November 13, 2008

Sacramento Bee Tries to Shame Us Into Subservience Again

First, go read today’s editorial in the Sacramento Bee, which should have been titled: “Listen, you uppity faggot: Sit down, shut up, and continue to support businesses that harm you.”

(Side note: Don’t you love how we’re always told that our civil rights struggle is completely divorced from the African-American civil rights struggle — until it becomes convenient to cite Dr. King in an attempt to shame us for standing up for ourselves, legally, peacefully, and nonviolently?)

Then make sure you read the comments — many of which reflect our feelings; e.g.:

If you’re a Christian, and you find out that the owner of the restaurant on the corner that you love to eat at is trying to end marriage for all Christians, then you would have to ask yourself, which is more important, that meal, or my family’s stability? Likewise, the owner of the restaurant must himself, which is more important, my business, or Christians not being able to marry? By boycotting, there is no bitterness, just people protecting their family interests. Am I really going to pay someone to try to destroy my family?! Even the suggestion that people would or should do that is insane.

so, I guess it is the Bee’s position that I have to spend my money and associate with people that I find reprehensible? typical provincial Bee, side with the establishment way of thinking, and, in this instance, reflects anxiety about the fact that gays, lesbians and their supporters, like myself, are going to exercise their rights of association to avoid patronizing people that treat them as second class citizens, I’m sure that the evangelicals are appreciative, though

And it is my right to not give my money to any individual, company, or organization who will then go and donate it to the destruction of a group’s civil rights.

Now, I want to share something from a little book called Wearing History by Steve Gdula:

For homosexuals who had come of age during the 1940s and 50s, the events of the summer of 1969 were almost inconceivable. For this generation, caution was the watchword when it came to coming out. Peaceful and orderly protests, like those held by [the Mattachine Society], were favored over raucous displays.

“Even the Mattachine name,” Gdoula writes later, “was adapted from that of an idiot savant of the Italian theater, a character who was by his very nature unthreatening.”

With public opinion of the minority already low at best, hateful at worst, homosexuals chose to present an image that heterosexuals could identify with, if not respect. Sooner or later heterosexuals would have to acknowledge that homosexuals were the same as them. Civil rights for gays and lesbians were inevitable. But as gay politician Harvey Milk would astutely recognize years later when it came to granting equal rights and privileges, power is never given to a minority. Power has to be taken.

Taking power, if not control of their destinies, became a rallying point for the new generation of gays and lesbians coming out at the end of the sixties. And one of the first action items on their agenda was the informal abandoning of many of the tenets that defined the old gay rights guard. Orderly conduct, mild-mannered speech and respectable forms of dress were all viewed as placation devices that, while they might have appeased some heterosexuals, kept the movement stalled. …

The days of lighting candles and standing silently were being extinguished. There was a fire burning in the belly of the homosexual community. A sense of urgency, and awareness of “if not now, when?” was stoking the feeling of empowerment. The time for action was here. …

Looking toward the future, gays were realizing that a new attitude was needed immediately. The days of meek compliance and well-mannered subservience were gone. Those methods, as seen through the eyes of the new activists, weren’t working.

And, nearly forty years later — forty years, people! — those same methods still aren’t working.

Instead of throwing rocks through windows, we are working within the limits, the legal limits, society has set for us — the same society that has drilled into our heads the idea that unchecked “free market capitalism” is a good thing.

Well, maybe this time it is a good thing.

As Sun Tzu wrote, never leave your enemy without an outlet.

Voting with our wallets is the only outlet we have left.

Our marriages have been violated, our children bastardized, and our very personhood rendered inferior by the vote of mob rule. And the Sacramento Bee wants us to keep lining the pockets of our oppressors?

Simply and plainly: No. Absolutely no.

Posted by: Sapphocrat

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