Thursday, March 29, 2007

"Why do straights hate gays?"

You must read the op-ed from Larry Kramer in the 20 March LA Times, written to a straight audience.

Also a must-read: Larry's speech to a queer audience,The Tragedy of Today's Gays, condemning queer apathy and self-destruction.

Larry is 72. He's been HIV-positive for 20 years. He founded ACT-UP and Gay Men's Health Crisis. He lived through the plague years; he saw them die. He has a right to be angry. He can speak for the hundreds of thousands of voices we've lost to the plague.

2 comments:

TenureTrackNewbie said...

Larry is right, and it is sad. But, being very liberal it would worry me that if gays don't support the democrate candidate, they would only strengthen the republican vote.

Foobar said...

TTN, good point. I canvassed many a neighborhood for Kerry. I even voted for him, though I rolled my eyes.

As with the African-American community, there's resentment that gay votes are perceived as so "safe" that the Democratic party needn't address our concerns -- where else could we go?

The answer, I suppose, is that gay voters could stay home in disgust on election day. I'm too much a Civics Nerd to do that, but it seems to be a popular response when parties don't speak to voters.