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SEATTLE GAY NEWS
VOLUME 14, ISSUE 26
JUNE 26, 1987

We have little to be proud of this Gay Pride Week.

One by one we are being picked off by the enemy.

I don't think you're going to like what I'm going to say. It's the last time I am going to say it. I'm making a farewell appearance. I am not tired. I am certainly not suffering from burnout. I have a lot of piss and vinegar left in me — too much in fact. No, I'm not tired.

Not physically tired, at any rate. I am, of course, as are you, very tired of many things. I am tired of what they are doing to us. I am tired of what they aren't doing for us. I am tired of seeing so many of my friends die — I'm exceptionally tired of that, as I know you are too.

I'm also tired of people coming up to me on the street and saying, "Thank you for what you're doing and saying." They mean it as a compliment, I know. But now I scream back, "Why aren't you doing it and saying it too?" Why are there so few people out there screaming and yelling? You're dying too!

They are killing us! We are being picked off one by one. Half the men reading this could be dead in five years, and you're still sitting on your asses like weaklings and therefore we, the Gay community, are not strong enough and our organizations are not strong enough and we are going to die for it!

I have come to the terrible realization that I believe this Gay community of ours has a death wish and that we are going to die because we refuse to take responsibilities for our own lives.

Yes, most of all, I'm tired of you. I'm tired of the death wish of the Gay community. I'm tired of our colluding in our own genocide. I'm tired of your passivity in participating in your own genocide. You do not have to have AIDS to acquire a system deficient and immune.

How many of you have given a thousand dollars or more at any one time to any Gay organization or Gay charity? Ten thousand? (For the rich readers: One hundred thousand dollars? A million?)

How many of you have spent at least an hour a week volunteering for a Gay organization? Ten hours? [...]

How many of you have written consistently or even irregularly to an elected official or testified to an official hearing on the subject of AIDS, or regarding treatment, or official lethargy in this city and state and country?

How many of you really trust the NIH is capable of coordinating research around a crisis of this scope?

How many of you even know what the NIH is, or how important it is in your life, and that your very own life is in its hands? You didn't know that, did you? That your very own life is in the hands of an agency you don't know anything about. [...]

How many of you are willing to face up to the fact that the FDA is fucked up, the NIH is fucked up, the CDC is very fucked up — and that entering the seventh year of what is now a pandemic, the boys and girls running the show at these organizations have been unable to make whatever system they're operating work?

How long are you prepared to wait for these systems to work? How long are you prepared to wait before our own AIDS organizations provide us with adequate information on available treatments? How many hours and days are you prepared to spend on the phone attempting, in vain, to find out what is going on where and how's it doing and why can't my dying friends get it immediately?

How many of you believe you have no responsibility to take action on any of these matters?

How many of you need to die or become infected before you feel you can take action on why every single branch of government in charge of AIDS, both local and federal, is dragging its ass?

What's the number at which you can decide to stop just sitting quietly like the good little boys and girls we were all brought up to be and start taking rude, noisy, offensive political action?

It always amazes me when I tell people they have power, and they answer me, "Power? Me? What power?" How can you be so conservative, dumb, and blind? You know what is going on better than anybody, and yet you are silent, you constantly, consistently, and continuously sit on your collective asses and refuse to use your power.

Your voice is your power! Your collective voices! Your group power! Your political power! Your names all strung together on one long list is your power. Your bank accounts are your power, if you weren't all so devastating stingy when it comes to funding anything Gayer than a Halloween costume. Your bodies are your power, your living bodies all strung together in one long line that reaches across this country and could reach to the moon if we only let it.

You know that this country is not responding on a national political level or a local political level, and yet you sit by along with everyone else and watch our men being picked off one by one by one by one by one.

No one is in charge of this pandemic, either in this city or this state or this country! It is as simple as that. And certainly no one who is compassionate and understanding and knowledgeable and efficient is even anywhere near the top of those who are in charge. Almost every person connected with running the AIDS show everywhere is second-rate. I have never come across a bigger assortment of the second-rate in my life. And you have silently and trustingly put your lives in their hands. You who are first-rate are silent. And we are going to die for that silence. [...]

Don't you ask yourselves quite often the Big Question: Why am I still alive? Untouched? At some point I did something the others did. How have I escaped?

Don't you think that makes you obligated to repay God or fate or whomever or whatever, if only your conscience, for this miraculous fact: I am still alive. I must put back something into this world for my own life, which is worth a tremendous amount. By not putting back, you are saying that your lives are worth shit, and that we deserve to die, and that the deaths of all our friends and lovers have amounted to nothing.

I can't believe in your heart of hearts you feel this way. I can't believe you want to die.

Do you?