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They want a war on us because they desperately need anything to cling to power, and we're an easy target because let's face it: even most proud Democrats are at least a little homophobic if you catch them in an unguarded moment.
They know they can go after us and the people in power, even the supposedly "progressive" ones, will quietly look the other way.
They1 want us to take it off the streets so they can target us in the alleyways, they want us to take it out of the light so they can hunt us in the darkness. "Be respectable" is saying "be out of sight", and atrocities thrive when they are not seen.
They can't hurt us openly yet, so they demand we are respectable and quiet so they don't have to hide our screams. Only be obvious about your queerness in specialized containers so we can grab a dozen of you at once, call it obscenity or call it a tragic accident or call it a lone wolf.
They cannot force us into special neighborhoods yet, but they can moralize us into hiding when we're not gathered.
If your existence makes cishet people uncomfortable, then exist more so they have to adapt to you. Be loud. Be open. Because if only one of us is that person is a target, but if all of us are than we are a fucking movement.
And the reason is obvious, too. You see it happening all the time. Nixon did a similar version - quote is form a former aide of his, pulled from here:
We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.
Except now they can't make it illegal to be gay or trans, but by getting the public to associate gays with kink and trans with drag, and then criminalizing both heavily.... well, I don't need to say the rest. And we can't forget how the fascists and their ilk try to associate queerness with "leftist ideology" or how anti-queer measures disproportionally disrupt BIPOC communities - it's all connected, and that's why intersectionality is so important.
The cops are not our friends. There is no being "one of the good ones." And if you're trying to get other queer people to be respectable, you're just helping those with power push your queer siblings into neat little pens before they come for you.
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And to avoid implications, They here refers to the cops, and the GOP, and the evangelicals, and of course the capitalists who all find us uncomfortable and inconvenient.
