Enough!

More thoughts about the election and its consequences

The Fundies are crowing (heard on NPR yesterday) that a majority of Americans have spoken against gay marriage. The voices imply haven't you gays had enough humiliation yet? Give up now and stop causing trouble. It's never going to change in your favor. So why don't you crawl back into your closet.

David Mixner responds with a full-throated cry. "Enough!" We are creating Gay Apartheid. One set of rules for straights, another for gays. You want Gay Apartheid or you hate it. There is no halfway. If you hate it, fight with us. Don't wimp out. We're not waiting any longer. If you want our support you have to earn it. We have spent $100 million in just the last two years (I think this is just on the pro-gay side) because America has the silly and disgusting notion that our rights and freedoms are up for a vote. That's terrorism by ballot. Think of the good that could have been done with that money.

Now that we've lost in Maine is Obama and Congress going to spend any political capital on us heading into the 2010 election cycle? Nope, you can kiss lifting the military ban, federal defense of marriage, and several of our other issues goodbye at least until 2011.

So what to do? Doing the same old thing won't cut it.

Demand more from our national organizations. Who was prodding Obama to act on behalf of Maine? A reasonable question. We feel our kindness is being abused. No more money until the question is answered and we can expect straight and tough talk of elected officials.

The Gay ATM is closed. No more fair weather friends who come to us for campaign money and don't deliver and tell us we have to wait. They must stick their necks out by becoming co-sponsors of bills important to us.

It is perhaps time for some well-placed civil disobedience.

The press has the attitude of, "Oh yeah, another gay loss, how sad. We support you." You do? We are the civil rights issue of this age and you should treat us the way you handled civil rights coverage in the 1960s.

We're adjusting too easily to Gay Apartheid. We can't let that happen.

Mixner's full remarks say it much better than my summary.

Here's more discussion of the window of opportunity to enact several of our issues being closed. Too much talk of "We'll come back for you." We can't let those issues get in the way of the 2010 election.

Apparently members of Congress agree that window has been missed. The agenda for 2010 is being prepared and our issues may not be on it.

Another frustrated voice says:

Forgive me for being on a downer, for being angry and frustrated. They [Fundies] pay no cost for their lies and bigotry; we pay with the lives of our brothers and sisters, their blood in the street, every time that the Christian Right amps up their rhetoric.

I want them held accountable. I want them to pay a price. I want so much disruption at their events, their fundraisers, their gathering that the price of oppressing us becomes too high for them to sustain.

Actually, I believe they are paying with declining membership. They don't recognize the source of their decline. However, I sympathize with the sentiment.

In a email from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force it appears that the win in Kalamazoo is adding a bit of momentum (or maybe it is cover) to the Employee Non-Discrimination Act which may come for a vote by the end of the year.

Fundraising has now begun for the $1 million to get a million signatures to put the marriage question back on the Calif. ballot next November.