So, the people who were killed (who, by the way, were mostly ordinary people trying to live their lives, not slain during political actions) didn't "rise above" the bigots? Could you please read some--actually, a *lot of* queer history and revisit this conversation.
This is what I mean. It's all dressed up very nicely, but he keeps revisiting this theme that the people who died somehow brought it on themselves. We're talking about women like Gwen Araujo here. What was her crime? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of…
Boogie is strongly implying that our dead were all killed in some heroic, storming of the Winter Palace struggle. That if, maybe, we'd indulged more peaceful methods, that wouldn't have happened. But we die in hate crimes while trying to live an ordinary life.
There is no connection whatsoever between any mode of queer activism and these deaths. Nothing we could have, or should have done differently. Advocating for bloodless social change is lovely, but this was a ridiculously offensive and stupid peg to hang that on.
Let's take this big. The problem with Boogie's "theory" is that it assumes social change is a natural phenomenon that occurs without any human intervention. The arc of the universe bends towards justice all on its own.
If we waited for a more congenial season, which would arrive on its own, we could have justice with far less struggle. If we wait even longer, we'll have justice, and no one need even have so much as asked for it.
This is a disturbingly common approach to social history which, as well as being wrong, is also deeply modern in ways that its promoters don't seem to appreciate. Humans haven't been able to take observable societal change for granted for more than maybe 200 years.
The notion that one's society should rapidly and visibly progress, both technologically and socially, in the span of one's lifetime is a very, very recent thing that we take for granted. It's the result of the Industrial Revolution, in large measure.
Yet it's been around just long enough that people seem to mistake it for the natural order. That the world changes as if by magic. No. We made it in our image, collectively. For good and for ill. That's how this all works.
And when you see activism, you're looking at one of the engines of change. Discomfort will always be a part of the process; there will always be debate and acrimony, always those who want to turn back the clock, always those offended by the slightest difference.
Nothing we have today that we consider essential, from weekends, to marriage equality, to an end to de jure segregation, to women's suffrage, to labour laws, were won without overcoming bitter and entrenched opposition. Not. A. One.
If you delude yourself into thinking otherwise, you think as Boogie must. That there is a favourable season when the world will, of its own accord, suddenly tolerate things it didn't before. Some invisible thermodynamic process that creates equality.
But that process? It's us. It's always been us. And it'll never be otherwise, for society is the product of human endeavour. Therefore, prejudice and inequality endure as long as we allow it. Not a moment longer.
