Reply #365: i welcome your honesty in admitting this isn't a liberal thing to do. [View All]

[bearfartinthewoods]

it makes it easier to understand the motives. you want to kick ass.
nobody wants to riot anymore so the only action you see available is to out someone you don't like. the part i don't get it how you think it's going to make things better for the GLBT community.

i'm wondering if you may be suffering from a little bit of tunnel vision. i have many gay friends and have learned of stonewall as history but the real story of how progress happened has little to do with stonenewall.

most of the progress happened because a million people had gay friends who they didn't want to see suffer so they said. "that's not fair". they said it to their golf foursomes when someone cracked a gay joke and they said it in the office place or schools when someone was harrassed and they told it to their representatives and they taught it to their kids. that's how it happened.

i understand how it is to be close to the heart of a movement and have a skewed estimation of it's importance. i fell into the same trap during the anti-war movement in the 70's. i thought we stopped that war. we didn't. the population in general stopped the war because they didn't want to see anymore kids coming home in bodybags for no good reason. many of them hated the kids in DC and on campuses all over the country. they thought we were dirty druggies who should get a job. we didn't change their minds any more than stonewall changed their minds. they changed there minds because it hit someone they knew...because it hit them in their gut and hearts.

that's what has changed things for gays in this country. if the people in general were not supporting change, a riot in NYC would just be another bunch of kids who ought to get a job....