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13 Nov 2008 10:21 am

Enough

Dan Savage sums up gay political activism:

Gay people generally aren't the placard-waving, bomb-throwing, chaps-wearing, communion-wafer-stomping radicals we're made out to be by the Bills O'Reilly and Donohue. Most gays and lesbians are content to be left to alone; many gays and lesbians go out of their way to ignore political threats and political activism and political activists. Only when gays and lesbians are attacked—only after the fact—do gays and lesbians take to the streets.

Remember: the Stonewall Riots were are a response to a particularly brutal and cruelly-timed (we'd just buried Judy!) police raid on a gay bar in New York City; ACT-UP and Queer Nation were a response not to the AIDS virus, but to a murderous indifference on the parts of the political and medical establishment that amounted to an attack.

Most gay people grow up desperately trying to pass, to blend in; most of us flee to cities where we can live our lives in relative peace and security. We don't go looking for fights. And most gay people walk around without realizing that they've internalized the dynamics of high school hells some of us barely survived: it's better to pass, to stay out of sight, to avoid making waves, lest you attract negative attention, lest you get bashed.

Continued here.

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