SILENCE IS DEATH and ACTION IS LIFE

I read the comments of Pat Robertson about killing off Caesar Chavez. I've also read that the literalist christians are claiming that they feel "persecuted" for their beliefs. And then that some folks are planning to crash funerals in Tennessee [of gay men who died from AIDS?] shouting about sin killing them off. Geesh.


The United States is becoming a very scarey place. I've been watching all of this and I been thinking about it alot.

Sometime before she died, Audre Lourde said, "Your silence will not protect you." When we are quiet and unassuming, then the "majority" does what it will and we get marginalized as a people and treated as extralegal. Our silence rewards the status quo.



When we get active because we are tired of being treated as second-class citizens and sorry that we ever bought into that "don't ask don't tell" propaganda, then vocal members of the majority start screaming things like:

HOMOSEXUAL AGENDA

and

WITCHES ARE SATANISTS

and

WELFARE BUMS

and

THOSE PEOPLE DONT WANT TO ___________!


Well, dig this.

I'm here to announce that I am one of "those people." I am a homosexual. I am a gay man. I am a lesbian. I am a transgendered person. I am a bisexual. I am a witch. I am a pagan. I am a non-theist. I am a polytheist. I am a "retard." I am "mentally ill." I am homeless. I am a "welfare bum." I have AIDS, Hep C, what have you.

I am the people your parents warned you about!!!



The System is sick!

If people want to scream that I am going to their version of hell or yell about the "homosexual agenda" or the humanist or the godless or about all of us who want THE SAME BASIC RIGHTS THAT THEY HAVE then let them.

I can't fix that. But there are other wars that WE together can win.

I don't agree to surrender my country to people who want to live out their bigoted dreams upon the fabric of our political machinery. It takes one person and a friend to start a revolution.

Change begins with me and gains momentum with us.

We all have a right to LIVE our lives and to VALUE our lives.


now hear this: I AM DONE WITH SILENCE. I AM DONE WITH PASSIVITY. I AM DONE WITH BEING TREATED AS EXTRALEGAL. I AM DONE WITH NOT HAVING THE SAME BASIC CIVIL RIGHTS AS THE IMMORAL MAJORITY. I AM DONE WITH THE CLOSET. I AM DONE WITH HIDING. I AM DONE WITH HAVING OTHER PEOPLE DICTATE WHAT MY BELIEFS AND MY LIFE SHOULD LOOK LIKE. I AM DONE WITH ALL OF THAT.

thank-you.


~sapphoq