I hate gay activism... or at least I hate what it has a)made some of my friends become, b)caused to occur in this country, and c)brought out in various people that I once thought to be emotionally sound.
Gay activism (and, one would call it safe to assume, ANY sort of activism) affects people in myriad ways from the intellectual to the emotional to the physical; people become self-righteous and short-sighted; while they are more than willing to explain their actions, they are also more than willing to utilize whatever rhetoric or semantic they feel will drive their point home... even if it means driving it home to someone who, for all intents, is on their side. To the dyed-in-the-wool activist, there are no targets "below the belt"... there is only one target... and I suppose that is an enviable tack to take, seeing as how it could be considered a penultimate form of focus, but as with most things that one would consider "penultimate" these days, there are always caveats.
Collateral damage from harsh activism is a real thing, and I think has been let off the hook far too much in the past. In Larry Kramer's play The Normal Heart about the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in New York (and the main character Ned's descent into a world of activism in the face of overwhelming resistance from all sides) one can easily observe a single man's resentment toward his own activist drive; his cause becomes his obsession, and he drags his friends and family to and fro in an attempt to make them as mad as he is only to alienate them and push them away.
His friends who would be his supporters are driven slightly mad by his great though terrible focus... but therein lies an interesting conundrum - neither party can see the forest for the trees; Ned's friends and family see a man who was once an artsy and loner intellectual spiral into the madness of activism, while Ned sees a populace ready to blissfully shut their eyes to an ever growing dilemma that has the potential to swallow the world whole. Ned cannot see that his friends are good people; that his friends are actually supporting him and loving him and taking the plethora of abuses that he seems to feel free to dole out. Ned's friends and family cannot see that their avoidance of life will more than likely give life credence to dissipate and vanish out from under them; that Ned, instead of blissfully traipsing toward the grave, would rather they be bruised, beaten and bloody... but breathing.
I liken this to my friends... friends who, in quite the bold-faced manner, tell me that should I not be willing to act against oppression in a vocal and physical manner for my rights (ie: fight), then I probably don't deserve any rights in the first place... friends (on the other side) who reprimand and ride roughshod my attempt to do just as mentioned above through whatever means I am able... a family who is supportive and wonderful, but doesn't necessarily understand to what level they could potentially be involved (note: not my immediate family; I would trade them not for the world...)... the list of discrepancies continues ad infinitum
Ugh, makes me sick... there is no middle ground, and that, my friends is the un-Buddhist thing to say; Buddhism is all about the discovery and maintenance The Middle Way... and it simply seems to me that as of present, in this world in which we live, we are unable to see the middle ground. Should one side chose to turn a blind eye, the other side's observance of the middle ground will be all for nought. Should neither side choose to acknowledge the middle ground, then who's to say it exists at all? Damn you Einstein and your crack-pot theorems...
Here's hoping, says I.
I can say nothing more about it... at least not now. Hope has been an important word this past year, and a big part of me hopes that, like when one utilizes a word far too many times in a single moment that it loses all meaning, we are still able to understand just how simple the definition of hope can be.
Fin...
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