The Breeze at Dawn (don't go back to sleep)
Posted by Sara at 9:02 PM
http://transgroupblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/breeze-at-dawn-dont-go-back-to-sleep.htmlThe signs are all around us that we are in the midst of something big. A social movement that has grown out of a response to oppression and one that contains in its pedigree the battles fought by women during their suffrage movement of a hundred years ago and by racial minorities in the civil rights movement of forty years ago. The climate has changed in such a way that everyone who falls outside the gender binary can soon gain legal legitimacy if we continue to press forward and do not settle for incremental progress. Full social legitimacy will take years longer, but it will follow, except in hearts filled with hate and bigotry. Equality will not stop hate crimes but it will make them much less socially acceptable. It will by it's very existence increase education and familiarity, and that may make the crucial difference.
Although caged at the moment as being about same-sex marriage, the current fight is for full gender equality. It is the fight to prohibit discrimination against anyone regardless of gender expression, and without regard to the gender they find attractive. This fight has been sidetracked and strung along for a decade or more by the likes of the HRC, Joe Solmonese, Barney Frank and others; politicians that made a nice living and a career off of speaking for the most mainstream of GLBT folks, those that can fully blend in. They made progress within that very limited arena and that was a good first step.
