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
David said,
March 7, 2009 at 7:33 am
Standing by silently is what got is in the situation that we’re in now with Prop 8 in CA and all the other states that have banned same-sex marriage.
Rosa Parks may have silently sat at the front of the bus, but she did so in defiance of the status quo. Of course, Martin Luther King, Jr. was far from silent.
I didn’t always agree with the actions of ACT UP, but their “Silence Equals Death” has always remained with me. They had the right idea in standing up, being vocal, and making others hear.
“Civil disobedience is the inherent right of a citizen to be civil, implies discipline, thought, care, attention and sacrifice”. – Mahatma Gandhi
Paul from Faces InEquality said,
April 26, 2009 at 1:15 am
The Niemöller poem is an eloquent reminder of what we are up against – mass intolerance. And the deadener of “someone else will fight this fight” is as much a challenge as silent.
Thank you for speaking out. Thank you for being out. It is those two actions – if taken as a collective – which will make the scariness of being gay a distance memory.
Paul
FacesInEquality.org
Jay said,
May 22, 2009 at 3:00 pm
Niemöller’s words have been a huge influence on the person I hope I am today. I think that now, we have reached a point in time where there is no going back, we’ve crossed the line and pulled those against us past a threshold – their arguments can no longer hold weight as we have become more visible. We have to keep pulling though and never forget to protect not only the members of the LGBT community, but ALL people in the quest for equality. Thanks for posting this!