No More Ms. Nice Dyke

"In order to win votes, you have to convince people that they should LIKE you."

So, basically the idea is that we have to swallow our anger and be nice so that people will like us.

As a child, I absorbed the message that nice girls don't get angry, or at least don't let it show when we are. Since I wasn't supposed to show my anger, and it had to come out somehow, I started cutting myself and banging my head into walls. What I finally learned is that when you stuff your anger down over and over and over again, the festering pile starts to grow and stink, until it bursts out, usually in an uncontrolled explosion of toxic rage and resentment.

Right now, I'm fucking pissed off that 52% of the voters in California think that I don't deserve the same consideration as a goddamn chicken. I'm angry about the fact that the Mormons came in from Utah and spent millions of dollars disseminating lies about me and my wife. I'm livid that a couple of chubby disabled geeky dykes and their two cats are considered such a threat that the constitution of my state has to be amended to enhrine us as second-class citizens under the law.

God forbid I should make people who think I'm less than fully human because of who I love uncomfortable.

If there's a single reason the No on 8 campaign failed, it wasn't because we were too confrontational. On the contrary: we were so afraid of confrontation that we listened to the focus groups who said that mentioning our families and even the word "gay" might offend swing voters. Instead, the campaign was all about abstracts. We said Prop 8 was "unfair" and "wrong", but we didn't say, "We're your neighbors and co-workers and classmates and friends. We're the ones you'll be hurting if you vote in favor of this, because you'll be telling us that we're less than you, that we don't deserve to be happy." We let the other side define us because we didn't want to be too aggressive.

Yeah, that worked out real well.

The reason we're at the point where marriage equality is a reachable goal is because almost 40 years ago, a bunch of drag queens, stone butches, hustlers and runaway teenagers (many of whom were people of color, but everyone seems to forget that) at the Stonewall Inn finally said, "Fuck this shit". Instead of waiting for the NYPD to like them, they got up, got angry, and fought back.

Remember when the President of the United States couldn't even say the word AIDS, even when a friend of his was dying from it? Remember those pissed off fags and dykes who took to the streets yelling "We're here; we're queer--get used to it!" They weren't nice, and they weren't well-behaved, but you couldn't ignore them.

In the history of this country, no minority group has ever gained their rights by being nice and non-confrontational and waiting until people liked them. Right now, 52% of the voters in this state--my state, where I live and work and pay taxes--have effectively come into my house and torn up my marriage license. I'm angry about that. I have a right to be. And I refuse to sit around and hope that maybe someday, they'll like me enough to possibly give me back my right to spend my life with the person I love.

Fuck that shit.