Reply #10: I can see your point ...

[kweerwolf]

... I've often said that what Will Rogers said about Democrats ("Tell them to form a firing squad and they stand in a circle") could just as easily be said about the LGBT community.

But ... I see our present position as highly tenuous. We literally will have to fight for our rights now. We cannot depend on our nominal "allies" to look after our interests when they are so afraid they may lose a few votes if them piss off the fundies or other lower life-forms. We need to let them know that they will lose our support if they do not stand with us.

This is an extremely dangerous time for the LGBT community. We have made slow, steady progress. The changes I have witnessed in my lifetime have been tremendous. But those changes have produced what I learned way back in college sociology class as "the revolution of rising expectations."

Look at the Civil Rights era, for example. Blacks, in general, were victims of their own passivity during the years of Jim Crow laws. It was only after they began it win their rights (and understood for the first time how far they had to go) that militancy broke out in the black communities. I see the same thing happening now among the gay community. Equality is a wave that must keep moving forward or it will explode.