A letter, a challenge.

[hsavinien]

TO THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT

You say we're coming for your children, and you're right.
  We're coming for your queer children.  We are your queer children.
  God--your God, our God--made us that way.  And there's nothing you can do about it.
  So now we have to be saved--from you--because you do nothing but warp innocent minds.
  We will not allow you to force future generations into the closet.
  We will not allow you to abuse them in that way.
  We will not allow you to poison all of American life.
  We will not allow you to breed hatred in our schools.
  We will not allow you to create queer bashers and murderers.
  We will not allow you to push us all back into the closet--in the military, on Capitol Hill, in Hollywood, or on Main Street.
  We are never going back into the closet.
  Your most articulate and ardent spokespeople and politicians still claim that homosexuality is a "choice."
  This we find curious.
  Sexuality is not a choice--it is a natural, immutable orientation.  It's those who speak of "choice" who made a choice--a choice to fight their own queer urges,  Many of them are repressed bisexuals and homosexuals, obsessed with routing out of society what is coming from deep inside them.  Quite a few of them--we know for a fact--are even active but deeply closeted homosexuals who preach the gospel of homophobia.
 
  But the army of lovers will no longer be silent; the greatest casualty in this war you've declared will be the closet.

--Michelangelo Signorile, Queer in America: sex, the media, and the closets of power, 1993

15 years later:
Even in the wake of this latest election, the ban on same-sex marriage is growing.  California's Prop 8, as well as the measures passed in Arizona and Florida bring the total up to 30 out of 50 states with measures preventing same-sex marriage.  The amount of ignorance and political jargon surrounding this issue is jarring.  Most voters who supported the bans are likely to cite religious reasons for doing so, as if the government is attempting to rule on a religious issue!  This is not the case.  Even if it were, majority rule is not the deciding factor for the free practice of religion in this country.  Atheists, Wiccans, Mormons, Jews, Presbyterians, and agnostics are all allowed to freely practice under U.S. law.  Legal marriage--marriage in the eyes of the state and nation--is not a religious matter.  And legal marriage is what queer folks are seeking at the moment.  For that matter, there are more religions than you'd imagine (and denominations within larger religious groups) that are happy to celebrate same-sex marriages within their faith.

We will win this.  It may take time, but we will win.
 
 

Comments

[agent-tomato.livejournal.com]

That's a very good point about religion. I will have to remember that the next time I'm forced into a debate.

Very much word.

[hsavinien.livejournal.com]

*nod* Thanks.