Don't let your schooling interfere with your education.
~ Pete Seeger

Monday, March 24, 2008

A Challenge to Sally Kern

Okay, Sally. You say that “Studies show, no society that has totally embraced homosexuality has lasted for more than, you know, a few decades…” So name one.

Meanwhile, I’ll name a few that lasted a bit longer. Like ancient Greece, which went from the Minoan culture of around 2000 B.C. to the end of the Golden Age, when Rome conquered it sometime around 200 B.C. Eighteen hundred years of not only accepting homosexuality, but of making it the norm.

But, of course, that included a bunch of different aspects – Alexander the Great was Macedonian, and Sparta, and Athens, Corinth, etc. So how about Rome – 700 B.C. to 400 A.D. Interesting to note that Rome was the greatest empire on earth for about 600 years, but it started to fade and fall after adopting Christianity as the state religion in 313 A.D. A hundred years later it was a thin shell of its former glory. Not that I’m relating the two.

Also interesting to note that the Third Reich lasted about 12 years. It started out speaking of its homosexuals and Jews in similar terms to this:
One of my colleagues said We don’t have a gay problem in our community… well you know what, that is so dumb. If you have cancer in your little toe, do you just say that I’m going to forget about it since the rest of you is fine? It spreads! This stuff is deadly and it is spreading. It will destroy our young people and it will destroy this nation.”
and
“I honestly think it’s the biggest threat our nation has, even more so than terrorism or Islam…”
and ended up sending both Jews and homosexuals to the gas chambers.

Maybe it’s not our homosexuals who are a threat to this nation. Maybe it’s our Sally Kerns.

(Quotes courtesy of http://jmbzine.com/)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow. Agreed.

I just watched this talk on TED from Karen Armstrong, and you would probably love it, it's 20 minutes, but so worth it. Just about the Golden Rule of LOVE and never HATE. Good stuff about appreciating others, I think it was challenging and inspiring all in one.

Here ya go:

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/234

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.
~Helen Keller

Reading List for Information about Transpeople

  • Becoming a Visible Man, by Jamison Green
  • Conundrum, by Jan Morris
  • Gender Outlaw, by Kate Bornstein
  • My Husband Betty, by Helen Boyd
  • Right Side Out, by Annah Moore
  • She's Not There, by Jennifer Boylan
  • The Riddle of Gender, by Deborah Rudacille
  • Trans Liberation, by Leslie Feinberg
  • Transgender Emergence, by Arlene Istar Lev
  • Transgender Warriors, by Leslie Feinberg
  • Transition and Beyond, by Reid Vanderburgh
  • True Selves, by Mildred Brown
  • What Becomes You, by Aaron Link Raz and Hilda Raz
  • Whipping Girl, by Julia Serano

I have come into this world to see this:
the sword drop from men's hands even at the height
of their arc of anger
because we have finally realized there is just one flesh to wound
and it is His - the Christ's, our
Beloved's.
~Hafiz