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From: sdyer@bbncca.ARPA (Steve Dyer)
Newsgroups: net.motss
Subject: Re: Reply to Steve Dyer
Message-ID: <961@bbncca.ARPA>
Date: Mon, 24-Sep-84 23:13:36 EDT
Article-I.D.: bbncca.961
Posted: Mon Sep 24 23:13:36 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 26-Sep-84 07:46:21 EDT
References: <3715@decwrl.UUCP> <960@bbncca.ARPA>
Organization: Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Cambridge, Ma.
Lines: 41

Nothing like a modem hanging up...  Here's the rest of my truncated
article.

You seem to see the limited "P.R." ability of the gay community as
due to lack of trying.  It is much more complicated than that.
Naturally one would like the "message" to get across to as many
people as possible, but the gay rights movement is very young
compared to the civil rights movement.  What we see here are the
earliest rumblings of a movement, one which is still not unified,
and which has only begun to make the attempt to change societal
attitudes, and here, mainly through small, local actions: changing the
attitudes of one's neighbors comes before the attitudes of the country
at large.  Net.motss is one vehicle towards this.  Having gay people
speak out and publically affirm their identity is one vehicle towards
this.  Seeing openly gay people elected to public office (e.g. Studds,
Boston city councillor David Scondras) is one vehicle toward this.
As helpful as laws and ordinances can be towards ensuring equal
rights, one cannot legislate attitudes.

Your comment about society recognizing racial equality as an inherent
"right" is not qualitatively different from a respect for a person's
sexual and affectional preference.  What you are seeing, though, are
attitudes at opposite ends of the time line.  A comment like yours
about racial equality would have seemed equally outrageous, 100, 50,
even 20 years ago in some parts.  Changing attitudes takes time.
Already the situation of gay people today is far far better than
20 years ago, even with the Brunsons still in the outback.

We will have come a long way when the claims of a Falwell are
dismissed out of hand by people, simply because they know gay
people and recognize the caricature which such demagogues present
as an enormous lie.  Sure we aren't there yet.  It will be a
matter of time.  In most urban centers, there is significant
progress along these lines.  You might argue that such "progress" is
illusory, and there are many more people outside the cities with
more retrograde ideas.  Perhaps, but this is the nature of change;
it starts in the cities and only later is accepted in general.
-- 
/Steve Dyer
{decvax,linus,ima}!bbncca!sdyer
sdyer@bbncca.ARPA