It Is So Hard To Fight Fear And Ignorance

When I was taking a community organizing class one of the things that they taught was if you can tap a person’s emotions (fear, hate, love, etc.) it becomes very hard to break that connection. Some of Saul Alinsky rules are “Ridicule is man's most potent weapon” and "The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself” and that is what the opposition has learned and learned well.

How a Ferocious Backlash to LGBT Equality Is in Full Force While Leaders Have No Strategy
Huffington Queer Voice
By Michelangelo Signorile
February 20, 2016

In South Dakota, Governor Dennis Daugaard is right this moment mulling over a bill sent to his desk by the legislature that would bar transgender students -- kids often facing bullying and discrimination -- from using bathrooms or locker rooms that correspond with their gender identity. The bill defines such facilities as "designated for and used only by students of the same biological sex" and federal officials say it violates federal law, specifically Title IX of the Civil Rights Act. South Dakota would be the first place to pass such a law, but it certainly doesn't look like the last.

In Georgia and Mississippi, new "religious liberties" bills that would allow government workers, taxpayer-funded groups and businesses whose owners or operators oppose gay marriage to discriminate againt gays, have advanced. Legislators in over twenty other states are pursuing similar actions. And in Texas, a new Kim Davis is on the horizon, as Molly Criner, the clerk of rural Irion County, says she may not give out marriage licenses to gay couples (no couples have apparently yet come to get one). She testified last week before a Texas legislative committee. "This is going to be something that violates my oath," she claimed.

A backlash against LGBT equality is in full swing, eight months after marriage equality came to the entire nation, and it's not just happening in very conservative places. In Houston, a city which had a lesbian mayor and prided itself on inclusiveness, a ballot measure rescinded the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance with an overwhelming majority last November, as opponents targeted transgender people with a campaign of hate and "bathroom panic" via television ads.

LGBT leaders not only didn't have a plan then, they've still not figured out how to deal with bathroom panic and the right's age-old tactic of exploiting people's fears about their children with regard to the presence of gay or transgender people.

I read a number of reports on focus groups run by LGBT organizations and they found it is hard to break that linkage with fear. It worked with segregation (Oh my god, a black man is going to be in a bathroom with a little white boy!), it worked against the gays (Oh my god, a gay man is going to be teaching our children in school!) and it is working with us.

The only things that the focus groups found that somewhat works are education but a lot of the people don’t want to listen and also visibility. Harvey Milk was right when he said,

“Gay brothers and sisters, you must come out. Come out to your parents. I know that it is hard and will hurt them, but think about how they will hurt you in the voting booth! Come out to your relatives. Come out to your friends, if indeed they are your friends. Come out to your neighbors, to your fellow workers, to the people who work where you eat and shop. Come out only to the people you know, and who know you, not to anyone else. But once and for all, break down the myths. Destroy the lies and distortions. For your sake. For their sake.”

I feel that we have to visible!

I know that is hard for many of us to do because of loss of family, jobs and housing, but who can safely come out should.