Does the LGBT Movement Need to "Get Real?"

[Shana A]

Does the LGBT Movement Need to "Get Real?"
Filed by: Michael Crawford
November 29, 2008 10:00 AM

http://www.bilerico.com/2008/11/title_tbd.php

There is a moment in every Dr. Phil show were he tells the guests of the day that they need to "get real" and stop the behaviours that are causing them pain and emotional distress.I think it is high time that the LGBT community internalize that message and end the sometimes limp-wristed approach we take to fighting for our right to equal treatment under the law.

Continuing reports and analysis coming out about the No on Prop 8 campaign show that our side ran a timid and poll-driven campaign that avoided the use of images and messaging featuring same-sex couples talking about how Prop 8 would effect their lives, ignored outreach to communities of color until the last minute and failed to anticipate anti-gay tactics that even a first year poli-sci student could have predicted.

[NicholeW.]

I liked Mike Crawfor's essay and think it's nail-on-the-head correct. For all too long we've withdrawn, withdrawn, withdrawn -- and if lesbian and gay folks have done that TG/TS people are actually prolly much more withdrawn.

And we wonder, consistently why we lose "rights issues." Because, it's easy enough to believe that families are not part of the homosexual experience -- when they are -- strong, vibrant and enviable-by-straights families. But we want to turn our political power into "reason."

TG/TS people discovered, if we discovered anything, Ocotber of last year that the same thing applies to us. We don't share the emotional impact on us of our lives and the ways we are treated legally and socially that no other people in this country have to, or would, put up with.

Rationality is not gonna win people over in great enough numbers to make the difference. On the other hand, knowing that one is hurting and harming people just like oneself, in every way, not "freaks" or "child-molesters" or "rapists," makes it that much harder to deny those people exactly what I already have.

In 1964 the murders of three young men in Philadelphia, MS and a 1963 church bombing in Birmingham, AL, probably did more to eventually make changes in the ways we actually treated one another as racial beings than any number of debates and "well-thought-out" proposals did.

Sad that it takes horrific murders to accomplish that.

Nichole 

[Natasha]

Does the LGBT Movement Need to "Get Real?"

http://bloggernista.com/2008/11/29/does-the-lgbt-movement-need-to-get-real/
11/29/2008

There is a moment in every Dr. Phil show were he tells the guests of the day that they need to "get real" and stop the behaviours that are causing them pain and emotional distress.I think it is high time that the LGBT community internalize that message and end the sometimes limp-wristed approach we take to fighting for our right to equal treatment under the law.

Continuing reports and analysis coming out about the No on Prop 8 campaign show that our side ran a timid and poll-driven campaign that avoided the use of images and messaging featuring same-sex couples talking about how Prop 8 would effect their lives, ignored outreach to communities of color until the last minute and failed to anticipate anti-gay tactics that even a first year poli-sci student could have predicted.