October 1986

Gay Peoples Chronicle

THE THOUGHT CONNECTION

WHO ARE YOU?

page 7

CHRISTINE BURTON

I'm not asking your name, what you do for a living or who your lover is. I ask: WHO ARE YOU? What is the real you, without that external garbage you affect to satisfy society's expecvations? I ask: What is your unique core?

More than ever before the history of humankind, the individual is under attack--programmed, conditioned, controlled, manipulate, mauled and mutilated-and if you're lesbian gay, also maligned.

a former times, humanity was captive to monarchs who fed on our life's blood, and to ecclesiastical leaders who drained our soul by intimidation and fear of the hereafter. Also our ignorance kept our intellect active with superstition instead of with knowledge.

Now, we know the earth is not flat; we know that God is not in the sky--we've been in space and seen for ourselves. Only a few, ineffectual monarchs are left, and ecclesiastical hierarchy is no longer blindly obeyed. But we live under the shadow of dictatorship, and we reach for our weapons.

More threatening is the seemingly peaceful attack on our souls. Dimly we perceive the accelerating danger and we whine, while they plot and achieve. We are facing an intended takeover of our beliefs and behavior by a wave of domination euphemistically called the New Right. Nothing new about it: It's the same old collusion of government and church, the pupose of which is to fill the insatiable maws of power-craving men.

The individual is attacked because a couple of hundred years ago, that philosophical movement, the Enlightenment, began a trend thinking whereby the individual was recognized as having intrinsic value. It produced the French Revolution, the American Democracy, the Civil War, and grew until the Flower Childřen externalized in their behavior the concept of individual human rights. That momentum flowed into

the Women's Movement and into the lesbian and gay struggle for freedom to live peacefully outside the closet. Those men of church and state, whose testosterone-induced, territorial

instinct has gone wild, are panicking.

We've had 2,000 years of Christianity that used to teach the Golden Rule. And it was nothing new. Jesus, a Jew, was only repeating what he'd been taught by his own Judaism: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Now, it is debased in that mindless, "Have a nice day," while the gurus of

individual is unable to think what is best for self or country, and we generate a budgetary deficit of unheard-of proportions to protect ourselves from the Communists. None of us wants Communism, but intensifying that cry is only a highdecibel brass band to drown out the reality that we are within from rotting preacher-produced hatred for women, children and homosexuals. Blacks and Jews are not off-limits to them either.

is Anti-abortion misogynist attack on women's right to control their

Is it possible the homosexual community

exacerbates its problems by its own self-image?

hatred, most of them ordained in that same Christian religion that claims to have originated the Golden Rule, have taken over the waves to convince all of us print media and the air that they and they alone are saving the world from the "immorality" of Communism, abortion and homosexuality.

They're shrewd to throw all those disparate issues into one bin: 1. Oversimplification appeals to the unthinking;

Hatred for

Communism is a shoo-in to get the cooperation of the government 3. Oppressing women is indigenous to our culture; Hatred for homosexuals is an efficient rabble-rouser--get multitudes to hate the same thing. In a democracy that's real power.

There is one flaw in democracy: Its success or failure depends on the quality of its citizens. Hatred produces citizens of very low quality. Hatred paralyzes the intellect so that the

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bodies. And it is an attack on children; it would create a population explosion in which even more children would die of hunger. Also it is certain that those who preach against homosexuality with such vituperation are insincere. If they reallky cared about eradicating sin, which they say homosexuality is, they'd attack organized crime, in corruption government, and the arch sin of all sins hatred for others. If the Communists conquer, it will be, not for our shortage of weapons, but because we're rotten with hatred. Weakened from within, we'll be a pushover

You ask: What can I do? I'm only one person. The science of molecular biology teaches us that life processes take place at the molecular level. It's what the molecule does that makes all the difference. And it's what the individual human does that can change humanity. If you don't believe that, it's because you don't

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know who you are.

Every one of us needs a complete overhaul, beginning with a diagnostic investigation into who we are and why we are that way, followed by repairs and a tune-up.

I hear you: "All right, Christine Burton, who are You?"

The spiritual essence of me is made up of my memories of the evolutionary experiences of my species, the genetic memory of all my forbears, the experiences in my former lives, my own empirical knowledge and a personal drive to make things better where I live. Every day I renew my selfawareness by scraping off the barnacles of societal poisoning, and I live my life--not theirs. My moral code: To respect the privacy, the person and the property of everyone, and to live an honorable, honest and responsible life.

I become empowered. The feeling that a den of lions wouldn't faze me fashions my mien and my behavior I exude self-respect. Homophobes become less inclined to despise me. Public opinion

being changed at the molecular level.

Is it possible the homosexual community exacerbates its problems by its own self-image? Low self-esteem is conducive to paranoia, and the closet becomes deeper.

Socrates should have said h "Know thyself and be proud.

Christine Burton is editor of Golden Threads, a contact quarterly for lesbians over

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