Besides linking the LGBT community to pedophilia, incest, Nazism, witchcraft and bestiality, it has now focused on the idea of "recruitment," especially in schools. It's really a non-issue, but Tony Perkins of the disingenuous Family Research Council has sounded the alarm of "recruitment" in schools if anti-bullying education is enacted.
Mr. Perkins will doubtless take umbrage with this passage from Tales of The City:
[In a letter written to his mother, Michael (Mouse) Tolliver telling her that he is homosexual].
No, Mama, I wasn't "recruited." No seasoned homosexual ever served as my mentor. But you know what? I wish someone had. I wish someone older than me and wiser than the people in Orlando had taken me aside and said, "You're all right, kid. You can grow up to be a doctor or a teacher just like anyone else. You're not crazy or sick or evil. You can succeed and be happy and find peace with friends - all kinds of friends - who don't give a damn who you go to bed with. Most of all, though, you can love and be loved, without hating yourself for it."[5]
So will the beautiful, wicked City-by-the-Bay be able to prevent possible extreme attacks? No. Nothing can prevent hate crimes perpetrated by zealots spurred on by the Religious Right. Zealots have, in fact, become the new home-grown terrorists, oblivious to the parallels their preachers have to radical Islam's imams. And will it survive the amped-up volume of rotten rhetoric? Yes. The performance of a show like Tales of the City is certainly a testament to that: San Francisco will survive because basic humanity, love and compassion will always survive, despite the efforts of some to make the very soul of The City extinct.
Alright, this piece may go down as just another rant, so as to end it with a more PC tone I will force myself to understatement: the attackers (he says with teeth gritted) against the glorious City of San Francisco are ... not ... very...nice ... people.
1 Before the "Jockey Shorts Dance Contest" started, I was a go-go dancer in the infamous End Up's cage. I lasted more than three months. I was popular ... as well as hungry.
2 I always seem to be close to crimes in The City: I was very near the Pink Saturday homicide (and I was in a Castro bar during the White Night Riots), so I was able to ask police about it: it was gang-related and had nothing to do with the gay community or the Pink Saturday Party. The Christian Right, however, omits this fact, hoping that their profile of gays as violent will be proved correct.
3 FYI: Harry Hay did not intend to replace Judeo-Christian principles with his own ideologies. Furthermore, gay politics has never been as powerful as the video might leave you to believe. Gays have always been creative in their vociferousness, leading most to believe that they have enormous amounts of power.
4 Police also shouted "sieg heil!" and "bonzai!" When they herded us all onto the intersection of 18th and Castro they were astounded at the number of patrons in the bars - approx. 1500. When we started to shout "Go Home! Go Home!" the 50 policemen reasoned that the crowd was unsustainable and ... went home. One bartender at the Elephant Walk couldn't go home: after having scalding hot water poured over him, he was clubbed viciously enough to lay in a coma for over six months.
5 Interestingly enough, this is the same letter Maupin published in the San Francisco Chronicle , telling his own mother that he was homosexual.
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