I’ m more than a little upset right now. Not this moment, at least not uncontrollably in this moment. But overall, I’m very very angry. I’ll tell you why, even though you probably don’t want to hear it. Proposition 8. I’m furious about it, but not for the reason you may think.

Sure I’m distressed that California voters passed a discriminatory bill into their constitution. I’m even a bit angry about it. But what’s really got me steaming mad is the gay communities reaction to it. I expected anger and protests. I expected a legal challenge. I didn’t expect the seemingly endless mind-numbing rage and fountain of virulence that seems to have overtaken the gay population. Not a day goes by that I don’t hear about an attempt to boycott a business whose ceo gave money to prop 8, or angry rants about so-called traitors who aren’t supporting those boycotts, or rescinding performance rights to their music. Next all the gay interior decorators will be expected to go to the homes they’ve decorated and trash them in recompense for the legal injustice done in California.

Today the hot topic is the pastor giving the invocation at the inauguration in January. Apparently he’s against gay marriage, and the gay community feels his selection is a betrayal by president-elect Obama. I’m confused as hell, because I can’t make my brain see it that way. It seems completely unrelated to me.

But all that’s beside the point. The thing that really makes me angry is the shift of our consciousness from trying to protect our rights and achieve legal equality and parity, to trying to punish people who don’t share our goals.

We used to protest in front of City Hall, or the White House, or another government building. We used to march through the streets to make people aware of us and our message. We used to tell people about the injustices and struggles we endure.

Now we’re boycotting a movie theater, rescinding performance rights, attacking religious leaders for their beliefs, and condemning our newly elected president-to-be for level-headed equitable decisions and solutions.

I just don’t understand this need to punish people. I don’t even understand the true anger. I wish the Mormon Church hadn’t worked so hard to take away the right of homosexuals to marry in California. I don’t understand why they did. But I’m not really angry at them. A bit sour perhaps. Truth is, they are doing what they believe to be right, and I can’t fault them for that. As far as I know, they didn’t break the law, and if they did that should be addressed legally. But trying to punish them for their beliefs is just another type of opression, and it’s every bit as virulent and ugly as the struggle that homosexuals have every day of our lives.

It is not my right to mete out punishment for another persons beliefs or actions. I’m not going to boycott Cinemark because their CEO supported prop 8. What he did was legal according to our laws, and I don’t want think it’s right to try and punish the company for that. If they were firing glbt employees in a state with a protection law I’d probably feel much differently. But they aren’t.

This sort of vigilante justice makes us look petty and it takes our focus away from the battles we should be fighting. We will never have equality until everyone really believes that we are deserving of it. The legal system can not grant us equality. If it could we would no longer have such inequality for african americans or women. I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to change our legal code to ensure equality for all, but we can’t sacrifice our principles in order to do so. We can’t hunt down the non-believers and burn them at the stake. We can’t attack people for exercising the very rights that we are exercising in our fight for equality.

In love,