Why do straights hate gays?
An aging 72-year-old gay man  isn't
hopeful about the future.
By Larry Kramer
LARRY KRAMER is the
founder of the protest group ACT UP and the author of "The Tragedy of
Today's Gays."

March 20, 2007

DEAR STRAIGHT PEOPLE,

Why
do you hate gay people so much?

Gays are hated. Prove me wrong.
Your top general just called us immoral. Marine Gen. Peter Pace,
chairman of the Joint Chiefs, is in charge of an estimated 65,000 gay
and lesbian troops, some fighting for our country in Iraq. A right-wing
political commentator, Ann Coulter,
gets away with calling a straight
presidential candidate a faggot. Even Garrison Keillor, of all people,
is making really tacky jokes about gay parents in his column. This, I
guess, does not qualify as hate except that it is so distasteful and
dumb, often a first step on the way to hate. Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama tried to duck the questions
that Pace's bigotry
raised, confirming what gay people know: that there is not one
candidate running for public office anywhere who dares to come right
out, unequivocally, and say decent, supportive things about us.

Gays
should not vote for any of them. There is not a candidate or major
public figure who would not sell gays down the river. We have seen this
time after time, even from supposedly progressive politicians such as
President Clinton with his "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays in the
military and his support of the hideous Defense of Marriage Act. Of
course, it's possible that being shunned by gays will make politicians
more popular, but at least we will have our self-respect. To vote for
them is to collude with them in their utter disdain for us.

Don't
any of you wonder why heterosexuals treat gays so brutally year after
year after year, as your people take away our manhood, our womanhood,
our personhood? Why, even as
we die you don't leave us alone. What we
can leave our surviving lovers is taxed far more punitively than what
you leave your (legal) surviving spouses. Why do you do this? My lover
will be unable to afford to live in the house we have made for each
other over our lifetime together. This does not happen to you. Taxation
without representation is what led to the Revolutionary War. Gay people
have paid all the taxes you have. But you have equality, and we don't.

And
there's no sign that this situation will change anytime soon. President
Bush will leave a legacy of hate for us that will take many decades to
cleanse. He has packed virtually every court and every civil service
position in the land with people who don't like us. So, even with the
most tolerant of new presidents, gays will be unable to break free from
this yoke of hate. Courts rule against gays with hateful regularity. And
of course the Supreme Court is not going to give us our equality, and
in the end, it is from the Supreme Court that such equality must come.
If all of this is not hate, I do not know what hate is.

Our
feeble gay movement confines most of its demands to marriage. But
political candidates are not talking about — and we are not demanding
that they talk about — equality. My lover and I don't want to get
married just yet, but we sure want to be equal.

You must know
that gays get beaten up all the time, all over the world. If someone
beats you up because of who you are — your race or ethnic origin — that
is considered a hate crime. But in most states, gays are not included in
hate crime measures, and Congress has refused to include us in a
federal act.

Homosexuality is a punishable crime in a zillion
countries, as is any activism on behalf of it. Punishable means prison.
Punishable means death. The U.S. government refused our requests that it
protest after gay teenagers were hanged in Iran, but it protests many
other foreign cruelties. Who cares if a faggot dies? Parts of the
Episcopal Church in the U.S. are joining with the Nigerian archbishop,
who believes gays should be put in prison. Episcopalians! Whoever
thought we'd have to worry about Episcopalians?

Well, whoever
thought we'd have to worry about Florida? A young gay man was just
killed in Florida because of his sexual orientation. I get reports of
gays slain in our country every week. Few of them make news. Fewer are
prosecuted. Do you consider it acceptable that 20,000 Christian youths
make an annual pilgrimage to San Francisco to pray for gay souls? This
is not free speech. This is another version of hate. It is all one world
of gay-hate. It always was.

Gays do not realize that the more we
become visible, the more we come out of the closet, the more we are
hated. Don't those of you straights who claim not to hate us have a
responsibility to denounce the hate? Why is it socially acceptable to
joke about "girlie men" or to discriminate against us legally with
"constitutional" amendments banning gay marriage? Because we cannot
marry, we can pass on only a fraction of our estates, we do not have
equal parenting rights and we cannot live with a foreigner we love who
does not have government permission to stay in this country. These are
the equal protections that the Bill of Rights proclaims for all?

Why
do you hate us so much that you will not permit us to legally love? I
am almost 72, and I have been hated all my life, and I don't see much
change coming.

I think your hate is evil.

What do we do to
you that is so awful? Why do you feel compelled to come after us with
such frightful energy? Does this somehow make you feel safer and
legitimate? What possible harm comes to you if we marry, or are taxed
just like you, or are protected from assault by laws that say it is
morally wrong to assault people out of hatred? The reasons always
offered are religious ones, but certainly they are not based on the love
all religions proclaim.

And even if your objections to gays are
religious, why do you have to legislate them so hatefully? Make no
mistake: Forbidding gay people to love or marry is based on hate, pure
and simple.

You may say you don't hate us, but the people you
vote for do, so what's the difference? Our own country's democratic
process declares us to be unequal. Which means, in a democracy, that our
enemy is you. You treat us like crumbs. You hate us. And sadly, we let
you.