When is an INSULT actually important?

I’m going to repost a comment I made at Daily Kos from someone who just didn’t get it (at least, the perspective I am coming from as one gay man, less the entire LGBT community), and since certain much nicer thread of conversations have been had also at Docudharma this same fine day, I thought it would deserve a little reiteration:

I’ve stopped talking to people who are all about Obama at all (with yes this one exception) or organization based ideology based group politics as the primary driver.  

I have given up and come to the conclusion that you will do what you will do.  To me, your hearts (plural, not personal) are hard and it’s all about political support.

The past has shown us (that is, all us GLBT people) that political support, given freely, is ignored and taken for granted.  We give political support, we are ignored.  Bitch and we are lectured to as if we are children, told that we are whining and wanting a pony.

So, our hearts have to grow hard in turn.

If what is wanted to do is find a way to condescend to gay people and make them subservient to related but not necessarily consonant political demands, well, mission accomplished, but if that makes one feel good, I’ve concluded that people can do it without me.  It’s obnoxious, though.  It’s homophobic, and irritating enough to make some people give up and say, “whatever, go away”.  And I mean that as a phenomenon and as a syndrome.  

To dangle other issues and expected support for singular people and personalities and political parties like a carrot using openly suggested homophobia (like making things about an entire class of people in exchange for something else one wants), the price is too high.  For me, anyway.  I will not eat shit to please some person dangling a hallucinogenic carrot at me for a reward.  

If I need someone, that need is not high enough to make me cringe and say, “yes, ok, I’ll do whatever you want, just support us”.  Because it’s craven.

I’ll do without your support if that is the price — that I and every other member of a suspect class has to please you as the price.  I’ll stop talking to you totally.  And less this small exception, that’s exactly what I’ve done.  And I’d suggest every other gay person on God’s Green Planet Earth do the same.  We will make progress when we are no longer treated like children and rewarded with beads and trinkets.  

Just my general philosophy.  Not to say all or even most gay people agree, us being, you know, very different people.

Now, of course, I have to (as if I have to paint an obvious picture as if finger painting with colors) I’m not Clark.  Gay people are all different.

My question, especially to Democrats seeking political support from gay people, reframed and repackaged as exactly what you might say:

At what point does repeated, systemic insult become political imperative, even with so much that other liberals and GLBT people might have in the way of common cause?

Some gay people might be insulted at this coupling of the political fortunes of one man, or even one party, to their basic human rights.

For Obama supporters, this might be a good thing to note.  You see, for me, it’s not about the insult.  Oh, you Democrats, as a party, spit in our faces, when it’s time for you to do something positive about our basic human rights.  You pee on our feet and tell us it’s raining.  And you don’t even have the decency, the basic respect, to try to hide that you’re doing that.  And then you ask us to make some kind of pragmatic calculation about being urinated on, and that’s not even enough.  We have to do it in a worshipful way.

It might could get argued that this insult should be set aside in exchange for what an Obama supporter might argue is the greater good.

But, you see, one reason I advance this line of reasoning is, America does not like losers.  It doesn’t like craven people and beggars who will give hand jobs for crack.

And, make no mistake, that’s what you all, who posit that we better pay attention to your politics if we want our rights are asking us to do.  You all know who you are, so don’t pretend I’m talking to you if I’m obviously not.

So, yes, if it would work, even then, I’d wipe the spit off my face and say, yeah, Democrats, what can I do for you today.  IF I THOUGHT IT WOULD WORK.

But it won’t work.  We’ve been waiting for our civil rights for 40 years.  We’ve been asking nicely.  We’ve tried being demanding, in a oh so nice, civil, asking way.  We’ve tried, and are trying, and continue to try, things like civil disobedience.

But as long as we unconditionally tie our fortunes to the Democratic Party, we’ll be treated like losers.  As long as we give votes in advance for crumbs, and then don’t even get the crumbs, the Joe Bob in the bar is gonna say, “Heh, those fags are chumps, ain’t they?  They don’t even have the balls to get angry.”

BECAUSE, to the extent we do this, WE ARE LOSERS, at least in the context of the American psyche evaluates us.

In the future, if we win, we have to do aught which will make the worst homophobes at least respect us.

“You piss off them gays, and the’ll be hell to pay, I tell you whut!”

HELL TO PAY.

And so, yes, the insult is important.  Taking an insult and turning the other cheek might be advisable, if it was something minor.  If I wanted to talk about prescription drug prices, for example, it might be a good idea to continue to participate, and finegel, even if I was treated, as a single person with raw and callous condescension and disrespect.

But this disrespect is not about me.  And it’s not even about treating an entire population with disrespect.  It’s also about turning their civil rights into a game for decades.  And it’s about figuring out what to do, because only when this attitude changes will the real breakthrough come.

It’s also about leaving people behind.

You offer us our rights, and then offer to leave people behind.  You have the gall to even ASK us for our political support and donations and votes in exchange for these devil’s bargain choices.

I am to lie down, roll over and beg for treats, in advance exchange for you, for example, passing workplace protections, but only for GLB people and not transgendered people.

This is why the GLBT approach both current and past is failing.  

We are offered political crumbs in exchange for highly conditional support, and being civil about it when millions or thousands of us are being told to continue to suffer, and probably live their whole lives and die, waiting.

This level of realpolitick is so cynical, so destructive, and so in your face nasty is neither realistic nor pragmatic.  And if GLBT people want to win, we have to be winners.  We have to stop being craven.  We have to start telling Democratic apologists, if you won’t do what it takes to earn our votes in advance of asking, how dare you.  

If we take the nasty, are we not, in some measure, just as guilty for our own treatment?

How dare you even ASK us.  Because that takes chutzpah.  And we have to be observed calling it what it is, chutzpah.

Because, in America, nobody likes a loser, and nobody sympathizes much with someone who will let himself or herself be spit in the face, over and over again for decades without getting militant.

Militancy for GLBT people, NOW, if we want to SUCCEED, isn’t an option.  If it were, I could learn to eat a shit sandwich, if it would get those millions of people the requirement of freedom they’ve been waiting for their whole lives.  

No, militancy for GLBT people is a requirement.  If you couple our human rights to political survival, we have to be willing to slam the door in your face.