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You are here: Home > Forum > A Place of Safety > General Talk > A depressing end to 2016
icon13.gif A depressing end to 2016  [message #72323] Sun, 18 December 2016 18:22 Go to next message
timmy

Has no life at all
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13739



I feel we are set back a good ten of the twenty years this site has been here. The rampant homophobia I see in the news in the USA, in India, even in allegedly accepting UK tells me that this site is more needed than ever.

Just look regularly at the LGBTQI+ news we aggregate regularly, even ignoring that sick bigoted bastard Tony Perkins. I am so looking forward to the day he is caught in an airport toilet with a cute rent boy;s dick down his throat, but I bet it never happens. That asswipe is too scared of his own sexuality ever to try out a man!

India has places banning gay male couples form celebrating New Year. In the UK, in London, we are back to queer baiting.

It is up again to our generation to make the world safer for the future and to give hope. We are the moral majority, despite being members of a still oppressed minority

[Updated on: Tue, 20 December 2016 16:32]




Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
Re: A depressing end to 2016  [message #72325 is a reply to message #72323] Mon, 19 December 2016 15:58 Go to previous messageGo to next message
NW is currently offline  NW

On fire!
Location: Worcester, England
Registered: January 2005
Messages: 1558



Quote:
timmy wrote on Sun, 18 December 2016 18:22I feel we are set back a good ten of the twenty years this site has been here. The rampant homophobia I see in the news in the USA, in India, even in allegedly accepting UK tells me that this site is more needed than ever.

...

It is up again to our generation to make the world safer for the future and to give hope. ...

--

I'm sure you're right, Timmy. We're the ones with the experience of suffering oppression, fighting it, and in many cases eventually winning: experience that those much younger than us don't have.

But I just don't feel I can do it any longer. I've spent very nearly forty years living as an out gay man. I've campaigned on "gays in the UK armed forces", equal age of consent, Section 28, equal marriage, HIV/AIDS issues, and on assorted issues for other parts of the globe, and I am now tired beyond belief. Bone-weary, in fact. Oh, I'll continue to challenge homophobia in my daily life wherever I encounter it, of course, and having spent two-thirds of my life out of the closet I've forgotten where the door is, even if I did ever take leave of my senses and contemplate crawling back inside. But I no longer have the passion, the drive, the sense of urgent injustice needed for demos, petitions, and the endless endless endless letter-writing/emailing. I applaud you, and all others who are still so actively engaged, but at the moment it is not in me to join in actively.

I hope that this is merely temporary: I have had a really shitty past three weeks, as the "winter blues" I always suffer has kicked in months later, but far more savagely, than usual. Depression is never good news. But part of me now feels an urge to settle for being comfortable: to settle for the odd spot of gardening, duplicating newsletters for the Green Party, curling up in front of the log stove with the cat ...

Who knows? It may pass when Spring arrives. It may not. But I *do* worry that those of our generation are becoming fewer, and generations that have grown up in more tolerant times may not pick up the baton from us when it is needed.



"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
Re: A depressing end to 2016  [message #72326 is a reply to message #72325] Mon, 19 December 2016 16:50 Go to previous messageGo to next message
timmy

Has no life at all
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13739



Some of us, such as you, NW, have more than done their bit. Others have done the bit they can. It seems to me that you may migrate with honour from front line activist to doing the bit you can. And if that is curling up with the cat that truly is what you can do.

Countering homophobia always comes at a price, too. I called out a homophobic bigot in public this summer. I was told that my doing so had made someone else uncomfortable. That cost me a volunteer role I was interested in and passionate about. So be it. But what disturbed me is that his bigotry was more acceptable to the organisation than my calling him out on it. He is seen as fine, and I am seen as a loose cannon.

But that is what we need to do, call bigots out, one by one if necessary.

And, when the baton needs to be passed on, there is no shame in passing it cleanly, when one feels one can do no more





Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
Re: A depressing end to 2016  [message #72327 is a reply to message #72326] Mon, 19 December 2016 17:19 Go to previous message
NW is currently offline  NW

On fire!
Location: Worcester, England
Registered: January 2005
Messages: 1558



Quote:
timmy wrote on Mon, 19 December 2016 16:50
And, when the baton needs to be passed on, there is no shame in passing it cleanly, when one feels one can do no more

--

Thanks, Timmy. And if - as I expect - it's a marathon rather than a sprint, I hope I'll be able to stand by the side offering cups of water and encouragement, at least.



"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
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