Daddy, Papa and Me

Gay people generally aren't the placard-waving, bomb-throwing, chaps-wearing, communion-wafer-stomping radicals we're made out to be by the Bills O'Reilly and Donohue. Most gays and lesbians are content to be left to alone; many gays and lesbians go out of their way to ignore political threats and political activism and political activists. Only when gays and lesbians are attacked--only after the fact--do gays and lesbians take to the streets. Remember: the Stonewall Riots were are a response to a particularly brutal and cruelly-timed (we'd just buried Judy!) police raid on a gay bar in New York City; ACT-UP and Queer Nation were a response not to the AIDS virus, but to a murderous indifference on the parts of the political and medical establishment that amounted to an attack. Most gay people grow up desperately trying to pass, to blend in; most of us flee to cities where we can live our lives in relative peace and security. We don't go looking for fights. And most gay people walk around without realizing that they've internalized the dynamics of high school hells some of us barely survived: it's better to pass, to stay out of sight, to avoid making waves, lest you attract negative attention, lest you get bashed.

It's true, and this time it seems as if the LDS church, the religious right and 52% of Californians stirred us all up, they've awoken something I don't think they wanted to and they will come to regret.

They won't regret it because there will be violence done against them (though knowing the religious right, they'll feign persecution even while bashing others) or because their rights will be trampled on (unless you count "not being able to dictate to others" having your rights trampled on),

no, they will regret it because they just have awaken millions of new activists. People who just want to be left alone and live equally, free from harm and allowed to make supper for their kids, work, create, shop, vacation, educate, volunteer and love without hate or discrimination confronting them every step of the way.

I think they awoke these new activists and strengthened the resolve of the rest of us at just the wrong time... for them. They took away (not just blocked, but snatched, eliminated, wiped out) rights just when huge signs of hope also came into view. The country elected the first Africa-American president in over two centuries, blacks went from slavery to segregation to president. That is a sign of hope, of change. Connecticut voted down a change to their constitution in hopes of eliminating marriage equality there... and marriages started yesterday.

So, just when the LDS church, the religious right and 52% of Californians put us underfoot, an hand of hope reached out to pick us up.

The opponents of our equality just ensured that millions of us will not stop until we have it, millions of us who might have been complacent before, millions of us who have worked hard and now will work harder.

This movement seems to be different. It's not the top-down approach we've had for so long in the 90's till now, even in the No-on-8 campaign, it's a you-tube, facebook, protests in the streets bottom-up uprising.

I have a feeling, maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think so, something fundamental has changed.

I know it has in me.