October 5, 2010.
Regarding: John Duran on the ‘de-outlawing’ of West Hollywood (to Bill Kelly and Karen Ocamb):
Where did you find this wonderful letter? It is perfect Don Slater thinking. We have always had the extremes in the community/movement, but we must say no to the Taliban that wants to make us like everyone else. And the idea that hetero families want to moved to an LGBT area and then change it is no different from Muslims moving to America and then trying to force us to change to their Sharia law.
The more I think of the letter and the “issue,” the more complicated it gets with the two views of founders — Harry Hay and Don Slater. It seems to me that they would have the same view on this. Yet their disagreed on the issue of integration versus being different-outsiders, the “canary in the mine” — seeing things first and differently because of our not being like heteros on the basic issue of sex.
You were right that it is a national-generic problem. To get people to like us, we are told to conform — which defeats the very purpose of the movement — according to Don Slater, the right of any American to his/her privacy. It is no one else’s business what we think or who we have sex with. But it is interesting that in a sense “we” have taken over some parts of a city and made it a good place to live and then non-homosexuals see how good it is and move in and then try to force us to change to fit their views, which views didn’t seem to make where they lived before as good as the way we made the area. (Not sure how to say this better.)
But this is not a bigoted problem. The same thing, I was told long ago in some class — I think it was a sociology class on housing around Baton Rouge while we toured to see some of them — we tend to take our errors with us. The example was many people being told, for medical reasons, to move to dry areas, especially Phoenix where the growth that gave them problems would not exist. The people moved and soon started thinking the place would be “better” if it had a little greenery and started planting things like the place they came from. Soon they had destroyed the very atmosphere they had moved to, making it as bad as the place they had moved from.
It is one thing for the community/movement to support those who seek the benefits of marriage. But it wrong for those people to then use religion and societal approval (or disapproval) to say that all homosexuals should marry and conform. That makes them like the Taliban — deciding what rules are best for everyone, and killing those who disagree.
