This is kind of a hard post to write.  I’m still a little shocked and very much saddened.   Neal and I often walk to Target.  It’s near our house, we need the exercise and its better for the environment than driving that short distance.  On the walk home tonight, we stopped at an entrance to a parking lot for a car that was turning.  The driver, an African American woman, waved us ahead.  After we crossed, she turned into the parking lot behind us and as she did so yelled “FAGS!” out her car window at us.

After calming Neal down enough to keep him from chasing her down and insisting that she say it to his face (I don’t know where the bail money is!), I thought about this and several things troubled me.  First of all, I’m always troubled by bigots that are too cowardly to show their bigotry.  Driving by and yelling derogatory slurs is cowardly.  It’s how you be a bigot without being at risk.

The worst part though was that I hoped she later realized the irony of hurling a hateful, prejudicial slur at a minority group on Martin Luther King Jr. Day.  The irony certainly wasn’t lost on me.  It’s a problem for the GLBT community.  As long as other minorities don’t see the inequality of GLBT people as a civil rights issue, how are we as a community supposed to relate to those other communities without appearing deeply racist or discriminatory ourselves?  I honestly believe that most of the GLBT community sees equality as a right for everyone.  After all isn’t that what this country was founded upon–the ideal that ALL men were created equally.  So how is it that a community that less than 50 years ago was making that argument in defense of their own civil rights can stand up and say that all men were created equally except for those fags, dykes and trannies?

I hope that more of the African American community will come to the realization that unless everyone is equal, our country is not living up to the ideals that Dr. King believed in and that our founding fathers believed in.   Until everyone is free, no one is truly free.  So to those in the African American community that do understand the struggle of GLBT people as a civil rights issue, I say “Thank You”.  To those of you that are part of the GLBT community or are allies of the GLBT community, I say “Thank You”.  But to those of you that are happy to have your civil rights and the “fags” be damned, I say “FUCK YOU!”