As a 72 year-old Gay, cisgender, white male I have to admit that for those reasons, and considering the history of those years to this relic, regardless of any empathy or sympathy for the Right to Choose movement, it is not my issue. 

In my youth it might have been one of the issues for which I gave my time and energy, perhaps not as specific as choice, but women’s equality in general and all that came with that, but in the hierarchy of those things closest to my heart because they were closest to me, labor, minority, women’s, and Gay rights, as they were things that would influence my many future years and needed a lot of correcting, the best I can be now is an ally.

I will be at the ramparts and all, but, just remember, my knowedge is not experiential, mainly academic, so my energy and urgency will simpy not match yours.

Now, with the very strong potential to lose certain GLBT rights for which many of us fought and had the chance to experience, however briefly, and my not having to choose whether or not to see a pregnancy through to the end because of my gender, orientation, and age, with the potential dissolution of marriage equality and other now assumed rights to be things forever, there is even a low degree of urgency from the older generation because for many it is a continuance of a struggle over which there had been some progress in their lifetimes but a battle to be continued or, now, refought by the young.

As effective as the older people might have been in their younger years to get things this far, times have changed and so should tactics, and we elders must accept that while we were the force in the past we are the allies now.

I have fought bigotry to successfully create a safe school environment in a state capitol city’s school district for all students including all the letters of the Rainbow Alphabet and watched as after 12 trouble free years where none of the predicted problems ever materialized, even the guaranteed ones in bathrooms and sports, the Make America Great Again people in power remove that protection because they feared it would engender the horrors it obviously had not.

These rights were won once and can be again, but those who established those rights will be well into their 80s if they were the ones fighting to restablish them. 

It is up to those much younger to make a better world that they can enjoy for a  long time to come.

The best I can be is an ally, not just to those fighting for women’s bodily autonomy, but the young Gays who will lose the rights won by those who will now see them taken back. 

The old tactics are irrelevant now, and we old people will be, in spite of our best intentions, working unconsciously to create a world we want, not the one the young need.

When the draft of the decision that would end Roe came out, not seeing anyone locally doing anything in protest, I made a sign about Roe and another one about the potential loss of other unenumerated rights and sat on the corner by the federal buiding in my city at which I had previously sat for my one man visibility semi-standouts, so named because I sat in a lawn chair. In the past for one full week, two hours each day I had brought attention to Trump’s opening salvo against GLBT people in 2017 and a few years later to expose the Sheriff of Bristol County MA for the bigot he is. This time I sat for five days in that time slot with a sign about the Roe decision and one about the potential loss of all unemumerated rights.

When a local women’s group began their once a week gathering at the opposite corner when Roe was killed, the corner favored by most gathered groups as it is in front of the federal bulding entrance, I contnue to show up each week with them, but at my corner. 

It is their issue and they need the freedom to say what they want and how they want to without filtering it because it is mixed company.

If guarded language tempers the necessary language, their message gets watered down and becomes an unconscious acceptance of the oppression they are fighting.

My additional topic of all enumerated rights, although an important one, would be adding another issue to their specific and targeted one and could possibly redirect the discourse.

As a good ally I speak along with. I neither speak for or instead of.

With the gaybies, their use of the word Queer so freely might bother me, but for how long?

The rest of my life compared to the length of the rest of theirs? 

We made mistakes and still made progress.

And if some tactics just rub me wrong, or might go against my assumed expert opinion?

Believe me, we older people wish some of our activist history could be polished up a bit. 

I have to accept that my time of being a mover and shaker is up. Like with fish it is not good to linget pas primet your time.

But count me and other old people as allies, even if we outwardly do not seem to have any relevance because we are are old, cisgender, white, Gay men.