It's Gay Pride month and I wanted to write something that made a difference. Then I read Brandon Shires post on his blog yesterday and realized I couldn't say it even close to as good as he did. I asked him for permission to re-post his thoughts here, and he was kind enough to say yes.
If you haven't read any of Brandon Shire's books yet, you're missing out on someone I feel is one of the most talented out there. Here is his Author Central page: Author Brandon Shire . I've read them all and loved them. Listening to Dust and The Value of Rain remain two of my favorite all time novels.
Challenges
for the future of LGBT Rights
What challenges do you
see for the future for LGBT Rights?
A lot has been written
in response to this question. There are still so many challenges for the future
of LGBT rights that it is hard to narrow them down to just a few key
points. But I do think there is one key element which succinctly
addresses all the larger concerns.
Single-fix focal points
We tend to focus on
one issue at a time, as if the issues we face as LGBT were non-inclusive of all
the other issues. And we do so to our own detriment.
Where we leave gaps,
our opponents gain a foothold. Marriage is the current focal point. It’s
snappy, it has immediate gratification, it has great sound bites, and look at
all those smiling faces…everyone is all dressed up for the party.
What you don’t see
behind those photos are the 200,000+ homeless LGBT kids still on our streets,
the level of poverty that most LGBT’s live in every day, the barbarity of
verbal and physical attacks on trans people, and the continuing racial divide
that separates much of the LGBT community. Job discrimination? It’s
bursting at the seams, but you hardly hear a word about it.
All these issues are
connected, but our opponents have successfully lobbied the public (which
includes LGBT) into believing that we should segregate our thoughts. This is a
health issue, this over here is a black/white issue, that one is a jobs issue.
Look, this is a trans issue, that a religious issue, and this is a gay
issue. And those lesbian feminists, that’s something else completely.
We need to start
understanding the mindset behind the attacks on the LGBT community. They come
down to one very effective mechanism for ineffectiveness: divide and
conquer. As we allow our
opponents to create dissention among the LGBT community, they gain and we lose.
Yes, single focus has helped us make great gains (look at how far we have come
with marriage), but at what cost? Who do we leave behind? Who decides who we
sacrifice? How many do we sacrifice?
The single greatest
challenge for the LGBT community is to finally come to the understanding that
we have allowed our enemies to divide us. All LGBT issues affect all of
us. Tweet this!If just one LGBT person is bound by the definitions set
by our adversaries, then we are all bound. Not a single one of us truly gets the rights
we are fighting for. Not one. The commonality between us is not that we are LGBT, but that we are human and
that our opponents have taken our self-anointed labels and attempted to turn
them against us. But we’re changing that, slowly. (See below.)
What are gay
activists/allies getting right? Getting wrong?
Got it Right
Redefining
LGBT. For a long, long
time our definition of what means to be LGBT was determined by others, haters
usually. Every major movement, every major victory comes down to one basic
fact: We have taken back and and begun to redefine what it means to be LGBT.
Our voices are now heard, not because we have shouted down our foes, but
because we have proven them wrong both morally and factually. These facts –the essence of who we are, what we do, and
how we live – are what have given us every major victory. Remember, it only
takes 10% of population holding an unshakable belief to convince the rest of
the population to adopt the same belief.[1] So yes, every voice counts,
including yours.
Got it Wrong
Claiming we
won. We haven’t won, not by far. Victory in a few skirmishes and
battles is not winning the war. Ask any African American if they won the battle against racism, ask any immigrant,
any non-white. Ask a woman how the battles still rage over misogyny and sexism.
Ask an LGBT kid in a small town how safe they feel, or how included, or how
reviled.
Exporting
‘My Gay Life’. There’s
a lot we can do to support the movements in other countries for LGBT rights,
but simply exporting our own ideas and ideals in the same way we market the
ideal gay image (which is male, white, svelte and rich) is not going to work.
Real change is cultural change and most Americans (gay and straight) have
little understanding of other cultures, including those which are relatively
close to our own.
You cannot take the
supposed playbook from the US LGBT rights movement and simply plop it down in
another country which has thousands of years of history and culture. Boots on the ground is what we
need focus our efforts on – that is supporting those native men and women who
are striving to make a change within their own countries. Anything else is
viewed as another attempt at a subversive ‘western imperialism.’ See China,
Russia, Uganda, Croatia, etc. (The list is endless.) The religious right and
extremist groups are making strides at proclaiming that LGBT rights are an
‘imported phenomena.’ (Next they’ll be a CIA plot.) We know this is not true,
but we still continue to market being LGBT as a ‘freedom’ and not as an
inalienable right of being human. And we still, unfortunately, have the
imperialist idea that we, as Americans, know what’s best for others. It’s
hurting our international brothers and sisters, and it is something we need to
halt, now.
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Visit Brandon's website and blog here: http://brandonshire.com/author-bio/
Thanks, Brandon, for letting me feature your post. Your writing moves me as a reader and inspires me as a writer. My world is a better place having read your work and for knowing you. Hugs.
Caddy Rowland is a novelist and painter. Her
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To find out about her novels visit http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B005FW8BZE
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