I am going to be honest.

I have met and worked with many labor and GLBT activists over the years, and the work done and battles fought were often tough.

In the forty plus years I have seen unions struggle to get and maintain decent hours, wages, and conditions of employment and have protected the contract from assaults by representing teachers in grievances even when the motivation was to maintain the contract and preserve its power for all members and not the one who I had wished was not the person I was representing, especially when that person was a non-dues paying employee whom I was obligated to represent by law although they were using the resources of the union supported by its dues paying members.

I saw and fought a number of attempts by management to whittle away conditions and the respect hard working people deserved. I heard the lies used to justify the attempts to reduce professionals to mere “help”.

As a GLBT Activist I heard the lies and scare tactics used to reduce me and mine to “other” status. I heard the demonizing and dealt with the treatment used to deny me and mine the inalienable rights with which all are endowed by our creator. I watched as people were given the opportunity to decide that I was not someone who had those rights and could be denied housing, medical care, employment, and decent human respect because someone needed to be able to do that for their selfish gain,

I watched as some of us were bashed and killed for sport in the name of religion, and for that same reason saw friends die because religion claimed a virus was God’s punishment, not for who they were, but because they were said to be the caricatures invented by those who used religion as a political tool.

I saw the resistance to protect school children from being bullied to the point of suicide because they weren’t the good Christian, heterosexual kids that were acceptable to those in charge.

I saw us treated as throw away people who should be grateful for any crumbs we were given by those whose world it was assumed to be. We were expected to be grateful they let us exist in the margins,

And so I fought.

I fought on both coasts and in the Buckle of the Bible Belt alongside those who fought for our birthright as full citizens.

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So what I do not need now that the president, congress, and the Supreme Court are making my Constitutional rights dependent on one religious denomination, and with an opening on the SCOTUS bench that shows all the signs of going to someone who will further assault my rights and rule in favor of those who also do it, is to be told to keep a stiff upper lip and carry on because it’s not all that bad, especially those who take their rights as a given without having had to fight for them and assume everyone has also always had them.

If you have never had to fight for your rights, don’t tell those of us who have that things are not all that bad, the fight is easy, and we should welcome it because it is.

This time, if you tell us not to give up the fight without realizing we are going to be fighting old battles for the prizes already won, and if you assume it to be the lark your advice appears you think it is, join us this time and help.

But don’t tell me not to be angry, or to be nicer than those who attack me, or be the better man.

They don’t accept me as a man.

Allow me my anger born of my frustration that once again I have to devote my time to the fight that should never have had to be fought in the first place while I am forced to fight it again.

And if you are a young GLBT person, it’s more your fight than mine as our age difference means you have to live under the upcoming conditions far longer than I do especially if you sit back and wait for someone else to do it.

We old guys need you to be there to take the baton.

Last time I tried approaching things with class and dignity.

Not sure I can do that this time.