'I failed these kids because I spent 10 years as an openly gay man doing nothing, saying nothing and living complacently while these groups and/or individuals continued to actively pursue demonizing LGBT people'
 
 

SOUNDBITES — "When it gets down to the heart of the issue, I failed these kids. I failed these kids because I spent 10 years as an openly gay man doing nothing, saying nothing and living complacently while these groups and/or individuals continued to actively pursue demonizing LGBT people (or again, the action of being gay). I sat by and let Matthew Shepard, Brandon Teena, Gwen Araujo, Paul Broussard, Steen Fenrich, Ronnie Paris, Jason Gage, Sakia Gunn, Michael Sandy, Angie Zapata, James Zappaloti, Arthur Warren, Barry Winchell, Rebecca Wight, Sean Kennedy and countless others be murdered without speaking up. I was afraid, which is exactly what they want us to be. Perhaps had I spoken up I could have changed one person’s mind about LGBT people. Instead of believing LGBT people should be murdered, the person would have seen that we are human too – that when you prick us, we bleed. Perhaps that person would have changed another person’s mind, and another, and another – and eventually that mind changing would have trickled through to the black-clad man who thought it better to murder LGBT youth than to be one, thought himself superior to those whose lives he took, to those he hurt, to those that still hurt." —JaySays.com blogger Jay Morris on personal responsibility in the face of the Tel Aviv attack

 
Aug 4, 2009 · Link · 6 Responses
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Comments (6)

No. 1 · Dave

Uhhhh. Who?

Posted: Aug 4, 2009 at 3:15 pm
No. 2 · Joe Mustich, Justice of the Peace

It's time.

Posted: Aug 4, 2009 at 3:24 pm
No. 3 · Chance

Jay has an excellent point – I would just take it one step further.

Do what you aren't supposed to do. Say what's really going on. Be specific and completely honest. You say groups and/or individuals. But who? Religion. The only thing that makes us wrong. So wrong that someone would want to kill us. A Mormon tied Matthew to a fence, a Baptist beat him to death, and just recently, Rep. Foxx called it a hoax. She's a Catholic. Religion wore the black mask in Tel Aviv. We have to be able to see the connection. That's our responsibility.

We all have a responsibility to ourselves, our gay friends and family, and the next generation of gay youth. We have to be honest about who and what have defined us for centuries, and we have to make it crystal clear that this definition is not acceptable. Religion has defined us as wrong, sinners, and deviants. Well not anymore.

HRC and other members of Gay Inc are using their resources to reach out to churches. They do not require those churches, in order to play with us, to make any kind of formal declaration that church doctrine has changed, and that we are not wrong or sinners. They've shirked that responsibility.

Posted: Aug 4, 2009 at 4:22 pm
No. 4 · Jude

I encourage you to read the whole article. It provides more context.

Posted: Aug 4, 2009 at 6:56 pm
No. 5 · Chance

Thank you, Jude. I have, now, and I stand by what I said. Even more emphatically. Further comment on the article itself.

Posted: Aug 4, 2009 at 7:36 pm
No. 6 · Brian

Religion did this. Nothing else, just religion.

Posted: Aug 4, 2009 at 11:53 pm
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