...It is entirely possible that gay immigration to a gay homeland would far outstrip the local birthrate.
I am not an assimilationist; I have no desire to become anything like str8 people. Their customs, norms, traditions and institutions are for the most part irrelevant to me since these things have all been fashioned to serve the needs of str8 people, not all people. I am not an integrationist; I have no faith that straight people can be persuaded to behave in a just manner for any length of time. Institutionalized homophobia is a str8 phenomenon, not a gay one. Gays did not write the sodomy statutes. Gays did not make every word for a sexual process an expletive, nor did they make every word for ‘homosexual’ derogatory epithets. Str8 people did these things. There is absolutely no reason to believe that they will stop doing these things. Although there do appear to have been significant gains over the last years, there is no reason to believe that they are permanent...It would be wise to learn from that error.
... Still, it is unreasonable to deny gay people the companionship of their chosen families. If you would allow str8 people, no matter how dear to you, into a gay society you may not allow them complete equality.
There is a difference between residence in a land and citizenship in a land. This difference can be very subtle and hardly noticeable in day to day life...It is sufficiently dangerous to warrant requiring that they earn the privilege. Electoral candidacy and land ownership are other questionable areas, though they are of considerably lesser importance.
Pardon the extensive edits in your eloquent reply,
Feral. You raise important points. I understand the minds of members who say
they exclude us, let's exclude them, too, but must agree that this is a simple retribution mindset which will never succeed.
I accept the idea of colonialization as a way to possibly move towards what I regard as the ultimate goal - nationhood - but cannot accept it as the
be-all, end-all solution to the problem the GLBT of the world face, as it is, to my mind, little more than
ghetto-ization, which already exists in so many parts of the world, whether voluntarily imposed or by force. Major U.S. cities (and those in many other parts of the world) all already have gay ghettos, which are, for all intents and purposes, gay colonies. Thus, to my mind at least, the colonies concept is already a failure and likely will not ever achieve more than it already has. It will certainly never be able to achieve any sort of status of true equality for us. Gated communities are nothing more than walled ghettos, and saying that such "colonies" work is like saying the
Warsaw Ghetto was a nice, cozy place to live.
The original idea underlying this entire organization is that some day we will not only want and desire our own nation, but
need it. To some, that day is already at hand, as they are being actively pursued, persecuted, murdered, stifled, and chastised (not necessarily in that order) for being GLBT - being
who they are. One of the underlying notions of our organization is that nationhood is desirable not so much for purposes of creating an
"us vs. them" space, but in order to grant all those experiencing terror at the hands of straight people a place of refuge, a new homeland, where their safety is paramount, as well as giving those of us who merely feel uncomfortable in their own surroundings but face no real dangers a place to call home.
And while things have been improving for
some of us in
some places on this little rock we call
Earth, lots have been steadily declining for many others. Even those of us living in some of those countries we
thought were liberal, safe and finally coming to embrace and include us are seeing giant leaps backwards under their current oppressive "conservative" regimes. While optimists (I count myself as one, usually) believe that the next election cycle may cause the pendulum to swing back from right to center again,
there is no guarantee of that happening. Conservatives and those who embrace the current U.S. regime, for example, consistently have belittled those of us who said the 2004 elections were already fixed, that Bush would be returned and that Diebold's nefarious machines would play a role, that this was the first step towards de facto dictatorship and abrogation of rights, etc., etc.
Well, we were right, sadly. And since we were, more words of caution. Colonialization to my mind is a mere stepping stone.
The ultimate goal is, must and should be independent statehood. And that state must be welcoming of all. Excluding
anyone except sworn enemies, homophobes and those who publicly state they wish to do us harm would be to lower ourselves to the same level as those we seek to escape. And while genetic markers may be unimportant to some, to others they remain vital, especially those of us who believe that
blood ties eternally. It would never be acceptable to me to say to anyone
Welcome to the Gay Republic, but your grandmother, cousin Edna and Uncle Zach cannot live here since they are str8. The only exception I could see there would be if Cousin Edna or Uncle Zach or even Grandma were sworn homophobes who had stated publicly on repeated occasions epithets indicating their desire to destroy us, our state, our way of life or to do us harm from the inside. And that would be a matter of a constitutional protective clause, and I don't think we are quite there yet...
In rereading the previous paragraph, I note the profound similarities between my own thoughts and Herzl's as well as the need for our future homeland to incorporate many of the ideas upon which modern-day Israel is based. We must be welcoming, yet cautious; open, yet guarded. We must never be too trusting, but also not appear overly suspicious. It will be a very fine balancing act to get everything
just right. And ultimately, we will likely need to attune everything to Abraham Lincoln's notion that
one can please part of the people all of the time, all of the people part of the time, but one can never please all of the people all of the time.The way I see our future is the way we originally posted it on our gayhomeland.org website - first comes the Association. Second, we increase membership and spread the word world-wide. During that phase we solicit and accrue donations and gifts to broaden the cause and to set aside for eventual land acquisition. Once we have a formidable financial reserve, we discuss where we can realistically hope to buy a tract of land so significant that it represents enough ownership to possibly warrant future independence. (Part of that situation may also involve the purchase of an island; as noted elsewhere, islands which are off coastal areas have traditionally always fared better when it came to independence and securing secession...) Finally, through peaceful, diplomatically recognized and acknowledged means, we will eventually succeed in bringing about the
ultimate goal for this organization - a true GLBT homeland for all. Will we need to arm ourselves? Fight wars? Hopefully not, but even that cannot be overlooked or excluded. Our ultimate goal is the peaceful establishment of our own homeland, but only an idiot or a lamb does not defend itself when threatened.