Hey, Mr. LaPierre, the LGBT community is far stronger than the NRA
In the late 1980’s early 1990’s I volunteered at the Zen Center in the Castro district of San Francisco. I didn’t understand what was happening with AIDS nor why but I wanted, as a heterosexual woman, to get a sense of it. There was no better place than the Zen Hospice in the heart of the Gay community.
When the Supreme Court ruled on Friday, June 26, 2015, for equal marriage rights for the LGBT community and all people, I remembered my time at the Castro hospice center, and I thought how incredibly far our country had come in 25 years.
No movement is created or strengthened without the blood, the fire, the tears, the commitment, the love or the unnecessary loss of life of some of its members. I have marveled and been witness to the determination and the growing strength politically, economically and spiritually of that community. I have had the honor of working with some of the most powerful voices within that community, so I know one thing to be true. I know that LGBT people will create a movement to defeat the stupid, ignorant, hate-filled agenda of the NRA. We are not talking the second amendment, though that too has been corrupted by ignorance. We are talking about the ability to buy a Sig Sauer in 38 minutes, an automatic weapon with reduced kick and so light weight a 4-year-old could use it.
I don’t believe that 49 young people lost their lives for nothing. I believe that 49 young people lost their lives to start another movement – a movement so powerful that Muslim Americans, Newton families, churches of all faiths and denominations, heterosexuals, Mental health organizations and reasonable people everywhere will again join with the LGBT community to disrupt the power of the NRA over a Republican Congress. A congress filled with people of so little integrity, courage or thoughtfulness that it too will dissolve under the pressure of a movement that started in Newtown, CT., and strengthened in Orlando, Florida.