The excruciating pain of the perhaps Lesbian "witches" at the stakes in Europe, found guilty by the heterosexist men who were threatened both politically, theologically, and spiritually, these women feeling the fires on their legs, started by Gaymen, who were equally threatening to the heterosexist political and religious structures, tied to the faggots of wood which were used to start the fires, is our pain.
Perhaps they were witches. In fact, they probably were, living within the cycles of the moon and the seasons of the Earth, knowing that the deity is both male and female and, by transcending both, is neither, living outside traditional theology and ecclesiology. Perhaps they were in sexual and emotional relationships with their sisters. Perhaps they did not need men nearly as much as the men would have liked. Surely they knew the Mystery of which the men were not and could not be privy. Their pain is our pain.
The pain of the women at the Salem witch trials is our pain.
The pain of the women burned in the witch hunts of Europe is our pain.
The pain of the burning of our sister and martyr Joan of Arc is our pain.
The pain of the humiliation and death of Gaymen in colonial Amerika in the 17th century simply for being gay is our pain.
The pain of the horrifying torture and death of Queermen during the Portuguese and Spanish Inquisitions is our pain.
The disemboweling and rape of Gaymen with red hot irons in early Britain is our pain.
The pain of the Queermen who were incarcerated and experimented upon, raped, and killed in the ovens of Nazi concentration camps because of how they loved is our pain. That pain of having to wear an upside down pink triangle is our pain.
That same pink triangle that made the Great Plague of AIDS of the 1980's and 1990's visible through our prophet Larry Kramer and the organization called Act Up which he founded in a world which would rather not have it so, particularly the Reagan-Bush administration in the White House who were really the murderers , not the disease, that same Nazi pink triangle that symbolizes the pain of the concentration camps that is our pain today became a symbol of at once rage, life, and hope.
Our slogan "silence equals death" was true. It was so during the Jewish Holocaust and it was so during our Holocaust. For too long we were silent as we died horrible deaths, and it was our public screaming and media actions that finally began the change, but it was also their silence, the Reagan-Bush silence, which did, in fact, equal our death. The institutional homophobia of the administration which wanted as many of our Tribe to die off as possible is what kept us from breathing. For six of their eight years in the White House, they never once uttered the word "AIDS", and they successfully kept it out of the media. They gave no money for funding research to try to find medications that would control the disease. They just wanted us dead and out of their world, as many of us dead as could possibly die. It was our genocide, our Holocaust, and the pain of the approximately 500,000 beautiful Gaymen in their prime of life who died of complications due to AIDS in the 1980's and 90's and who continue to die today in a more quiet way, is our pain.
The pain of a Queer person being bashed on a street corner in Chicago or New York or Los Angeles or Denver or Dallas or any city in Amerika, or tied to a fence post left to die in Laramie, WY is our pain today.
The pain of Lesbians or Gaymen who get beaten and bashed in so many different kinds of ways, especially through domestic violence, is all our pain.
The pain of an African American Gayman being dragged by a car and finally run over three times in the South is our pain.
The grief over so many horrible anti-Queer death throughout history is our grief.
The terror, isolation, and pain of a Queer person struggling with coming out is our terror, isolation, and pain.
We cannot escape it.
This pain and grief are powerful parts of our Queer collective unconscious, the cell memory of pain and grief as we have lived it throughout the history of humankind, but most especially since the advent of Christianity. It is a pain that the Spanish gypsies, the People of the Flamenco, would call jondo, a deep pain in the cell memory. We are all connected in that pain, but we are also a resilient people, and that ties us to each other as well. We bounce back in the face of every obstacle, and we still dance the Dance. We are still here, no matter what has been done to us, no matter how much hatred we face, and we will continue to be here until the end of all things.
As well, we are all connected in our great joy when we dance together, laugh together, bond with each other, make friends with each other, have sex with each other, make love with each other, eat a meal together, go shopping with each other, celebrate life together, worship with each other, tell our best Queer friend our deepest most secret secret. In our lives, surrounded by too much hatred, we strive for life.
"Live in joy,
In love,
Even among those who hate."
This, from that great books of wisdom "The Dhammapada", this tells us how to survive in the face of the hatred that is still spilled on us, particularly from the radical Christian Right and White Supremacists. In the name of Jesus, they would have us dead. But the words of the ancient text teach us that we have life to live, and we are peoples of the Cosmic Dance, dancing, dancing through all our pain and all our joy. dancing the Cosmic Dance of Lord Shiva and his consort Lord Vishnu, dancing the Cosmic Dance with God/dess, dancing ecstatically with the Mother whom we incarnate and embody on Earth.
Keep Dancing, my Brothers and Sisters. Keep Dancing, for it is this Dancing through the pain that is also a deep part of our collective unconscious. We Dance for Life; we Dance for Love; we Dance for all that we are and all that we can be.
Keep dancing, my dears. Keep Dancing.
you write very well and are insightful
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