“Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself… There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.”—Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail.

84 replies on “Quote for the Day”

  2. #47
    nice, gay Catholic, care to tell us how that works with the TOTALLY HOMOPHOBIC POPE. Even in Seattle Dignity was kicked out of parrish buildings to meet and have Mass.

    New criteria from the Vatican will not allow any gay man to be a priest. Backward they are moving.

    It may be difficult, but, maybe black gay men have to figure out their CHURCH is the real oppressor……let’s have that discussion sans race …..

  3. @50. Just to clarify. I’m not in a competition with anyone.

    I’m pointing out that people using the bible for justification to enslave a race of people (a horrible thing) is not the same as actual orders from God to kill actual groups of people (a horrible, but completely different horrible thing).

    44’s attempt to compare and equate the two is intellectually dishonest, and that’s all I meant.

  4. @52 – Let me clarify. Raised Catholic. I’m not a practicing Catholic anymore. Also in reality, I must’ve been lucky to not hear the anti-gay rhetoric the Vatican says by the priests, who gave mass. But they were probably gay. But I do agree with ya that religion is the biggest oppressor.

    In the south during slavery, the issue of slavery was what the Southern Baptist Convention was founded on. They were for it, while every other religious group in the South was against it. The SBC quoted the Bible as a means to justify slavery. The SBC quoted the damn thing after the Civil War when slavery ended to continue to oppress blacks. The SBC continued to quote it for seperate but equal and civil rights. They even quoted the damn thing to prove their case against interracial marriage. then moved on to abortion and gay marriage.

  5. keshmeshi you DID NOT read what I wrote. Now go back and RE-Read what I wrote. Who said ANYTHING about Christians? Not I.
    Your “Fact” 1: debunked; Justification of oppression by the use of Religious text Is not the same as a Law Code that affirms the right to Kill a Gay person (As I stated). Quote me one Religious text of any Religious Law Code were it approves the killing of a person because of the color of their skin. I’ll take Just ONE.
    Your “Fact” 2 debunked; I never mentioned Christians, don’t play the martyr you do it poorly.
    Your “Fact” 3 debunked; I do fact checking, you don’t.
    You should check your “facts” before you spew, Idiot.

  6. @53 – I’m no biblical scholar, but my understanding of how the bible has been used to justify discrimination seems to be different than yours. As far as I know, there is nothing in the bible that condemns gay people as a group, probably because our concept of what it means to be gay and part of a gay community didn’t exist at the time. However you sure as hell can find zillions of examples of ethnic group damning and condemning and slaughtering and enslaving.

    In Genesis right after the pretty rainbow Noah curses his son Ham, and by extension his descendants, to be enslaved by his other two sons. Ham is then named as the father of Palestinians and other groups that have been interpreted as African peoples. So God didn’t curse Ham himself, or specifically say black people, but that is the basis for saying it was God’s will for black people to be enslaved.

    On the other hand the biblical orders to stone what we now call gay people seem to be based on individual behavior at the same level as straight adultery, and not some concept of inherent evilness of a group of people. That’s why conservative christians insist people are not born gay, but choose to engage in gay sex and therefore sin. But of course they use that to justify discrimination against what we recognize as a group, the LGBTQ community.

    So I think it’s totally appropriate that keshmeshi would draw that comparison, and the only intellectual dishonesty I see is people who think some thousand-old story makes it ok to suppress anyone’s rights. Bonus rant: the quote in my last comment about how Eve was condemned to suffer pain in childbirth was used to justify burning midwives as witches during the inquisition, because they defied God’s order that women suffer for Eve’s sin.

  7. One of the biggest forms of Enslavement is Economic Enslavement. 3 percent of the people own 84 percent of the stuff. Focusing on the small issues takes our eyes off the prize. People who use and control the land and resources are the real oppressors.

  9. Minorities are second-class citizens within the gay community; I do not see that changing if you get what you want. In fact, it would only get worse. You aren’t liberals, you are libertarians pretending to be liberals to construct a fake coalition which you are quite willing to jettison as soon as it serves its purpose. The church STARTED the civil rights movement–the gays can never equal that. I’d rather know that the poor and hungry are clothed, sheltered and fed than ever have gay marriage. The reaction to your defeat showed me your ‘true colors’, and I have no intention of making myself vulnerable. That is all.

  10. @59
    ditto
    The Homosexual ‘lifestyle’ is all about self centeredness.
    It is about sexual gratification without the responsibility of procreation.
    Gays only care about Blacks to the extent they can use them to achieve their political objectives.
    They couldn’t care less how many Black women die from AIDS.

  11. @60 More ignorant lies LeRoi. All people who care about injustice, gay people included, care about the injustices to black people. To say they only care so “they can use them to achieve their political objectives” is just plain false and you know it. As far as sexual gratification goes, how else would you explain so many fatherless and unsupported children of hetero’s than to say it’s sexual gratification without the responsibilty of procreation?

  12. #56. These three biblical passages seem pretty straightforward to me.

    Leviticus 18:22: Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; it is an abomination.

    Leviticus 20:13: If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.

    Romans 1:26-27 (TNIV): Because of this [idolatry], God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
    +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

    The Palestinian/Israeli conflict is Biblically-based, I agree, but that’s not what we’re discussing here. The Bible does not say: “America and Europe: Go to Africa and kidnap Ham’s descendants; bring them to the Americas and enslave them.” The relationships between Arab and Israeli nations has been in conflict since those tribes could write their own histories.

    The Bible, however, does say that same-sex relations are worthy of death, and it’s instructed in both the Old and New Testaments, and it is universal. This isn’t God instructing primitive, Nomadic tribes why they should start fighting each other. This is God telling his chosen people–and later, the Gentiles–to kill homosexuals. It’s straightforward. There may not have been a term for homosexuality or bisexuality, but we know that it was common life among Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans (notice who Paul was addressing in his letter).

  13. #60. Gays only care about Blacks to the extent they can use them to achieve their political objectives.

    I have heard this so often since the election, it makes me want to scream. I’ll say it as bluntly and as respectfully as I can: Not having much in common does not mean not giving a shit.

    The straight African American culture and gay culture don’t have much in common with each other. As a rule, we don’t share common interests in the arts, be it film, music, or even books. We don’t enjoy doing the same things. We like different types of entertainment; we take different types of drugs; we like to eat different foods. Our cultures don’t much overlap with each other. We don’t even worship the same way. This is not a judgment; it’s not a negative thing; it’s just the way it is.

    Damn! Let’s break it down further! The same thing can be said of the gay and lesbian cultures! And we may sometimes snipe at each other the way brothers and sisters do, but you don’t see us voting against each others civil rights!

    Doesn’t it make sense, then, that we wouldn’t hang out with each other or date each other much? That doesn’t mean that we don’t give a shit about each other! That doesn’t mean we’d vote against your rights, for god’s sake!

    I used to think that one thing blacks and gays had in common was politics. We tend–for the most part–to vote the same way. But I’ve since realized that we vote Democratic for different reasons.

    I heard black people, over and over, since the election complaining that gays don’t invite them to our reindeer games. Think about it, would you want to come to our parties and hang out? Do you like our music? Our movies? Our literature? For the most part, no. I know I’m generalizing here, but it just seems to me that we just have different interests. But, god, not having much in common shouldn’t be a deal breaker about everything!

  14. @63 – If you say African American culture and gay culture don’t have much in common, then how do I as a gay African American fit in? The overlap in my interests exist. The only difference is that I date men not women.

    The issue is that when people speak of gay culture and black culture clashing, they always forget about gay and lesbian blacks. When you see me on the street and don’t know me, what’s the first thing you see? A black guy or a gay guy?

  15. @64 – That’s why I put “as a rule.” And I knew I was generalizing, but I was just trying to make the point that just because–as a rule–our cultures don’t have much at all in common, doesn’t mean that they don’t care about the other.

    To you, apres_moi, I’d say you should think about what you like, where you’ll feel most comfortable, and what’s most important to you and hang with that culture. And if you choose the gay culture, it won’t mean you don’t give a shit about black people.

    If you choose the black culture, it won’t mean that you should automatically vote against gay rights.

    Maybe one day, it won’t be such an either/or.

  17. lol, yeah, the way gays are treated is very similar to the the way blacks were treated. Stop the navel gazing. Fags are so self centered it makes me kinda happy to see them get hated on.

  18. a tune:
    dedicated
    to reconciliation
    and Love.

    >sung to the tune of
    ‘The Farmer And The Cowboy’
    from ‘OklaHOMO'<

    (Dan; I’ll wait while you run get your dancing shoes……
    ready?…

    The negro and the gayboy should be friends
    Oh, the negro and the gayboy should be friends
    One wants to marry his beau, the other just to boink his Ho
    But that’s no reason why they can’t be friends
    Democratic folks should stick together
    Democratic folks should all be pals
    Gayboy dance with the downlow negro,
    DownLow gives AIDS to his gals.

    I think we can get Elton to sing it at Obama’s inauguration.

  20. For those of you who think that MLK, Jr. would be in support of your cause, please remember that he was a Baptist minister. The tenets of his faith, like all the other faithful, would be against the idea of gay marriage. I like how you use his words, but forget who he was!

    It’s a little like trying to John Paul II would support abortion.

  22. @62 – What I’m saying is the many ways the bible has been used to justify violence against certain people is fucked up; it seems ridiculous to try to say one form is worse than others because it is explicitly written to kill someone who does this thing. And yes, I know there have always been gay people, but that doesn’t change the fact that the laws you quoted are about what was seen as individual behavior. Interpretations of God’s word have had much more weight throughout history since christianity became a powerful institution than a strict literal reading of the bible indicates.

    I have to say your reply to apres_moi at 65 seems really fucked up to me. I can only assume that your only connection to black culture is through media stereotypes. It’s not either/or for apres_moi; he’s an adult, he has his life experience to help him shift between cultures. For you to spout some G.W. Bush “you’re either with us or against us” advice for him to choose only one group is just bullshit. Actually re-reading your comment you have already chosen for him: saying “just because our cultures don’t have much in common” is you taking ownership of gay culture and placing him in black (straight) culture. And that helps create allies how?

  23. @72. I promise I didn’t mean to do that. Tell apres_moi what to do, I mean. He asked me for my opinion about where black gays and lesbians fit in when they’re being pulled by two very different cultures. At least I thought that’s what he was asking me. I guess I was just answering from my own experience. Being a gay, tom boyish, bookish nerd growing up among poor white trash in the south, I too have to “pick and choose” part of my two cultures. Two cultures that have nothing in common with each other (Italian/Catholic/uneducated/southern and gay/educated/bourgeois/activist/atheist/leftist). I deal with the weird duality every day. I also know the culture I fit in the easiest with.

    I thought it was common knowledge that African American culture and gay/lesbian culture have little in common, and I don’t mean what we get from the news or Queer as Folk. I don’t know, the differences seem to stare me in the face. This is not a judgment on either culture. It’s just my empirical observation.

    Honestly, it’s only been now that I realize I’ve been offending you with my every post. I’m very new to Slog, and I’ve been delighted and relieved to find a place where this difficult, volatile, but important conversation is still continuing to take place. I mean, at least here, the few trolls are ignored! Most other places (at least ones with which I’m familiar) it’s gone away because no one wants to address it.

    Seriously, asteria (and apres_moi if needed), please accept my apology for being offensive. I honestly thought I was onto something good and helpful here.

  24. 70..that’s the stupidest thing i’ve heard all week..as if all baptists beleive the same things .. as if there aren’t MANY different kinds of baptists.. and as if black baptists and white baptists believed the same thing in his day..or in this day..
    tell me more about who he was..
    stupid stupid stupid

  25. What I see is that, as their rights continually expand, the gays move sharply to the right. I think they are upset because the minorities stabbed them in the back first. Gay marriage signals the end of gay/lesbian political involvement. All those years of the closet signify them not being willing to take political risks for anyone else besides themselves. It wasn’t HIV that caused people to come out, but the availability of pre-packaged identities to slip into and safe, sanitized, segregated ghettos to live in. Real edgy.

  26. I guess in the end what offends me is not so much your co-opting of the language of the civil rights movement–that belongs to everyone–but rather your appropriation of a history which is actually someone’s heritage. Like it or not, the gays are generally not linked by blood; you will never feel the pain that, say, Matthew Shepard’s mother or MLK’s children felt.

    But hey, at least that allows you to distance yourself from your history and its responsibility in a way that blacks, whites, Jews, etc cannot. Like the feminists, you have ‘waves’ (‘generations’ is a word studiously avoided); so when things such as racial exclusivity are brought up, you can merely attribute them to the previous wave.

    I particularly have to recommend looking into the end of ‘second wave’ feminism. They, like you, pretended to have a giant rainbow tribe. They, like you, consistently ignored the pleas of the poor and minorities. They, like you, ascribed to racial caste. And when they tried to pass the ERA, they lost. The ERA still isn’t legislated into law. That should tell you how successful this marriage fight is going to be.

    The civil rights movement had to have sold out entirely before white gays would join it. Your ‘activism’ consists of snaring corporate endorsements. Ask Microsoft to legitimize your marriage; don’t further cheapen the words of King.

  27. jade @73 – you know, I really wasn’t offended; I was angry about a lot of the other comments that just reproduce this (straight) black vs. (white) gay divide most people take for granted as always true. You happened to respond to that comment, and I responded to you, and even though I was clearly angry I tried to be respectful of you as a person. I don’t really think you need to apologize, at least not to me. If you feel that I was offensive to you, do accept my apology.

    I think it is totally valid for you to say that your experience has been that there is no “common ground” between gay and black culture. But don’t try to impose that perspective on everyone, especially someone who already has spoken about his experience as a gay black man. I didn’t read the response @64 as him asking your opinion about where he fits in; what I read (read into?) it was: “hey, you are talking about this divide as if it’s miles apart, and if that’s true that doesn’t leave me any space to be fully myself. what the fuck.” Just because there isn’t much common ground doesn’t mean there is no common ground, and it definitely doesn’t mean people can’t move back and forth between different cultural spaces.

    As I said in an earlier post, I’m a straight white woman. But I have the humbling experience of having close queer friends that will bluntly but lovingly call me on my straight assumptions. I have also sought out the perspective of queer people of color, mostly women, through books and documentaries and occasionally workshops. Mostly what I hear from them is that they just want the space to be themselves; don’t ask someone to choose between the black community and the gay community. Do you choose between being white and gay? I am of course assuming here that you are white because you haven’t mentioned your own race.

    If we (white folks) really want to help queer black folks with homophobia in the black community I think we should first support their humanity, ask what kind of support we could give, and also work on finding what we have in common. But I don’t know how to do that on Slog, and I know when people have asked similar questions at events I’ve been to the answer is usually that we actively engage in conversation with other white people about how we participate in racism, even unintentionally, and what we can do to resist racism.

  28. Some people are offended because supposedly blacks have endured much more than gays. I’m not so sure. If blacks have endured it for hundreds of years, gays have endured prejudice for thousands. If blacks have been killed, gays have resorted to suicide. It is true that blacks have no closet to resort to, but closeted gays live in the constant fear of exposure and blackmail. If homosexuality were not so poorly regarded, Larry Craig would have sex in his bedroom not a bathroom. The ‘N’ word is out of circulation, but any form of denigration tends toward a homosexual epithet. Are the two comparable? Yes and no. I understand the african-american’s unease with the comparison. I wish they could understand the gay person’s position better.

  30. could somebody clarify for me. is it not true that the civil right that gays are fighting for is marriage in name?

    to me it seems like the equal rights under the law that black people fought for in the civil rights movement of the last century can really only be compared in spirit, and even that is a stretch. yes, the hatred and homophobia are as vivid and destructive as the racism and hate crimes against black people, but those represent a cultural void of morality that cannot be addressed by laws (i.e. its already illegal to beat a man because he is gay). however, looking at the actual civil rights being fought for here, and without detracting from the injustice of prop 8, many people, including myself, see it as a little too much of a stretch to compare the gay couple who doesnt have a marriage license to the black couple being blasted with a firehouse for absolutely no reason.

    pick me apart, and im sorry about the extemporaneous rambling that are my thoughts.

  31. #80..if that is the summary of the discussion..here goes..
    while it’s true that the current ‘right’ that’s highlighted ( marriage ) singular, i think it’s a mistake of tone and focus to separate the marriage and family rights from the entire gay struggle for respect and rights in general. it would be like separating any one aspect of african american rights from the whole. the rights won by african americans did not naturally extend to all people and the struggle for inclusion – of rights to privacy, to family, to employment, to not be discriminated against as regards housing , hate crime statutes, health care issues – while largely addressed in whole are still issues for gays in many places in this country. and they still are for african americans as well. this is why the comparison is apt. for both the gathering of rights is a process for gays this is another step in that process.prop 8 ( and i’m not sure why no-one in this discussion grasps that the california prop is but one of many that are either on the books or in the planning stages ) is but part of that struggle.
    oh ..and the gay couple that wants a marriage license ? they aren’t just looking for a piece of paper or for a ‘name’ , but for all the protection that the law afford other couples, for them , their spouses, their children and their families. it may seem like small potatoes to those who can take these rights for granted, but the vehemence by which we continued to be denied suggest otherwise.

  32. The difference between the civil rights struggle and the gay rights struggle is that gays actually care about the gay rights struggle. You, like the 3rd wave feminists, lack the responsibility of blood. Those people who got the dogs and fire hoses were the fathers and grandfathers of the people who voted yes on Prop 8. And why not? When the civil rights struggle was going on, the only ‘out’ gays were those who could not afford a closet–namely the poor and minorities. You didn’t attend the marches, you have no legacy in the civil rights movement. You have corporations and the gay dollar. The rights and safety for non-white gays will not improve should you get marriage. What will happen is that you will drop out of the civil rights movement altogether.

    You had every opportunity to address what minorities in your own community complained about. Instead the marches, clubs and organizations are now de facto segregated. The minorities voted with their feet, and I don’t blame them. In fact, white people (gays especially) have shown that oppressing someone else seems to be the quickest path to prosperity–how exactly are minorities to blame in taking it? Why, when showcasing ‘gay history’ do you showcase Abe Lincoln and not Cecil Rhodes? Indeed, the gay clubs are still segregated by door policy in South Africa–that’s his gay legacy. The real disparity is in saying we don’t have the moral right to be as prejudiced as you have already shown yourselves to be. If it gains true minorities power, then I say to hell with gay marriage, gay adoption, and antidiscrimination policies in general. I know they don’t help me.

  34. but one good thing he has managed to accomplish inadvertently is to reveal how tenuous any notion of “community” is when applied to gay people.

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