“Day Without a Gay” seems to have cropped up in the news today in several places, like the LA Times, Houston Chronicle, AP and Mercury News yet MassEquality.org, HRC.org, GLADD.org were all mum on the subject. In fact they were even talking about this in New Zealand:
“Google showed 1.9 million hits for the phrase, a Facebook Web site group had about 9,000 members and international media reported on the protest plans hatched by a Los Angeles-area trainer, Sean Hetherington, and his boyfriend.”
Why is it so hard for the LGBT community to find unity? Together we could have promoted this event and gave it the impact a great idea like this deserves. There seems to never be any support from the bigger organizations for original ideas from smaller groups and thinking outside of the box. I can only hope that we can do better in the future, but I fear that the arms distance rule will continue to both hinder and haunt us so long as we do not call for change within these organizations.
If an idea is worth promoting it is worth promoting, it shouldn’t matter who thought of it and we should put the politics aside. It seems that this is not indicative of just the LGBT community, but rather our country as a whole. We all need to remember that we are in this struggle together and work as one. We need to promote the best ideas and help them move forward regardless of who thought of them first. In the end we all suffer for not capitolizing on our best ideas, don’t we?
do you know how many people around the country could have been fired once they publicly stated they were gay? and in this economy, it’s not like they could just go pick up another job anywhere. and since there is no union-style infrastructure to provide “strike pay” to people fired for being gay, i’m not surprised more people didn’t participate. how many gainfully employed straight people do you know that offered to support a fired gay person? i know of zero.
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p>i was in california on the 10th, and a number of people actually did participate by taking the day off to volunteer for non-profits. i assume that these were people who knew they wouldn’t lose their jobs. certainly in california, they are legally protected against being fired simply for being gay. but in most of the nation, that’s sadly not the case.
It sounds like a neat way to make a point – like Gay Jeans Day in college – but it is so close to being a radical labor action that it was probably too scary for both institutional activists and, as Laurel suggests, the most vulnerable people.