the voices who would attempt to trample our Constitution and kill our humanity. Equality’s opponents must be shown that America’s promise of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” isn’t dead.
Until my full and equal civil and human rights are recognized, I’ll not stop fighting. Until the voices of anti-gay hatred are just as nearly silent as the voices of America’s racist past, I’ll not stop fighting. What do I want? Equality. When do I want it? Now.
We’re queer.Number four proved
Tell that to the mothers who've aborted approx. 50million babies in America.
Those children had rights. They were not “parasites”. The woman's body ENDED at the umbilical cord. If she takes dope or smokes cigarettes or drinks alcohol, she will harm her baby that is growing inside. Anyone knows this. “Help prevent birth defects”.
Can you be “just a little bit pregnant”? Answer that question and you will arrive at the answer of “when life begins”.
No Regrets for a Love Of Explosives; In a Memoir of Sorts, a War Protester Talks of Life With the Weathermen
By DINITIA SMITH
Published: September 11, 2001
He (Bill Ayers) also writes about the Weathermen’s sexual experimentation as they tried to ‘’smash monogamy.’’ The Weathermen were ‘’an army of lovers,’’ he says, and describes having had different sexual partners, including his best male friend.
;0
So, they'd figure massive retaliation by bringing up the gay gene argument.
So, I'd counter with genetic engineering in re vegetables, and what part of that troubles them?
Being gay is not organic to the species.
Using human feces to fertilize crops may be organic, but does the human body eating such crops, rebel? Always does.
Most the true organies agreed with my position. And this is how I was able to discern the naturales from the brainwashed in the SF Bay Area.
Not really. That is just the emotional front for the real agenda, which is getting tax and insurance benefits presently granted to marriage partners. If we gave them that, they would shortly shut up about marriage.
I am very, very tired of people that define themselves by what the do in bed. I have an acquaintance who goes by “J....Gts. G is the first letter of her/his last name,ts is for trans-sexual. I NEVER would identify myself as P..cs. I’ll leave the cs to your imaginations.
Second Stonewall: One gay man's rant on the state of Queer Equality
Q Notes, November 29, 2008, Matt Comer
Nope...
not...
going...
to...
laug.....
Oh, hell
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In the words of the old Gilbert & Sullivan lyric,
"I want what I want when I want it!"
But you are so wrong. Their tantrums for financial benefits are just a ruse, to be used as leverage to get what they really want. It's fairly obvious, if not sometimes subtly suggested, what the homo-activists want: full acceptance by society, forced by law onto those who won't accept it by conscience.
Gays turned entertainment into a "gay-friendly" closed shop by cabalistic influence and control (example: Bob Geffen) and distributed gay propaganda to the nation for 30+ years through Hollywood and, more importantly, the Big Three television networks.
With wider choice, heterosexuals don't have to sit still for gay content and propaganda. With the loss of their infotainment oligopoly, homosexuals lose a captive vehicle of cultural influence.
Real choice and real competition in entertainment and information markets will force homosexual propagandists to compete with reality for mindshare. They'll lose, just like Communists lost in eastern Europe, because at the end of the day, their message is counterfactual, countercultural, counterproductive, and contra naturam.
It doesn’t even end with acceptance of homsexuality. It ends with the end of all moral judgements over all sexual pairings regardless of sex, age, relation, marital status, number, or species of partner(s).
That is the Sex Positive Agenda as espoused by Reich, Kinsey, and the so called feminist movement.
The slippery slope only ends in the gutter.
Acknowledging same sex marriage as an equal construct opens the door to teaching the “norming” of homosexuality at all grade school levels.
This is NOT about the actions of consenting adults in private. The Gay-Lesbian Task Force has already pushed for an end to the “discriminatory” nature of laws that prohibit people having sex in public restrooms in parks. There is nothing about restricting “the act” to adults or even to keeping it behind closed doors.
Meanwhile the Brits have put a webcam in the home of a heterosexual couple to see that they are “good parents” and have tacitly “promised” to turn off the bedroom cam to give them some “privacy” at times. I don’t hear the Lavender Mafia talking about bedroom police there.
Lawrence v. Texas was a farce weakly “defended” in court by a RINO District Attorney who was later shamed from office. The original arrest stemmed from a dispute between 3 homosexuals. A spurned lover made a 911 call against them alledging there was assault going on inside the apartment. The door was unlocked when the police arrived. The men continued with the sex act when asked to stop by police on the scene (they engaged in an act of same sex sodomy and did not pause from the action when asked so they could deal with the responding officer’s questions).
Since homosexuality itself did NOT carry a jail term, I am assuming that the men were arrested that night for not cooperating with the officers. The men had previous arrest records for drugs and other crimes. The caller was prosecuted and jailed for his false 911 call, he was later assaulted and had a pending court case for that assault against one of the 2 men and was later murdered before the trial went to court (it is still an unsolved murder).
The arrest gave the homosexual lobby a rallying point, with claims of “bedroom police” and from DAY ONE they said they would push to overturn the laws through the courts. I have always been skeptical of the motives of the caller and of former DA Chuck Rosenthal (he insisted that he had to prosecute even if he didn’t agree with the law, yet he showed other areas, like in the case of gun rights, that he showed he didn’t give a damn about what the laws said, he would prosecute gun owners and let THEM appeal their charges since Chuck did not agree with the laws permitting people to carry guns in their cars).
"Passive era"???? When??? Not since before the 1960s.
The narcissism of far too many "gays" leads to a very myopic, introverted view of the world, which is, in too many cases, a self-made myth.
By using the courts to hand down unappealable, final decree laws in their favor, gays are working furiously to overthrow democracy through judicial review in forum-shopped courts.
They are said to have at least one closeted associate justice on the Supreme Court ready to help them win the case of their dreams, which will hand down such a decree to all fifty States of the Union, criminalizing anyone who disagrees with the homosexuals -- including entire churches and anyone who utters any of the offending lines in the books of Genesis and Leviticus.
A Canadian divine has already been prosecuted for preaching Leviticus in his own pulpit. Gays hope to do that here -- to turn "non-reconciling" (i.e., "full Gospel") churches into the legal equivalent of the Ku Klux Klan.
The gay agenda on marriage is to destroy it. Marriage is heterosexually normative; it underscores the normality of heterosexual couples having children together and implicitly rebukes the sexual practices of homosexuals.
I also didn't know the mystery caller in the Lawrence case had been murdered.
I was under the impression that the Lawrence case was a setup, homosexual-rights groups having already been in court challenging the Texas statute (see Baker vs. Wade 1981, here: http://www.qrd.org/qrd/religion/anti/cameron/baker.v.wade.txt )
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