rrizzo@bbncca.ARPA (Ron Rizzo) (08/20/85)
[ Submitted to Ron Rizzo for anonymous posting. ]
The current Christopher Street has an article addressing
America's increasing conservatism (I, for one, think the media is
unwittingly increasing conservatism by focusing on "yuppies" and
"increasing conservatism", but you can insert your own theory on the
cliche at this point and read on). The main thrust seems twofold:
diminish the emotional reaction accompanying words like "gay" and
"homosexual", and re-interpret the gay cause as one for universal
American principles: freedom to beleive what you want, to say what you
want, to do what you want as long as it doesn't conflict with other's
rights (needless to say, that doesn't include the right to not deal
with gay issues). Straights might not defend your right to have
children, but they'll defend to their deaths the right for you to talk
about it-- at least in theory. (For the record, children of
homosexuals are probabilistically Less likely to turn out homosexual--
too bad stats don't have much impact on the way people make
decisions).
I, for one, am very glad to see a conservative movement within
the gay subculture. Ok, partly I'm biased because I beleive in
economic conservativism (generally laissez faire), but partly it's
because I'm tired of Sister Boomboom representing the gay cause to
America's families.
PCness (Political Correctness) has rendered the gay movement
impotent. By calling Robert's Rules of Order heterosexual societal
baggage, it has created meetings decaying to complete disorder. About
six years ago, a congressional report asked for suggested revisions to
American sex education to incorporate the lessons of the gay cause.
No response from the gay community was ever given, partly because
side issues had equal priority: cross-dressing is ok, isn't it? Sex
between people widely divergent in age is ok, isn't it?
Before you (perhaps otherwise justly) accuse me of the same
intolerant attitudes towards diversity that Jerry Falwell and the KKK
have, let me say that I beleive goodness is in the eyes of the
beholder, and that only acts which are clearly destructive should be
prohibited. But at the same time let me claim that the reason I
realize this is because I am forever rubbing up against the walls
society has arbitrarily placed against what I want to do. And let me
further claim that, having grown up in a small midwestern town, had I
not rubbed up against those restrictions I would (perhaps) be as
intolerant as the rest.
For although I recognize it is wrong to restrict others' freedom
in the name of making my own world more "perfect" (taken to extreme,
the mentality shouts "less Catholics, Jews, Blacks, homosexuals to
estrange my children-- everyone should be just like me"), I also claim
that the gains to be made in the 1980's do not stem from convincing
others that this is true. The media resents broadcasting messages
like this during the Reagon admistration (what kind of a message would
that be during a conservative "era"?).
The Gay cause must set specific goals, achievable one at a time,
which satisfy two conditions: a) the goal must be acheivable in the
current political climate, and b) the goal must be supported by a
large number of individuals willin to contribute to the cause. Yes,
this might mean we must temporarily halt our struggle against
pornography censors in order to get the feminist cause back on our
side. It might mean we must abandon our struggle to lower the age of
consent in some states in order to get wider support for the abolition
of sodomy laws. But it might also mean step by step victories which
will form the basis of a further movement towards maximum freedom.
In the end, we must stop estranging the most wealthy gays in the
country who, up till now, have been reticent to donate money to a
cause plagued with the reputation of being slightly left of cummunism.
It is time to free ourselves of our extremest stereotyping, to let
people know who we, as gays and lesbians, truly are-- rather like
everyone else.
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