Dear Harvey Milk,
The year you were killed, I was born. That makes me 30 years old in 2009. I have been out for 15 years, lived in 5 different countries, acquired 2 advanced degrees, fallen in love with 2 Jasons, been single-bilingual for 5 years since, and I am slowly becoming aware of the fact that I have been moved back into the closet with disturbing subtlety.
They just made a movie about you. I saw it a few days after a lover categorically refused to kiss me for fear of becoming infected with a disease I don't have. I live in a world where bishops are openly gay and speak at the nation's President's inaugural festivities. Where gay commitment ceremonies are the season's climax of family TV dramas. Where same-sex marriage has been legalized in Catholic Spain, a gay man is the mayor of Berlin, Sean Penn receives an Oscar for playing you.
I also live in a world where queer neighborhoods keep being gentrified and decentralized, where fear and sex come in the same package, where subcultures have become cynical about the fight for equal rights, where corporations like Bacardi and Absolut sponsor Pride parades while queer communities sponsor them to feed our rampant alcoholism, and where I make eye contact with unknown men only to intimidate them, never to flirt or simply acknowledge their humanity, for fear of being beaten up.
Irrational, I know. But that's how it (still) is in 2009. The gays get fired from the military, fired from their civil jobs, denied housing, refused service, refused adoption, refused marriage, refused rightful vindication for crimes against them, denied visitation rights, inheritance rights, tax breaks, full citizenship and immigration rights. We live in relative comfort but also in relative silence, we live openly but also in fear, our voice has been integrated but also submerged. We've become more straight-acting, more mainstream, more consumerist, more cynical, more complacent than you would ever have imagined.
I'm posting footage of the response to your killer's light sentence of 8 years in prison, of which he served 5 before being let go. The outrage generated during the 1979 riots has meanwhile been pacified by high glucose corn syrup, vodka tonics, crystal meth, fashion advertisement, gay cooking shows, and bad lesbian drama on cable TV.
But this year it's re-emerging in California and around the country and the globe with the fires that were lit by your outrageous presence on this Earth.
In reverence of our ancestors,
DKcosmonaut
Mittwoch, 11. März 2009
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The topic of homosexuality remains the one topic that I continue to focus on, almost in a fervent obsession, in my Bible studies. I still don't understand why the deference to homosexuality. Okay, so I finally got to the part of the Bible that talks about homosexuality being a sin and punishable by death (Leviticus 19/20). It's also lumped in there with all the possible configurations of adultery and sexual impropriety (brothers with sisters, daughters with fathers, etc. etc.). And so I see that it was categorized as an action someone was choosing to do, as a sexual act and nothing else. I also understand that these rules against "sexual impropriety" were the ways in which those writing the Bible could ensure population growth. Fine. Whatever. However, for those who believe in Jesus Christ as the Savior and as his death for an atonement of our sin with God the Father (right? They teach this in church and if they don't, it's in the Bible...), the key thing is LOVE. Ugh, it gives me a headache when I attempt to make sense of this. You see, I successfully debated this point one time with someone at church. She was on the whole gay = abomination and how we are instructed in the Bible to keep our left foot from tripping our right foot and my point was that I was taught that I am not the one to judge but permit God and each individual to handle things. Of course that was just the top of the iceberg for me when it comes to my point of view on homosexuality but I knew that I could not freely share my point of view with this individual as it could potentially lead to major drama and church happens to be one of those places that are drama free for me. Anyhow, my point of view is that God created us all in His image and He loves his creation. So, God loves everyone (straight, gay, trans, questioning, etc.). What hurts the most is that people who call themselves followers of Christ expend so much energy hating, which is the antithesis of His message, His life, and His death.
Of course I am preaching to the choir. I guess I just had to get it off my chest.
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