On "how could gay rights compare to civil rights?" Someone asked me to repost this as an OP.

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Fri Nov-07-08 08:54 PM
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On "how could gay rights compare to civil rights?" Someone asked me to repost this as an OP.

A new poster who was skeptical about the importance of "gay rights" was confused as to how gay people might dare compare their concerns with the suffering of African-Americans by calling their demand for rights "civil rights." My response was--to put it simply--that the rights of LGBT people are an example of civil, meaning social and legal, rights.

"Ranking" oppressions is a grisly business that serves no one. When we put up DU polls with themes like "Who suffered worse: African-Americans, Native Americans, Jews under Hitler, or Gays?" All we do is pit subjugated groups against one another in a fight to make sure that our own dead, tortured, and mutilated will not be forgotten.

Nothing will take away the horrors of slavery, the continued class brutality against millions of African-Americans, the destruction of the black family through the selling of children and the separating of parents, the rape of black women by white slaveholders. No worries: the legacy of slavery is a special sort of American capitalist illness with such devastating effects, it'll be hard to minimize even with a black president.

But all the suffering of Blacks, Jews, Latinos, and Native Americans does not justify the social disenfranchisement of another set of people, especially one that cuts a swath through the descendants of black slaves and Native Americans, through Jews killed in the holocaust, and throughout the latino population (including undocumented workers and their children.) LGBT people exist in equal numbers in every population, although cultural issues play a huge part in how visible non-white gays are to the 'general public.' LGBT people exist in every class and socioeconomic bracket, although you are more likely to see affluent LGBT people on your TV because you are more likely to see affluent people of all nationalities on your TV.

There is also a tendency to attribute masculinity with working class status. Hence "Joe the Plumber" who makes $250K and spends his discretionary income on fancy car rims a year is "working class hero" but "Miqael the Barista" who earns $8 an hour as a barista and spends his discretionary income on skin creme is "an upper class elitist." By the way, GAY MEN EARN LESS THAN STRAIGHT MEN. But lesbians do earn the same as straight women--who also earn less than straight men. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15707842

So lets first gut the idea that GAY=RICH WHITE MEN. It's not like 10% of white men are gay and .00012% of blacks, asians, and latinos are gay. If you want to forget about Black LGBT people, then you can forget about James Baldwin, Lorraine Hansberry, and Alice Walker.

To make my point:

Some black gay folk's black gay heroes:
http://www.fyne.co.uk/index.php?item=354

Some good places to start reading if you REALLY care about the existence of LGBT Asians and Pacific Islanders
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/southasia/cuvl/glb.html

Care about Native American two-spirits? Maybe you might want to start here:
http://www.nativeout.com/

Latino?
http://www.adelantemagazine.com/

Iranian-American queers?
http://www.cheraq.net/45/ahmadinejad.htm

Working class queers? Click on this link if you aren't afraid of being soiled by "the left" (and by that I don't mean Clinton and Obama)
http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/1618

In other words: if you think that LGBT are mostly rich white people then you get all your info about LGBT people from FOX news and CNN and you're not really qualified to open your mouths about us. Either that or you're a rich white straight person whose gay friends are rich white gay people. Either way: you have no right to propagandize and demonize our reality.

But anyway, what real "civil wrongs" could have been done to gay people? Isn't it just a little razzing, a little name-calling here and there?
And aren't gay people some newfangled invention, created by the permissiveness of white hippie culture?

TORTURE

1) The new world to Pre-1900s: As slavery and indentured servitude flourished so did the murder of gay men (and lesbians, although I haven't taken the time to reproduce the info here, check out Thomas Laqueur's book "Making Sex.")

One of the tragedies of the New World is that it took over much of the legal system of the Old World. The Buggery Act of Henry VIII (as re-enacted by Elizabeth I in 1563) was adopted, often verbatim, by the original thirteen Colonies, and buggery was punished by death. The records of convictions are scarce, but they were not systematically recorded and are therefore difficult to discover. In 1624 Richard William Cornish, Master of the ship Ambrose, anchored in the James River, Virginia, was hanged for committing sodomy with the 29-year-old cabin boy William Couse. We know that sodomites were prosecuted in Plymouth Plantation in the 1640s. In 1646, in Massachusetts Bay Colony, William Plaine was executed for having committed sodomy with two persons in England before going over to the colonies; and in the same year, in Manhattan, New Netherland Colony, Jan Creoli, a negro, was sentenced to be choked to death and burned to ashes for a second offence of sodomy. A lot of rich whiners, they were. :sarcasm: But those were the 'olden days', right? Maybe not...

1) From the 1920s on, gay men and lesbians were arrested and committed by the state and experimented on by scientists. From Wikipedia: "Medical attempts to change homosexuality included surgical treatments such as hysterectomy, ovariectomy, clitoridectomy, castration, vasectomy, pudic nerve surgery, and lobotomy. Substance-based methods included hormone treatment, pharmacologic shock treatment, and treatment with sexual stimulants and sexual depressants. Throughout the 20th century, gay men and lesbians have been arrested and subjected to having their genitals burned and cut off--often for belonging to underground gay rights organizations. One person you might want to use as a reference for this is Alan Turing, that bougie computer genius who helped the allies win WWII. Sure he was convicted of homosexuality in the UK, but no matter really, the same sort of thing happened here all the time. From Wiki:

"Turing was given a choice between imprisonment and probation, conditional on his undergoing hormonal treatment designed to reduce libido. He accepted the estrogen hormone injections, which lasted for a year, to avoid jail. Side effects included gynecomastia (breast enlargement)...On 8 June 1954, his cleaner found him dead...the death was ruled a suicide...Because Turing's homosexuality would have been perceived as a security risk, the possibility of assassination has also been suggested..."

And surely lobotomies of gays in Western democracies stopped before 1979?!!! RIght? Maybe not...

http://andrejkoymasky.com/mem/holocaust/ho07.html

Lobotomies of gay people stopped in Western Germany only in 1979. In the 17 years since 1962 30 homosexuals were operated on the hypothalamus.

But that would never happen in the US!!!!!

This spurred doctors like American Walter Freeman to brutally operate no less than 4000 patients in the 40's in USA using a golden ice pick. When he visited Denmark the Danish doctors at first were shocked.

Still, no one would do such a thing now! Well, except for psychiatrist serving the State Legislature of North Carolina in 2007

http://www.gay.com/news/article.html?date=2007/07/31/2&navpath=/channels/news/

A North Carolina psychiatrist who served the state Legislature this month as a volunteer "Doctor of the Day" is in trouble for more than urging electric shock therapy for gay people, the Charlotte Observer reported...

In his book, "Dr. Bob's Grocery Store Medicine and Healthy Life Anecdotes," which he gave out to lawmakers on his July 17 rounds, Crummie contends that "there is no such thing as a homosexual. The Gay Movement is a hoax," and that "individuals who act out homosexually are at best very neurotic and at worst psychotic. Most of them are character disorders."

Crummie, 69, writes that he put a stop to homosexuality at a North Carolina prison when he threatened to give electric shock therapy to anyone caught in the act, then demonstrated the procedure on a severely depressed inmate as others looked on, the Observer reported. He describes the episode as "one of my funniest stories."

The good doctor also made a point to mention that "We don't hear about the successful lobotomies."

Police Brutality

2) Dr. Crummie wasn't the only law enforcer interested in rehabilitating teh gay. The founding fathers were interested in keeping a check on us as well. From civilliberty.about.com: "In 1779, Thomas Jefferson proposed a law that would mandate castration for gay men and mutilation of nose cartilage for gay women. But that's not the scary part. Here's the scary part: Jefferson was considered a liberal. At the time, the most common penalty on the books was death."

Legalized dress codes in many states led to arrests of many lesbians from the 1940s to 1970s as did prohibitions on "same-sex dancing." Upon arrest, the brutality of the police against gays and lesbians was (surprise, surprise) not much different than the brutality against other oppressed populations. Gang rape and other assaults were certainly not unknown. For example, Leslie Feinberg described in Stone Butch Blues being forced to choose between giving a police officer a blowjob during a club raid, or being forced to go into the bathroom and eat his shit.

Need more? Excerpt from the Progressive:

LGBT people face torture worldwide

BY SURINA KHAN
June 28, 2001

First the bad news. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people all over the world are tortured and abused, often at the hands of their own governments and communities.

In Chicago, a gay man arrested after an altercation with his landlord in February 2000, reported that he was severely abused by police, who "handcuffed him by his elbows to a hook on the wall. Allegedly, while one officer walked away (but did not leave the room) the other sodomized him with a billy club, ramming his head against the wall as he did so."

In 1995, a lesbian inmate in California was placed in a men's unit where she was constantly visible to the other prisoners, even when she was in the shower and toilet. A guard sold entry to her cell to male inmates, three of whom raped her.

But the good news is you don't even need to be gay to be tortured by the police for being gay!

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1a2_1222363923

CIVILIAN ANTI-GAY VIGILANTES

3) The numerous crimes against LGBT people aren't classified as "crimes against LGBT people" because in many "red state" areas the concept of "LGBT people" does not exist and police departments refuse to collect data. This minimizes the number of official count of violence against gays because of the state's refusal to actual count the incidences of violence.

I'm sick of worrying about the people I love being beaten and murdered. One summer I knew 3 people who were beaten into the hospital. One story only made a COLLEGE NEWSPAPER. I'm sick of not being counted ON EVERY LEVEL. And I'm sick of watching young LGBT people of color being murdered only to have privileged white straight people insinuate that LGBT issues are basically elitist white bullshit. DO THESE DEAD PEOPLE LOOK LIKE RICH WHITE MEN?

ttp://

What do images like this do to fan the flames of hatred?

http://www.conjecturer.com/images/Chick/02.bmp
http://www.conjecturer.com/images/Chick/03.bmp

From truechristian.com:

What's worse than a Fag? Two Fags! How could anyone anyone be so ignorant? You fools! We aren't to allow these pedophiles to wed, we are to KILL THEM ALL!! Listen to the words of Love by Jesus Himself!

Leviticus 20
13 If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.

This is a complete outrage! Now gays can dephile the sancity of marriage. The marriage I have to my wife has just been insulted since now those rump ranging Faggots can do the same thing. Fags EAT their own FECES! They lick each others rectum!!! THEY CALL IT TOSSING THE SALAD!! Salad of what?! Vomit?! That's probably what they bathe in those FILTHY FAGGOTS!! DIE DIE DIE!!!

Leviticus 20
13 If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.

They are all Evil and since we are the Good guys here it is our DUTY to take away their "deserved rights" and show them for the slime God shows us that they are.

**********
As a lesbian, my partner and I face financial hardship that straight people don't (although my partner is allowed to buy me insurance, any medical benefits given to me are considered taxable 'added income'), state-sanctioned job discrimination (I can be fired for being gay), and having any assaults or even my murder being covered up by police because the municipality I live in doesn't recognize "hate crimes." If my partner is injured, any hospital that wishes to do so can bar me from seeing her on her death bed. Even when we have been together for 50 years, an estranged brother in-law or a nephew she's never met will be called in as her next of kin and if the relative is a religious fundamentalist, they can bar me from ever seeing her again.
*********

It's not just about some whiny plea of a few wealthy elitist white men who 'own the world and now want to redefine marriage too'--although a few wealthy white men might get some benefits along with the unwashed hoards of average multi-ethnic poor, working, and middle class gays--it's about a path towards financial and social EQUALITY which means not being sodomized and raped by police or religious vigilantes. It's about health insurance for kids and making sure foster children can get adopted into loving homes. It's about the survival of white and black and asian and latino and native american people.