Opinion: Who Wears the Dress; Who Wears the Suit?

Feminism, LGBT, Opinion — By Speak Equal on April 21, 2009 at 12:11 am
When I consider the state of the Gay Rights Movement, I often think to myself, “it could be worse.”

I don’t mean that in an overly content, self-pacifying sort of way. I mean it, in an honest to goodness, it really could be worse sort of way.

In today’s society, we are continually and rather openly, growing and developing as a community. More and more men, women, children, families, and friends are stepping out and stepping up. More and more communities and government officials are getting together to push forward inch-by-inch in the uphill battle for equality. A little more than 70 years ago PRIDE marches and parades, Gay Rights legislation, and the very idea of shows like Noah’s Arc and The L Word were unheard of concepts that people probably dreamed of and talked about at backyard cookouts and couples camping trips.

“1969: The Stonewall riots transform the gay rights movement from one limited to a small number of activists into a widespread protest for equal rights and acceptance.

Patrons of a gay bar in New York’s Greenwich Village, the Stonewall Inn, fight back during a police raid on June 27, sparking three days of riots.”
– infoplease.com

When thinking on the language that we use to promote dialogue on homosexuality and the Gay Rights Movement; terms like homoerotic, transgendered, and gay & lesbian literary critical theory can all be considered relatively new kids on the block. Yet, there is something to be said for the fact that we have one. And, the lexicon is ever-growing!

There is definitely cause for celebration. Celebration in music, literature, politics, education, culture. Celebration in courthouses for every small victory. Celebration in schoolhouses for every ounce of wisdom shared that is truth. Celebration in churches and community centers that teach equality, love, and acceptance. There is cause for celebration within every household that has ever spoken a word of advocacy.

However, the battle is not won. In fact, the battle is far from over.

It was a little more than ten years ago, that cold autumn night when Matthew Shepard was left for dead, tied to a buck fence in Laramie, Wyoming.

“The Laramie Project is a tawdry bit of banal fag melodrama – sordid, cheap, unaffecting, drearily predictable – without the least artistic or literary merit or redeeming social value.

Indeed, its only purpose is to promote sinful, soul-damning sodomy by playing on the sick, maudlin emotions of doomed, godless America and thereby to recruit ill-bred teenagers to lives of sin, shame, disease, death and hell”
– Fred Phelps

It’s been months, and the courthouses of California are standing stubborn and ignorant in their decision to hold Proposal 8 in place.

It’s been more than four years since that January 2005 when it was revealed that the Bush administration had secretly paid several columnists to promote its views regarding the Federal Marriage Amendment. Of the 11 states that all presented same-sex marriage amendments on their ballots two months earlier during the November 2004 Presidential election, all passed them overwhelmingly.

We have so much further to go, but the important thing to remember is that we will get there. Through hard work and connection and collaboration, we will get there.

If it takes one state at a time for the next 48 years, we will get there.

Continue to fight, speak, read, and write. These will one day be stories to tell our children.

Yes, I said children.

Children that will be raised in loving homes with two loving parents. Children that will excel in their schools, be unafraid to speak out in their communities, and excited about giving back to the world around them. Children that will celebrate the heritage of their parents’ struggle. Children that will bring about healing and progress.

Our children.

We will continue to move forward. We will get there one day. With our friends, our families, our partners, our lovers, our churches.

We will get there one day.

Oh, and to the nutjob in this YouTube video clip … you fundamentalist crazies used to offer the same “bible-endorsed”, foam-at-the-mouth philosophies in those cryptic, cultic tones when African-Americans first began tinkering with the idea of equality. *yawn* Get sumthin’ new, will ya?

Tags: Fred Phelps, Gay Rights Movement, GLAAD, Grand Rapids, LGBT, Matthew Shepard, Michigan, PFLAG, PRIDE, The Laramie Project, The Lion's Historian, vyzion360