But we need to acknowledge our successes. We need to see that change does happen, so we don't become discouraged - and apathetic.
So here's some good news, from Joel Diaz, on Facebook:
Something incredible happened last night. After a fun night out Ethan and I were in line at the Mikey's Late Night Slice Truck (surprise!) in the Short North. It was really cold so we were holding hands and standing close together laughing and joking about all the fun we'd had. The guy in front of us turns around and tells us to cut our gay shit out. I didn't expect what happened next but almost every single person in that line made it known to him it was not ok for him to speak to us like that. Granted he was caught between two homos so John Warner and I let him know this was our city too and let him have it but the straight people who spoke up were so awesome. The best part though was as he grew more irate and vocal the guys who work the truck told him they would not serve him because he was spewing hate and that he should get out of line. As I walked away with my pizza all I could think about was THAT'S IT! Every person who spoke up to defend us including the pizza guys representing their business was doing their part to make hate a thing of the past.
Neat, isn't it? The owners of the pizza shop expressed pride in their workers there, too.
America is changing - rapidly, when it comes to gay rights, more slowly in other ways. But I think we hit rock bottom during the Bush administration, the ultimate result of the Republican Party's 'Southern strategy.' Now, we're heading back up again.
I hope things are getting better. Unfortunately, Andrew O'Hehir of Salon thinks otherwise:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.salon.com/2013/01/05/welcome_to_the_new_civil_war/
I'm not sure that's a contradiction, Jeff, although, to be sure, the war wages on.
DeleteI noticed that he doesn't mention economics. The first Civil War was about economics as much as anything else. We might not think of slavery like that, but the South did.
And today, too, our disagreements about economics are entwined with disagreements about cultural issues. Republicans do that deliberately, because it would be hard to get much support for tax cuts for the rich, otherwise. But it's an evil brew.
He doesn't mention the growing secular movement, either - atheists, agnostics, and free-thinkers. Perhaps it's just wishful thinking, but I suspect that will be a growing battleground, whereas I think they've already lost the LGBT fight, just as they lost with slavery, lost with women's suffrage, and lost with segregation.
Thanks for the link!