Thursday, October 23, 2014

Lgbts should embrace, study negative parts of gay history

A serious pet peeve I have with my lgbt community is how we don't embrace our history as much as we should. Let's be honest, and this is going to get some of you upset at me. but sometimes when we talk about Stonewall or Harvey Milk, it's because it's the trendy thing to do in our community.

But I'm talking all aspects of lgbt history, particularly the negative parts. A lot of times, we take in such things, I wish we wouldn't laugh in an attempt to take it lightly. As an African-American, I don't take any parts of my history of oppression lightly. I don't make fun of scenes of Strom Thurmond spouting racist dialogue or George Wallace standing in the door way of the University of Alabama in a sad effort to stop desegregation.

So why do the lgbt community make fun of old clips of Anita Bryant or Jerry Falwell or the clip I am about to show below. Why is there such an effort on our part to make light of the negative parts of our history, i.e. the ugly words, the distortions of science, the efforts to make us seem predatory. Why can't we take these images and videos in an effort to educate ourselves as to what we are facing today because in actuality, the things said and done against us are no different than they were back then:

3 comments:

Unknown said...

"A Laugh can be a very powerful thing. Sometimes it's the only weapon we have."

By holding the bigots up for ridicule, saying "See how foolish they are," we take back the power they seek to rob us of.

Erica Cook said...

The reason is because we have a disconnect between the generations that just doesn't exist in other minoritiy groups save the disabled. We are usually the first generation of gays in our family, (that we know of) and we are usually not going to have gay kids. When you hear a story about the civil rights movement or I hear a story about the Holocaust we both think of those stories in the context of our family. We don't hear stories about our grandparents being arrested for being gay, or our parents being fired for being gay. Not usually at least.

Each generation sees what is happening as a new thing no one else has endured before. They have no way of knowing otherwise until later. I went to 4 prides before I even knew it had to do with the killing of Harvey Milk. My parents knew it, but it never occurred to them that it had anything to do with me. The idea that I have a heritage that they don't share with me is a concept they just don't understand.

Steve T. said...

Thank you Erica. I think that was a wise comment.