it gets worse

This summer, I had the unbelievable experience of watching the New York state legislature pass a same-sex marriage bill, allowing little gays like me to get married to other little gays. It was a moment that I wasn't sure I'd ever get to experience. I will never forget that night for a lot of reasons - it was the last night of work for me at my previous job and I spent it hugging the youth I had worked with for the last two years, overjoyed that this was their future; my best gay friends from North Carolina were in town to visit and we went out and celebrated with the New York gays and got shitwrecked and did inappropriate things on 6th Avenue; and it was the Friday of Pride weekend. Forget "It Gets Better." Our tagline for the weekend was "It gets fucking AMAZING."

Does it? Even as I celebrated the baby step forward to full LGBT-equality, I knew we had overlooked the real inequality: which is that it's still sucks to be LGBT for a lot of Americans. These campaigns seem to focus on the people who can afford to get married, and they aren't always focused on changing the national dialogue on LGBT people, which is rife with misinformation, stereotypes, and full on ignorance. Don't believe me? Look no further than what people were saying about Chaz Bono being cast on Dancing With the Stars. By the way, with Bristol Palin and now Chaz, shouldn't they change the name to Dancing With the Offspring of Real Stars?

While I have campaigned for and very much wanted the right to marry, I know that it's not what's most important. At least not for me. I know that marriage, while it should be a right, is more of a privilege. Because of my race and my gender, I will probably never have to fight very hard to be seen as equal. I will probably, as many others like me before, live a generally fulfilled life even if I didn't have the right to marry. I will probably never have to struggle to find a job, or to be taken seriously, or to be given opportunities to succeed. I'm not worried about people like me, I fight for people who aren't like me.

What happened today in North Carolina was not inevitable. In fact, Equality NC has worked for the past decade, repeatedly blocking this amendment from passing and they had been successful. North Carolina is the last state in the South to pass this amendment, and I can assure you it is because both the House and the Senate are controlled by Republicans. Some of the most ignorant and loathsome Republicans since that flaming piece of dog terd, Jesse Helms. It's not because North Carolinians suddenly hate LGBT people. They have always hated LGBT people, silly. Just kidding. I think. I hope. I... sigh.

I'm no longer a North Carolinian, but I'm an American citizen who has grown so exhausted with the increasingly ridiculous nature of this fight for equality. This shit is fucocked and let me show you why:

• Before people get married, they need to be able to live somewhere. Without a federal law guaranteeing the protection from housing discrimination based on someone's sexual orientation or gender identity, this fight for marriage will always be tinged with foolishness. (For example, transgender people of color, especially African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos, and those of mixed racial identity, are subject to staggering rates of eviction -- as high was 37%.) 
• Before people can live somewhere, they need to be able to work. Without federal protections from employment discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, this fight for housing non-discrimination will always be a little bit misguided. (36% of the same group of transgender people of color mentioned earlier experienced job loss based on their gender identity.) More of these alarming statistics here.
• Before people can work somewhere, they need to be healthy enough to work somewhere. LGBT people, especially the aging population, need to be guaranteed unilaterally respectful and competent service from health care providers. Not to mention that many transgender individuals cannot get imperative health coverage because of their income level and housing or employment status. Doesn't this make you wish we'd let the fight for employment non-discrimination take a back seat for a second?
• Before people are healthy enough to work, they need to be given an education in a safe environment so that they actually can become productive members of society. Without federal protections for youth in schools from vicious anti-LGBT bullying and harassment - the kind that drives LGBT youth to attempt and complete suicide more frequently than heterosexual youth - all of these other fights really mean nothing, don't they?

After we accomplish all of these things, then all LGBT Americans will finally be able to get married and then truly enjoy life's luxuries, like McCarran strollers for little Asian babies, and have iPhones and use Grindr till their penises fall off. Don't get me wrong. I want all of these things. I just think it sucks a bag of twenty dicks (which doesn't sound so bad until you think of why is it just a bag, and why are they not attached to bodies - okay, it's bad) that we're all so screwed up on this.

Go to school. Be healthy. Get a job. Get a place to live. Get married. Be miserable. This is the American dream, which is archaic in its own ways, but I'm assuming it's what most people consider they're means to the end of life, liberty and happiness. When you're not even guaranteed any of these things, on a federal level, what can you do?

The government has fucked us all up and over and backwards, and it's been a mean angry fuck. They tricked us into thinking the states should be taking care of these issues, which is why some states are seen as more "backwards" than others. Civil rights somewhere became a "state issue," even though I thought on the 14th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America we were guaranteed equal protection of the laws. I'm sure there is some fancy lawyer loophole, probably discovered by that shrewd shit-on-the-walls-crazy woman Patty Hewes, but that seems pretty clear cut to me.

I'm sad to see so many of my North Carolinian friends proclaim their disappointment in their state. I don't see it that way. I see it as I have always seen it - a select few toolbags, mostly rich, straight, white men, likely with beer bellies and abused wives and KKK memberships - deciding the law for the rest of us, no matter how many people disagree with their antiquated paradigms. (Maybe I can be a fancy lawyer!) The facts are there: the majority of North Carolinians do not want this amendment in their state. So, why are you all ashamed of where you're from?

And for those of you who are not in North Carolina, but who have some preconceived notion of people with little-to-no teeth, Dale Earnhardt t-shirts that say "Legends Never Die," and a predilection for not wearing shoes, yeah, okay maybe you're right. But it's not "inevitable," that it would have ended up this way, and North Carolina isn't full of bigoted idiots. A 13 year-old kid didn't get shot point blank and murdered for being effeminate in North Carolina, it was California. 8 people weren't arrested for a string of 4 anti-gay hate crimes in North Carolina, it was New York, the holy land of Marriage Equality. So quit talkin' bout my Daddy like you know something.

The fact is, inequality and injustice is everywhere for LGBT Americans. NC - don't be ashamed or sorry to call that state home. Feel pitiful that you live in the land of the free that still hasn't figured out what the hell that even means yet. This is not a failure for North Carolina, it's a failure for the United States. And it will keep happening until we have leadership in the federal government who gets a giant slap and a "Snap out of it!" lecture from RuPaul.

I am by no means demeaning the hard work that folks have put forth for any pro-LGBT legislation, as I am someone who has also worked hard on it. This whole thing is frustrating. This is purely a personal response to the situation, not to the people involved in the situation. So, don't hate me. Or do! I think I will be okay.

PS - If you are in the position or feel compelled, please see what you can to do help out Equality NC. I have worked for several non-profits, and this is the only one I would recommend you giving your money to. They are the real deal.