Proceed at your own risk

LICENSE TO KILL, RENEWED

The FBI now officially tells us that violent hate crimes against gay Americans are skyrocketing--from decapitations in Puerto Rico to pipe beatings in Houston.  The government is scrambling to figure out the cause.  Well, maybe not scrambling but they do seem somewhat curious.

Kill me now, please.  I'd rather the short sweet escape of a sudden death then the long agonizing torture of living in a nation wallowing in hypocrisy and pathological denial.

With Maine down, 31 states have now legalized attacks on homosexuals as deviants.

The United States military stands in its conviction that homosexuals are a threat to national security.

The Roman Catholic Church has announced that it would rather starve the poor and abandon orphans than see homosexuals treated with equality, respect and dignity.  Furthermore the Church is publicly engaged in a global witch hunt to drive homosexuals from polite society.

The Archbishops of New York and Washington joined with Evangelical leaders just  last week to denounce gay relationships and gay love as perversions equal in abomination to incest.

The Obama Administration counts as its allies and friends countless nations that promote life imprisonment and death sentences for homosexuals.

The Obama Administration defends the Defense of Marriage Act in court describing gay love as comparable to incest and bestiality.  The President also stands silent as gay men and women are beaten, tortured, raped and murdered in the United State military.

American Evangelical leaders preach that homosexuals are destroying families, the sanctity of motherhood and the moral fabric of American life.  Over the past few months a growing number of Evangelical leaders and pundits have been comparing gay activists to the incident at Foot Hood, claiming that the gay community is conspiring to launch a wave of terrorism against Christians that will make the Foot Hood massacre look like a tea party.

Oklahoma politicians are carrying guns for the express purpose of defending themselves from an epidemic of death threats from gay terrorists--although none have been documented or proven.

Several gay bloggers are now under investigation by the FBI for providing a forum for gay terrorists to promote attacks on Christians.  So far no angry mobs of homosexuals storming churches are gunning down clergy, but when Christians make a claim, government acts.

The rationale used to destroy Iraq was based on far less of a case than is now being made across this nation by Republicans and Christians.  Will we wake up one morning to shock and awe on Christopher Street or in West Hollywood?

The truth is out there; in fact it is rather obvious. 

This nation has given violent bigots, emotionally unstable teenagers, insecure heterosexual thugs and devout Christians a license to kill--to kill us--and until Religion is challenged as the cause, things will get much worse and will likely never get better.

The FBI says violence targeting gay Americans is skyrocketing.  Some would blame it on Adam Lambert and Ellen Degeneres.  All that visibility.  We're asking for it.  That must be the reason.  It's OK for Hip Hop artists to simulate anal sex with women on national television but when two men kiss, all hell breaks loose.  Load the guns, grab the baseball bats and sharpen the machetes!  The homos are kissing in public again!

Washington, state legislatures, the ballot box, the Pentagon, the courts and clergy nationwide have make it very clear that gay lives are less than human and are in fact a threat to the nation.  And the FBI is wondering who is to blame for the rise in attacks on gay men?

BLACK COPS AND GAY REPUBLICANS

As naive as it may seem, I still tend to assume that "the system" works more than it does not.  So, as naive as it may seem, I was recently shaken by the words of several well-respected Black leaders and activists who condemned the New York City Police Department as being pretty much rotten to the core.

As a gay man who was damaged and corrupted by 40 years in the closet, I have no difficulty understanding the symptoms and manifestations of self-hatred, not to mention the pathetic and often-times frightening maneuvers used by self-haters to gain acceptance and invisibility among the so-called majority.

Last year, New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly challenged allegations of racism in the horrific Sean Bell shooting.  Kelly pointed out that the majority of police officers involved in the incident were in fact Black themselves.  Kelly implied that it is illogical to accuse the NYPD of racism under such circumstances.

Some Black leaders bitterly refuted this defense pointing out that the vast majority of "victims" of police shootings in this city are young African-American men.  They contend that once an African-American puts on the NYPD uniform he ceases to be Black and in fact becomes Blue.

Is the NYPD so profoundly corrupt that it teaches racism to its uniforms?  Are our cops, regardless of race, trained to make automatic assumptions about men on the street based on the color of their skin? Is racism in this most liberal and progressive of cities in fact pervasively institutionalized?  Do Black men and women enter the force to change the system from within only to end up facilitating and enabling an even worse brand of racism?

If the criminal justice system is seriously biased against minorities and particularly against African-Americans, is it even possible for Black police officers to remain true to their own communities and heritage and stand with pride as part of the very organization that represents the enforcement arm of an allegedly racist system of justice?

Are Black officers a defense against racism in our criminal justice system or are they enablers of racism?

These are troubling questions that remain unanswered as we continue to see black innocent black New Yorkers shot and killed by members of NYPD, black and white.

But these questions have also struck an uncomfortably familiar chord within my gay heart. 

As a gay New Yorker, I find myself deeply troubled by the possible analogy between Black cops and Gay Republicans.  In fact, are Black cops cut from the same cloth as gay Republicans?

Gay Republicans take the position that they can change the system by working from within.  The majority of gay men and women, myself included, see Gay Republicans as Uncle Toms who enable homophobia, wallow in self-hatred and sell their souls to gain acceptance by the so-called majority, a majority that openly crusades to deny us, as Gay Americans, our civil rights and our equal right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Gay Republicans use the excuse that they are Republican according to the old standard of fiscal conservatism and less government. In fact, as George W. Bush has demonstrated over these past seven years, fiscal conservatism and less government is as relevant to today's Republican party as oral contraceptives are to a couple of gay lovers.

I've never before considered the New York City Police Department in this way. Have I been wrong?  Are the Abner Louima, Amadou Diallo and Patrick Dorismond incidents of the Giuliani days the rule rather than the exception?

It may be that a few hearings and debates will produce little more than window dressing.  Do we need a revolution at the center?  Perhaps Christine Quinn's gay perspective may be of some real use in this situation as she looks within the system, the police department and the heart of Ray Kelly.  But it may also be that Black cops and Gay Republicans do us all much harm.  The large percentage of Black cops in the NYPD has had no impact on the repeated shootings of innocent Black New Yorkers and the Gay Republicans have had no positive impact on the advance of gay rights.