This
statement was forwarded to be read out at the opening of the Winter Olympics at Sochi,
2014.
Sochi Homo
Ask yourself - what
really holds Queer culture back?
We
do. We do because of our continuing lack of acceptance of the ‘normal’.
We
just don’t trust the ‘normal’. More importantly, we may have nothing in our
pockets, but we will never allow ourselves, at any point, to be just ‘normal’.
Equality is not sought by us, nor is it an
end result. So, no gifts please - we want no acceptance - because it now seems
that we’ve been right all along. What we are transcends the thousand barriers
of race and class and gender because we're everywhere and always will be. And
we haven’t worried ourselves to traverse those difficult situations, we’ve ran
at them screaming. We’re the ones who have chosen to walk alone down those dark
alleyways. And we’ve been granted no permission whenever it’s been sought.
We’ve come through reams of litigation and
condemnation and will again and again and again. And we will still laugh in the
face of any contrition, because we can’t promise not to do any of it again - to
any of your judges – in fact, we will do it again, but next time it will be
bigger and louder than the night sky in a hurricane.
And we’ll rise and fall and not worry because
of the stars that surround us, our chosen families that flicker away and die
all too soon. We refuse to count our blessings, be contrite and play
tic-tac-toe on the steps of your churches. Or to be ‘strong’ again, when you’ve
already decided not to listen.
“What we are, transcends the thousand barriers of race and
class and gender because we’re everywhere and always will be…”
So, we don’t accept your acceptance, nor do we seek the breadth
or creed of your forgiveness. Because we do not need forgiveness from anyone. That
has to come from you, for yourselves. That has to come from the conscience of
those who’ve beaten, ridiculed and chided us for thousands of years. Those
who’ve denied us our real, dear families, those who’ve hijacked our deaths and
begrudgingly complied with the normalcy of our new weddings. Ask yourselves; is
this forgiveness? Should we lean on your one heart with the weight of millions
who came before us and who stand alongside us right now?
I bring my pain with me to the table, a pain so great and
long-lived that it still stirs the soul and the belly of my being. I bring on
the faces of the young dead from my own past, the real warriors of a filthy
bloody war we all went through together. And the women, who ran to the aid of
their broken brothers and created a single voice that’s still screaming out
today.
So, go with all your fabulous sins, my brothers and sisters, and
real joy will be sure to follow you. I love those who run to that slippery edge
in a game of kiss, dare and death. I love those who subvert the very sex that’s
supposed to define them. I love those who love me back simply because of love
itself and I love those who keep loving, when loving has long passed.
And those who know where normality ends and reality begins. The
kids who put whatever they have into in a flimsy sack and find a way to leave
their early families behind. And to falter over and over again and never stop
faltering until they die, because those are the follies that make us. The
mettle that binds us in every sea of no fucking hope. The glue that never
separates us from the reality of our life and death experience. The fear that
sometimes keeps us separate from each other, yet brings us together when the
knives go down. The strength to draw from all history because we know that all history
is really ours; that we’ve peppered the changes on those dull old maps and
coloured the weave of every creative stroke. These changes made, because not to
reminds us only of regret - that building stone of our lives that we’re never
allowed to shed.
The pathways to our worlds remain open but shackled. The roads
are still wide but populated less. But we have shown over and over the power of
our steps and grown steadily - supported only by the very best. Can we really
give away this life of ours - a history so rich within us all? Can we not
falter and have to watch our backs at every life event, lest it be normalized
and given the so-called protection of a society that has proved itself so
wrong?
To sacrifice our otherness is to walk with passing strangers, to
lose the trust we’ve known to share. Because that otherness is our only
identity. It’s that one within a crowd that refuses to be accompanied, or the
voice that will be heard - but only by a few. Will they kill it off with
persecution again? Will they succeed in changing us into what they really think
we are? Will they keep trying when they have failed so many, many times before?
It’s time to stop history, dead. What’s happened up until now
happens no more. The door has been closed for the very last time. So, don’t
rejoice or ‘permit’ us - we reject all of that. Instead, look to yourselves and
in there, see who we are. Then, look out to the world and see who has made it
glow for you.
Go on, we dare you - look out into the world.