Take to the streets and possibly scare and or offend people? Damn right!

So, over in this post and in reply to comments to it, Artaxastra thinks the GLBT people and their allies who have taken to the streets are like the KKK. She thinks we should concentrate on getting people to like us, that we should be conciliatory and we should step back and work carefully and not try to scare anyone.

I say...BULLSHIT.

On September 5, 2008, Nancy and I, along with two very dear and wonderful friends, went to the county clerks office and got married in a ceremony recognized in the city and county of Sacramento and in the state of California. Why we did it doesn't matter. What matters is that we had the right to do so. It was a right determined by the highest court in the state, doing their job interpreting the Constitution of the State of California.

Apparently, our marriage and the 17,999 other same-sex marriages that took place after May 16, 2008 offended a group of people. They didn't like it, didn't like that we had that right. And so...they decided to take it away from us. They got help from many places, but the chief source of funding and people to man phone banks and protest--did you know that they bused people in from Utah to protest on California streets?--was the Mormon Church.

And they did it. A combination of factors that are even now being debated enabled a church from Utah to scare the people of California into taking away a right granted to a minority under the law.

Should people be scared of gays and lesbians, bisexual and transsexuals, people who somehow don't fit into their narrow view of sexuality that we call straight?

No, of course not.

Should they be scared that an out of state church was able help to pass a proposition to amend a state's constitution to take away a minority's right ?

No.

They should be terrified. You should be terrified. We should all be terrified.

They took away our rights.

The tragedy here isn't that 18,000 couples now have to wonder if that piece of paper means something. The tragedy here isn't that many many more couples who dream of being married someday now have to wait even longer than they already have. The tragedy here isn't that the GLBT folk and their allies took to the streets in protest, thus upsetting some delicate balance that some people think might some day down the line get some people to LIKE some of us.

The tragedy here?

The tragedy here is that MORE PEOPLE aren't out there in the streets.

They took away our rights.

Are we angry? No, we are fucking outraged.

They took away our rights. Here in the United States of America.

They took away our rights.

Of course we took to the streets. I don't want to live in a country where a minority has its rights taken away and DOESN'T take to the streets.

They took away our rights.

What if women had been granted the right to vote and then had it taken away. Would you expect our suffragette fore-mothers, women who fought and marched and went to jail and were force-fed, to just sit down and wait for people to LIKE them?

What if everyone who ever marched or spoke up for their civil rights, MLK and Black people, Césear Chavéz and the Hispanic workers, the stone butches and drag queens and the fags and dykes of color...what if they'd been given the rights they deserve as citizens of America only to have them taken away? Would you expect these people who fought and talked and marched and argued and bled and, yes, sometimes died to just sit down and wait for people to LIKE them?

They took away our rights.

Everyone in this country who believes that all are created equal, that what we as Americans strive for is a more perfect union....

Everyone should be out in the streets, because they took away our rights.

They. Took. Away. Our. Rights.

Whose rights are next?