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For close to 40 years I fought for Gay rights. When I left Massachusetts in 1985, there had been much progress but not as much as in Los Angeles to which I moved. Just having more rights made it clear things would become better in Boston, and, the previous wins in the war meant there was the possibility of more gains in the future.

I met and worked with people who were correct and the rights they fought for won, but I have recently stood in front of the homes of those I knew in the struggle but did not live long enough to enjoy the rights they won.

For eight years there I was involved in the struggle on the front lines, seeing my rights being won, and, then, I ended up in Oklahoma where I gave up every right I had both inherited and won, and, for all intents and purposes, had to start all over.

For 18 years I fought alongside some unbelievable people who are still at it even today and some who did not see what they had won, who actually were effective enough to have the capital city of the state become one of the few school districts in the United States to protect Trans students up to the year the district did that in 2010.

Ironically, this addition resulted in my returning to Massachusetts where at the age of 61 I finally had my rights with which I had been “endowed by the Creator”.

To put this in perspective:

Those under 20 have always had marriage equality in Massachusetts.

Anyone under 30 has gone through school here with anti-bullying laws, procedures, and teacher training.

Those under 35 have had equal rights in the state of Massachusetts since birth.

Anyone over those ages got their rights, gradually and unevenly over long periods of struggle if at all and know the value of them.

They know what life is like without those rights, and they know the homophobes will do anything to remove them and then pour salt on the open wounds in the name of their twisted version of Jesus.

Consider.

I, at 73, have had my Rights as a Gay man for only 12 years, as long as a kid entering middle school this school year. The kid has had rights 100% of his time on earth while my having the same rights amounts to 16% and came about because I moved and inherited them from those who did the work here as I did elsewhere.

I may not have ever met them, but I know them. 

Not everyone I knew and still know have the same rights we have here, some are losing them, and most cannot move here.

Please do not be like the under thirty members of the Gay Community in Oklahoma.

Every stripe of the Rainbow flag, whichever the design, or letter of the alphabet, now and to be added, in the Oklahoma City Public Schools were protected in all school policies until the religio-fascists decided to let every stripe and letter keep that except the Trans kids who had their rights stripped away, some a month before senior graduation.

This is the second school year beginning with the Trans kids not having their rights and no one seems to be interested in getting them back, not even the students who had them at the same time and still do.

Because I am in Massachusetts as a result of all those students getting their rights, and got mine by default and have only had them for the same amount of time the Trans kids had them, and because I went from having a modicum of civil and human rights only to lose them and have to fight to get them back, I know the position they are in and it angers me that while I sit here enjoying my rights only because people here fought for them, I see kids losing their rights and their own peers, their on Gen Z, seem too concerned about pronouns and symbols than the reality that they have turned their backs on those who lost their rights because they still have theirs.

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