Testimony
Lyrics taken from and inspired by the It Gets Better Project
Set to music by composer Stephen Schwartz
Sung by the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus
What would it look like if the LGBT movement had a racial justice agenda? Well, for starters, we’d see our struggle for equality tied to other movements for justice, not just by analogy. So, for example, there’s been a noticeable silence about Trayvon Martin on most of the mainstream gay blogs, probably because most (white) gay folks don’t see the case as “our issue.” But as Zach Stafford recently pointed out here on HuffPost, gay folk should care about Trayvon Martin because all of us who are “outsiders” — whether because of sexual orientation, gender non-conformity, or race — can be targets of violence.
When we say that the gay right movement is the new civil rights movement, we’re playing into the divisive racial politics of NOM. We have to do better than “gay is the new black.” We have to see that the fight for sexual equality hasn’t replaced the fight for racial equality, because that’s not over. When the LGBT movement moves beyond shallow slogans like “gay is the new black” to embrace a racial justice agenda that sees our struggle as tied to others, then we’ll have truly won a victory against opponents like NOM that can only see “gays and blacks” as an easy place to drive a wedge.
Out in the West: The Mormon Church is going mainstream — and leaving its gay members behind
“It begins at the kitchen table where your father cracks gay jokes. It is furthered at school where the teachers allow kids to call each other fag. It grows into a hot flame in the church pew on Sunday where you are told that the door to eternity is narrow and policed, where the lines between lost and saved are engraved into your skin. All of that fear must go somewhere. It cannot be contained. And so it erupts in ignorance and baseball bats.”
— Jennifer Sinor
A different kind of "don't say gay"
A teacher in New Zealand has started his own campaign against the word “gay,” but it’s a totally different battle from the one Tennessee is fighting.
Warren Bowers sees students using the word “gay” as an insult far too often. He’s banned the pejorative use of “gay” in his classroom and is trying to expand the ban to become schoolwide - or bigger.
The move was inspired because an 8-year-old student with lesbian parents said she was upset that her classmates used “gay” as “a bad thing.” From the Advocate:
“Quite often teachers just ignore it … teachers will pull kids up on using sexist language, they’ll pull kids up on using racist language … but if kids use that word ‘gay’ … quite often, they’ll just let it slide,” he told The Dominion Post of Wellington.
A member of Parliament recently praised Bowers’s efforts. I second this praise. This kind of language should receive the same punishment as racist language, ethnic slurs and the like. I wish we had more teachers like this over here in the States.
Source: gaywrites
