The Boomers began arriving for the meeting open to anyone who shared the concerns. 

Although Massachusetts is a rather liberal state, it is not immune to the attempts of some to make the very Blue state very Red. On the state’s South Coast, the area from Wareham, which is actually part of Cape Cod but on the mainland side of the canal, to Rhode Island, one county recently dethroned its long-reigning white supremacist, anti-immigrant, ultra-MAGA sheriff for one that was willing to do his job as sheriff and not use the position for personal and political gain. The former sheriff is now pushing the Christian Nationalist agenda in the state by having a position of some kind with the state’s Republican Party.

We were meeting to discuss and, perhaps, begin coming up with strategies to counter and head off any attempts to ban books or pass local and state laws that might feed into the removal of rights, long held or newly recognized ones, while those doing so invoke the names of America and religion, both of which are not beneficial to all because one point of view ignores that We the People of the United States, having decided to form a more perfect Union decided to establish Justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to all of us and our posterity came up with a Constitution, not a Bible, in which there is not one mention of God or religion beyond banning the government from establishing a state one.

Books are being banned and women’s reproductive rights are also under attack, as is dealing honestly with race, gender, and history.

When the meeting began at the announced time, the dais was assumed by the leader of the meeting who was the chair of the local Democrat Town Committee that had called the meeting and had at the least notified all Dems on the South Coast of it, a local Native American with a PHD.  

Those facing him were Boomers, mostly obviously white. The only person of color I was aware of in the room beyond the man at the dais was my Cape Verdean friend who people assume is white because of her light skin tone. 

The women in the room were of an age that they had fought for the right to choose, equal pay, breaking the glass ceiling, attempting to pass the ERA, and to a varying degree had those rights recognized so that for whatever time still remained for them to be applicable, they could enjoy them.

They are of an age now where something like the right to choose is no longer an immediate consideration in their lives as opposed a won right that they had at least had the chance to have after its being won and they want available for their progeny.

If the right to choose goes, these women have enjoyed the right for the last 50 years so actually lose little personally as it is now one they cannot exercise. They may have the satisfaction of knowing they won the battle and benefited from that win assuming future generations would benefit from their work, but they know choosing whether or not to have an abortion is just not in their futures.

It was the women who saw that none of the beneficiaries and now future losers were present.

Among the participants, no one else came forward as Gay beyond myself, and as the topic was book banning I explained my experiences twenty years ago when the object of the religio-fascists was to ban “Gay themed books” without a specific definition of the term. The book banners eventually lost and for twenty years those who fought the bans and those who came after could freely enter a library and choose a book that was “Gay themed”.

Looking around the room, those present were people who have had the opportunity to read whatever book they so choose, other than me almost, and as all of those present were Straight save one, this was not an audience for the Gay books like “All Boys Aren’t Blue”, but one that was willing to fight to keep books like that from being banned but remain available to those who would read them for pleasure or need.

For all intents and purposes the loss of women’s reproductive freedom and book banning has no influence on the lives of the people in the room as they would not be exercising what a woman’s reproductive right to choose involves and have already read a lot. In the twenty years since we fought off book banning in Oklahoma I have been able to read whatever I want while the rest in the room had never faced such a condition where they couldn’t, and as most of the Gay books being banned are age related to people 60 years younger than myself, I would most likely never read them and so would not miss them.

Old people, the majority of whom have at best 20 years of life left if they are lucky and so would not suffer any losses being promoted by the present GOP, were there to plan the best way to preserve what is being threatened while no one who would be spending the majority of their futures under this repression was there.

The people of the age where reproductive rights are essential were not there.

The Gay community and the umbrella group that serves it provided you name names was not there.

Those who should be defending the rights of minorities, for CRT, and other race related concerns were not there.

Those whose lives will be affected by decisions being made now, who may lose the rights won for them and may have to learn to adjust to life without them, perhaps fighting to get them back, need to know as any good union member can tell those who were not there that when it comes to protections, you never get back what you give back.

Indifference is giving back.

We were there to defend the rights we had won and ones we only got to enjoy for a moment.

I fought for over 40 years for Gay rights on both coasts and in the middle, the Buckle of the Bible Belt to be precise. I have seen various degrees of bigotry. In each location I gained more rights than I had in the previous, but ones I should have always had not doled out to me, and when entering Oklahoma in 1993, I had to give up what rights I had fought for and start all over. At the age of 61 I moved home to Massachusetts and for the first time I had all my rights. After all those years of fighting I got to enjoy them for 12 years so far. I got them strangely, not because I had won every rights’ battle, but because I moved to a state that respects its citizens and Gay people have equal rights, the ones the Creator gave all of us.

The advantage I have is knowing I can survive and if each right is removed in steps, I am only gradually returning to days with which I am familiar and know I can survive, although not happily. I not only did not have, had, and will no longer have my rights, but I will also have the memories of the battles and those alongside whom and against whom I fought, and then die quietly with memories of it all and not in the fit of the battle redux  that could have been avoided.

I neither do now nor will have to worry later about banned books. As an old guy I can read what I want.

I will not have to worry about the loss of Marriage equality. I am too old to consider it. Remember, I was 61 before same sex marriage was legal for me, and I may not have aged so well nor garnered the riches that would have worked for my benefit in this regard now.  

I am retired so I cannot be fired, although under the old conditions I did face that.

I can’t be denied a lot of stuff because I am a senior citizen and that alone gets me stuff.

I am more protected by the rights of the aged than I am by Gay Rights, but considering it all, it sort of evens out.

During the days of questioning, discovery, and self-acceptance, I had all my rights. I thought I was Straight and lived accordingly. So I knew what having rights, even ones taken for granted, was like. When I accepted myself and came out, I lost quite a few of them. I fought to be equal to my former self, and to a degree became so.

If the rights I fought for are taken away by degree, it will not be like throwing me into a pot of water with other younger frogs to slowly kill us by gradually increasing the water temperature until we are boiled to death as statistically I have a better chance of dying of old age before the water gets to the temp to boil me to death than the younger frogs in the pot with me who have a better chance of living long enough and suffering the whole time until boiled to death.

Their concern being in the pot should be greater than mine. I am on borrowed time with my life behind me. Their lives could have been ahead of them.

So, where were they?

Where were the young women, the members of racial minorities, the Gay community?

Why was this a room of senior citizens, Boomers, discussing and planning the preservation of rights they can not exercise at their age and not one of the age groups that will be most affected and for the longest time.

The absence was noted by the women, the Cape Verdean, and the lone Gay man.

And so, a room filled with Boomers discussed the present situation, made suggestions about realistic approaches, came up with a way to organize and respond South Coast wide to an event at a moment’s notice whether it was to a school board meeting, city hall meeting, or an incident, and how we can head this all off at the pass so those who had inherited rights would not have to live the future without them, a short future for those in attendance.

Those whose future it is were not there.

This is where I am tempted to tell the young ones to stop deflecting and claiming all the ills in their lives are because of selfish Boomers while this meeting had the attendance it did.

You actually had to drive to a location, enter a building and then a room, and talk to real people face to face with no memes or platitudes about the cosmos manifesting itself. We were not there for the “likes” or to preach comfortably through a keyboard but were in the room to accomplish something, in this case saving rights others need to have after we are gone.

Granted, the weather outside was beautiful, springlike temperatures and a slight ocean breeze cooling the warmth of the sun. But our rights do not only get attacked when the weather is lousy, and the planning that needs to be done to remove them might have to be held when it is not convenient not only when it lacks competition.

But, avoiding the Paine quote about summer soldiers and sunshine patriots, I will not do that.

I will just say plainly.

The Boomers showed up to protect the rights of the young knowing full well that what they are preparing to fight for no longer affects them but the absent young.

That’s who Boomers are.

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