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02/02/2011
'Gays are risking us straights....'
Saw a comment yesterday that's really stuck with me over the past twenty-four hours. I think because it gives me tough insight into how too many straight people still see our loves and loves:
A threat. Sounds dangerously close to: Don't get too uppity or we''ll bring back electroshock.
This is obviously a more extreme case. But I see this sort of meme all around LGBT issues. There's this all-too-prevalent idea that equal rights are a gift we gays are waiting to be granted by a sympathetic "general public." Even from proven allies, there are still those words that make equal protections sound like some sort of charitable endowment. Those compromises that act as if due process is but a suggestion. That complacency that sidesteps (and therefore fails to lead on) the righteousness of this principled fight, with the tone instead conveying the sense that gays are only achieving because the majority either doesn't care or is sick of hearing about us.
Not sure how we change this. It may just take more time. A couple more generations. A few more "Glee" duets. Just more of everything before "It Gets Better" refers to the forthcoming joys of being able to vote, drink, and rent a car, and not the simple act of living within one's own skin and truth.
But I do know that I'm not hinging my life, my citizenship, my marriage on the "don't make it too easy for us" threats of an entitled heterosexual. The radical idea that I'm as Good As You is a "risk" I'm willing to take.
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