This post hit a little nerve with me, being the queer activist/superhero that I am. :)
I don't understand how viewing the AIDS Quilt encouraged you /not/ to be an activist. I'd really like to hear more about that, I suppose, because I just can't wrap my mind around it. The AIDS Quilt is a big piece of activism, and every single person who made a panel, and really, every single person whose life inspired a panel are activists.
The mainstream queer movement was enhanced in a lot of ways by the AIDS epidemic, because it brought people out and had them demanding their rights to health care, to treatment, to respect. Unfortunately, it wasn't until HIV and AIDS hit the heterosexual population in larger numbers that the government really started doing anything about it.
I think wanting to be a good model /is/ activism, and it is applaudable. Being a good person /is/ important. However, being a good person who is also openly queer shows people who may have snap-judgments of queer people that their prejudices aren't necessarily true.
Case in point: I just went to a job interview at a homeless shelter. I was concerned, because the organization is Christian-based, that I might be looked upon unfavorably (because I'm pretty obviously queer). Instead, I had the interviewer tell me that she had been hoping that I would be the sort of person who could address the needs of all of the GLBT people that were in the shelter, that maybe I'd come up with a way to get a group together, that people had needs that were not being met. That's something.
But I also want my equal rights. I will still write letters, and offer testimony, and make phone calls, and march, and get in my representatives faces, because I /am/ a good person, and I /am/ a queer person, and I have rights.
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I don't understand how viewing the AIDS Quilt encouraged you /not/ to be an activist. I'd really like to hear more about that, I suppose, because I just can't wrap my mind around it. The AIDS Quilt is a big piece of activism, and every single person who made a panel, and really, every single person whose life inspired a panel are activists.
The mainstream queer movement was enhanced in a lot of ways by the AIDS epidemic, because it brought people out and had them demanding their rights to health care, to treatment, to respect. Unfortunately, it wasn't until HIV and AIDS hit the heterosexual population in larger numbers that the government really started doing anything about it.
I think wanting to be a good model /is/ activism, and it is applaudable. Being a good person /is/ important. However, being a good person who is also openly queer shows people who may have snap-judgments of queer people that their prejudices aren't necessarily true.
Case in point: I just went to a job interview at a homeless shelter. I was concerned, because the organization is Christian-based, that I might be looked upon unfavorably (because I'm pretty obviously queer). Instead, I had the interviewer tell me that she had been hoping that I would be the sort of person who could address the needs of all of the GLBT people that were in the shelter, that maybe I'd come up with a way to get a group together, that people had needs that were not being met. That's something.
But I also want my equal rights. I will still write letters, and offer testimony, and make phone calls, and march, and get in my representatives faces, because I /am/ a good person, and I /am/ a queer person, and I have rights.