the latest and a moment for other people

An interesting look at how various hypothetical votes from the African-American community would have affected Prop. 8.

You've probably heard by now that the Supreme Court is going to review the challenges to Prop. 8, but won't be staying it. We probably won't know the outcome until at least March, so while we're waiting I suggest we continue to fight where we can.

The latest I've been seeing is people saying we shouldn't be protesting churches, or we shouldn't be protesting at all. The idea is that we've got to show everyone how nice we are so they'll get around to giving us our rights. The trouble with this idea is that a) GLBT people are an "invisible" minority, meaning unless we consciously put ourselves out there nobody knows it's us being nice, and b) everybody else is too busy taking care of their own needs to worry about minorities (or other minorities.) We need to be loud to get dialog going. If I may quote Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter From Birmingham Jail here, he makes my point:

You may well ask: "Why direct action? Why sit-ins, marches and so forth? Isn't negotiation a better path?" You are quite right in calling, for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent-resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word "tension." I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth.

In short, you have to start the conversation first.

Today is the 10th annual International Transgender Day of Remembrance, so I'd like to take a moment to address someone else's fight here. Because transpeople get treated like shit by the general population, even gay/bi people who really ought to know better, and far too often people brutally murder them in cold blood and get away with it, and it's wrong. So take a moment -- read this year's names and think about what you can do to stop the hate, because we all should do something.