We Will Not Go Quietly

[Editor's Note: Found this floating around the internet and thought it was worth sharing with you. The author is unknown, but the sentiment's not.]

She is a lover. She is a butch or femme loving Lesbo. She loves breasts, and enjoys cunnilingus, one of the many forbidden ways Lesbian women love each other.

She is your next door neighbor, and the running joke at your work place. She is a Dateline Special you forbid your children to watch.

When you see her and her girlfriend in public, you stare long and hard, exemplifying a demoralizing snare that could ward away the devil.

You are a wimp, a futile, close-minded discriminating person. The sad part is, you bring this garbage to church with you, asking God to diminish her corrupt ways, in order for the world to be "normal." Do not allow yourself to be fooled by your own ignorance and stupidity; things are not always as they may seem.

You poke fun at things you do not understand. You are like a five-year-old child who grosses out at the sight of two heterosexual adults kissing in public. You push her far, and when she is down, you do not look back.

Perhaps you are the only faggot here. You are just a product of society's dictation. You are an annoying gnat to the queer community, trying to dictate the moral rules and regulations concerning love and relationships. You try to tell people who they should be attracted to, how many partners one can or can not have, or what a real woman and man is.

You represent the same puke that mainstream society has been trying to shove down our throats for decades, and now we have a new crop of pompous, self-righteous baboons within our own communities pontificating the same drivel.

Does she scare you? Does she make you nervous? Does your body itch and shiver in passing? Do you break out in a rash? Oh that must be terrible for you.

Perhaps you are so frustrated because she is happy and well adjusted. You are so uncomfortable with her sexual orientation that you cannot possibly imagine why she would not share the same pessimistic appraisal.

She will no longer run and find a corner to tuck away in, trying to avoid you in public.

Spare her the preaching and the manipulation. She is a part of your world, whether you like it or not. The more you condemn her, the more you try to make her feel uncomfortable for breathing the same air as you, the more enthusiastically she will seek out people who are made to feel as uncomfortable as she is.

That is just the first step. She will unite with them, making your personal hate-struggles more difficult, without imposing of course.

The little oppressors walk among us blatantly. But there is a problem, unlike years past, she is no longer afraid. She will fight, scratch and claw for what's hers. You can bet her politics will be in your face. It's not the way she wants it, but it seems as though that is the only way you will have it.

Yes there is a problem, and the problem is yours. She's not going away.

And Another Thing: Holy World War III

By Carole Taylor


Now this is truly not a new concept, but in my last column I wrote about the problems caused throughout the centuries by nasty little things called holy wars. I was thinking at the time just that the holy wars in the Middle East and in the Near East are so dangerous that they may put an end to war, and rights, altogether by putting an end to people altogether.

But one of my readers reminded me of something I’ve written about briefly before: There is a holy war going on right here in this country and has been for decades.

Gays and lesbians are the victims of domestic terrorism in nearly every city and town in this country. We’re fighting as involuntary soldiers in the ‘holy’ war that right wing religious types wage against us every day and twice on Sunday--Christians and Jews and Moslems alike. Their hate speech is what fires the torches of the cross-burning, white/straight supremacists; it’s the adrenaline pumping through your average, red-blooded American gay basher.

God told them to do it.

Well, not exactly. Not directly. They heard it from some politician, who heard it from some preacher, who heard it from some other preacher, who heard it from some bishop, who read it in some book whose author may or may not have been God. That trail of hearsay wouldn’t even stand up as evidence in a circuit court in Alabama.

When anyone invokes the name of God, or Godde, or Jesus, or Allah, or Vishnu, or whoever else may require that His or Her pronouns be capitalized, that politician or minister has you by the short hairs. If a politician or anyone else out to grab power says that God told him to do or say yada yada, that it’s in the Bible or the Koran, you can forget about it’s being in the Constitution. Reason and law are both beyond superfluous if God has been called to have a seat in Congress. There will be no discussion here, because that’s not the side of the brain that will be engaged. The left side reasons and discusses, the right side feels and lights fires.

It’s like playing the national anthem or “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” in the background behind Private Ryan. You don’t see the blood or feel the pain. You only think about the patriotic phlegm that music is intended to pour down your throat. It’s hard to swallow, but you do it. That’s what that lump is. Music touches the right side of your brain. So does religion.

Because religion is about nothing if not about nothing. Nothing you can see or count, that is. If you can’t take it on faith, you can’t take it.

So when the jackboots come for gays and lesbians, they have to quote scripture as their cadence. Theirs has to be a holy war, because they don’t want anyone really thinking about what they’re saying. They don’t want anyone realizing that he might know someone gay, like someone gay, even love someone gay, might even BE someone gay.

And when George W. talks about fighting terrorism, let’s ask him if he means ALL terrorism. You and I live with the possibility of it every day, and this violence is not delivered by someone on an FBI watch list. The soldiers in this holy war may be our own parents or best friend.


Carole Taylor holds a masters degree and most of a doctorate, which she used as a university administrator for much too long by all accounts. She has been a commercial artist, a journalist, a grants writer, a house cleaner and a Renaissance woman. She also wrote a fantastic must-read novel, called
"A Third Story". You can email her here.

And Another Thing: The Hillary Thing

By Carole Taylor

I just thought I’d weigh in on this Hillary thing. This Obama thing. My weighing in will amount to about the tilt of a snowflake in hell, but the owner of this site nags me gently to submit something. (“Submit!!!”she says. “But I don’t KNOW anything!” I say. She used to be in the Army. It’s a dominance thing.)
[Editor's Note: As a former Staff Sergeant and a vet of Blood for Oil Gulf War One, do you honestly think we WANT to be political pawns? Now drop, give us 20 and buy a hybrid as soon as you can afford one! Thanks, dear!]

So here. This is at last what I know.

I know I’m a middle aged (well, more than middle aged) white woman. A lesbian, by all evidence. And probably not all that white, but I haven’t had the DNA thing done yet. I will, though. I’d like to know. I think each person ought to know for good and all who their foremothers were. And so here is another thing I know. Obama is a black man. But he is also a white man. If he’s half black, and half white, he and we can as easily say he’s a white man as a black man. Yes? No? Maybe?

I KNOW we need a black person as the president of this country. I know. The arguments are many. Chief among them hinges on the very obvious fact that slavery was a horrible, horrible thing, and Obama would heal the country. (Slavery’s not over, you know. It still goes on, even in this country, but certainly all over the world. Still.) But if that’s the argument for Obama, that it’s time—and that’s the most frequent argument I hear, that it’s time —- then let me make the same argument for Hillary. It’s time.

Women have been the property of men, white and black and every other color, since possessions have been written down in ledgers or in law books or in hearts. Women are still owned by men in most parts of the world. Only in the last 150 years or so have we not been owned by a father, a husband or a son in the United States. By law. Love doesn’t count when the law says otherwise. Love doesn’t last an instant when the law says otherwise. Recall, if you will, all those stories about how white slave owners really loved their black slaves. Right. Recall, if you will, our own experiences with the power of law over love. So if it’s about healing the scars that slavery caused, let’s start with the oldest slaves ever. Let’s go back 5,000 years or more.

And the other thing I know is that votes are rarely, if ever, cast because of facts.

You may consider issues and policies and promises, but all those things bring about a gut reaction, if you consider them at all. Elections in this country are all about feelings. Hardly anyone but wonks like me even looks at the issues with a critical eye. Nearly everyone votes on gut reaction alone. My gut tells me that all politicians lie. But my gut also tells me that the lies that Democrats tell are ones I can live with. Republicans lie and steal your money for their rich friends, and they con vast numbers of people into voting against their own economic self-interest by lying about Iraq, and lying about gay people, lying about poor people, lying about wars and rumors of war, fear and rumors of fear, let me count the ways. No, don’t.

Let me not count the ways. I’ve already counted them, and since you’re reading this, so have you. So I’ll vote for Obama if he’s the nominee, and I’ll try to convert as many rednecks as I can grab hold of.

But I hope and pray that Ohio and Texas and Vermont and Rhode Island give Hillary her due, give her back her lead. It’s her turn, damn it. It’s her time. If it’s not now, it’s never. Never for my generation, and never for me. She probably didn’t grow up as much a slave of gender politics as I did, because she went to a college that had no men in it to muddy the water. And she wasn’t raised in the South like I was, where gender politics IS the water.

But she stands for a whole generation, the generation that finally said I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore. Women younger than 40, even 50, can’t remember that there were no rights till our generation just went damnation and took them. So I’m taking this thing personally.

Obama may be the nicest man on earth, but he’s still a man, and a young man, and he has plenty of time. I don’t. Hillary doesn’t. And the plain fact is that if Obama were a black WOMAN, or a white woman, or half and half, with the same resume, the same pedigree, the same oratory skills, Ms. Obama would not be in the race at all. You know that, as well as I do.

So this IS about gender. More than it is about race. No one would have given Ms. Obama a second glance. And yes, Hillary might not have been given a glance either had it not been for Bill. But Hillary, along with Bill’s talent, GOT Bill to where they both landed. Even he credits her with his successes. She knows her stuff. She can do the job. She has the resume. She has the grit. She’s had every scrap of paper she ever touched for the past 30 years scrutinized by Ken Starr or somebody just like him, and she survived. She can DO this. Islamofascists, my ass. Hillary has survived the Republican Reich Wing, for God’s sake.

But I’ll bite my tongue and love Obama if he’s the choice. I already had my say at the Tennessee primary, and even took my 93-year-old mother and talked her into a vote for Hillary, too, though she’s always claimed to be a Republican. My mother loves me, and usually does what I ask her to do when it’s really important. And at heart, my mother is a feminist. She just won’t say so out loud, because she’s a good and tested Southern woman. But my mother laid claim to her membership in the company of women, quietly, when as her only experience with a computer in her entire life, she touched Hillary’s name.

I hope she gets to touch Hillary’s name one more time. I hope my mother gets to live long enough to see one of her own sworn in as president of this country. But they’d better hurry. It had better be now. It’s time.

Carole Taylor holds a masters degree and most of a doctorate, which she used as a university administrator for much too long by all accounts. She has been a commercial artist, a journalist, a grants writer, a house cleaner and a Renaissance woman. She also wrote a fantastic must-read novel, called
"A Third Story". You can email her here.

And Another Thing: Donkeys and Elephants and Homophobes... Oh My!

By Carole Taylor

[Editor's Note: This column originally ran during the election season in 2000. You could make a drinking game out of "How Many Things Haven't Changed." Enjoy and drive safe.]


Those of you who have read a few of these columns have probably surmised that I'm not a Republican. I didn't watch a lot of the Republican convention because way months ago when Dubyuh came up with that "compassionate conservative" crap, it was pretty clear anything he said after that was going to be smoke and mirrors anyway.

But like a train wreck or the 700 Club on cable, sometimes I have to glance in on my way by simply out of morbid curiosity. I didn't expect any substantive admissions from the GOP that human rights were a big issue for them, and I was not disabused of my prescience. They are concerned, naturally, about gay issues, but only about ridding us of our supposed affliction through divine intervention, and many of them did rise in prayer for poor Jim Kolbe, their only out gay US representative, and they asked God to forgive him or release him or strike him straight. So far no news has arrived from the Kolbe camp that any of the many prayers had their desired impact.

C-SPAN also carried much of the Reform Party's bitch fights. The Reform Party, as you may have heard, is now The Reform Party We're Really Just Republicans and The Reform Party Damn It, the Next Generation, each with its own candidates for alpha and beta dog. And you will be happy to know that one of their official vice-presidential candidates, Ezola Foster (a black woman who is also a member of the John Birch Society....huh?) has assured us that Pat Buchanan, her running mate and Reform Column A's presidential candidate, is not a homophobe. "He ain't no homophobe," she said. "He ain't no racist."

Isn't that a relief.

We've been given the final word on those questions, so we can all just relax. Buchanan wants to bring all US troupes home from everywhere abroad and station them arm-in-arm along the US/Mexican boarder. He actually said this. Not the Canadian boarder. Just the Mexican boarder. He ain't no racist. But maybe he will actually draw off a few of the truly rabid Republicans from voting for Bush, and if he does, Godde bless his little closet Nazi heart.

Down the road from the various Reform Parties in Long Beach, there's that other bunch. If you are interested in any of the political doings this week at the Democrats' show, you would have missed the most significant parts (to me) unless you were watching C-SPAN. The cable public affairs channel is the only one showing the whole thing unedited and uncommented upon. If you depended on any of the major networks for your coverage (and if you don't have cable, you're almost totally out of luck) you missed the fact that Melissa Etheridge opened the whole convention with a medley of songs, one of which was "America, the Beautiful" incidentally written ages ago by a lesbian. Probably hardly anyone watching knew that bit of history. But most of America didn't get to see Melissa at all since she was on way too early for anybody but political junkies like me.

Tuesday night at the Democrats' do, there was a bit of history made, but again the networks didn't pay any attention to it. Elizabeth Birch, executive director of the Human Rights Campaign, is the first head of any lgbt rights organization to address any major party convention. Again, her comments were ignored by the networks. Monday night was President Clinton's valedictory, and consummate politician that he is, his speech rallied the troupes. But Birch's speech for me was not only better written but better delivered. I'm sorry more Americans didn't get to see it.

Tuesday was Liberal Night at the Democrats' show, but at least they HAVE a liberal night. While Texans at the Republican House of Smoke and Mirrors prayed for conversion and remission of sins for their gay and lesbian members, the Democrats all over their house, as well as all the Texas Democrats, stood up and cheered for Ms. Birch and waved equality signs. My Cliff Notes of her speech won't do it justice.

Forgive me for the brevity of this column, but I've tried and tried to find something really funny or newsworthy about this political season, and so far the Republicans have been so redundant in their vacuousness that I'm at a loss this week. Maybe when Dubyuh and Al have their first debate. Except that I don't like to watch blood and Gore on television. I'm forced in the end to rely on bumper stickers. And not even a *published* bumper sticker because the person who came up with this one (a friend of mine, Gini Lester) is afraid it might somehow garner votes for the Republican ticket. She knows she could make some money from it, but she has this ethical thang, doncha know, and refuses to increase Republican exposure, so to speak. She has created the perfect slogan for the Log Cabin Republicans: FAGS FOR DICK/ DYKES FOR BUSH.

And on that sordid note, I urge you to register if you haven't already, and for goddesake and your own sake, vote. Live as though it matters. But puhlease don't take that bumper sticker to heart.

Booga booga . . .

Carole Taylor holds a masters degree and most of a doctorate, which she used as a university administrator for much too long by all accounts. She has been a commercial artist, a journalist, a grants writer, a house cleaner and a Renaissance woman. She also wrote a fantastic must-read novel, called
"A Third Story". You can email her here.

The Amazon Trail: Left at the Altar

By Lee Lynch

The Pianist and the Handydyke were going to the county clerk's office to complete paperwork that would unite them in a civil union. Their friends came from out of town. I was to take photographs. My sweetheart and I had a union gift all planned. And, as soon as we could, we were going to make our own trip to the county clerk's office.
Then the Pianist told me that a federal judge, at the eleventh hour, had put the right to a civil union on hold. The judge would take a month to decide if a petition signature -- in this case the questionable signatures in the 65,000 on a petition to overturn our civil union law -- is the same as a vote. It's not, and has never been in over 100 years of Oregon voting law. I felt like gay people were being told that he'd let us know if he would give us the opportunity to enjoy the same rights as straight America. What the judge said concerned him was making sure that the initiative process is constitutional. I, in my impatience and fury, only heard the word I have been hearing since I came out: no, no and again, no. It took the Pianist to remind me that "we live in a country where nine states (almost 20% of the U.S.) have passed laws that legalize civil unions and even marriage for gay couples."
I'm all emotion when it comes to our seesawing rights. Our need seems so benign to me. We don't want to have sex in the streets and scare the horses. We, far from being outlaws, simply want to be able to live quietly with security and respect. The challenges to civil unions made by the religious right make me feel like we're being toyed with, like mice in a world roamed by cruel, giant cats.
I'd researched the new law and was waiting till the day the forms would be made available so I could download them, when Judge Michael Mossman, U.S. District Court of Oregon, quashed the plans of so many couples. What I learned by Googling Judge Mossman: he was nominated by George W. Bush on May 8, 2003. He attended Ricks College, Utah State University and the J. Reuben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University. Can I trust that his Honor is, as the Pianist pointed out, only trying to give the other side its day in court?
I feel bullied. Wearing suits and dresses rather than fur and claws, a moneyed, out-of-state anti-civil union group has come to beat us with petitions and signatures, club us down with hired-gun lawyers and sympathetic judges. They hate the sin and love the sinner? Where is the love in this? Lesbians and gay men are so ready to sign on the dotted line, to take legal responsibility for one another. It's something gay couples have done, outside the law, for a long time. Something a huge number of non-gays refuse to do, or do half-assed, running for divorces when things get rough, ignoring financial obligations even for the kids they share.
Instead of using my camera to record this small, proud, happy event in our little town, I find myself an herstorian of disappointment. What would happen if some judge tried to put on hold the unions of straight couples, no matter the legal reason, to give opponents a chance to make their case for referring the right to unite to voters? Even as my sweetheart and I planned our union, we knew that our chance might be stolen by the morality terrorists. Is this just a hold, or will the judge's ruling lead to a long, expensive obstruction? A setback here bodes ill for other hopeful states.
A retired military friend from Texas commiserated: "It is terrible to treat us like less than human beings – it seems like when we think we are going to get better treatment they take it away. Just like letting convicted criminals in the service, but not gays." No wonder we are a people of diminished expectations. Moral waivers are granted when felons join the armed forces, but legalizing our bonds of love is an uphill battle.
And then Huckabee won Iowa. Another four years of judicial appointments like Mossman? It is very clear what we have to do if we want even the cobbled, partial blessings of the states in which we live and pay taxes. We have to vote in candidates who leave the judging to their deities and treat all their constituents equally. We're going to have to work harder in every state so couples like the Pianist and the Handydyke are never again left at the altar.



Copyright Lee Lynch 2008 1/08

Lee Lynch is the writer of more than a dozen dyke books, among them "Sweet Creek", as well as book reviews, articles, feature stories and a syndicated column. You can read more about Lee here . You can check out her Lee's Myspace page . And visit Lee's Tripod homepage .

And Another Thing: The Control Queen Amendment

By Carole Taylor

Once upon a time a bunch of guys in wigs got together in way too many clothes with frills and lace in a steamy back room and committed history.

No, I’m not talking about a gay bar in the 70’s. I’m talking about the guys who hammered out this really radical document which royally pissed some people off. Literally. It pissed off most of the people with power in the world, actually, because it said that one white guy (King George, by coincidence) couldn’t control the assets or rights of the entire balance of the human race. Not even just a few white guys. Now, granted, it often doesn’t seem anyone bothered to continue to pay any attention, but this country did end up with a Constitution. It took a few more tries and a few more amendments before the progeny of the authors finally allowed other human beings to be considered human beings, but that’s another story.

Rumor has it that this country, and even some others, have progressed to the point that most educated people expect basic human rights to be a given. That the pursuit of happiness should be a basic human right, that individuals, even women and even people with skin of some other color than beige, should be able to exercise free will within reasonable limits. We assume human rights to be given to each of us by the Creator and that when a government restates those rights, it is being redundant at best. Conversely, governments who expressly legislate against basic human rights have by those specific actions relinquished their moral right to govern.

We assume that paring up with someone we love is about as basic a human right as you can find. It’s certainly as basic an effort to pursue happiness as you can find. But this right is not mentioned in our Constitution. The document says nothing about the right to marry. Apparently, this basic human right is SO basic, SO given, that it didn’t occur to anyone to bring it up. I have the right to marry. And beyond that, I have the right to marry the person I love. Of course. Next?

Well, not really. For centuries, marrying the person you love wasn’t even an option, but the right to marry itself was assumed. It was just assumed that your father would broker the deal, whether he asked if you thought the guy or girl was cute was beside the point, whether he got your permission or not was beside the point. Most likely he didn’t ask. Marriage was, and world-wide often still is, an issue of property or political alliance. When kings married their first cousins, possession and control of the whole white world was kept in the family, so to speak. The theory being that France wouldn’t attack England or Germany or Russia if it meant knocking off the grandchildren. Of course, history and personal experience will tell you that your family is the very first greedy little bunch who will try to take your inheritance away from you, so marrying for political alliance and protection of property has never been an idea that has proved itself very functional. Took those white boys centuries to figure out that marrying your first cousin wouldn’t get you more land and fewer wars, it would just give your kids a head full of mismatched teeth and concerts on the back porch with dueling banjos.

Marrying for love has only been in fashion or even possible for the past hundred years or so, but since gays and lesbians didn’t exist as legal entities in law or in the public mind at all, marriage for us has never been an issue before now. WOMEN didn’t even exist as legal entities until just a few decades ago, but you really don’t want me to go there, trust me.

I’ve written about marriage before, but this past week, the issue has come up again in the news. Emboldened by the appointment of one of their own to a squeaky chair in the Oval Office, a group of conservatives (surprise, surprise) has decided to dick around with the Constitution again. Read for yourself and weep: http://www.allianceformarriage.org/

These gentle and compassionate souls want an amendment to limit who can marry whom. They fear legislation like Vermont’s civil union law and want to overturn it at the federal level. They fear legislation in foreign countries who have gone even further to allow love to be certified at Le City Hall. Those forking Europeans just won’t mind their own bidness. They make contract laws and then OUR government has to respect them. It’s infuriating having to live in a world that might make us abide by international human rights laws governed by a world court Bush can’t even make a life appointment to. Dagnabit.

I don’t know specifically the individuals who have formed this ad hoc committee, but I would bet it’s the same cadre (or their first cousins) who wanted an amendment to protect the flag from being burned. I myself was concerned about that one, gasping that on every street corner stood a 50 year-old, grizzled and whiskered hippie with his Zippo poised under the national banner. Scared the bejeezuz out of me, didn’t it you? They were everywhere, didn’t you notice? These poor old anachronisms had no time to waste, either, since you can’t drive down any street in the country without feeling that someone thinks we’re all in the throes of Alzheimer’s: If you forget where you are, just go another few feet and you’ll be able to spot a flag to discover which country you’re in. Do they do this in Europe? Is there a French flag on every building in Paris? Is anyone else as concerned about identifying the country as redundantly as Americans are?

How much you want to bet that the same people who want this anti-gay amendment are the ones who want an amendment to ban abortion under any circumstances, who want an amendment to give every white boy an Uzi….Wait. We have that one already. Next they’ll want an amendment to say that this is a Christians-only country, or try for an amendment that says this is a whites-only country.

What they want right now is an amendment to the Constitution that says that only men can marry women. No matching up of genitalia, if you please. And no fatherless families—they say that’s their goal. It’s a statement that would seem to be a particular slap in the face to lesbians who provide two mommies and an encouragement to gay men who adopt. You got TWO, count em, two, gay fathers there. Doesn’t that meet your requirements of promoting families that aren’t fatherless? The next amendment they’ll try for would be more to their real point: America for straight people only. Does anyone doubt that’s this organization’s goal?

The history of amending the Constitution has been one that expands rights. Amendments to the Constitution, with one notable exception which didn’t last due to that other human propensity for pursuing happiness, have not been efforts to limit rights. They have been added to limit the power of government. Amendments to the Constitution have been added out of the prescient knowledge of human tendencies and history. Without comment from the second highest authority, human beings will revert to their natural selves: selfish, authoritarian assholes. Bill Gates aside, the purpose and history of Constitutional amendments is that they prevent government (read that One White Guy or One Small White Guy Mob) from lording it over the rest of us, from telling all of the rest of us how high to frog, from taking away those Godde-given human rights, one at a time or in one swell foop. Amendments reiterate and codify rights. They don’t take them away.

The guys who wrote the Constitution made it hard to change the document for a reason. They didn’t trust elected officials to stop being their baser selves without the buggie whip of law to spurn them on to enlightenment They wanted to prevent individuals and even mobs from sinking to their controlling, paranoid nature.

They foresaw that Control Queens would be ever with us. She is. And she’s a Republican.

Carole Taylor holds a masters degree and most of a doctorate, which she used as a university administrator for much too long by all accounts. She has been a commercial artist, a journalist, a grants writer, a house cleaner and a Renaissance woman. She also wrote a fantastic must-read novel, called
"A Third Story". You can email her here.