"Justice only counts when you extend it to the scum of the Earth."--Alexis Davis on GH.
I don't know why I buy the Advocate, sometimes, and what's even more puzzling is why I just submitted my subscription form.
Well, it is the only regular gay newsmagazine in the country. More news than OUT or those other types of magazines. And they just published, online, Paul's NYC report. I guess it's a mixed bag.
However, every time I read it there's something in every issue that prompts me to write a letter to the editor, and this time, I actually sent it.
This time it was the one-page article by a man in Maine who was the victim of a gay-bashing attack last year. While he made out the usual laundry list of "what we need to fight for," what really bothered me was the overtones of bourgeois contentmen and the almost smug satisfaction of being an acceptable, traditional format of a gay man to present to his fellow Yankees up there in Maine. He surmises that most people will have a good year, as good as the previous one (except for that 2x4 that whacked him in the face), and that most people will probably not be victims of discrimination.
La la laaaaaaaaaaaaa!
I hate to berate the victim, but my God, did that whack to the face knock some common sense out of him? I am sick to death of the "I am just like you" convincing the straight world needs to see the sense in having equal rights for everyone. Why must everyone look alike before they have equal rights and equal justice under the law? As the quote above says, justice only counts when everyone gets it. Frankly, some of the worst criminals walking the Earth get better justice under the law than gays and lesbians ever get ever law-abiding day of their lives.
So, without blathering on, you can read the short version I dashed off to the Advocate or read the longer version.
I don't expect everyone to be an angry raging queer, but I do want to see a lot more passion in people. I saw no evidence of the author becoming an activist at any level; I heard all about his kids getting cuter and cuter and his lover getting a promotion and how thankful they all are and how we all should smile more when we work toward equal rights.
As someone who also enjoys a comfortable existence, and who tends to try to be moderate in my approach to things, I was just disheartened to the extreme, that he came off as so namby-pamby, assimilationist, conformist, and forgiving. I would have liked to have heard how the experience changed him, as opposed to making him grateful about how life is still the same and how it probably will remain that way.
My question is this: If the death of Matthew Shepard and the plight of others has moved people, like myself, to want to do more, why is this man, who himself was attacked, coming off as so so so soft? You would think the attack would have changed the trajectory of his life in an unalterable manner, yet he seems to want to make sure it stays the same. Perhaps there's a lot he left out, but somehow, I doubt it. The urge in gay America these days is to say something like "Look how much I am just like you. Can you restore my civil rights now, please?"
We need civil rights protections not because we are special, or the same, but precisely because we are different. When you are attacked and you get lesser justice because you are different, you need civil rights more than anyone else.
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