The Prokaryote Kid

Links if you want to read more - I did.

[T]here are two questions I am always asked by lesbians who look down on AIDS work, and by lesbians and gay men working in other progressive movements. One is: “Would gay men have done the same thing for lesbians if the situation had been reversed?” The first thing I say is, “I am not in this movement for gay men; I am in this movement for myself.” And then I ask them: “What have straight women and straight men done for us? What have the antinuclear and anti-intervention movements done for us?” I’m not saying that people shouldn’t work in these movements. I am saying, “Check out the homophobia in your question.” The second question I am asked is: “If a cure for AIDS happened tomorrow, wouldn’t all those gay men go home and not care about access issues?” “Probably a lot would,” I answer, “just like all the women who went home after Roe v. Wade and only came out again when Roe was threatened.” The fact is that poor women — and because of institutional racism in this country, Black and Latin women are disproportionately among the poor — and young women and rural women have not had access to abortion for many, many years. Where were these women in 1977 when the Hyde Amendment, cutting off federal Medicaid funding for abortion, was passed? Gay men, as a group, are no better and no worse than anyone else. We have to get past this mentality.

‘we used to call it radar… sometimes you’re wrong and they’re really farmers