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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13766
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What do you do if you are Gay, and embrace LGBT rights, perhaps even fight for them on a large or sall way, but discover that the person or political party whose objectives you support also has objectves hostile to LGBT and, by inference, to you? That hostility is so great that you have a genuine fear for the safety of LGBT folk in general, LGBT equality, and, actuallym your personal safety. What do you do?
- Abandon that party or figurehed?
- Campaign for LGBT rights within that party, to that figruehead?
- Get back into the closet. Someone else will sort this mess out later?
- Vote against the party or figurehead?
- Some other action?
What do you do?
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
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Well, I'm an activist member of the Green Party, which has very strong views on equality (in fact, I'm staffing a Green stall at the local Uni Fresher's do in September, alongside a transsexual), so I don't think it would happen quite as you suggest.
But there have been a number of occasions where things I've been very engaged with - to do with poverty, street kids, rail renationalisation protests, antiracist/antifascist activities and suchlike - have involved working alongside, and sometimes under the leadership of, people who are not LGBT-friendly. I don't *do* closet (I came out very nearly 40 years ago), and things usually have settled down to an unspoken agreement to concentrate on the practical issues we're supposed to be working on and avoid dangerous territory of sexual identity. I've never been asked to keep quiet ... but I'm wary of inserting my own agenda where it's not relevant, though I certainly never keep silent if someone starts spouting anti-gay rubbish.
On the whole, the kinds of things I do tend not to attract the vociferously and actively anti-gay - even Roman Catholic and Muslim priests have generally been happy to work together on specific things without making an issue of my sexuality.
For me, it's a question of balance, I suppose. LGBT equality is only a part of trying to help make sure all people are treated fairly and decently, and I try not to jeopardise work on non-LGBT issues for the sake of having massive and unnecessary rows on "Gay Issues".
"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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