A few months ago I wrote about the gay “queer” anarchist group, Bash Back. They an “anti-establishment, anti-military, and anti-marriage” loosely-bound group opposed to the gender binary. (Yes, for some people, the first year of college never ends.)
Last month I wrote about how a Memphis billboard featuring a gay marine was destroyed.
What I know now is that those stories, unfortunately, overlap. Yes, the little brats of Bash Back are coyly claiming responsibility for the destruction of the billboard, and they’re camouflaging their counterproductve tantrum with an “explanation” that they are trying to stop “gay militarism.”
From the Bash Back site:
The big story for the past 2 months in the Memphis gay “community” and local mainstream media, has been the supposed “anti-gay” vandalizing of an assimilationist gay billboard put up in a poor POC neighborhood outside of downtown Memphis.
The billboard read “I’m gay and I protected your freedom,” and featured a white, straight-presenting man in uniform, was put up by the Memphis Gay and Lesbian Community Center and cost an estimated $3500.00 . The so-called “homophobic vandals” ripped up the billboard, leaving no trace it had ever even been there. Leaving only the pieces of a fabulous Patti Labelle advertisement in its place.
The gay “community” was so “outraged”, of course they had to do something;staged a prayer vigil on National Coming Out Day, to pray for the individual(s) who carried out this “gruesome act of homophobia”, as well as throwing in some veiled racist remarks that hinted that “the black community hates the gay comminity”; as if they are mutually exclusive.
I’m here to dispute the claim that this action was an anti-gay act.
First, sending gays to be military fodder is NOT pro-gay or conclusive whatsoever to gay liberation. State militarism only reinforces the dominant structures, and the racism/heterosexism they perpetuate, as well as reducing the number of gay people in the world (both those in Amerikkka and the countries Amerikkka is colonizing/conquering).
Second, we accuse the MGLCC of being flat out racist/anti-queer/anti-trans; and we furiously question how that the Memphis Gay and Lesbian Community Center can squander $3500 on military billboards, when Memphis has the highest trans-murder rate (11 trans women of color, 1 white transwoman and 1 transman of color), as well as one of the highest queer youth homeless rates in the nation, and how they can justify putting a pro-military billboard in the overwhelmingly POC neighborhood of Morris Park, when the poor Black community in Morris Park is disporportionately preyed upon by the military (through the court system’s “prison or military service” rule for minor felonies as well as recruiters’ false promises of otherwise impossible economic/education opportunities)?
Their points are well-taken. But how on earth can Bash Back think that reducing LGBT visibility is good for anyone? And why does everyone have to be “queer” in their world. Why does Bash Back believe that it has any moral authority to dictate how people who are attracted to members of the same sex must live?
This kind of vandalism is an immature response to nuanced and complicated problems.
