Taxation is a goood point, D.V.. In the U.S., my biggest issue is with taxation and denial of equal civil rights and access to civil services.
I know so many people who believe these changes will come in the future and it is important to not push politicians too much on the issue. But, I would love to see a real political force and action, which includes the support of every minority group, that demands the extention of the Civil Rights Act to include GLBT, and gives deserved equal access to every civil service.
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Originally Posted by FuzzyKen  Throughout history descrimination has been alive and well. There has always been descrimination by one group of individuals against another. The sad part is that history seems to teach us nothing.
The largest problem today is that of the religious "fundys". These individuals preach to numerous individuals each day of worship that hatred is OK, and that in their eyes or by their individual translation of the bible (or other religious document) that hatred and killing of gay people is good and endorsed by the religious diety in question. There were questions about this raised in the death/murder of Matthew Shepherd. There were some who said that the murderers had attended a homophobic sermon just before the murder happened. It was not pursued by prosecutors.
At the same time, I am greatly bothered by things I see in the gay community even though I am in the broadest classification a member of it. I left Palm Springs, California in absolute disgust. Our former roommate is HIV sero-positive and was solicited regularly by a really weird group of people called "bug-chasers" begging to be "seeded". Most of these were 18-24 year old kids who were under some weird impression that the minute that they popped up positive that they would get all the steroids they wanted, spend their life in the gym bulking up, and the taxpayers would very quickly be paying for incredible drug costs so that they could in fact do this. As a long term HIV survivor, this made his blood boil. He would just about start screaming whenever this happened.
There were tons of "trust-fund babies" who lived in lives of luxury yet never had a job of any kind. Again sero-positive and living it up in Palm Springs.
A very common event in that area was to go to a supermarket and watch some guy with 20 inch biceps get out of a car with a handicapped plate or mirror hanger with no visible handicap. After time, I learned that many of these men suffered from peripheral neuropathy which is caused in some individuals by the protease/reverse transcriptease inhibitors.
When HIV was new and we knew what caused it the Gay Community got behind stopping the spread of the disease as more and more people became ill and died. When the drugs came along to prolong people's lives it was like all responsible behavior of the younger generations coming in was forgotten. When people were dropping like flies in insecticide the younger ones were not yet there. They did not know, understand, nor would they listen to any person disagreeing with their viewpoint that "bareback sex" was just great. Some of the logic I witnessed was incredible. We now have MD's doing what is called "kitchen sinking" because many of these fellows insist on living in such a manner as to overcome the drugs, remain infectious and they either don't understand or don't care.
We could early in this epidemic have gay pride. We, the gay men, went to the homes of those infected and we through grassroots outreach programs helped our own. We cleaned houses, we did laundry, we fixed meals and sometimes we even paid for the food to help our fellow gay men. Some of us hauled our friends to various emergency hospitals to watch E.R. and admitting people descriminate against HIV. It did not happen often, but it did happen. At that time even some of the televangelists commented on how well we cared for our own. When we made them nervous we were really doing something right. In San Diego a cleaning service was started as a grass roots effort. They started with a delapitated old Chevy Van which was stolen by car thieves. Beacause of the great work, Miller Brewing Company donated a new van to help. Gentlemen, this is what gay pride is all about.
The general conservative heterosexual public is bombarded with exaggerations and misinformation about people like us. Some comes from conservative politicians and some comes from religious extremists. The problem is that in some cases we as a community need to really look hard at ourselves. If we do, we will find the places that the extremists get their ammunition.
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I think if we look at ourselves first, then look damn hard at our critics we can do a great deal better.
In my lifetime I had hoped that descrimination against GLBT indidivuals would have died like the dinosaur it is and deserves to be. I do not know if I will see that now, but I really hope that we can improve things. But to make improvements from without we have to first make improvemens from within.
We have to quit making ourselves willing targets for our critics. |
First, wanted to write that I loved reading your post.
I also desire an end to the illogical discrimination based upon who or how you love. But, I disagree that anyone can "quit making ourselves willing targets for our critics" - imo, they will find a reason to hate no matter what changes are made.
As you have seen over your life, homosexuality has moved from being pathology, a sickness, to something that is just indefinably wrong. While I agree bug chasers on the extreme end are dangers to the community itself, I disagree that there should be community wide behavioral changes so someone looking in from the outside won’t be able to point and giggle or make snide remarks. I think the only way to change the perception of GLBT is to show how diverse the community is good and bad… like everyone else.
