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By Kirk Read
It's not that I'm a pacifist. My Cold War childhood pretty much ruined any chance of me becoming a latter day flower child. I've certainly tried to be floral but usually end up on the periphery of demonstrations, rolling my eyes as white kids with dread locks hold hand-painted peace sign and swap signatures on each other's petitions. The peace movement ain't no place to be cynical. I would have been an utterly substandard hippie. The day the bombing started in Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands of people turned out for the Castro Street Fair. It was truly bizarre to watch them get beer buzzed and dance to numbing diva wails in the middle of the streets. Many of them didn't even know we were at war. I saw leather guys with American flag hankies in their back pockets, like patriotism was some sort of top or bottom fetish activity. The scariest thing was that these guys weren't kidding. Dozens of men were wearing camouflage with nary a hint of irony. I've pretty much given up on queer folks having radical politics collectively, but it's been truly spooky to walk through the Castro and see American flags in nearly every business window. Gold's Gym went so far as to stencil a huge flag on its storefront with the words United We Stand. Every time I walk by, I want to spray paint Wake Up on top of it.
There has been a palpable lack of deep discussion about the events that led
to this war. The Middle East has never and will never fit into the fifteen
second sound bytes allotted by television news outlets. This is why most
Americans have zero understanding of the enormous amount of history involved
in the suicide attacks. This lack of understanding has everything to do with
why we're at war.
The night of the bombing, Market Street filled with anti-war people beating drums and screaming chants. They were furious. A friend and I ran down to join them when we heard the drums. As I stood on the corner taking pictures of the passing throng, I cried for the first time since it all started with the September 11 attack. It wasn't about grief or fear. I was heartened that these rallies provided an outlet for lots of other reactions to the war. Most of all, I was relieved to hear people raising angry voices. I've been clenched-jaw pissed off for the past month. A therapist might explain it away as denial or some sort of alternate expression of grief, but I can barely watch TV without wanting to strangle someone. I am totally fed up with network television's insistence that we come together as a nation and present a unified front. It's the same thing parents tell you when guests are coming over and they donąt want anyone to know how dysfunctional the family is: be quiet and fall in line. I've been getting dozens of emails from friends who should know better, asking me to send money to the Red Cross or donate blood. To top it off, people started saying that we needed to put aside our differences and get behind zealots like Bush the Second and John Ashcroft. Huh? For those of us who have tasted the bloody policy gloves of these men, this is an alarming concept. No matter how we feel about the war, we can't just jettison our politics and jump onto the patriotic parade floats. Even though we are overwhelmed by the tragedies of the past month, we must avoid falling into the mainstream lockstep of jingoism and war-mongering. Our military is still rooting out and discharging queer folks, no matter what clumsy pieces of spin control the Pentagon cobbles together. Celebrities have fallen all over themselves to do public service announcements and benefits advertising their grief and their new projects.
More than 20,000 gather in Germany to protest military action against Afghanistan
Gay celebrities have stepped forward to stump for the Red Cross, which still wonąt take blood from gay men. The Boy Scouts have raised a ton of money from the royalties of God Bless America, which has been in relentless rotation.
Kirk Read is the author of How I Learned to Snap, a memoir about being openly gay in a small southern high school. He can be found at www.temenos.net/kirkread |
My Army Colonel father is probably rolling in his grave. Not because
we're bombing the crap out of Afghanistan but because his youngest son is
going to peace rallies on an almost daily basis.
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