Another Pride week is here, and while we have made great great strides in the fight to have all people treated with equal humanity, dignity and decency, it's not over yet!
The religious right has grown more strident as their insane troll logic crumbles around them, and they are determined that if they are going, they're taking everyone with them!
The common sense approach, the one that says I'm a human being therefore I will be treated like a human being, doesn't always work.
Don't be complacent; for every boy or girl who found it easy to come out and doesn't understand what the fuss is about, there's a Matthew Shepard, beaten and left for dead simply for existing on the planet. For every cocktail they invent to combat HIV, there's a man out there who thinks it was great that by waiting a few years before mentioning the plague, thousands and thousands of gay men were simply wiped off the earth. And for every marriage performed for loving, consenting and beautiful couples in MA and other states, there are widows and widowers who have lost even the rights to their homes because their government says they didn't exist.
Vote early, vote often, vote NDP *L*
And though this week is significant for many many reasons, remember, Pride is a 24/7/365 thing.
 

Scarecrow-Melissa Etheridge
Showers of your crimson blood
seep into a nation calling up a flood
of narrow minds who legislate
thinly veiled intolerance
bigotry and hate

But they tortured and burned you
they beat you and they tied you
they left you cold and breathing
for love they crucified you

I can't forget hard as i try
this silhouette against the sky

Scarecrow crying
waiting to die wondering why
scarecrow trying
angels will hold carry your soul away

This was our brother
this was our son
this shepherd young and mild
this unassuming one
we all gasp this can't happen here
we're all much too civilized
where can these monsters hide

But they are knocking on our front door
they're rocking in our cradles
they're preaching in our churches
and eating at our tables

I search my soul
my heart and in my mind
to try and find forgiveness
this is someone child
with pain unreconciled
filled up with father's hate
mother's neglect
I can forgive but i will not forget

Scarecrow crying
waiting to die wondering why
scarecrow trying
rising above all in the name of love