I would really like to meet some of those young people who in 2016 told me that they either did not vote, were unregistered because, ya’know, things come up, or voted for Trump in order to send the older people a message, so I could ask them how this whole Roe v Wade thing worked out for them since they are of the age where such a procedure might be needed which the older people they allegedly taught a lesson to are way pass.

I spent my adult life involved in politics, labor activism, and social justice promotion with a concentration on the Gay stuff and have seen the highs and lows of the process.

I was in a room at the Parker House in Boston with some Union people and progressive politicians and activists when the Republicans came down from their gathering a few floors above us to loudly taunt us like they were the bullies in the school yard because Reagan was just declared the winner.

Most were not Boomers.

I was there when the seed for all the damage about to come from the Reagan administration and its aftermath was planted, the root cause of a lot of the modern problems now visited upon the young.

I have stood in rooms when votes went right and in others when they went horribly in the wrong direction.

I left Boston in the mid-Eighties where Gay rights had been slowly coming along, but where even the most minor thing done by a gay person or couple, the mere holding of hands for example, was still considered a bold, political statement. I arrived in Los Angeles where things were further along but still not where the Constitution should have had Gay people and where, although freer than most places, most Gay activities no matter how innocuous, like a birthday party of a Gay co-worker celebrated by other Gay people from work, were still largely underground and under the RADAR things.

By the time I left, a lot had come about and Gay life was closer to what it should be.

I arrived in Oklahoma and lost many of the civil rights I had gained through having actively worked to gain them and had had on both coasts, basically starting over in the fight.

But, I knew what it was to live without my rights, how hard the struggle had been to get the basic rights we had to that point, what the difference was between having and not having those few rights, and how precious having them was and how vigilant we needed to be to ward off the assaults of those who, beyond not wanting us to have our rights, would also like all of us dead through disease or federal execution if the Christian Street Gangs don’t get us first in Jesus’s name.

I was there before Gay rights and as we got some. I was also in a position of losing the rights I had won elsewhere but were not yet recognized where I landed.

I was deprived of my rights, fought for and won my rights, but, because I went to a particular state, was stripped of them, so I know from experience of the cycle from not having to having to losing.  

Imagine living in one state fighting, again, to get the same rights you had already fought for and won in another state. In the Boston/L.A. situation it was not so much gaining or losing rights in one place or the other, but, rather, both places were somewhere along a moving line of gaining rights. At some point, while one city might have gotten something first, like marriage equality, in time they both arrived at the same place.

Oklahoma was entirely different as the progress was more laborious, greatly opposed, and came with loss.

Now, I am back in Massachusetts where all the rights I had fought for through the years are set and actively protected by the people and the state.

Basically, I went from working to get even the basics to getting more complicated rights recognized (the difference between being allowed a drink in a bar and getting married) to having to fight for what I had already had elsewhere but lost where I was, and, now, I am where all those rights at whatever stage they had been or are in other places, whether partially or fully recognized, are here for me to enjoy.

“Well done thou good and faithful servant.”

I did the running of the race and the fighting of the good fight.

But experience teaches, and that which has been won can be lost if people are not vigilant or they have become too complacent.

After Massachusetts had had marriage equality for eight years before I moved back, while others might have taken no real notice of it, I was amazed the first few times I heard someone openly and in a public, mixed crowd refer to his husband with everyone acting normally as with any spousal introduction.

I had to get used to that. Where I had come from that term was just nicer than partner, lover, or roommate, but lacked any legal or community meaning beyond the couple. Here it meant something, but with that came a bit of status quo.

To some, after 18 years, there has always been marriage equality so it, like the Right to Choose, is here to stay.

So, it really disturbed me in 2016 when the Gaybies were saying they would vote for Trump for two main reasons.

First, they had bought into his claim that he was the best friend of the Gay Community, much more so than Hillary, so with him as president, they could continue exercising those rights that we would have had earlier if the older generation of Gays had worked hard enough when they were young.

Second, because we older people had screwed up the world, we needed to be taught a lesson.

I spoke with too many young people who were not registered, chose not to vote because what good would it to anyway, or voted for Trump to shake up the old people, the ones who had seen him on TV going back to the 1970s and knew who he really was.

We then saw him appoint extremely anti-GLBT people to positions that matter to the GLBT Community, issue GLBT rights-limiting executive orders, and go after the Transgender Community like they were the third grade teacher who humiliated him by sitting him in the corner and having him take responsibility for his actions. His obsession was pathological.

By the time I was 70 years old, we had a Supreme Court with an extremely conservative bent because Trump got to appoint three justices even if it took all sorts of political machinations to do it, and they are in a position now to revisit certain previous SCOTUS decisions and undo them.

Things like marriage equality, military service, employment, health care, housing, and basic needs.

Now, compare the time I have remaining on this earth to that of the young people who had intended to teach us elders a lesson as if we are one, monolithic group.

Who got served?

I know I can survive without certain rights as I had already lived most of my adult life without them. I might not like returning to the way it was, but I did get to fight for the rights and then finally get to enjoy them, and my life after those rights will not be as long as that before those rights.

My generation is about to punch out and leave the factory to the new employees.

What lessons did we old people learn?

We had marriage equality, we worked for it, the appeal of which will come with a multitude of complications because of combined property and other assets that are part of a legal marriage and will have to be dealt with legally if existing same-sex marriages aren’t grandfathered in while all future such marriage will just be partnerships with fewer rights and legal marriage assets.

We learned that, regardless how long or short of a time, we had rights. However, the people coming after us may not have the right to make and enforce contracts, to inherit, purchase, to lease, sell, hold and convey real and personal property, to sue, be parties, give evidence, and to the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons and property because, well, they’re GLBTQ+  and  people will work to take rights away.

We also learned we were not incorrect in thinking we needed to learn more about the world than what our friends tell us because they had heard it from a friend of theirs.

We also learned that it is true that the price of freedom is vigilance.

The latest news from the Supreme court is the shot across the bow. A victory for the Anti-Choice, the anti-women should control their bodies more than the men should crowd in this case will embolden people to go after anything with which they do not agree or have chosen not to understand, and more people will lose rights they may very well have assumed were permanent while we aged Cassandras ran around the beach warning about that big unexplainable horse on wheels.

Barret, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch got added to the other conservative justices on the Supreme court as a result of teaching a lesson, a lesson that was not carefully thought out, the baking soda volcano that would have looked so much more spectacular if the new chemical used instead of boring baking soda had not produced a cyanide gas that harmed many and killed some.

Apathy is going to cost many people their rights.

What was that lesson again?

.

.

.

.

.