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If you thought the Prop 8 results (and let's remember, that Prop 8 was the first such anti-gay initiative to take away rights the gay comunity had already been granted -- that's frigging scary) in CA were the backlash to the advance of gay rights, you were wrong. They're just the beginning of it. I've been watching the news coverage in the last couple of days, and everthing, all of a sudden, feels like twenty years ago. It's not a good feeling. It makes me not want the news on. It makes me not want that coming into my home.
Let's start with Time Magazine and their "What Happens if You Are On the Gay Enemies List" scare article: Actually, it wasn't gay actvists who posted list of donors to the Yes on 8 campaign. It was publically accessible databases that were masaged into usable form for the general public by the Computer Assisted Reporting unit at The San Francisco Chronicle, one of America's top mainstream newspapers. I used to work in CAR for the Associated Press. This use of CAR is not some gay conspiracy. It's a useful public tool to help people decide in this case -- regardless of where they stand on the issue -- what businesses they do and don't want to support based on how they distributed funds to either side of the Prop 8 issue.
Now, let's talk about things going on around LJ. The discussion in response to this post was fabulous and I think most of us learned something. Some of it was still really ugly though and hurtful. But the reality is this is a fight, and sometimes people get hurt in fights, sometimes, it's even by your own damn side. It sucks, but it's going to happen. Listening minimizes the damage. So does being willing to say you're wrong and ask more questions.
You should also check out what's going on over on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
engayge_america where there was a discussion far more useful than the one on the D.L. Hughley show last night, about how gay rights is _a_ civil rights issue, but absolutely distinct for both logistical and historical reasons from The Civil Rights Movement. Why do I highlight this? Because the gay community has its own history of racism (this is what oppressed people do, make enemies with other oppressed people -- surely we all remember this from our playground years), and the Prop 8 vote should be the call to address this divide, not talk it up and make it worse.
Meanwhile there's this post from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
artaxastra that is pretty damn inflammatory (and uses an appallingly poor choice of an analogy) -- so much so that it obscures some good points about how a lot of gay rights organiations and fundraisers have failed us (I certainly won't give money to HRC) and makes it difficult to respond civilly/rationally to the parts of her post with which I vehemently disagree.
If we learned anything from the recent presidential election, there's strategy and tactics. We are not all called to fight this fight the same way, nor should we be. We do need to be in the streets protesting (over one million people took to the streets yesterday against Prop 8). We also need to be sitting down and making our case to the people we don't usually want to talk to about these issues. We need the people who are willing to be conciliatory and push for baby steps towards equality just as much as we need the people who are angry, who draw a line in the sand, who boycott and protest, who say this ends here and this ends now.
Why?
Because this is not one fight.
The marriage battle is a fight to have the legal means to establish and protect our families, but it is also a fight to be able to say "I am as human as you, no matter how different from you I am."
Now it sucks, that marriage has become both a symbolic and practical battle. Certainly, it means that every gay family in America is having to talk about marriage at the dinner table in a way that doesn't necessarily let them choose their moment. It puts stressors in our lives, and many, quite legitimately, consider the matter to infringe on our culture. But this is the shape of the fight and whether we like it or not, now we must answer it.
My mother grew up as the only Jew in her Connecticut town, and when I was bullied as a child she said I must never react -- not cry, not be angry, not do any of the things I naturally wanted to do, because as a people that had once been treated as animals, we must never act as animals.
My mother was not wrong, but she was also not exclusively right. Because I am an animal, and animals bellow in pain when they are wounded. And this battle succeeds through love and patience, yes, but also through pride, and anger and sorrow. It succeeds by some of us be willing to say "ask me whatever you need to about my identity and experience as a gay person so that you can feel more comfortable" as surely as it succeeds by others of us saying "I will not sit down and shut up and make nice and beg for scraps."
We need all those voices, and now is not the time for this community and this coalition of supporters to eat eachother. But that is what we are in danger of doing.
This fight is about to get long. It is about to get ugly. And I would be unsurprised if the violence against gay people that I thought this country was really moving beyond comes back. If you missed it, it was really fucking scary. I had friends bashed, bottles thrown at me. I sat in emergency rooms because people held hands.
Find your path in this, find others who share it. But know your tactic in this war is not and should not be the only one. Mind yourself. Mind your tasks. Mean what you say, say what you mean, consider the repercussions, and offer your acknowledgement of the shared struggle to those who struggle in this in a different fashion.
I've got no beef with you if you're a compromiser, a pragmatist in this thing. It's not my path, but seriously, we need you folks. But if you tell me to sit down and shut up? We have a problem. Because this fight isn't about you. And it's not about me. It's about us. All of us, as a nation.
Many tactics. Several strategies. One goal.
Hang on tight, kids. It's going to be a rough ride.
Let's start with Time Magazine and their "What Happens if You Are On the Gay Enemies List" scare article: Actually, it wasn't gay actvists who posted list of donors to the Yes on 8 campaign. It was publically accessible databases that were masaged into usable form for the general public by the Computer Assisted Reporting unit at The San Francisco Chronicle, one of America's top mainstream newspapers. I used to work in CAR for the Associated Press. This use of CAR is not some gay conspiracy. It's a useful public tool to help people decide in this case -- regardless of where they stand on the issue -- what businesses they do and don't want to support based on how they distributed funds to either side of the Prop 8 issue.
Now, let's talk about things going on around LJ. The discussion in response to this post was fabulous and I think most of us learned something. Some of it was still really ugly though and hurtful. But the reality is this is a fight, and sometimes people get hurt in fights, sometimes, it's even by your own damn side. It sucks, but it's going to happen. Listening minimizes the damage. So does being willing to say you're wrong and ask more questions.
You should also check out what's going on over on
engayge_america where there was a discussion far more useful than the one on the D.L. Hughley show last night, about how gay rights is _a_ civil rights issue, but absolutely distinct for both logistical and historical reasons from The Civil Rights Movement. Why do I highlight this? Because the gay community has its own history of racism (this is what oppressed people do, make enemies with other oppressed people -- surely we all remember this from our playground years), and the Prop 8 vote should be the call to address this divide, not talk it up and make it worse.Meanwhile there's this post from
artaxastra that is pretty damn inflammatory (and uses an appallingly poor choice of an analogy) -- so much so that it obscures some good points about how a lot of gay rights organiations and fundraisers have failed us (I certainly won't give money to HRC) and makes it difficult to respond civilly/rationally to the parts of her post with which I vehemently disagree.If we learned anything from the recent presidential election, there's strategy and tactics. We are not all called to fight this fight the same way, nor should we be. We do need to be in the streets protesting (over one million people took to the streets yesterday against Prop 8). We also need to be sitting down and making our case to the people we don't usually want to talk to about these issues. We need the people who are willing to be conciliatory and push for baby steps towards equality just as much as we need the people who are angry, who draw a line in the sand, who boycott and protest, who say this ends here and this ends now.
Why?
Because this is not one fight.
The marriage battle is a fight to have the legal means to establish and protect our families, but it is also a fight to be able to say "I am as human as you, no matter how different from you I am."
Now it sucks, that marriage has become both a symbolic and practical battle. Certainly, it means that every gay family in America is having to talk about marriage at the dinner table in a way that doesn't necessarily let them choose their moment. It puts stressors in our lives, and many, quite legitimately, consider the matter to infringe on our culture. But this is the shape of the fight and whether we like it or not, now we must answer it.
My mother grew up as the only Jew in her Connecticut town, and when I was bullied as a child she said I must never react -- not cry, not be angry, not do any of the things I naturally wanted to do, because as a people that had once been treated as animals, we must never act as animals.
My mother was not wrong, but she was also not exclusively right. Because I am an animal, and animals bellow in pain when they are wounded. And this battle succeeds through love and patience, yes, but also through pride, and anger and sorrow. It succeeds by some of us be willing to say "ask me whatever you need to about my identity and experience as a gay person so that you can feel more comfortable" as surely as it succeeds by others of us saying "I will not sit down and shut up and make nice and beg for scraps."
We need all those voices, and now is not the time for this community and this coalition of supporters to eat eachother. But that is what we are in danger of doing.
This fight is about to get long. It is about to get ugly. And I would be unsurprised if the violence against gay people that I thought this country was really moving beyond comes back. If you missed it, it was really fucking scary. I had friends bashed, bottles thrown at me. I sat in emergency rooms because people held hands.
Find your path in this, find others who share it. But know your tactic in this war is not and should not be the only one. Mind yourself. Mind your tasks. Mean what you say, say what you mean, consider the repercussions, and offer your acknowledgement of the shared struggle to those who struggle in this in a different fashion.
I've got no beef with you if you're a compromiser, a pragmatist in this thing. It's not my path, but seriously, we need you folks. But if you tell me to sit down and shut up? We have a problem. Because this fight isn't about you. And it's not about me. It's about us. All of us, as a nation.
Many tactics. Several strategies. One goal.
Hang on tight, kids. It's going to be a rough ride.
