40 years ago, the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village, NYC (a gay bar) was raided by police to arrest gay men. These types of raids were common in the 60's, but that night, the police brutality against the gay community was not going to tolerated. The patrons lashed out and fought back, led primarily by the drag queens present, and resulted in a police stand off including hurled bricks, violent demonstrations and more. Most consider "Stonewall" to be the birth of the modern gay civil rights struggle against institutionalized persecution against the LGBTQI community.

Fast-forward 40 years and the police department conducts a raid on a the Rainbow Lounge in Fort Worth, Texas on the evening of June 28th, 2009. With a paddy-wagon out in the parking lot, and the excuse that they were conducting regular checks for liquor license compliance, the police raided the bar, took away 18 arrested patrons (for public intoxication IN A BAR) and even hurled one customer so violently to the floor, that it resulted in traumatic brain injury, a drifting blood clot in his brain, and he remains in the ICU today. You tell your self this could never happen in today's America - you are flat out wrong. The truth is that institutionalized homophobia exists in full strength in this country even in major metropolitan cities.

CNN Video Report of the Raid

How in the name of all that is good in this world, can police still be sanctioned to perform this type of activity? Raids on gay bars? Attacking the LGBTQI community on their own territory where they are just having a drink and hanging out with friends? Where is the outrage? Where are the drag queens throwing bricks?

This situation is symptomatic of two major things wrong in our community. The first being that the LGBTQI community has been classified as second-class citizens, undeserving of equal rights or protections under the law. If you treat us like subhuman things, then you can justify your violence against us all day long. This is why laws like the Matthew Shepard Act need to be passed, the DOMA needs to be repealed and DODT needs to be done away with. These archaic laws and institutionlized hatred against a minority and they MUST not stand. Any justifications for doing so rooted in religion or tradition are only indicative of the tyrrany, bile and hatred that makes up the very fiber of said religions or traditions.

Secondly, I'm going to turn the magnifying lens back at the gay community. We have become soft over the years. We settled for trying to get folks to understand that we are "no different than they are" and that we can live mainstream lives too. We've always been "mr. nice gays" and worked within the law and what have we gotten for it? TV shows mocking us as prancing nelly queens, constitutional amendments that eliminate our rights, being beaten and strung up on a fence left to die, and now police raids in what used to be our safe zones! While these events are certainly starting to rile up the LGBTQI community to speak out, act up and protest against the injustice we still show the majority of the populace time and time again that we are passive, harmless and conventiently out of sight.

The time has come for us to embrace the spirit of that first drag queen who picked up a brick, said "NO MORE!" and hurled it at institutionlized bigotry dressed up in a police uniform. I'm not condoning violence, but I am condoning purposeful civil disobedience. We need to show the majority that this minority is a force to be reckoned with. We need to show that we can shut down a city, crippling its roads with blocked intersections full of protestors. We need to show how we can shut down entire corporations by blocking access to their supply chains. We need to demonstrate the power of our money by donating to causes that support our best interests, and boycotting products like Rockstar Energy Drink, companies like Walmart, and churches like the Catholic and LDS churches (all institutions that have put their money toward anti-gay interests and legislation).

The American public needs to realize that this is the era of LGBTQI civil rights. We will not rest. We will not be silenced. We will not leave our trans friends behind, and we will not settle for segregationist laws. No civil rights struggle has ever failed; sometimes it is a case of waiting until the old guard dies off in enough numbers until the new generation with more open minds can replace them. In any case, we will win this. There has been, and will continue to be lots of backlash from the fear-drunk conservative right. We need to stay strong and speak out. Reach out to our families and friends especially the ones who don't understand the issue or "don't know anyone gay." By turning minds and hearts and through large public acts of civil disobedience demonstrating our power we will turn the tide.