Tag: culture war

At last, a different meme and a small victory in the culture wars.

Today’s Hudson, New York Register Star has the counterpoint to the horrendous Itawamba County, Mississippi, prom stories.  It seems that two gay friends have been elected prom king and queen by the student body at Hudson High School. I’m applauding.

Join me in Columbia County, New York.

The Register Star reports:

The Hudson High School prom made history this past Saturday when openly gay best friends were named prom king and queen.

Seniors Charlie Ferrusi and Timmy Howard won their respective crown and tiara by a landslide Saturday and said the support they received from their peers and school administration has been fun and humbling.

“It’s a really big step for Hudson but also for the gay community in general,” Howard said Wednesday. “To have this happen in our city is pretty exciting.”

Ferrusi said he and Howard started thinking about running about a month ago. While there were some students who were in opposition to their idea many more approved and the boys decided to go for it.

By prom night the overwhelming majority of students cast their votes in the open ballot race. They won by such a wide margin the school didn’t crown any runners up.

Earlier this afternoon, the Superintendent of Schools and the High School Principal gave a press conference (sorry no reportage yet) in which they supported the boys’ election and said that was all there was to it.  It remains to be seen how the School Board might respond.

I’m really proud of the Hudson High School students and staff.  This is so much a better story than one tinged in homophobia and hatred.  Join me in applauding.

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simulposted at dailykos and The Dream Antilles  

It should now be apparent by those who are aware of the recent and not so recent sweep of history that a few facts have been coming into focus.  And if it is not, it should be.

Both major political parties of the United States use GLBT people.  It’s not that they ignore us, it’s not that they regard us as an inconvenience.  No, they actively use us to achieve the only thing that is important to them: achieving and maintaining political power, which power is used to enhance the wealth and status of selected groups in our society.

And if you look at the flow and ebb of political power, and what is done with this power with respect to not just GLBT issues, but women’s issues, immigration issues and all manner of social issues is this: Both parties have an interest in keeping the political game going.

It is well established among GLBT folks that the Republican Party has been and continues to be hostile to the well being and first class citizenship of our people; this is not and has not been in dispute for a long, long time.  They are hardly blameless in the game of American social values football, while they tend to be neglected because their position is and has been so clear for so long.  Nonetheless, the interest is in not so much oppressing GLBT people as using them.  Using our existence for fundraising, for demagoguery and for all manner of pandering in order to win elections; to keep and hold power.

Nonetheless, this leads to extremes of social discourse that tend to slide under the perceptual range of the average American; there are things we notice and pay attention to that average people who are not so much interested in GLBT issues tend to ignore, less those that spend inordinate amount of time on liberal political radio and so-called “liberal” blogs and websites.

Extremes such as this.

If you asked me, I would agree with a few propositions, were they brought to me by my GLBT friends and gay allies:

1.  Yes, there are people who genuinely hate and/or fear GLBT people, even people who occupy political office, and that for those people, this is not a game, given the opportunity, they would destroy us, and possibly have all of us killed.

2.  Yes, those people (who want to destroy us) tend to be concentrated on the far right, and that those people in the political center, or to the left of center, where anti-gay, tend to want more to use us and keep us from advancing, than they want to “destroy” us.

What is not so clear, however, to the average politically unengaged American, is the degree to which prominent Democrats, and the Democratic Party, also use GLBT people to their political ends, all of which makes the tolerance among Democrats to far right extremes doubly disgusting in that these extremes of hate and fear might not exist but for the fact that Democrats use this debate to keep and enhance their power.  

Remember, my proposition is the Democrats and the Democratic Party in general are using us despite full knowledge of the degree of damage this hate does to the social discourse.  And that this is a political game played out among Democrats and Republicans, not to settle the social debate on one side or another, but to keep the debate going, to serve their political ends.

This may be somewhat obvious to the average poster on Docudharma, but I would point things out that might not be so obvious to the average American.