About the video – background

The idea for the video popped into my mind while listening to the song. Except that we aren’t actually f*cked, it just seems that way sometimes.* From this perspective, the video is an expression of anger and frustration, of rage at injustice. The fundamentalists and certain social conservatives have created a climate – world wide – in which it acceptable to condemn us, acceptable to beat us, acceptable to kill us. To quote a judge in Texas, who was presiding over a trial for the killers of two gay men, “they were just a couple of queers.” We are the last minority that it is socially acceptable to discriminate against.

But this isn’t the message I wanted to send. Yes, the video is an expression of emotion, but it is also a call to action. It is a call to “be the cure.” We are the best weapon we have – if we come out of the closet.

Three minutes and eighteen seconds pass quickly. Ivan and I had a lot to say, but not much time. Yet, we managed to pack several themes into the video. Religion-sponsored hate and oppression, adults teaching children to be bigots and the tsunami of states banning same-sex marriage, all of which provide justification for and contribute to an endless series of gay bashings and murders. Finally, the video ends with clips of some of the most ignorant and homophobic personalities in America and the plea to “Be the Cure.”

Before Proposition 8 passed, one of the false arguments used by the proponents was that children would be taught in California schools that marriage equality was OK (oh, the horror!). These very same people happily took their kids (some of whom are gay) to anti-gay rallies, used them as weapons and taught them to be bigots. We both wondered why it was OK to teach hate but not equality. The answer, of course, is deliberate ignorance, but it is astonishing that so many people can be so blind.

Or is it?

It was Ivan who drew the comparison between the Ku Klux Klan (“then”) and the Mormon church (“now”). I thought it was brilliant. Here you have two organizations, disguised in white, that seek to deny a class of people the same rights that everyone else enjoys. They will travel from far lands to descend on your home and preach hate and intolerance of people who are different. They will contribute millions of dollars for the sole purpose of controlling your life based on the twisted, ignorance-based sense of morality they have been brainwashed into believing.

The preacher/church to Borg idea was my own, and yes, I am a sci-fi geek. In case you’ve been in a cave for the past two decades, the Borg are fictional villains – cybernetic-enhanced humanoid drones from multiple species – organized as an interconnected collective. They exist to achieve one goal: to “add the biological and technological distinctiveness of other species to their own” in pursuit of perfection. This occurs through forced assimilation, a process which transforms individuals and technology into Borg, enhancing, and simultaneously controlling, individuals by implanting synthetic components. In other words, they seize control of your life and soul. You have no independence or free will. You are a slave. And you assimilate others to be exactly the same.

Of course, all religions do not require blind obedience or the recruitment of others, and not all preach evil. But many do, particularly of the fundamentalist, conservative varieties. It is no coincidence that the same religions that condemn people who find themselves attracted to members of their own gender, that claim homosexuality is an illness and can be “cured,” also deny any discovery of science that contradicts their millennia-old mythology.

Fairy-tales over reality? Deliberate ignorance? It is not only unnatural, it is evil.

* Though many of us, unfortunately, have been. Murdered, executed, fired, beaten, tortured … simply because we were born different.