2011-01-18, 01:41 PM
I agree with Fiel. I don't think the article is much more than a gay man tired and bitter after fighting for 30 years and seeing nothing change. I don't blame him, since it's 2010 and we're just barely starting to see some things on his list of "what they tell us we can't do" begin to change, ex. legal adoption of children (in select locations), ability to serve openly in the armed forces (DADT just repealed), gay students organizing in schools (more prevalent on college campuses but gaining ground in high schools), gay murder as hate crimes (UN just voted overwhelmingly to deem murder in the name of sexual orientation a hate crime), and light, basic PDA (definitely acceptable, though again in select locations).
I think his issue is the same as one of my Mom's good friends, who has been with her partner for 20 years and still has trouble believing change is occurring at all. When I was home for break these past few weeks my mother told me of the day DADT was repealed and how her friend, her coworker, walked to her room and asked her if the law was really repealed. Even though my mother kept insisting it was, saying how she saw it in the news and knew I was spamming about the repeal, her friend still acted as if she had major doubts. Ultimately my mom believes her friend has been living in a world for so long that has done nothing but hate and ignore her that it's hard to believe things are actually changing (which, again, also understandable with the vote for gay marriage in California, the passage of Prop 8, and then the pseudo-repeal of it this past August).
So in the end I think that's what he's getting at: this is a person who has lived through, arguably, the worst times of LGBT oppression in the history of the United States, and is looking for some reason for it all. I think his arguments are very one-sided (read: AIDS + the man), when, again, things really are changing, perspectives are shifting, and the reason it appears things haven't been done with regards to AIDS is not because people don't give a pomegranate or want to make money (though the bit about the pharmaceutical companies and antiretrovirals, I imagine, is disturbingly true), but because it is one of the worst biological nightmares ever faced by the human species. All I'll say is take a look at the massive global effort needed to eradicate smallpox, and then compare the numbers and the viruses themselves and see how bloody difficult it is to eradicate AIDS.
I think his issue is the same as one of my Mom's good friends, who has been with her partner for 20 years and still has trouble believing change is occurring at all. When I was home for break these past few weeks my mother told me of the day DADT was repealed and how her friend, her coworker, walked to her room and asked her if the law was really repealed. Even though my mother kept insisting it was, saying how she saw it in the news and knew I was spamming about the repeal, her friend still acted as if she had major doubts. Ultimately my mom believes her friend has been living in a world for so long that has done nothing but hate and ignore her that it's hard to believe things are actually changing (which, again, also understandable with the vote for gay marriage in California, the passage of Prop 8, and then the pseudo-repeal of it this past August).
So in the end I think that's what he's getting at: this is a person who has lived through, arguably, the worst times of LGBT oppression in the history of the United States, and is looking for some reason for it all. I think his arguments are very one-sided (read: AIDS + the man), when, again, things really are changing, perspectives are shifting, and the reason it appears things haven't been done with regards to AIDS is not because people don't give a pomegranate or want to make money (though the bit about the pharmaceutical companies and antiretrovirals, I imagine, is disturbingly true), but because it is one of the worst biological nightmares ever faced by the human species. All I'll say is take a look at the massive global effort needed to eradicate smallpox, and then compare the numbers and the viruses themselves and see how bloody difficult it is to eradicate AIDS.