I feel as though I am on the cusp of something big and ominous. Maybe I am having some sort of emotional inner turmoil related to some issues in the past, like the three bedroom with Carissa and Erica. But if that is all that's bothering me, why do I feel like at any moment I'm going to have to take up arms and fight for my life?
If you've been keeping up with this blog you'll know that I've had the feelings of being an alarmist for quite some time now. It's died down, ebbed and flowed out of my life like a soft tide, but every so often it comes back again. As if I should be on alert or something.
Everywhere I look there are headlines about another gay suicide or LGBT harrasment. I see emails and news stories about the right-wing conservative groups "National Orginization for Marriage," and the "Family Research Council," and I see them spew their hate or anti-LGBT propaganda. It makes me sick. They can hate us in the streets, they can hate us in their churches, they can hate us on television and they get away with it.
How do I protect myself from this hate? I know that I must love as they hate, as strongly and in fact more strongly than they ever could, because that's something in my power. But what else? I can vote. I can picket. I can get involved.
Getting involved also scares me. I don't know why. I know that the haters are out there, even in so liberal a town as L, and I can't help but feel like the on-going mass of chaos surrounding issues like "Don't ask, Don't Tell," and the continued bullying and suicides of LGBT teens everywhere are attracting attention and violence like a lightning rod.
The giants on both sides are facing off. Godzilla and Mothra are battling - without a second thought to Tokyo. I feel as if I am in Tokyo and there is no place to hide; no where is safe.
It is not because of my sexuality that I feel this way or any other kind of excuse that the 'Family Research Council' would love to tout in their speeches...it is because of those like them. Those who would rather see me dead than homosexual. Those who would - and one day might - use their very hands to stuff me into an oven because I am gay.
When a gay person feels that they have no other options or that their lives will never be joyful because of the fear and harrasment that permeate their every thought and waking moment then something isn't right. We already know something isn't right. These suicides are a call from above for action and solution. No one deserves to feel like they are somehow wrong or inferior.
Yet with each conservative speech and each religious leader's damning remarks, that is how each and every gay person is made to feel. Like second class citizens, like dirt, the scum of the world.
And what are they damning homosexuals for? Love.
We as gay people only want the freedom to love those who we have found a bond with, without fear of harm, harrasment, death, hatred, censure or reprisal. We want to enter into a union that all heterosexuals can enter into on a whim. A heterosexual can go to vegas with a stranger and get plastered before getting hitched. And yet, tax paying, law abiding citizens who are homosexual and already have committed and loving relationships, can NOT.
There are lots of things that I would like to see happen. DADT repealed, A crack down on hate crimes, equal marriage rights for homosexual citizens, and for it to not feel like Nazi Germany everytime I turn on the tv to watch CNN or FOX. For it not to feel like Nazi Germany everytime something like Proposition 8 passes, or when I read headlines on the internet about some new radical idea to 'cure gays.'
WAKE UP AMERICA.
Or you may wake up to find that one day, your liberties are at risk too.
Thank God for your rights and recognition under the law - thank God that you will never have to fight as we have to fight, just for an inch of liberty in a country with a very harmful brand of hate, which threatens to culminate and erupt at any moment.
Wake up.
(Photo from: http://technabob.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/fire1.jpg)
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