May 2010 archive

http://www.mwra.state.ma.us/

In light of this “emergency” the “news” featured video footage of ONE as in a singular worker grinding a giant pipe clamp.  Must be state cutbacks.  

This comes before any other consideration.  For too long, we have suffered in the shadows, and, at best, incorporated obliquely as part of a greater whole.  We are not a people.  It is time for us, in the face of our obliteration and lack of consideration, to be, a people.

I was posting a series of posts on facebook, and this came to me.

If you are GLBT, the fact is, you are laughed at.  You are taken for granted.  You are mocked, and ridiculed, even by the people who claim to need you, and to want you as part of your coalition.

You are DESPISED.  You are LAUGHED AT.  And, what is so ironic about this is, you are despised, laughed at, mocked and ridiculed, despite everything having been taken away from you, that you need nothing from these people who are mocking, laughing, and ridiculing you.

If we do not get justice, and swift, severe, uncompromising justice .. then …

It is time for a GLBT nation.

It is time for us to start seeing ourselves — and I would argue globally — as a people, as a distinct (how shall I say it), uh, world.

Gay people are persecuted in China.  We are persecuted in Uganda.  We are persecuted in the United States.

And the irony is, people in BRITAIN — BRITAIN, for god’s sake — they see our individuality and our value as human beings, despite their country’s greater acceptance of our civil rights, as more important of attention than the people in power do in our own country.

If you are an American, Obama and the Democrats laugh at you.  Really, they do.  They issue trite speeches on your behalf, but have no intention of actually doing anything for you, or even in exchange for your vote.  In other words, they don’t treat you seriously .. this is the same, politically, as laughing at you, and Obama himself has mocked you, personally, for trying to hold him to account.

If you like being mocked, ridiculed, and taken advantage of, then carry on.

They see you as being so unimportant they won’t even count you.  Oh, yes, they argue about counting married couples and whether you should be included in that — but as individual GLBT people, worthy of being counted?  This is how meaningless your entire existence is to them.  And these are the people, putatively, who care about your civil rights more than anyone else in this country.

We have tried to exercise our influence within the existing big tents.  What I would argue is this is, has been, and continues to fail.

We need to go beyond political parties.  If out of extreme necessity if nothing else, we need to be a global union.  In so many words, whispered, a phantom — the beginnings of a NATION.

The people who mock, despise and ridicule you, at the same time, and in a very singlehandedly sinister fashion, not only want, but demand your vote, your donation and your work on behalf of their particular political agenda.

Call it a union, if you must.  If you will.  But we must join together.  We also must show the way.  The corporatists threaten to engulf us all.  The corporatists know no nation, no national boundaries, but they hope to control us all.

We have to band together for the common good.  We have very different political philosophies.  We are Republicans.  We are Democrats.  We are — as I am — Greens, and others.  And we are Chinese, Americans, Ugandans, but we all live on the good green planet earth.

And we are in the minority.  Our cultures have adopted a philosophy of despising us, as outcasting us, as ridiculing us — as lepers, until they need us.

But we are all GLBT people.

With all that`s been going on, a few distractions may help in dealing with the normal stresses of everyday life.

For those who were there & remember what to me was a major formative time of my life, I`ll start off with the ladies of the sixties, their colorful scarves, the hopes we all had in peace & love.

The world was ours.

For those who weren`t there at the time, these images may take you on a trip to the past, which really still is around in the present.

You simply have to look around & see it.

It only takes to be distracted from what you`re shown, to see the things that are.

OH, THE SIXTIES

Anger and hate are very expensive.  Trust me, I know.  You will sit in your father’s house, the same father who wasn’t there for you, for 20 years, and listen to him say, I just don’t know how to live with a fag.

This is expensive.  It’s expensive for your ideal of yourself.  You want to think of yourself as more than a set of genitals, that wants genitals of the same type.

You will get angry.  You will remember telling your father, you have tunnel vision, and, in the end, dad, this will cost you.  Then, twenty or thirty years later, forgive — like flipping a switch.  Yet, remembering.

You will listen to your father tell you, 20 years later, he doesn’t remember using that word.  That word, that destroys everything you think of as yourself, as just another fag.  Not a son.

Twenty years later, you will tell your father, you welcome the chance to have a relationship with him, only now, his acknowledgement of you as his son must now be unequivocal.

Anger and hate are very expensive.  Sometimes, so expensive, you will and must at least be willing to sacrifice your only remaining parent on the alter of exigency.

Bloodless bigotry is also expensive.

It will cost you your college degree.  It will cost you your self respect.  It will cost you everything.

But, don’t be gay.  Don’t like people of the same plumbing as you, or it will cost you everything, and your dissatisfaction with that lack of self respect will cost you more.

You will stare into the blue eyes of your father, the eyes that are exactly the same as yours, who, twenty years ago, make it impossible for you to realize your dreams, and understand, it’s not about him.

In the end, it has to cost.  In the end, it will cost you fear, self loating, and self disrespect.

And then, it will still cost you more.

It will cost you understanding it wasn’t about him, or them, and nobody can make your choices for you, but you.  You will understand, that you have to hold the world up, not just for yourself but for everyone who comes in your place.

In the end, you will have to understand, nothing will change unless you make it hurt.  And, this hurting has to come without anger.  You will arrive in the place of the bloodless bigotry foisted upon you in the first place.  You will have to understand a life without mercy, that costs you everything, because your oppressors, although very diffenly minded, arrived at the very same place in a very different way, the way without cost, without blood, without loss, the way of callousness, the way of not understanding and not willing to live and let live.

Then, twenty years later, you will stare into the blue eyes of those who did unto you and hear them say, “I don’t remember.  I would never say that”.

This will cost, it will go on costing.  We will pay, and pay, and then pay some more.  And, you have to balance.  You have to listen to the blue eyes of the person who did this to you, and hear him say I don’t remember, I wouldn’t do this, I’m sorry you feel this.  You will have to own your anger.

And then you will have to find discipline.  You will have to learn to forgive, yet understand the cost.

In the end, you have to forgive, but you have to master fear.  The fear of that same loathing and lack of self respect that have been forced upon you for twenty years.  Your inner lion.