Reclaiming Our Pride

CONDENSED FROM SPEECH AT PRIDE DAY BY PEGGY LUHRS

HAPPY PRIDE DAY EVERYONE! I'D LIKE
to see us reclaim our pride as a liberation
movement.

After 911 I joined one of the first vigils at the
top of Church Street. My sign read “the antidote
to terror is increasing human rights for all.” I be-
lieve that more now than ever.

Using war to respond to terror has been one
of the stupidest blunders the U.S. has ever made.
Oh, and what’s this got to do with gay pride?

The Pride theme this year.is “Peace Out.”

Peace out  stay calm. We need to do that on
a personal levelso as not to add to the ever-ex-
panding level of violence in the U.S. and the rest
of the world. ‘

But collective action for peace and human

l rights is what I see missing. The GLBTQ move-

ment began as pait of the liberation struggles of
the mid-20th century: civil rights, women’s libera-
tion, lesbian and gay liberation, coexisting and
part and parcel of the anti-Vietnam War move-
ment.

There is no greater enforcer of gender roles
than the culture of militarism, which defines
men as killers and dominators and women as
supportive wives and sacrificing mothers. After
Vietnam, the Pentagon began a “Make America
a Man Again” program. They had to conquer the
dreaded Vietnam syndrome; that people were
turning against war. They needed to make war
popular again. They do it by making war a manly
endeavor. They have video games now for re-
cruiting teens. Games that make war seem like a
fim  well  video game.

The media now refuses to show the reality of
War. We don’t see the corpses, the wounded and
maimed. We try to ignore the fact that life on earth
itself is in doubt because of the consumptive and
militaristic practices of the American empire.

Despite the myth that our wars have won us
our freedom, the reality is that wars always bring
greater repression. Each war has torn away our
freedoms and instituted an ever-larger military,
industrial, energy complex. ’

Women are considered spoils of war, always in
danger of rape and just so much‘ collateral darn-
age. All deaths but those of soldiers are collateral
damage. Thirty percent of women in the military
have experienced rape or attempted rape, and
I’m sure that’s a low number since women under-
report. The military does not want gays because
of the threat to this rigid gender hierarchy. Hor-
rors! Men might treat other men the way many
men‘ treat women. That is the big fear.

Terror has been as much the ally of the state
as its enemy. We now have a huge and hugely
useless state apparatus that spies on our every
Communication and keeps tabs on our political
activity, but cannot actually protect us from ter-
ror or from hunicanes. We are deeper in debt as a
nation than we have ever been and yet there is no
money for schools or healthcare or sheltering the
homeless, ending poverty or repairing our much-
abused environment. '

They are spying on gay peace groups. Focus
011 the Fatally tells us that marriage equality for
queers is being brought to us by the forces of hell.

Perhaps we should start breathing fire. African
Americans are once again under the rule of a co-
alition of racist good old boys. And their votes are
being annulled. None of us who oppose the ruling
cabal can trust that our votes will be counted.
But reacting as we are meant to by being in-
timidated by the State/the government does no
one any good. We react to the labeling of the right
and refuse to take the moral high ground which I
think rightly belongs to those seeking peace and
human rights. Since the Reagan backlash against

There is no greater
enforcer of gender
roles than the culture
of militarism, which
defines men as killers
and dominators and A
women as supportive
wives and sacrificing
mothers.

equality, the debate has moved steadily to the
right with devastating consequences for all but
the rich and the energy and war profiteers. Why
are we so insecure about all this? Because it is
not the manly way?

' In our movement, I’d like to see more pride;
less fear: a movement inclusive of all races and
classes. I am particularly tired of parts of our
movement feeling they should tell others how
to be and when and where they should partici-
pate. Like those whose main goal is marriage
wanting to keep the Queer Liberation Army from
participating in a demonstration for the Gender
Identity Bill. I am very tired of folks who think
they are the ones who know how politics works
and who should be squelched in the name of suc-
cess. Whose success is it if it isn’t inclusive? I'm
tired of it for two reasons. First, it's wrong, it’s
undemocratic, and it marginalizes the more radi-
cal among us. '

Second, I’m tired of it because it doesn’t
work. ‘

This how we lost the ERA in Vermont, the
Equal Rights amendment for women in Vermont.
It doesn’t work and yet it goes on, whether it’s
Mattachine throwing out its founders for be-
ing leftist when the organization became popu-
lar, or the Vermont ERA committee leaving out
grassroots feminist organizations because they
weren't ladylike enough or the Democratic Party

CONTINUED ON P.19 -)

 

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