Wednesday, February 28, 2007

"You Queers Haven't Suffered Enough!"

Jim Burroway gives Exodus International Vice President Randy Thomas a little history lesson here during Black History Month about civil rights. Randy, who never fails to find a way to make sure queers don't deserve the same rights as the heterosexuals he worships, is aghast that Suze Orman, the financial guru who recently outed herself, stated that she'd love to be able to marry her life long partner.

And why has Randy gotten all hot and bothered? Well, because Suze has a lot of money! Apparently, according to Randy, you don't deserve civil rights unless you are indigent and have been fire hosed. From Jim's site:

Madam C.J. Walker rose from being an uneducated washing woman in St. Louis to becoming one of the richest women in American. Through her own determination, she put herself and her daughter through school. And when she started to have problems with her hair falling out, she invented a line of hair care products which were designed and sold specially for African-American women. She soon become not just one of the wealthiest Black women in American, she was one of the wealthiest women in America period. She founded her business in 1906, and by 1913 her company employed twenty thousand sales agents in the United States, Central America and the Caribbean. Her sales agents, who were mostly of African descent themselves, earned $25 a week — a far cry from the $2 a week that washing women normally earned at that time. When Madam Walker died in 1915 at her New York mansion, she left behind an estate worth some seven million dollars in today’s money.

Using Randy's logic, she wouldn't be eligible for civil equality.

I know Randy personally and he lives under the delusion that he is a loving person to us gays because he goes out and tells the conservative Christians to love us and bring us coffee cake if we live next door. Thanks, but no thanks, Randy. I don't need the coffee cake. What I'd like is the same rights as heterosexual human beings. I know, as you date that lesbian friend of yours and the two of you pretend to have "feelings" -- and who wouldn't after 10 years of self-enforced non-masturbatory celibacy; ever been to a prison? -- that you and "the girlfriend," if you get married, will enjoy all the rights that you will be denying your fellow same sex attracted "coffee cake friends."

But maybe, just maybe, you might want to try to think about someone besides yourself for a change. There are other people on this planet. And we have families, too.

Hat tip: Pam's House Blend

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I was struck by your comment about how this silly guy you're writing about dates a lesbian and the two of them pretend to have "feelings." A situation that is more common than many people realize.

It reminded me of two things. 1.) A group called the Aesthetic Realists that during the seventies in New York would match up a gay man and a lesbian, convince them they were only gay because of "negativity" or some such crap, and marry them off. Naturally these "marriages" did not last. The cult still exists but does not persist in claiming it can turn gay people straight; in fact, it now denies that it ever tried to make people ex-gay. (Many of those they married off sound off on the group on their own website.) I hope they won't get back into it again and join all these other stupid groups who think they can turn people straight.

2.) Sadder still, I frequent a gay bar in New York that has a "straight" bartender that nobody really thinks is straight. [It seems many gay bars now have straight-identified bartenders, but I imagine they have to be at least 2s or 3s on the Kinsey scale if not higher.] He brought his girlfriend in one evening and most everyone perceived her as a lesbian. No one can take their relationshiop seriously, but the guy bristles if you try even in a nice way to talk to him about it. And this is the 21st century! And he works in a gay bar!

I find it terribly disheartening that nearly 40 years after Stonewall there are people who still can't accept themselves. Among the Christian Right it's bad enough, but it seems it even applies to some people we would call gay-friendly, which is just terrible.