Come here, baby gays, and let me tell you the story about how James Somerton made me so fucking angry with a single line that I had to make this post.
As I now know, most of his audience is young queers and there are things we NEED you to know.
The fight for marriage equality was a massive fucking deal and I will tell you why with a very personal story.
My mom was a nurse during the AIDS crisis. And I mean she started working as a nurse out of school in 85. My mom was on the front lines. She worked with so many AIDS patients that it genuinely altered her brain chemistry. My mother was a homophobe before her nursing career. She was a massive supporter of gay rights until she died in July because of what she saw during her career.
And what did she see?
She saw people who had been abandoned by their families dying with their partners at their side.
And then suddenly…the family would materialize, ban the partner from the room, kick them out of their homes they had lived in with their dying partners for decades, and then watched them ban their partners from even attending the funerals or visiting the graves. Imagine being denied your right to grieve.
And why was this possible? Oh simple. They weren’t married. They weren’t legally bound, the partners weren’t considered next of kin because they weren’t fucking married.
I watched my mom pass. It was horrible and painful and traumatic and terrifying. But it was closure. And I wouldn’t have it any other way because I know…that who my mom wanted by her when she passed was my dad. Because she was scared, she wanted her partner by her side and she was terrified she was going to die. My dad couldn’t be there. He had to work, which sounds cold but understand he had been off work for a month by that point and he was the only one who had health insurance. He wanted to be there, we had made plans to take her off the life support when he came back (we were 4 hours from him) but there was a freak accident and she passed the night after he left to return to work.
Why am I telling you this? Because I need you to understand how important this is to some people. So you can understand how big a slap to the face it is to have people say “marriage equality isn’t that important”. You can understand why someone like James Somerton rolling his eyes at marriage equality and implying we weren’t focused on job equality and discrimination (information that is WHOLEY untrue) would make me see red.
It’s not trivial. It’s not meaningless. It wasn’t about “assimilating” or “appearing normal” (we’re already normal).
It’s about people who had their children taken from them because they weren’t the biological parent. It’s about people who never got to comfort their loved ones in their final days. It’s about people who weren’t able to comforted by their partners in their final days.
So the next time you think “why waste your time on something as trivial as marriage?” Remember my mother. Look up testimony from victims of the AIDS crisis. Remember the people who advocated for marriage equality were the survivors who were torn from the love of their life.
Remember that we advocated so damn hard to give you the right to grieve.
in light of a four day ceasefire in Gaza being agreed upon, i am once again asking you all not to lose sight of the big picture. Biden and the Israeli Government are trying to frame this as a major democratic victory and as a favor respectively. they have no intention of a total ceasefire. they have no intention of stopping their genocide. remember - a ceasefire is the very first step. it’s not even the bare minimum.
the absolute bare minimum in this situation is 1) a complete ceasefire and immediate humanitarian aid in Gaza, 2) complete halt of all military foreign aid to the Israeli government, 3) the Israeli government being prosecuted for its war crimes in the International Criminal Court, and 4) land back and reparations for the Palestinian people. free Palestine means free Palestine, not just temporarily stop carpet bombing Palestine.
a temporary ceasefire is something, but it’s not even close to the end goal. we cannot let up pressure when things seem to be looking up. keep protesting, boycotting, spreading awareness, contacting politicians, etcetera. keep your eyes on Gaza. free Palestine.
despite everything, actually it means a lot to see people who don’t need to care posting for palestine. i often see zionists aghast that “some too-online white leftist in the united states thinks they understand the middle east” but i think this anger and panic and ensuing discourse has (deliberately) overshadowed how much of this solidarity has been clear, straight-forward and compassionate.
i think about how arab countries stood up for palestine first (not their governments, but their people) and how between 1948 and today the united states and israel have categorically and systematically destroyed our abilities to do so, destroyed our abilities to speak at all, destroyed our attempts at self-determination, destroyed our countries, and now antizionist jews, black people, queer people, indigenous people, immigrants and other minorities have taken up this mantle worldwide. and yeah, the too-online white leftists too.
i actually find it very touching to see how diverse pro-palestine protests are. i find it very touching to see someone articulate clearly that they understand what happened to palestinians despite 75 years of historical revisionism and propaganda. i find it very touching when people aren’t intimidated by the middle east like it’s some unknowable no-man’s land full of terrorists and challenge that narrative.
i saw the video of that man who worked for the white house under obama, you probably know the one i’m talking about, taunting an egyptian man at a halal food cart in new york. he specifically taunts him about the mukhabrat, the egyptian secret service, and he says “i hope they take your father’s fingernails out.” he’s openly gleeful to know the term, the access provided by the violence of the state department. i think about how suspicious i’ve always been of americans who speak arabic because they’re usually here to spy on us, modern-day orientalists and arabists who see us as assets or threats.
i think about how these are the people who parrot “the middle east is so complicated” rhetoric—people who say it’s complicated because they hate us, because they see us as savages, because they don’t actually know anything about us and don’t want anyone else to. this is what they’re desperate to hold onto, this monopoly on ‘expertise on the middle east’ so that nobody can say, hey, they’re just people. its not more or less complicated than anything else. it’s only complicated because you’re racist.
its easy to use platitudes like “i see all people equally” but it’s more difficult to demonstrate it when it counts and even moreso when someone claims your bravery and compassion is actually hatred. thanks for doing it.
How is bnha anime of the decade…… they aren’t even anime of the hour of the minute of the second
The notes on this post were so toxic that staff just axed em
1969………
Yes, when the original post is deleted from the server (not just the blog, but the Tumblr servers), there is no root post for notes to be added onto, and also no root post for time to be counted from, so it starts from zero. Most computer operating systems use Unix, which was launched in 1971 with t.he epoch date of midnight on January 1, 1970 as 1. Therefore zero is one second behind that date: December 31, 1969. Also, very unfortunately, this also means nobody except you and anyone you reblog it to will see this explanation, as you cannot open the notes to see comments when there are no notes.
