Yesterday was national coming out day and today is the 11th anniversary of Matthew Shepard's death in Laramie, WY. In researching for a panel discussion tonight at the Laramie Project Epilogue I found myself wondering why we as queer people can feel that "in order to win rights, gay people not only have to be just like you, they have to be better than you" where you is mainstream America. How deeply have we bought into the idea that we will have arrived when we can get married and divorced, just like the straight people? How long will it be before we really grasp that what makes us such a powerful community is rooted in our difference from "you"? Our desire to follow our heart in the face of opposition?
We, the SGLGLBTTSIQQAPPGV community, bring together a diverse and beautiful cross-section of the american salad bowl-- when we get it right. We are everywhere, and we re-emerge in every generation, touching straight families as their children, friends, and extended family. We can no longer be identified as "other" when we sit at so many tables in fragile silence, the truth out there that we will no longer hide behind the reassuring deceptions many of us embraced, for so many years. We don't always look like each other and we certainly don't look like "you" and I, for one, am proud of that.
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