I’ve been having an ongoing chat with a gay man one generation younger than myself. That means he’s in his early 40s. I met him when he was in his early 20s. We’ve been bemoaning the insanity of our current times. I’m not sure if he meant Russia’s barbaric, unprovoked war against Ukraine, or Covid-19, or the resurgence of anti-LGBT legislation in several of the “united” states. But I took it as the latter.

This is an old script. It reminded me of the song “Everything Old is New Again,” written by Peter Allen (a gay performer/songwriter, once married to Liza, don’t you know). Not sure there’s much in this world that’s more gay than Peter Allen onstage with the Rockettes (sorry for the video quality):

Yet once again, a bully from Florida has given us a gift. Back when I was in my early 20s, that bully was Anita Bryant. Today, that bully is Ron DeSantis.

Anita’s gift to the LGBT cause in the late 1970s was called “Save Our Children.” Ron’s gift to LGBT today is nicknamed “Don’t Say Gay.”

Common to the resurgence of anti-LGBT legislation is this fetish to bully gay/trans kids and spread lies about gay people. Anita, bless her heart, wanted to roll back LGBT civil rights protections. She succeeded for awhile. Ron wants to “shore up parental rights” by eliminating references to gender and sexuality in certain grades (actually, this law makes it a crime to talk about any gender or sexuality, not just LGBT ones – expect those lawsuits to start flying soon).

Why This Is A Gift

This is a gift (and a warning) because there’s always a drift away from vigilance to complacency. I see it; I’m guilty of it too. The desire to rest on laurels is strong. After all, we’ve worked hard. We’ve been working on this for what seems like forever.

Finally, those wars for marriage equality, adoption equality, military equality, many (if not all, everywhere) civil rights have been won and enshrined in law.

Until they aren’t anymore.

It’s important to realize that, however we might dread it and want it not to be, the truth is they’re coming for us yet again.

Our enemies. The ones who hate us and lie about us. The institutional, the beyond-cynical Trumpian right wing.

They’re coming for our marriages. They’re coming for our kids. They’re coming for our rights in the dishonest guise of protecting “religious freedom.”

Disbelieve me at your peril.

Cleve Called It

Back in 2002, I made a short documentary called “Our Brothers, Our Sons.” It’s somewhat dated now, but it was comparing/contrasting safer sex messages around AIDS/HIV between Baby Boomer gay men and Gen X gay men.

One thing I’ll never forget from that film, however, is the quote from veteran gay activist Cleve Jones, who said of the younger generation then, referring to rights, that “they don’t realize it all could be taken away, just like that.”

(you can see that quote in the “Our Brother, Our Sons” trailer here on the Amazon page.)

Cleve was right. Gird up, folks. It’s not over, there’s likely dark days ahead of us and we’ll keep on fighting. We always do. We always live the Act Up slogan, Silence = Death.

We won’t be silent. We’ve been here before and we won. We will prevail again this time, I have no doubt.

One of the main reasons for that is the younger generation — of all stripes, is on our side. They’re on our side! Things really can change.

So thanks, bullies. For the warning. And one more thing: We’re not “united” with you, motherfuckers. Looking forward to seeing this resurgence of anti-LGBT legislation dying. Everything old may be new again, but that doesn’t mean that everything old is correct — or indeed ever was.