Et tu Melissa?

After being confused by the recent comments by Melissa Etheridge, calling for a truce in the Rick Warren fiasco, I read her piece in the Huffington Post. Melissa's credentials as an activist are bona fide and her writing takes the high ground, something I respect her for.

She tells the story of how she came to meet Rick Warren at a fundraiser for Muslim Americans and how they found common bonds, in both her battle with breast cancer and that of Warren's wife. Etheridge espouses the same hope which caused so many LGBT people to work so very hard to elect Barrack Obama when she says, "Maybe if they get to know us, they wont fear us." and "I know, call me a dreamer, but I feel a new era is upon us.".

I admire your faith Melissa, but I have to disagree. For you see by Warren's own admission he does know us, he has gay friends and has broken bread at our tables. This is not simply a preference red wine over white, rock over jazz, this is a painful reminder of the apologetic politics of pre civil rights America. The time when good Negroes were the ones who knew their place and didn't get uppity. Does this sound familiar, does this remind you of another revolutionary change that occurred recently?

Let's revisit history, while it was the non-violent protests of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King that we remember it was the fearless action of Rosa Parks by taking her rightful seat on that bus that created change. While we know that the 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education ruled the unconstitutionally of 'separate but equal" it was the actions of 7 fearless young people; Carlotta Walls, Jefferson Thomas, Gloria Ray, Ernest Green, Elizabeth Eckford, Thelma Mothershed, Terrence Roberts, Minnijean Brown, and Melba Pattillo who bravely walked into Central High School escorted by US Army troops on September 25, 1957.

It was not just kind words and good deeds that gave us Civil Rights; it was human lives, blood, sweat and tears. It was our outrage at being illegally beaten and harassed that lead to the Stonewall Riots, the tragic murder of Harvey Milk that lead to the White Night Riots. And personally, watching my own friends and loved ones so courageously battle and ultimately succumb to AIDS while our nations religious leaders called it God’s wrath and fought our attempts for treatment, education and care at every turn has left a permanent acrid taste in my mouth for preachers who use pulpit as a forum to oppress the rights of others in the name of God. No good has, or ever will come of the insane practice.

And it is now our righteous indignation at seeing our fellow Americans have their rights rescinded which has fueled our anger at President-Elect Obama for legitimizing Rick Warren’s homophobic actions.

We are angry, we are disenfranchised and we want justice.
What I am trying to say is that real change does not just happen; it takes hard work and sacrifice. The people who created and passed Prop 8 know this and it is a lesson we all have bitterly been reminded of. What we do now is up to us.