Bird droppings

I watched Milk last night. It's the story of San Francisco City Supervisor Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected representative in California.

A few things struck me as I watched the film.

First, that this man and the women and men of his era were literally dying and bleeding, fighting very simply for their right to exist. Our modern day struggle for same-sex marriage rights or employment non discrimination really doesn't compare to their struggle. This is simply the tail end of our long struggle to gain acceptance in mainstream society as a normal and valid part of it. We're cleaning up the remaining vestiges of discrimination that continue to exist. They were fighting for their lives.

That's not to say that our modern day struggles are not important. Rather, that the struggles of the past were far more fundamental. It would have been hard to get excited about marriage and employment equality when you could get arrested, beaten, and killed for holding your partner's hand in public or having sex in the privacy of your own home.

Another thing struck me. It was something that Harvey Milk said to Dan White at one point, about how this struggle for civil rights isn't just some issue. It's our lives. He pointed out that three of the four lovers that he had had in his life had attempted or committed suicide.

This... hasn't changed. Sure, there's less oppression in general. But it's most emphatically not gone from our society. We are *STILL* dying. We are still killing ourselves. We are still hiding who we are in fear of a society that threatens us sometimes with no less than death.

I think about my own relationships and friends. The vast majority of them have several mental or emotional problems. Many have attempted suicide at some point in their lives.

I commented, "Being gay is a mental disorder... generator."

We are a group of people literally screaming for nothing more than the right to live our lives. I don't know how, amidst all this pain, suffering, and death, there could be even one person that could stand against us. How could any human being with even a shred of empathy hear our story of love and pain and do anything but love us? I don't understand it. I don't understand how anti-gay bigots can sleep at night. I don't know how they can possibly justify their actions.

And then I remember the fact that my own sister, ex-spouse, ex-mother-in-law, step-grand-mother, step-father, aunt, and others stood in my way to prevent me from gaining access to my own mother's funeral until all of the "normal people" were gone and I was given my own private half-hour with her.

They rationalize and justify their actions through whatever means they can possibly dream up. We queers are sick. Messed up in the head. Confused. It's not about the gay, it's about how our behavior has changed. They dream up a thousand excuses and rationalizations and sleep content in the knowledge that their God will reward them well for holding true to their convictions.

Watching movies like Milk, reading the reaction of the conservative right to the prop 8 decision, and remembering the actions of my own biological "family", I find myself disgusted with the state of humanity. I find myself filled with anger and rage at the vile and contemptuous evil that lies in the shriveled hearts of these people. I want to scream at them. Exact violence upon them. Show them just how much they have hurt me and all others like me. Make them understand it by whatever means necessary.

Unfortunately, anger alone will never fix this problem. You can't defeat hatred with more hatred. And thus we need both anger and diplomacy in the struggle to gain our right to exist as valid human beings.

This is as much about demonstrating our power to the world as it is teaching them gently that we are human beings just like them.

The sad truth is that we must continually go out and educate the masses even while they bash our faces in.

Harvey Milk and the activists of his day won us rights that today I simply take for granted. That I can be publicly and openly in a same-sex relationship is something that barely registers to me most days. That I don't have to fear police bashing down my door in the middle of the night to arrest me for "unnatural sex acts" is something I don't even consider.

But then... when I hear about things like prop 8 and what not... there's still something inside me that feels very... WRONG at the idea that anyone could possibly ever have a *vote* on whether or not I am a valid and worthwhile human being. I really liked the way Judge Walker put it in his decision: "fundamental rights may not be submitted to [a] vote; they depend on the outcome of no elections.”"

Amen. Hopefully this continues to be true.