Date:         Sun, 26 Jun 1994 12:32:20 EDT
From: PMDAtropos@aol.com

[ Send replies and comments to raemo@ITSA.UCSF.EDU only. DO NOT reply to
PMDAtropos@aol.com ]

   The queer rights movement is at a fork in the road. For too many years, we
have taken the "right" road and pined for acceptance by the world community.
We believed that if we played by their rules, then our "rights" would come to
us. If we "clean up our act", we are told, then we can prove that we are
"normal". We are just like straights, except for who we sleep with. Just like
them... We should be allowed to join the military and prove our patriotism
and our love for a country that wants us dead. We should be able to marry and
have the same financial benefits that they enjoy. Our mimicry of their
institutions is destroying our movement. If we fail to recognize and
celebrate our diversity and settle for merely  being "tolerated", then we
will continue to be considered expendable. We are not on this planet to be
taken for granted...

   We are supposed to tell the drag queens and the leather men to go away,
pack up their sequins and whips, that they're not welcome here. The supposed
child molesters among us are the first to be sent to the guillotine, then who
knows who is next. How quickly those who are in power forget that our people
are made up of queens, butch lesbians, bisexual hippies, radical faeries,
transexual sex-workers, lesbian separatists, queer anarchists, witches, queer
punks, pagans and everyone else who is concerned with being themselves. Out,
loud, and proud...Ridding our family of these "blemishes" will not get the
sexphobic, racist, hypocrits off of our backs The right-wingers still want to
haul us off to concentration camps no matter what color lipstick we wear or
what gym we work out at.

   It's time to wake up and realize that those in power in the gay and
straight community are not interested in much else besides continuing the
status quo. Those who say that they have our interests at heart are merely
looking to coopt and subvert our movement of sexual liberation. Next time
anyone purports to say "I support queer rights", ask them what action they
have taken to back up their claims. Buying a tee-shirt or writing a check is
a poor substitute for real physical action.

   Maybe the best thing for this fucked up family of ours is to let the
right-wingers win in their quest to eliminate us through their ballot
initiatives. Then maybe we'll get off our well-toned asses and do something
to stop them. Then maybe the gyms, the bars, the baths, and the clothing
stores will empty out. Those people who are not comfortable outside the
confines of the gay ghetto had better wake up. There are too many of us
absorbed in the "lifestyles", and not enough people committed to creating any
sort of future for the movement. The segregation of gays into a ghetto
mentality has cut off queer liberation from its potential to liberate all
sexuality in all of its forms. Next year take your vacation in Nebraska
instead of Fire Island or the Russian River and find out about tolerance. All
those credit cards and no freedom, except the ability to buy a future of
privilege. The purchase of "freedom rings" does NOTHING to to stop years of
homophobia. They say the oppressed make the worst oppressors. It's working...

   Our 250,000 dead brothers and sisters we have buried are turning over in
their graves if we merely allow ourselves to give up and settle for mere
respectability. The mass death that has cast its shadow upon the doors of
most of our friends has something to do with our apathy and sadness. Let's
grieve together and get on with the job at hand. Sitting on our asses waiting
for our rights will merely bring more of us closer to the obituary pages.
Some of us will not be lucky enough to make it into the newspaper. They will
die alone and afraid. Others will from alcoholism, drug abuse, teenage
suicide and lonliness. Too much smoke and not enough fire...

   If you're going to Stonewall to party...forget it...go there to do
something constructive. Go to NYC to send a wake up call. That we are not all
"normal" boring, straight-acting and self-hating. While the term "queer"
causes some people to cringe at its meaning, it's time to take the term back
and start really playing the part. Let's get fired up. Let's remind everyone
who we really are and what we stand for. Our visibility can create a spirit
in which diversity is celebrated and cherished rather than shunned and
despised all for the sake of being tolerated. Show your sisters and brothers
that you love them and that you will not allow anyone else to define our
agenda. Let the world know that queers come in all shapes, sizes, genders,
sexualities, and colors. Wear your best drag, whether sequins or leather, or
wear nothing at all...It's liberation time, sisters and brothers, NOT
assimilation time; that was last year's news at The March on Washington. So
leave the freedom rings at home. We must realize that the potential for real
radical change in our movement. It is worth the long hard fight so that we
might create some hope for a human future based on love, diversity, and true
liberation.


  copyright- Timothy Buttercup- p.o. box 420164-SF,CA 94142