Why do straights hate gays? by Larry Kramer

[metta]

Why do straights hate gays?
By Larry Kramer

Why do straights hate gays?

An 72-year-old gay activist isn't hopeful about the future.

By Larry Kramer, LARRY KRAMER is the founder of the protest group ACT UP and the author of "The Tragedy of Today's Gays."
March 20, 2007


DEAR STRAIGHT PEOPLE,

Why do you hate gay people so much?

Gays are hated. Prove me wrong. Your top general just called us immoral. Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, is in charge of an estimated 65,000 gay and lesbian troops, some fighting for our country in Iraq. A right-wing political commentator, Ann Coulter, gets away with calling a straight presidential candidate a f*g**t. Even Garrison Keillor, of all people, is making really tacky jokes about gay parents in his column. This, I guess, does not qualify as hate except that it is so distasteful and dumb, often a first step on the way to hate. Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama tried to duck the questions that Pace's bigotry raised, confirming what gay people know: that there is not one candidate running for public office anywhere who dares to come right out, unequivocally, and say decent, supportive things about us.

Gays should not vote for any of them. There is not a candidate or major public figure who would not sell gays down the river. We have seen this time after time, even from supposedly progressive politicians such as President Clinton with his "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays in the military and his support of the hideous Defense of Marriage Act. Of course, it's possible that being shunned by gays will make politicians more popular, but at least we will have our self-respect. To vote for them is to collude with them in their utter disdain for us.

Don't any of you wonder why heterosexuals treat gays so brutally year after year after year, as your people take away our manhood, our womanhood, our personhood? Why, even as we die you don't leave us alone. What we can leave our surviving lovers is taxed far more punitively than what you leave your (legal) surviving spouses. Why do you do this? My lover will be unable to afford to live in the house we have made for each other over our lifetime together. This does not happen to you. Taxation without representation is what led to the Revolutionary War. Gay people have paid all the taxes you have. But you have equality, and we don't.

And there's no sign that this situation will change anytime soon. President Bush will leave a legacy of hate for us that will take many decades to cleanse. He has packed virtually every court and every civil service position in the land with people who don't like us. So, even with the most tolerant of new presidents, gays will be unable to break free from this yoke of hate. Courts rule against gays with hateful regularity. And of course the Supreme Court is not going to give us our equality, and in the end, it is from the Supreme Court that such equality must come. If all of this is not hate, I do not know what hate is.

Our feeble gay movement confines most of its demands to marriage. But political candidates are not talking about — and we are not demanding that they talk about — equality. My lover and I don't want to get married just yet, but we sure want to be equal.

You must know that gays get beaten up all the time, all over the world. If someone beats you up because of who you are — your race or ethnic origin — that is considered a hate crime. But in most states, gays are not included in hate crime measures, and Congress has refused to include us in a federal act.

Homosexuality is a punishable crime in a zillion countries, as is any activism on behalf of it. Punishable means prison. Punishable means death. The U.S. government refused our requests that it protest after gay teenagers were hanged in Iran, but it protests many other foreign cruelties. Who cares if a f*g**t dies? Parts of the Episcopal Church in the U.S. are joining with the Nigerian archbishop, who believes gays should be put in prison. Episcopalians! Whoever thought we'd have to worry about Episcopalians?

Well, whoever thought we'd have to worry about Florida? A young gay man was just killed in Florida because of his sexual orientation. I get reports of gays slain in our country every week. Few of them make news. Fewer are prosecuted. Do you consider it acceptable that 20,000 Christian youths make an annual pilgrimage to San Francisco to pray for gay souls? This is not free speech. This is another version of hate. It is all one world of gay-hate. It always was.

Gays do not realize that the more we become visible, the more we come out of the closet, the more we are hated. Don't those of you straights who claim not to hate us have a responsibility to denounce the hate? Why is it socially acceptable to joke about "girlie men" or to discriminate against us legally with "constitutional" amendments banning gay marriage? Because we cannot marry, we can pass on only a fraction of our estates, we do not have equal parenting rights and we cannot live with a foreigner we love who does not have government permission to stay in this country. These are the equal protections that the Bill of Rights proclaims for all?

Why do you hate us so much that you will not permit us to legally love? I am almost 72, and I have been hated all my life, and I don't see much change coming.

I think your hate is evil.

What do we do to you that is so awful? Why do you feel compelled to come after us with such frightful energy? Does this somehow make you feel safer and legitimate? What possible harm comes to you if we marry, or are taxed just like you, or are protected from assault by laws that say it is morally wrong to assault people out of hatred? The reasons always offered are religious ones, but certainly they are not based on the love all religions proclaim.

And even if your objections to gays are religious, why do you have to legislate them so hatefully? Make no mistake: Forbidding gay people to love or marry is based on hate, pure and simple.

You may say you don't hate us, but the people you vote for do, so what's the difference? Our own country's democratic process declares us to be unequal. Which means, in a democracy, that our enemy is you. You treat us like crumbs. You hate us. And sadly, we let you.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-kramer20mar20,0,1705133.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail



P.S. Thank you dkonfrost.

 

[Hard Luck]

Well ... that's one way of looking at it.







Ouch.

 

[Sofa-King]

Civil rights movement anyone?

 

[slobone]

Oh dear, Larry was always a bit on the hysterical side. It's a shame, because he makes some good points, but they're so mixed in with paranoia that it's hard to separate the two.

I do think things are getting better, but slowly. And of course any time an oppressed group makes progress, there's always a backlash.

Progress for gays may have stalled for the moment, but things are a lot better than they were even ten years ago. At least we can fuck legally in Texas now!

And no, I don't think straight people hate me because I'm gay. There are so many other good reasons....

 

[MWesH]

If loving men is something that we are born to do then maybe hate of other men is also something that one is born with and that might be one reason that we have men killing men and just saying it is something else. When I first was coming out I asked a street preacher why a person could kill other men and be called a hero but if you loved one you were a pariah. He didn't have an answer.

 

[Croynan]

Why do straights hate gays?
By Larry Kramer



http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-kramer20mar20,0,1705133.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail



P.S. Thank you dkonfrost.

Also, metta, thank you for posting the article.

eM.

 

[woaini]

I don't give a ****~~

 

[metta]

 

[looseliam]

I enjoyed the article. He does seem a bit too over the top on some thing, but I do find some validity to what he's saying.

I don't give a ****~~

And thank you for sharing.

For fuck's sake...

 

[Soilwork]

Quite honestly, he's right.

It's one of the reasons that I spew open distain for all you... I'm sorry... losers who live in the closet.

Oh, you're the first ones to make it all about you... "My Daddy won't understand" or "My friends don't think it's Macho" or "I won't inherit the family jewels."

You cling to your desperate and pathetic closets as if the world will end if you came out.

The problem is that it's not going to start turning until we all do.

It's a lot easier to hate us if you can't see us.

So THIS, my closeted friends... is entirely your fault. I have no sympathy for any of you, and your excuses are tired and empty. In the end, you don't want to come out for your own selfish and spineless reasons.

You don't deserve to live equally or even that happily. You haven't earned it.

 

[bluepheonix]

Not the most solidly written article, however he puts across some very valid points. I for one am sick of religion or supposed morality interfering with the lives of others, not just in our own lives but in the plights of others. It seems nowadays that everyone is too caught up believeing the oppressive opinions put forth by the few to see the truth of matters right before there eyes. There is no doubt that the equality denied to the gay community is wrong, that the prejudice and bigotry undermining others very rights to live as who they are is nothing short of criminal, and yet no one seems to care. This is the tragedy of our world, people simply don't care for their fellow human beyond the token compassion and outrage which gives them a sense of moral validation.

 

[bluepheonix]

It's one of the reasons that I spew open distain for all you... I'm sorry... losers who live in the closet.

Oh, you're the first ones to make it all about you... "My Daddy won't understand" or "My friends don't think it's Macho" or "I won't inherit the family jewels."

You cling to your desperate and pathetic closets as if the world will end if you came out.

The problem is that it's not going to start turning until we all do.

It's a lot easier to hate us if you can't see us.

So THIS, my closeted friends... is entirely your fault. I have no sympathy for any of you, and your excuses are tired and empty. In the end, you don't want to come out for your own selfish and spineless reasons.

You don't deserve to live equally or even that happily. You haven't earned it.

What an outrageous thing to say. How can you sit there and blame these people for the actions of an intolerant public. It is not easy to face the possible ramifications of coming out, you are in no position to understand their personal circumstances, and whilst you may have reached the self acceptance required to openly express who you are you still have no right to demean those who have not yet reached that point.

You dont deserve to live equally or even happily? what the hell is that, last I checked you don't have to EARN equality, it should be a basic right afforded to all people regardless. For one who is apparently fighting so adamently for the rights of the gay community you are sure sounding alot like those who would seek to deprive you of equality too.

 

[Soilwork]

You don't have to earn eqaulity?

bullshit.

you go tell Martin Luthor King that.

Maybe you can tell all the freedom fighters throughout history that they should have just stayed at home and that someone would drop by with a big bundle of equal for them to chow down on.

Sorry, but if every closted gay person found their testicles and stood up for themselves, we'd be a LOT better off.

And I can "blame these people for the intolerant public" becuase the public is intollerant because they don't come out. simple as that, in my own pig-headed opnion.

And as far as "understanding" someones "personal circumstances," buddy.. I've heard them all.. and they all roughly translate as "I have no guts."

 

[bluepheonix]

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

The idea of equality is that you do not have to earn it, rather that everyone is born equal. It is the fault of those who enforce their own obstinate views on other that this right is denied. In arguing that these people don't deserve their basic rights because they are not yet able to reveal something about themselves that will inarguably change their lives asserts that you are superior to them and in so doing you deliberately violate the rights for which you yourself fight.

It should also be noted that its not always as simple as just 'finding your testicles and standing up for yourself'. To assume that there is one simple and definate way of solving the problem is ignorant, "im hear, im queer get used to it" doesnt neccessarily hold alot of sway with those who despise your very existance, and by ridiculing those who do not yet have the confidence to stand up for themselves you are only compounding the pressure, expectations and fear seemingly harboured within the community of which the individual is a part.

"They all roughly translate as 'I have no guts'". Wow, what do you even say to that, it's called empathy mate, just because your fine with who you are doesn't mean it's a simple situation for everyone else. The prospect of losing your family, your friends, your way of life and ending up all alone facing an intolerant world is a daunting prospect to say the least, and perhaps the instances of depression and suicide justify a little more consideration than just "you are gutless".

 

[Chalchalero]

Why do straights hate gays?
By Larry Kramer



http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-kramer20mar20,0,1705133.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail



P.S. Thank you dkonfrost.

I'm glad to see that Larry Kramer hasn't lost his vim and vigour after all these years...

As another poster put it quite succinctly, he has been known to be a bit hysterical at times. But as was also said, he has made some supremely valid points. I am always surprised and not a little disappointed when I come across gays whose main purpose in life is to protect their right to fuck and their right to marry, and then they're all done.

The idea that gays still cannot visit loved ones in the hospital if the family of their partner doesn't permit it, the fact that we have no legal rights of inheritance, the fact that society's institutions are officially biased against gays simply because of the people we love, our lives are still valued far less than the lives of heterosexuals, as far as society and the law are concerned; these are things which need to be addressed and they are real. They are not just Mr. Kramer's paranoia.

My first lover died of pneumonia brought on by AIDS in 1995. His family were a bunch of Christian fundamentalists from Georgia who had never come to visit him in the ten years we were together, but somehow managed to be in New York with a U-Haul truck within hours after his death to clean out the home we had made for each other over the years.

I was 27 years old at the time, was working in non-profit and not making much money, and hadn't yet inherited my grandmother's money and so was completely dependent on him. The apartment we lived in was in his name, everything we purchased was in his name because frankly I didn't have the credit. Therefore, when these people decided to just come and take everything, they basically had the legal right to do it. If we were a straight couple, and I were a housewife, I STILL would have had a right to inherit the property left by him. Instead I was left with nothing and thrown out of my apartment. Have any of you had to start over from scratch with absolutely nothing to your name and nowhere to go? It is a frightening experience, I can assure you.

You may not like what Mr. Kramer is saying, but I will tell you what, a great many of the advances we have made over the past 30 years are due to his shrill shrieks and "paranoia". Without Act-UP and the LGBT Center and the GMHC, all of which he was fundamentally responsible for creating, where would we be right now?

It takes the radical, angry and super passionate people in the world to get things moving. We can afford to look down our noses at people like Larry Kramer and disdain him for being too loud, or too hysterical or too "paranoid", for the simple fact that he made it possible. We can dedicate our lives to sticking pictures of our private parts on the internet and drooling over those of others and cooing and sighing over pictures of that "really cute guy on the WB" because we are not struggling for our very existence anymore thanks to him. Our relatively comfortable lives today are only possible because of him and people like him, many of whom are long gone now due to AIDS, gay bashing, you name it; and their fight for our equal rights and the basic civil right to even exist.

And if you think that fight is over, people, please remember Matthew Shepard. His was an extremely heinous case, but not (by ANY means) an isolated one.

The shallowness and selfishness of some of us in the gay community is mind-boggling at times...

 

[Chalchalero]

If loving men is something that we are born to do then maybe hate of other men is also something that one is born with and that might be one reason that we have men killing men and just saying it is something else. When I first was coming out I asked a street preacher why a person could kill other men and be called a hero but if you loved one you were a pariah. He didn't have an answer.

That was a great question and it does not surprise me that the preacher could not answer you. I wonder whether it even got him to thinking, or whether he just put it out of his head and continued along his merry way as most people seem to prefer to do when faced with a questioning of their value system...

I have never believed that hate is something with which we are born. It is something which has to be taught to us. There is no ingrained value system with which we are born. That is provided to us by our parents and family members, our teachers and our friends. We are born a clean slate when it comes to values, and it is what our families decide to write on that slate that we begin to formulate our views of the world. This is why so many gays suffer from self-loathing. I have never believed that it is a natural born trait to hate oneself. But when our families and our communities tell us that we are somehow "bad" because we are gay, that is what can lead to some of us believing it and therefore hating ourselves for it.

Young people today are so fortunate. Because even in my generation, it was deemed perfectly all right for people to make jokes about niggers and fags right to my face, despite knowing who and what I was. It was I who had the problem if this speech disturbed me, after all, they were only kidding! If I couldn't take a joke...

Nowadays, thanks to PC and all of that other fun stuff that the spoiled youth of today have grown up with, such speech, while still prevalent, is deemed to be unacceptable in most of society.

But I can assure you, when you grow up hearing such speech, it is easy to feel that somehow you are less of a human being than everyone else is, and to both resent it and fear it. We are not born with those feelings of shame and self-loathing, these are things which are taught to us.

 

[Chalchalero]

I don't give a ****~~

This is emblematic of my other posts. Young people such as yourself can afford to not give a **** because other people have and do. Go jerk off to a porn star or something. You have nothing to offer here.

 

[Chalchalero]

Quite honestly, he's right.

It's one of the reasons that I spew open distain for all you... I'm sorry... losers who live in the closet.

Oh, you're the first ones to make it all about you... "My Daddy won't understand" or "My friends don't think it's Macho" or "I won't inherit the family jewels."

You cling to your desperate and pathetic closets as if the world will end if you came out.

The problem is that it's not going to start turning until we all do.

It's a lot easier to hate us if you can't see us.

So THIS, my closeted friends... is entirely your fault. I have no sympathy for any of you, and your excuses are tired and empty. In the end, you don't want to come out for your own selfish and spineless reasons.

You don't deserve to live equally or even that happily. You haven't earned it.

While I undestand your sentiment, I don't agree with you.

In the early 90's Harvey Fierstein began a magazine devoted to outing people in Hollywood and other public personalities. It caused great controversy in the gay community because many people saw it as an invasion of people's privacy and potentially ruining the lives of the targeted individuals.

I agree that more people should come out of the closet. I don't believe, however, that they should be forced out if they are not yet ready to be. I can see the perception of cowardice on the side of those who believe that everyone should be outed. I really can. But when we are intolerant of the needs and special circumstances of those who choose not to come out or feel that they are unable to come out, then we are feeding into the same intolerance directed at us as a community. There are enough people out there who hate us, why do we need to hate each other.

People who are in the closet are often scared and could probably use the support and understanding of those who are out, not their hatred and disdain. I don't disagree that there are some who would rather remain on the "DL" getting their rocks offf in private while then returning to the benefits of their straight acting lives at home. I too believe that there is something inhernetly dishonest about that. But I also believe that a great many of these people do what they do for cultural or family reasons.

It takes a HUGE amount of balls to come out to your family and community if you are, say, a person who lives in the inner city where your very survival depends upon being seen as a tough macho straight man. There was only recently a middle aged gay man who was murdered in Queens by people in his neighbourhood just because he was gay and effeminate. He had lived in that neighbourhood for years, and everyone liked him. But when a group of local youths decided they didn't like him, he was brutally murdered, just like that. If you were a closeted gay man living right down the street from that, how quick would you be to want to jump on that poor man's bandwagon?

Other cultures such as Orthodox Jews will completely shun you if you're gay. These are close tightly knit communities where, in many cases you don't know anyone who is not a part of it. Can you imagine being completely cut off from everyone and everything you ever knew and being left literally completely alone in the world? I can, because it happened to me for a time, and itis not pleasant. Some people are strong enough to deal with that. But I am willing to wager that most are not.

So when you are feeling judgemental about these people, try and take a moment to devote a little bit of the tolerance and understanding that you would demand of the straight world. Because part of equality and civil rights is being able to make the choice for yourself how you wish to live your life and not to have it dictated for you, either by the straight world or the gay one.

 

[Chalchalero]

You don't have to earn eqaulity?

bullshit.

you go tell Martin Luthor King that.

Maybe you can tell all the freedom fighters throughout history that they should have just stayed at home and that someone would drop by with a big bundle of equal for them to chow down on.

Sorry, but if every closted gay person found their testicles and stood up for themselves, we'd be a LOT better off.

And I can "blame these people for the intolerant public" becuase the public is intollerant because they don't come out. simple as that, in my own pig-headed opnion.

And as far as "understanding" someones "personal circumstances," buddy.. I've heard them all.. and they all roughly translate as "I have no guts."

I disagree with this assertion, because you are blaming the victim here. A woman is raped and so it must be because she dresses like a slut? This is 1950's era thinking.

People are intolerant out of ignorance and hatred. That is their problem and not the problem of the people they hate. That's like telling me that if I would just act a little bit more white and maybe bleach my skin a little, then maybe there wouldn't be Neo-Nazis and KKK members wishing me dead. It's my own damned fault they hate me, I should have been white.

I can assure you that most people hate gays because they DO come out. Remember the unChristian Right's mantra, "hate the sin but love the sinner?" Now if that isn't a call for all homos to crawl back in their closets like good little boys, then I don't know what is.

Nothing we do is going to change the way people feel. Someone who wants to hate us is going to hate us whether we are in the closet or out of it. What needs to change are people's perceptions of us so that the raison d'être of their hate is negated. What needs to change is the legal position that we are somehow second class citizens.

Martin Luther King didn't try to change the minds of the racist populace of the South. He knew that was impossible. What he did was to bring attention to the fact that there was a huge part of the population of this country that was being treated as less than human and demanded that something be done on a government level. I agree that we cannot legislate morality or love, but we can legislate equality and justice. That was what he was fighting for. Attempting to change the tiny minds of the bigots in this world is a lost battle right from the start. But once our legal rights are recognised, then it becomes a fait' accompli and it is no longer acceptable for people to treat us as second class citizens.

It took until after the wave of civil rights legislation for the country to begin to see that racism against blacks was wrong. I believe that it will be the same with gays.

Bullying people to come out of the closet before they are ready is not going to change that.

 

[prudyprudestein]

I think I'm with Soilwork. If you hide in your closet then you won't be respected or attain equality. You have to be out, sometimes in other peoples faces and demand and command respect. I'm out to family, friends and at work and have been out a long time. It takes balls to stand up for yourself and be who you are.