As a minority, lesbians and gays have few, if any, friends and allies willing to expend political capital on our behalf — although other minorities accept all the golden eggs we produce for them with endless handfuls of gimme and mouths full of “much obliged.”
We also have less family support than any other minority due to the paradoxical effect that very religious, pro-family people apparently feel commanded to disown their lesbian and gay family members — even their own children. And many of the ones who don’t go that far achieve the same effect by constantly insulting and harassing their children in the name of God and family.
Don’t believe me? Here’s a sample: watch the episodes on the reality series “Working Out” where the openly lesbian star of the series has encounters with her mother.
And think about this: what African-American children ever have lived in terror of being thrown out like trash when their parents find out they are black? How many have committed suicide because they feel so hopeless about how their families will treat them when they find out they are black?
Well, since lesbians and gays KNOW that we can’t turn to others to help us or do our work for us, the happy result is that we do it ourselves. Can’t get a job? We make our own. Businesses don’t sell the things we want? We make our own — the things and the businesses to sell them. Restaurants won’t serve us? We make our own. Lack of healthcare or discrimination in healthcare? We make our own. Churches discriminate against us? We make our own. Can’t get housing? We make our own.
I’m telling you, people, lesbians and gays are natural born fiscal conservatives, Obama and the Democrats will never stop ripping us off AND WE ARE UP FOR GRABS BY THE CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT!!!
So, what is the no-cost way of turning blighted neighborhoods around?
Harness the power of lesbian and gay self-reliance and resourcefulness by passing civil rights laws protecting the rights of lesbians and gays to jobs, housing and public accommodations. Want to put a jet pack on that turnaround? Legalize gay marriage.
In addition to enormous self-reliance and resourcefulness, the unique ability of lesbians and gays to go into blighted neighborhoods and turn them around is based on the fact that the majority of us do not have children, so we can buy in neighborhoods that have lousy schools. (Speaking as a former Realtor, the ONE thing that has the most influence on your home value is the reputation of your neighborhood’s schools. Making them excellent pays you BIG dividends.) Once we turn the neighborhood around, the schools follow.
Also, since we are a rainbow minority — people with disabilities and every race, ethnic group and religious group has lesbians and gays — we are more likely than most other minorities, with the exception of people with disabilities (which also is a rainbow minority), to have friends and acquaintances who are very different from us, so we are not afraid to move into neighborhoods where we don’t look like anyone else there.
I did not figure this out on my own, I heard an author being interviewed on talk radio about a book his book and the unique contributions lesbians and gays make to society. I think the book was about the conditions that make businesses, communities and nations thrive and was not exclusively about lesbians and gays. When I find it, I’ll update this post with the info, since the author supported his point with research, while what I’m saying comes from glimpses of what acquaintances accomplished in blighted neighborhoods in Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, Maryland.
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