BEYOND violence and disease, there is discrimination--the everyday fear and exclusion all gays, Lesbians and bisexuals feel. The idea that we must be "tolerated" is just part of this discrimination. It is also entrenched in the legal system, where we are not even tolerated.
Gays, lesbians and bisexuals are not asking for "extra rights," but simply for the right that most heterosexuals take for granted--the rights to employment, insurance, housing and marriage. You may be suprised that in 48 states, the first three may be denied to anyone solely on the basis of sexual orientation. (If Boston's Bernard Cardinal Law had had his way the same would be true in Massachusetts.)
As for the last, many of us would like the right to marry the person we love. How would any of these essential rights hurt any of you?
Perhaps some people would prefer us to be homeless, unemployed and uninsured, and, indeed, others do prefer us dead. Is this our "kinder, gentler nation"?
TOLERANCE is not enough. The gay, lesbian and bisexual community is not something that needs to be tolerated like a bad cold or a rash. We are the full moral and spiritual equals of heterosexuals, and refuse to continue to be relegated to second class citizenship and fear. There is nothing bad about us to tolerate.
The gay, lesbian and bisexual community demands that the violence against our lives be stopped. That goal demands that everyone fight such violence against our lives, and that everyone fight such violenceloudly. The gay, lesbian and bisexual community demands nothing less than full acceptance because we are part of you.
Yes we are different in some ways, but our diversity is a wonderful and powerful thing. Imagine the vatican without the ceiling of the Michaelangelo's Sistine Chapel or modern fiction without The color Purple. Or musicals without West Side Story, Or Harvard without Wigglesworth. The contributions of our community to society have been as enormous as the pains inflicted on us.
Gays, lesbians and bisexuals demand that you respect and value us. We are your roommates, your friends, your brothers and sisters, your parents and may well be your children.
If your life were being threatened because of your love, a love which by most accounts--scientific and psychological--is utterly innate and unchangeable, would you ask for acceptance? Would you want, perhaps even expect, people to join in the fight with you against injustice and to learn about your experience?
Tolerating Blacks is still racism. Tolerating Jews is still anti-Semitism. And Tolerating gays, lesbians and bisexuals is still Homophobia. Accepting us means respecting us, valuing us and loving us for who we are.
That is not too much to ask. We can accept nothing else. And heterosexists who preach tolerance or worse had better change, or enter the closets that we have abandoned.
We are never going back. In the words of Queen Nation, "Get used to it."
Thomas B. Watson '91 is chair of Defeat Homophobia and President of the Harvard-Radcliffe Arts Organization for the Advancement of Sexual Minorities.