As someone who is bi and was against the passing of Prop 8 (but not against the ballot), I’m conflicted about this list.
I mean, sure, protest groups do this all the time: find any record of businesses and individuals who contributed to something which those in the protest group were against, and then post them publicly in a "tar-and-feather" manner for the sake of boycotts and pickets:
- an anti-abortion group
- a pro-bush group (via a neutral third party)
- a pro-Ron Paul group
- an anti-Bill O’Reilly group
- an anti-Commercialization of education group
- etc.
However, lists of perceived enemies have been made by those who valued their self-interests to the detriment to someone else’s own life, liberty and/or property, including gangsters/mobsters (the "hitlist") and even Richard Nixon (his "Enemies’ list").
Plus, interest and protest groups who use the "name-and-shame" tactic tend to be viewed as vindictive, mobbish, sometimes ideologically-headstrong types. Plus, I remember "name-and-shame" being used by a tabloid newspaper in Uganda to specifically target gays and lesbians in that country, since homosexuality is looked down upon and outlawed with prejudice by that country’s paranoid leaders (both religious and political); this action was decried by LGBT-specific media outlets and organizations throughout the world.
So I know that LGBT activists are ready to switch to different, more forcefully vindictive tactics as a result of Prop 8’s passing, and I can’t blame them: "playing nice" may no longer be an option. But I can’t say that "name-and-shame" is a useful tactic for a demographic that is a tinier minority than most major ethnic and religious groups, since, taking a Malcolm X-like view, the vast majority is opposed to the idea of same-sex marriage and could care less about the LGBT existence lest we assume an increasingly separatist stance.
Everybody has to stand strong for issues dealing with non-acceptance of others. One fight is all fights too. You can’t really just pick one and be against the others. For instance you can’t try and fight racism for your group and not all racism. You can’t fight racism and leave out sexism, etc.
I guess this is a little off topic but even Gandhi said something along the lines of non-violent protest wouldn’t have worked if the British weren’t dignified.
He was also quotes as saying:
“I am one of those who feel that the violence of the brave is better than the non-violence of the cowardly!”
Sometimes it does come to blows.
I’m not saying that they should be selective…..OK, maybe I am.
My main issue, or at least the whole point of this post, is to emphasize that, in both this and many other countries, those who are “out” about their non-heterosexual sexuality are in the tiniest minorities.
Gandhi, while he didn’t have it easy to press non-violently for India’s independence, had more of a leg up on later historical manifestations of nonviolent advocacy for reform of the political status quo, due to the fact that he was pressing for the demands of hundreds of millions of people; African Americans had less of a leg up due to their own minority status in all states of the Union, and now LGBT Americans (and LGBT citizens in other nation-states) have even less of a leg up due to their own minority status in all municipalities.
The heteronormative majority is currently the dominator of this game of numbers, bevied by the fact that they seem more likely to increase their number due to procreation (something that is typically exclusive to the heteronormative majority).
How can we play this game, save that we gain some sort of powerful conglomeration that is bigger than the populations of most gay villages?