Reply #61: Thank you for the great article.

[VespertineIconoclast]

It was highly enlightening and an excellent read. Spaulding makes some excellent points. A few:

...others made the quite accurate point that the LGBT community rarely gets behind social justice issues of concern to minorities. Honestly, this card can be played legitimately -- because it's true.

I mean how elementary is it that if you want support from a community that you actually have to communicate with them to get your point across and win hearts and minds over. And that was one of the failures of Prop 8. And people have admitted as much, as efforts to get it overturned begin to gain support for another ballot initiative.

What a lack of cross-community dialogue means for out minority LGBTs is that one has to be willing to put yourself out there to be attacked, over and over for addressing homophobia in communities of color knowing that few, if any, non-POC LGBTs are going to come forward to have your back. I see it time and again, with the excuses ranging from "I'll be called a racist" or "it doesn't feel safe to do this" or "it isn't my place to do it." And many of these excuses are from people who have the anonymity of the Internet to protect them. Now that's bad.

Well, I'm here to tell you that it doesn't feel great to have your "black card" revoked any more than it feels to be called racist. Plus, I don't have the cover of anonymity. Of course that's my choice, but the work is so important; I hate to see the rancor and misunderstandings go on and on with the parties talking past one another.