What They're Afraid of Is Perfectly Normal
Firstly, let me state for the record that I am sick and tired of a lot of things these days. There are a lot of things for which I just have no patience, and I think that’s a good thing. Right now, I am sick and tired of the same-sex marriage debate (although I’m willing to continue to participate in it for as long as it takes). It should be a non-issue in that it should be common sense that any two consenting adults should be allowed to enter into a legal contract, which is all a civil marriage really is. I am sick and tired of right-wing fundamentalists who use their religion as a weapon to keep me down as a second-class citizen. (And, by right-wing fundamentalists, please be advised that I am not singling out Christians; there are ultra-conservative Conservative Jews, not to mention Orthodox Jews, who are just as guilty of this as are the Pat Robertsons of the world.) I am sick and tired of being talked about in public by "experts" who claim to know who I am and how I live, and I am also sick and tired of straight people telling me I need to be patient. Honestly, I'm tired of being patient. Damn it, I want my rights, and I want them now!
On the other hand, I am indeed a lucky man. I have good friends, good health and good energy, good people in my life, I have MAC OS 10.3.9 and 80 GB of RAM, I have 5,975 songs on my iPod and room for 10,000 more, I get to travel to Hawaii by myself at least once a year, and so much more. Most importantly I have two wonderful brothers, the younger of whom, Allan, also happens to be gay. (Yup, our folks got it right two out of three times, but don’t get me wrong, we love our straight brother as much as we would had our parents batted 1000!)
The other night, Allan and I were discussing a new anti-gay ballot that will most certainly come up for a vote in California in 2006, and he brought up a point that I had not previously considered. I hold the point of view that people who support anti-gay legislation are just plain mean people, and I really do believe that they are mean. I mean, really, would a nice person vote to pass laws that would keep two people from being allowed to visit each other in the hospital? Of course not! For the most part, they are mean, insecure people, and like most mean and insecure people, the only way they can feel secure is by keeping other people down. They are mean, they are mean-spirited, and they are afraid of anything that is different. This is the point I was making to Allan. He responded by saying “you know, they’re not really afraid of us being different, they’re afraid of us being the same.” I stopped for a second and asked him to explain. What they’re afraid of at this point, he said, is that equality in marriage has become the focal point of what we are fighting for these days. When we march for Gay Pride each June, they love being able to focus on the gays in leather, the drag queens, the Dykes on Bikes in various stages of undress, anything that looks “different” or “abnormal” to them, so that they can continue to feel justified in their bigotry, and continue to attempt to pass that bigotry on as their legacy to their children. But now, when they see us coming out of the "ghettos" of the Castro, West Hollywood, the West Village, and moving next door and leading so-called normal lives – two-income families in monogamous relationships, raising well-adjusted children, having backyard barbecues, attending their synagogues and their churches and their PTA meetings, fighting their fires, keeping the peace, running for office – that’s what scares them the most. They used to be afraid of us throwing our differences at them; now, Allan says, they are more afraid of us throwing our similarities at them. Because the more “normal” we look to them, the harder it will be to convince their children that there is something wrong with us, and the harder it will be for them to keep us down.
Allan has a point, and it’s a good one, and I will accept that some of these people are afraid of us looking as normal as they'd like to think THEY are. But, at the same time, I still hold that a lot of these people are just plain mean. And insecure. And power-hungry. And that’s what I have very little patience for these days.
Sunday, July 31, 2005
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
How Far We Haven't Come?
What follows below is the text, word-for-word, of a record review I wrote in 1992 after seeing Patrick Buchanan's attack on human rights at the 1992 Republican National Convention. While Buchanan's speech is credited with costing the elder Bush his re-election in 1992, it is an unfortunate barometer of how far we HAVEN'T come in 12 years, as it is just this rhetoric that gave Bush the younger his "second" victory. As always, I welcome comments and feedback.
____________________________________
Various Artists
Red Hot +Dance
Columbia Records
By Kenneth J. Altman
In the wake of last week’s Republican Convention, which Molly Ivins referred to as not a political convention, but, rather, “a violation of human rights and Amnesty International should be called in,” I can’t help thinking how precious an album like RH+D is. Precious, because if some people had their way, this record and everything it stands for would be outlawed. Think about it. While our friends, loved ones, brothers and sisters we’ll never meet but we know almost intimately nonetheless lie dying in hospital beds all over the world, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and that mother of all scumbags, Patrick Buchanan, are given permission by the President of the United States to espouse their blind, ignorant, evil hatred for us on national television—and attempt to tell us what is and isn’t moral. Buchanan, the man who would be fuhrer, the man who vowed to close down the National Endowment for the Arts and fumigate the building if he were elected President, would cringe at the mere mention of this—a charity record for people with AIDS, meant to raise money to educate the uneducated, assist the living, and allow the dying to do so with dignity and integrity.
I mean, Columbia Records, how dare you?! How dare you assemble a ‘bop till you drop’ collection of top-notch dance music from artists such as George Michael, Madonna, Sabrina Johnston, Seal, Sly & the Family Stone, etc., and donate all royalties and net profits to The Red Hot + Blue Company, which distributes money to a variety of AIDS organizations? (Four million dollars and counting.) And, really, have you no shame? Printing liner notes which ask questions such as “What would you rather be? a) Embarrassed by raising the issue of condoms? or b) Dead?” Don’t you understand, Columbia Records, that advocating the use of condoms can lead to tragic consequences, such as allowing the younger generation the chance to grow old and someday replace Buchanan’s “Christian” hate-filled lies with non-judgmental love, not to mention depriving Marilyn Quayle of her apparent G-d-given right to force her 13-year-old daughter to carry an unwanted child to term, even if she’d been raped? Moreover, how dare you include in those liner notes simple facts about AIDS, about how it is and isn’t transmitted, and to dare suggest in those liner notes that “we can still have fun in the age of AIDS. We just have to be smart about it.”
I’ll tell you how they dare, Buchanan. It’s how we dare, too, and it’s how many of us are still alive, because we dared. We dared to tell the truth about who we are and who we aren’t. We dared to tell the truth about AIDS and we dared to organize fundraisers, benefits, Bingo nights, marches, parades, dances, etc. We fed our friends when they were too weak to pick up a fork, we changed their diapers when they could no longer walk ten steps to the toilet, and we held our friends’ hands as they died, while people like you sucked up to the likes of Ronald Reagan and George Bush and tried your damndest to sweep us under a rug. Well, guess what, Buchanan, Robertson, Falwell, Bush, Quayle, and, yeah, you too, Arnold Schwarzenegger, sitting there in that Astrodome audience looking so smug and self-righteous, don’t think we didn’t see you sitting there while these messengers of hate delivered their ‘purification of the race’ rhetoric? Guess what we’re gonna do now? We’re all going to buy a copy of RH+D and when we’re done listening to it we’re gonna dance our butts down to the voting booths on November 3. And then we’ll show you what family values are, we’ll show you the immorality of discrimination based on sexual orientation or medical condition, we’ll show you the truth about G-d’s love and acceptance, for once and for all. And don’t you dare try to stop us, because the truth will set us free. And, Buchanan, when it’s all over we’ll find you a real job, where you won’t be able to do any more harm, like maybe at your local record store. We’ll need someone to keep stocking this sure-fire superstar-packed mega-hit on the shelves so people can buy it and give hope that this plague will someday be a distant memory, much like your most recent public speaking engagement.
Kenneth J. Altman is a free-lance writer living in San Francisco.
___________________________________________________________________
For a complete transcript of Patrick Buchanan's speech at the 1992 Republican National Convention, go to http://www.buchanan.org/pa-92-0817-rnc.html
What follows below is the text, word-for-word, of a record review I wrote in 1992 after seeing Patrick Buchanan's attack on human rights at the 1992 Republican National Convention. While Buchanan's speech is credited with costing the elder Bush his re-election in 1992, it is an unfortunate barometer of how far we HAVEN'T come in 12 years, as it is just this rhetoric that gave Bush the younger his "second" victory. As always, I welcome comments and feedback.
____________________________________
Various Artists
Red Hot +Dance
Columbia Records
By Kenneth J. Altman
In the wake of last week’s Republican Convention, which Molly Ivins referred to as not a political convention, but, rather, “a violation of human rights and Amnesty International should be called in,” I can’t help thinking how precious an album like RH+D is. Precious, because if some people had their way, this record and everything it stands for would be outlawed. Think about it. While our friends, loved ones, brothers and sisters we’ll never meet but we know almost intimately nonetheless lie dying in hospital beds all over the world, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, and that mother of all scumbags, Patrick Buchanan, are given permission by the President of the United States to espouse their blind, ignorant, evil hatred for us on national television—and attempt to tell us what is and isn’t moral. Buchanan, the man who would be fuhrer, the man who vowed to close down the National Endowment for the Arts and fumigate the building if he were elected President, would cringe at the mere mention of this—a charity record for people with AIDS, meant to raise money to educate the uneducated, assist the living, and allow the dying to do so with dignity and integrity.
I mean, Columbia Records, how dare you?! How dare you assemble a ‘bop till you drop’ collection of top-notch dance music from artists such as George Michael, Madonna, Sabrina Johnston, Seal, Sly & the Family Stone, etc., and donate all royalties and net profits to The Red Hot + Blue Company, which distributes money to a variety of AIDS organizations? (Four million dollars and counting.) And, really, have you no shame? Printing liner notes which ask questions such as “What would you rather be? a) Embarrassed by raising the issue of condoms? or b) Dead?” Don’t you understand, Columbia Records, that advocating the use of condoms can lead to tragic consequences, such as allowing the younger generation the chance to grow old and someday replace Buchanan’s “Christian” hate-filled lies with non-judgmental love, not to mention depriving Marilyn Quayle of her apparent G-d-given right to force her 13-year-old daughter to carry an unwanted child to term, even if she’d been raped? Moreover, how dare you include in those liner notes simple facts about AIDS, about how it is and isn’t transmitted, and to dare suggest in those liner notes that “we can still have fun in the age of AIDS. We just have to be smart about it.”
I’ll tell you how they dare, Buchanan. It’s how we dare, too, and it’s how many of us are still alive, because we dared. We dared to tell the truth about who we are and who we aren’t. We dared to tell the truth about AIDS and we dared to organize fundraisers, benefits, Bingo nights, marches, parades, dances, etc. We fed our friends when they were too weak to pick up a fork, we changed their diapers when they could no longer walk ten steps to the toilet, and we held our friends’ hands as they died, while people like you sucked up to the likes of Ronald Reagan and George Bush and tried your damndest to sweep us under a rug. Well, guess what, Buchanan, Robertson, Falwell, Bush, Quayle, and, yeah, you too, Arnold Schwarzenegger, sitting there in that Astrodome audience looking so smug and self-righteous, don’t think we didn’t see you sitting there while these messengers of hate delivered their ‘purification of the race’ rhetoric? Guess what we’re gonna do now? We’re all going to buy a copy of RH+D and when we’re done listening to it we’re gonna dance our butts down to the voting booths on November 3. And then we’ll show you what family values are, we’ll show you the immorality of discrimination based on sexual orientation or medical condition, we’ll show you the truth about G-d’s love and acceptance, for once and for all. And don’t you dare try to stop us, because the truth will set us free. And, Buchanan, when it’s all over we’ll find you a real job, where you won’t be able to do any more harm, like maybe at your local record store. We’ll need someone to keep stocking this sure-fire superstar-packed mega-hit on the shelves so people can buy it and give hope that this plague will someday be a distant memory, much like your most recent public speaking engagement.
Kenneth J. Altman is a free-lance writer living in San Francisco.
___________________________________________________________________
For a complete transcript of Patrick Buchanan's speech at the 1992 Republican National Convention, go to http://www.buchanan.org/pa-92-0817-rnc.html
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