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Coming Together As a Community
by Norm Kent
Welcome to the return of my column. It has been over a year since I regularly ran my features in Hot Spots. As you return to my words, keep in mind that my publications are not because I want to do your thinking for you. I just want to share my thinking with you. Do not presume these columns are all going to deal with legal issues, because they most certainly will not. They are the core of a book I am writing on the politics, pleasure, passions, and personalities of gay life. Hot Spots! Reaches more gay readers than any other gay magazine in Florida, and that's why I am here.
After the New Year, there tends to be a little bit too much depression hanging in the air for my liking. Alone for the holidays, some people start the year in a rut. We all meet people who think the glass is half–empty instead of half–full. We are lucky to be living in South Florida, which has become the epicenter of a thriving gay community. If you are reading this column, and you are gay, you are a part of not only our community, but the community at large. You are no longer apart from it.
The significance is measured in quiet victories and tempered steps. In the last year, openly gay judges were appointed and elected to the county bench in both Broward and Dade. Openly gay radio hosts dominate the AM airwaves in conservative Al Rantel and unbelievable! Neil Rogers. The Miami Herald has added a gay columnist to deal solely with gay issues. The gay Dolphin Democratic Club has become one of the strongest political forces in Democratically–dominated Broward County. Discrimination against AIDS victims has now become a criminal act. Laws protecting one's sexual orientation are in place in counties and cities.
We are not victims anymore, and we have to stop acting like it. We never should have been victims in the first place, but we surely are not anymore. When a city's commissioner slights us, our voices can communally and collectively censure him. We no longer have to cringe in dark closets or hide our anger. Our power is real, and it can be utilized in political, professional, and personal ways.
Sure, there is still much to be done. But we now also possess the belief that we can do it. Look, in the first hour of the Neil Rogers show last week, four people called up to remind him he was a faggot. A Kansas preacher decried Miami Beach as a "leper colony" after allowing for non–discrimination laws. A California teacher was nearly disciplined for discussing Ellen's coming out episode with sixth graders. Bigotry is still pervasive. The road to equal rights is not yet fully paved. As a community, we become a melting pot of activity that can be at once wholesome and creative, but simultaneously counter–productive and destructive. Within the gay community, circuit parties have now become controversial. On one hand, they express our freedom to liberate ourselves physically and they generate social and sexual liaisons. But lately, voices have been heard saying these parties send out a message of drug induced sexual recklessness and hedonism. We can't all agree on the way each of us should be. Nor are we supposed to. The essence of democracy is that we come together as a society, not to restrict the rights of any, but rather to secure the rights of all. The circuit party crowd isn't telling anyone that you can't meet at a softball league or in a community center or a political club. So who are we to start proclaiming circuit parties send off the wrong messages?
Of all people, who are we to tell people how to spend their recreational or leisure time? There is still a large portion of America that thinks homosexuals send off the wrong message, and, if they had their way would make us spend our recreational time in psychiatric sessions. Not that some of us don't. But at least you don't have to pay $200 an hour for a circuit party, and your time isn't up after fifty minutes.
There is the story of the long–time Court Jester and prankster who went just a little bit too far one afternoon, and enraged the king, who felt mocked and humiliated. He summarily ordered the jester's execution. But prior to beheading him, the King announced that "Because you have given me years of laughter and mirth, I shall grant you one last wish, that must be followed, as compensation for your years of service. What shall it be?" The King asked. Without a second's hesitation, the Court Jester responded: "I wish to live to a ripe old age."
If we want to be more intolerant, then let us together demand more of ourselves. Be intolerant of injustice. Be more self–critical. Do not accept abusive relationships. Drink less. Smoke less. Eat less. Care less about another's faults, and do more about your own. Understand that strength is disclosed in calm, and weakness in fury. Work to heal rather than hurt. We can all learn to live together more happily if we can temper our criticisms of each other and work in a more tolerant way for a better community. It's a good thought and the right way to begin the New Year. If you want to plant and water, rather than plunder and uproot, the world that is a jungle can also be a garden.