In his April 26 column, activist/author Wayne Besen says U.S. gays have a choice:
Sequester themselves in their closets, or don boxing gloves.
Besen sees corporate America, gays and Jews losing power and facing harassment from a minority of theocrats, while a majority of Americans stands by and allows “our legal rights and our basic humanity” to be stripped away.
I’m disappointed that Besen chose to focus on Larry Kramer, who offers little beyond “gays in America are dead, buy my book where I will tell you yet again about how horrible gays are” (Kramer’s pandering to homophobic and hysterical during the “AIDS superstrain” media hype showed why he is so one-note and unreliable — he wants to hear the worst because it confirms his own judgments and hostility towards his own kind). Why didn’t he say anything about John Aravosis at America Blog? John is one of the people who broke the story on Microsoft. He has almost singlehandedly pushed this story as well as the story about Microsoft paying Ralph Reed in the national media spotlight. And we’re now seeing Gates claiming that Microsoft may support the legislation next year. This has been a PR disaster for them. Yet, Besen doesn’t mention any of the counteroffensives by gays.
As for Magellan, this is a disappointment but a turning point for gay rights? Again, I don’t think so. Thockmorton was on their board for quite some time, and he clearly had some connections or some kind of pull that put him back there. It wasn’t like he walked up to them a few months ago, barked “give me a job” and they complied. It would be like claiming Exxon merging with Mobil and yanking away all the benefits for gay employees was the end times for gay rights.
There are civil unions in Connecticut, there may be anti-discrimination laws in Colorado (of all places), the Republicans are having a hard time passing gay adoption bans even in states like Virginia and Texas. There is a lot that we should worry about but there is no reason to go on and on about a huge backwards slide. The truth is that there have always been slides in the gay rights movement. Things come and go. This isn’t the end. And I don’t say that because I’m a Pollyana — I’m a very pessimistic person. But I don’t profit from exploiting fear and negativity, as Larry Kramer does. I’m really disappointed that Wayne Besen focused on that kind of fear-mongering at the expense of a real plan to combat anti-gay sentiment.
The other thing that bugs me…is he really saying that he was more confident in ’94 (when viciously anti-gay Republicans took over state and Congressional politics) than today? I think that a lot of people pave over how anti-gay much of the 90’s were.