Stop the Silence
Here is a note I wrote/compiled on facebook. It is short but I think important. I will expand a little more on here. The part in parenthesis is being added here.
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(Samuel Beckett, an Irish playwright, once wrote that habit is the great deadener. I can agree. The thing is our habit is silence. So for me silence is OUR great deadener.) I was searching for things dealing with speaking out and realized that silence is the greatest deadener. It is the thing that will kill our society, it will kill our goals, our freedom. (“We” as gay individuals need to start really speaking out and standing for our goals and freedoms. “We” need to show everyone how serious we are and we need to stop backing down and taking the shit that they are handing us. I believe that our greatest challenge will be to break the silence and become an EQUAL part of this society. But if we just lay down, give up, and stop talking and expressing out needs and rights we will lose again. We will have no right to complain because we will not be fighting. We are not victims, we can not play the “pity me” card, first of all, because they don’t pity us, but most importantly because we have no reason to be pitied if we don’t stop the silence.)
When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I was not a Jew.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.
-Pastor Martin Niemöller
