None of us is safe: the Lawrence King tragedy

I couldn't have said that any better myself.  When a gas station clerk called me sir then corrected himself, the man standing behind me was so upset that I was not what he expected that he ran to his car to get a baseball bat and came after me. Why would he expect that to be a proper response?! Why did he care?!  I luckily ran out of there before anything happened, but the reply from the officer I spoke to was a low mumble to the affect that if I had longer hair it wouldn't have happened.  Why do people think that if anything is different from their norm they have the right to hurt that other person physically or verbally?!

My two cents.

You said what I was thinking.

Okay, there's the woman I share an office with didn't hear about this. She's right-wing, but listens and watches/reads the news a lot. We got into a little argument about it because she said "the fact is lots of people die everyday". In other words "Why is this important? You think it's only important because he's gay. He shouldn't get more attention then anyone else."

Are people saying that here? Because that's what anti-gay people are saying. And I wanna know why queers should have to apologize for fighting for equality and better treatment for queers.

This kid may not have been black, but isn't he a racial minority? Maybe I'm just nuts, but he's latino right? If he were white, would latinos be talking about how they're not covered either? What about asians? For that matter what about queer women? Is it not primarily stories about gay boys getting murdered that gets people's attention?

I think we can really only get worked up over one story at a time, or else it's just too overwhelming. Questioning our motives for caring about one story is just anti-productive.

This is just what we do, we rally behind one story. We use it as a catalyst. Race is not the point. Gender is not the point. Queer is the point. You will not see any other minority as divided as we are. We separate ourselves by gender, by race, by growing categories of sexual orientations.

In trying to be all-inclusive and doing some sort of rollcall to make sure every faction of the queer comunity is represented we dilute the message AND make it too damn complicated for people to understand. Focus people. Focus.

Someone else complained that "Bisexual" wasn't actually spoken in the PSA. But look, how many categories do we need to include? It confuses people. People think what we're fighting for is all these different groups. But we are only one group. I realize that bisexual people suffer discrimination from within the queer community. But this is an internal problem to be dealt with internally. When bisexuals are discriminated against by the general population, it's because they have sexual relationships with people of the same-sex. The queer community sees bisexual, everyone else sees "50% GAY".

It's the same as how the white majority sees a mixed race person as whatever race that isn't white. IE a person who is a mix of white and black is discriminated against by the majority because they're black, not because they're "half white".

Our army is too small to take on all these fronts at once. All we want is a little addition to the law that includes sexual-orientation...in defintion of hate crimes, in definition of discrimination, in definition of marriage. And that will cover all us who are queer.

I mean, think about the "Civil Rights Movement". Think about what it represents. The African-American community? That's what I think of. It was fought primarily on one front. Black people demanding equal rights. That was the catalyst, and they unapolegetically used the plight of African-Americans in this country as an example of why ALL racism is wrong. Stories of black people being abused, murdered and sufferring all sorts of atrocities. They didn't necessarily include every single "race, color, religion, or national origin" in the message. Yet, that is how the Civil Rights Act reads. The battle was fought for one minority by one minority, but victory was for many more.

I first thought I was the only one who noticed. I actually watched it twice to make sure I wasn't mistaken, but they actually only flashed the word bisexual at the end and didn't mention it though they had the chance to do so twice. I don't want to nit-pick here, especially as I think that they did a good job otherwise, but I do feel left out in the rain all alone once again. It would have only taken one or two additional seconds to include the "B" of LGBT. Is this too much to ask for?!

It's a new dawn. It's a new day. It's a new life. And I'm feeling good.

i think it's human nature to forget what's not right in front of your eyes.  that is why it's so important that we are visible.  i lived in hueneme and ventura and, like you, am familiar with VCRA.  i did an interview with the president last year and we spoke about how despite what people think crimes against glbt people are increasing and how VCRA is the only center of it's kind in all of ventura county.  we also spoke about how the increasing latino population has contributed to the anti gay sentiment(doesn't mean latinos are bad) and how glbt latinos are dealing with it.  despite what people may think, ventura county is a pretty conservative place.   

it's sad but i don't think that this case would've gotten the attention it did had it not been a school shooting.  with so much bad stuff going on in the world it's hard to believe that anything will ever change.  you hope that outrage affects change but it's never enough and it will never be enough.  honestly pick up the l.a. times, usa today, n.y. times, washington post, san jose mercury, chicago sun, charlotte observer, or any other newspaper and read the headlines.  it's impossible to keep up with everything that's going on.

i recently moved just north of charlotte and everyday (like in l.a.) there's something tragic in the news.  a unc student was just murdered, a mom was just convicted of killing her two kids, another guy just got life for murdering a cop, and so on... in response to the other poster concerned about the black community support for certain issues, i think it's unrealistic to think that one station (that isn't black owned) would address every issue that comes to light.  i don't know about elsewhere but here in the south the jena 6 were a big issue.  also the case in w. virginia involving a woman who was tortured and held captive...but if you want to know why mainstream media doesn't focus on the little murdered or missing black kids, rent A Time to Kill.

for letting us know about this.

It wasn't her vile words that made me cry. But the strength of everyone in the video saying "We heard that".

I will spread this video far and wide.

Thanks a lot for the links!  I also started a thread about this under the politics forums.  You can discuss here as well and I am going to copy your post to there too for any who may miss the links here. 

_________

and says, "None of us is safe until all of us are safe."

Touching video. Thank you for posting it, scribegrrrl

Of course it matters that he was gay. That was the motive for the murder. It was a hate crime for godsake. If you think that doesn't matter, then you are allowing this kind of society to exist.

What doesn't matter is his behavior or appearance because that implies he, the victim, is to blame.

It's a horrible thing to have happened, but I don't think the sollution is to sentence a kid to the death penalty.

Instead we should address what kind of society we live in where these type of tragedies can take place, and more importantly, how we can change things to prevent more kids from killing each other. 

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-Everyone is entitled to be stupid, but some abuse the privilege.

Who doesn't blog these days?