As a community comprised of misfits and minorities our lives are touched by one human rights issue or another every day. Every so often the people of our community have conversations about these issues. These conversations are vital and each one shapes our daily lives.  

When groups fight for human rights, tempers are going to flare, and inevitably there is one or more group that WILL shout louder and longer. That is after all how fights are won. Changes do not always happen quickly, most often they are not quiet, most of the time there is ugliness, most definitely someone will think the change isn’t what they envisioned and almost always someone looses something in the fight, as in every political fight compromise is key.    We must lift one another in our wholeness, dividing ourselves because of color, sexuality, or gender pronouns only serves to weaken a community.  Our groups must remember to rationally discuss their needs, wants, desires or what they feel to be their rights when presenting their grievances. NO single group or even individual should be excluded for the betterment of another.

The last four decades the LGBT community as a whole has survived and succeeded innumerable fights, riots and conversations between law enforcement, governments and each other to find solutions and make enormous advances. Each group fighting in their own ways.

The Internet has hastened this experience allowing us to speak without thinking, expediting the ability to gather and march, to make moves without stewing in our own juices, those wish to contribute may now flip a switch and hit enter, without taking the time previous leaders used to consider the overall consequences to each and every action.  As we see the pendulum flip towards the RADICAL RIGHT we must remember this despite the  injustices happening every day in each segment of our community.

 We MUST strengthen our resolve and stop and consider for just a moment that this is a community built to lift up and strengthen one another.  When we fight among ourselves in a manner which begins to tear down the event, it weakens the producers ability, it undermines the foundation.  This type of behavior weakens the structure of an organizations political strength.  

Leather has never been easy, Being comprised of sexual deviants the Leather Community has always been the subject of controversy.  Despite who we like or who we feel might be the party in the right, an informed decision and any truly affirmative action requires information and input from all sides.  

I don’t like conflict. BUT I do admire that even in it’s messy nastiness, is my community, this dysfunctional family, does something that my biological family never did.  They talk, they fight, and then at the end of the day, we come together better for it.