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Queerer Than Ever
Community Compass
Queerer Than
Ever
The bullhorn was balky, and even those of us in attendance didn't get to hear much of the now nearly-a-tradition address to Pride by
Peggy Luhrs, one of the Vermont Pride celebration's co-founders. We received several requests to publish it and we're glad to oblige!
by Peggy Luhrs
This
is the 23rd Vermont Pride March. Some of you aren't even that old and
some of us were part of starting that first pride in 1983. Looking at
where we've come from then I find a mixed bag.
We have made a lot of
progress.
We are visible as we were not
when this movement started: we have won rights in many states.
In 1983 we hadn't even
heard of Civil Unions but we knew we were going to make Vermont understand
we were part of the citizenry.
We are now on television
and very visible. Young folks today do not seem to feel their heterosexuality
is threatened by the existence of queers in their midst. However for every
step forward the reactionary forces in this country work to push us back.
For every state going ahead with marriage another is passing laws to prevent
it.
Pat Robertson has said
we are more of a threat than Al Qaeda or Osama bin Laden.
And perhaps we are to
the world view of a Robertson or Falwell. We do stand for everything they
hate: a liberated sexuality, freedom from enforced gender roles, equality
for women, relationships based on love and pleasure not property rights.
We also embody a spirit of openness
and free inquiry that fundamentalists would like to abolish for their
patriarchal certainty of father knows best and gets to beat up anybody
who disagrees.
Those of us who pay attention
to history know that in times of upheaval, scapegoats are created to take
the brunt of the population's fear and hatred. In this country, the religious
right wing wants to make us that scapegoat. They raise great amounts of
money by demonizing us and blaming us for the ills of this country, ills
which are in reality the product of unfettered and unethical capitalism
and a patriarchy that is always concerned with displays of dominance.
As early as 1980 during the
Lebanon hostage crisis, I photographed graffitti in Los Angeles that said
"Kill Iranian Fags." Obviously the writer was ignorant of the
fact that the Iranians were in fact crucifying homosexuals. Or that he
and the fundamentalists in Iran and fundamentalists everywhere shared
many things including their ignorance.
They always oppress women.
They always hate homosexuals.
They believe there is only one
way, the way of their religion. And all others are infidels or going to
hell, and violence can be used against them with the blessing of their
Lord. Whether it is Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or Hindu, the religion
of the fundamentalists seems to be always the religion of a warlike, egomaniacal,
misogynist patriarchy always oppressing homosexuals and women to shore
up the authority of authoritarian men.
Charlotte Bunch has rightly said the
all fundamentalisms are violence-producing ideologies. And all fundamentalists
are more alike than not, even if they are mortal enemies.
We refuse to be their scapegoats.
We know that we are the children, the mothers, brothers, sisters of everybody
in this country. We will not go quietly. We'll be cheering with the QLA
against the crypto-fascist regime.
We must now have courage in
a regime that means to rule and control by fear.
A regime that thinks it can
use us to further its hideous agenda of permanent war that so benefits
the likes of Halliburton and Bechtel and the political fortunes of Bush
and Co.
We have a role to play in deconstructing
the militarism that has infected this country with its manifestering destiny
since its inception as a Republic. We more than any other group should
recognize the ways gender is used to produce soldiers and sacrificing
mothers and wives of soldiers.
We can recognize that homophobia
makes you stupid. Part of the reason given that our intelligence services
did not warn us about 9/11 was that we did not have enough translators
who spoke Arabic and Farsi. Yet the military discharged several translators,
who did speak those languages, because they were gay.
So in this dangerous time when civil
liberties are being taken away, when the National Guard is spying on the
Raging Grannies, wait till they find out about the raging trannies! In
this time when we are supposed to be ruled by fear and when our community
is so targeted, I think of the folks at the Creating Change Conference
singing "queerer than ever, queerer than ever."
Because if we are the antithesis
to the lying, murderous, war-profiteering, tyrannical regime of hatred
ruling the U.S. at this moment then surely we are doing something right.
And those who hate us, fight
us, work to keep us from having human rights...well it seems they are
secretly attracted to us.
Here is Dr. Paul Cameron, who in the
1980s called for quarantining gays to prevent the spread of AIDS, and
has called for detention camps for gays and for exterminating gays:
"Untrammeled homosexuality
can take over and destroy a social system," says Cameron. "If
you isolate sexuality as something solely for one’s own personal
amusement, and all you want is the most satisfying orgasm you can get
- and that is what homosexuality seems to be - then homosexuality seems
too powerful to resist. The evidence is that men do a better job on men
and women on women, if all you are looking for is orgasm."
So powerful is the allure of
gays, Cameron believes, that if society approves of gay people, more and
more heterosexuals will be inexorably drawn into homosexuality. "I'm
convinced that lesbians are particularly good seducers," says Cameron.
"People in homosexuality are incredibly evangelical," he adds,
sounding evangelical himself. "It's pure sexuality. It's almost like
pure heroin. It's such a rush. They are committed in almost a religious
way. And they'll take enormous risks, do anything." He says that
for married men and women, gay sex would be irresistible. "Martial
sex tends toward the boring end," he points out. "Generally,
it doesn't deliver the kind of sheer sexual pleasure that homosexual sex
does." So, Cameron believes, within a few generations homosexuality
would become the dominant form of sexual behavior.
So we are overwhelmingly attractive
and irresistible. If we are allowed to flourish, heterosexuality will
disappear.
This is like the Madrasses of Islamic
fundamentalism, where boys cannot even see their mothers or sisters because
contamination by the female might take away their resolve as warriors.
Because you have to suppress feeling to be a soldier and kill your fellow
human beings.
All militaries have used misogyny
in the training of soldiers as well as rape in the practice of war. The
forbidding of homosexuals in the military or at least the recognition
that there are queers in the military is partly because a twisted suppressed
form of homosocial bonding has been useful to the military.
The American Taliban would like to
crucify us.
Yet what they fear most is their attraction
to us.
This doesn't mean we are not in danger.
But we can recognize their perversion of desire into hate, attraction
to fear.
And we can continue to be queerer
than ever.
We ought to know, as Audre Lorde told
us, that our silence will not protect us. And also with Lorde to know
that "When I use my strength in the service of may vision it makes
no difference whether or not I am afraid."
Our adversaries' biggest weapon has
always been our fear.
We must remember how much we have achieved in the relatively short span
of our liberation movement.
And we must proceed in spite
of fear. Queerer than ever!