Common Sense	Common Sense Archive

Do you keep a little book, either a real one or one just in your cortex, in which are logged all the unfair grievances to which you have been subject in your life? The head-shrinkers back in the 40s and 50s, in their homophobic jags, had one favorite rant: Homosexuals Are Injustice-Collectors. The trick was on them. Came the 60s and 70s, injustice collecting became the rage-- it fueled talk shows, movements, and statuary. I note with interest that my country's capital has a Holocaust Museum. Not in Berlin. Not in Poland. Not nowhere but DC.

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It is the end of this century. Shall we do a survey of rights and injustices? Who is my favorite activist of this time? Margaret Sanger comes to mind. Birth control is the major contribution to human affairs in our time. That and the longevity of life, for some, which this century has wrought. There is Eleanor Roosevelt. In the US delegation to the United Nation, Mrs. R. got accepted the Universal Declaration of The Rights of Man. Après the American Revolution and The French Revolution, the idea of the Rights of Man became the standard for the world. Did you also know that Mrs. R's favorite radio show of the 1930s was Amos and Andy?

I know young people who are driven from their homes and families because they are gay. Not all gay youth face this situation, but the score card not only lists the home runs and at bats, but the errors, losses, and flubs. Why do we still allow such tyranny as that of parents against these kids? I have a friend who, as a student in the 50s, was denied the opportunity for a Rhodes scholarship because he was clearly queer.

I recall pot parties I attended as a student in my dorm at P.U. back in the 60s. The lads would gather about, and I was invited. We'd sit in a circle and the joints would move about. I would get all giddy and carry on and tell stories and make jokes, expecting the same of the brethren. They zonked out and would turn up the volume of Eric Clapton and Cream. I didn't get it. It took me a long while, but I finally did realize that being queer meant being different, even at the time in the 60s when the ethos of an arrogant generation was at its highest. It was not a place to be, as I quickly learned. I moved on to older faggots, my culture. And heard their stories of outrage and injustice. Sometimes being young is not enough, a condition soon got over.

What is wrong with this culture? We all have a diagnosis, each one of us. For, truly, this is a desperately sick society at many levels. Boy Scouts. Military. Workplace. Even in those situations of sickness and in health-- when you are queer, how do things change? How are things perceived as different? What baggage must we all carry because there is that unquantifiable chasm? What are we the products of-- if anything? Some gay folks turn out so oddly different from their progenitors. Why did it take so long for Stonewall to happen? You think things change. But do they? In the 50s and on, there were those gay folks who were blackmailed, fired, witchhunted, driven to suicide. I thought things had changed. You read the flourishing gay press. Guess what? Military witchhunts ongoing. Men and women fired for being queer. High school torment over gay identity. What will it really take to change this behemoth, this smelly carcass, of an AmeriKan society?

Nearly 30 years after Stonewall, in the bright light of the hope of change, what can be reported? What list of injustices can still be proffered? We have a national security state out of control. We have attacks on the rights of citizens creeping up onto the worst of times. We have the religious-- with a blessing of the government who grants tax-free status-- on the march against those who seek progress. We have a President and an Attorney General who lead assaults on individual liberties, which proceed with scant complaint. We have got a political climate in which reaction, thanks to RayGun and Thatcher and their heirs, is tolerated, in its incremental way. We have a gay movement interested in Gays In the Military and Gay Marriage. Kate Clinton's quip on the Gay Marriage froth: "Mad Vow Disease!" John Waters's comment on this: "I grew up in the 60s. Gay people wanted to get out of the military and wanted nothing to do with marriage." Is this generational? Or just the right way of looking at things?

I have my list, my little book. All the injustices. I also have my score card of advancements, which have happened. I still live in a culture in which both are mandated. You know, you want something better. My screed against this culture could go on for as long as you have patience for. Stuck like a piece of orange in a Jell-O dish. Still, I have energy and hope. It is the They who must change. Always the They. Always so many of them. I used to want to scream. I take from the Quakers my current M.O.: silent (actually, perhaps, not so silent) Quiet Witness. The West had its Berlin Wall to screech at; I have mine, we all do. "Comrade Clinton! Tear Down this Wall!"

Author Profile:  Mitzel
	Mitzel was a founding member of the Fag Rag collective, and has been a Guide columnist since 1986. He manages Calamus Books near Boston's South Station.
	Email:	mitzel@calamusbooks.com
	Website:	calamusbooks.com