"His Very Act of Protest Confers Dignity on Him"

Ladies, gentlemen, variations thereof, and none of the above, I'd like to start us out with some Ancient Gay History before delving into into the Introduction to Paleolithic Gay History that will be the subject of this article. Because I am a member of Generation Z, by "Ancient" I mean "one year ago" and by "Paleolithic" I mean "like, fifty or sixty years ago, like, you know?". Anyway, about a year ago in the San Antonio area, Democratic Party county chairman Dan Ramos stirred up some trouble by comparing gays to termites, the Tea Party (okay, that one hurt), and the Nazi Party. Yes. The ones that slaughtered gays, lesbians, and other gender nonconformists. Those Nazis. Well, I'd like to spend this article making good ol' Dan look like more of an idiot than he already does, a herculean task no doubt, but we'll give it the old college try, shall we?

Dan Ramos began his barely coherent rant by calling us and ours "a very sinister movement", seguing into comparing us to vermin, "homosexual termites" to be specific, and made a brilliant conclusion by stating that he "liken[s] [the LGBT community] to the Tea Party — the Tea Party and the fucking Nazi Party — because they’re 90 percent white, blue-eyed, and Anglo, and I don’t give a fuck who knows that." His words. Please keep in mind that this is the gay friendly major political party of the United States.

Although, to be fair, at the last meeting of the Evil Gay Cabal, I DID recommend that we purge our left-handed  bug Nazis from the movement. I tried, Mr. Ramos, I really did.

I'll be the first to admit that we have an race image problem. I guess back in the Mattachine days they didn't want to make people's heads explode by exposing them to double minorities, so vast numbers of gay celebrities are various shades of vanilla. And no, the gay-for-pay actors of color that portray gays on TV don't count. We have gay activists of color, but few in the straight-dominated culture that people generally can name like Jane Lynch or Neil Patrick Harris are both racial minorities and gender/sexual minorities, with the distinct exception of RuPaul. It seems that our culture forces you to pick a side, and being part of more than one minority is exhausting or impossible. Sally Ride lived her life as a female astronaut and a woman who championed the sciences. It was only after her death that it was discovered that she fulfilled both of those roles while also being gay. For this reason, I am excited to share with you a pivotal civil rights figure that was written right out of American schoolbooks, a man who was integral to the fall of segregation and the hope of a racism-free tomorrow.

Meet Bayard Rustin. He was born on March 17, 1912 in West Chester, Pennsylvania. Rustin was raised by his grandmother and grandfather, the former being a member of the oldest American civil liberties group, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Rustin's grandmother was also a Quaker, which cultivated in Bayard Rustin a strong spirit of passive, non-violent resistance. As a young man, he frequently met the luminary black rights thinker W.E.B Du Bois. Du Bois lambasted moderate civil rights activists like Booker T. Washington who argued that people of color must first work to better themselves financially and through education before demanding equal rights before the law. Du Bois argued that none of these benefits were protected without the force of law, and that equality enshrined in law must come first. Rustin took these values with him to the highest echelons of the civil rights movement. He organized the first interstate Freedom Rides in 1947 with the group that he help to found, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). He influenced Stokely Carmichael, leader of the famous Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). He traveled to India a year later to learn about non-violent resistance from close friends of Gandhi, then became Martin Luther King Jr.'s personal adviser on Gandhi-esque techniques, helping him organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Rustin even managed to dissuade King from carrying his personal handgun at the Montgomery Bus Boycotts and from ever using weapons, ever.

You read that correctly. Bayard Rustin personally taught Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the face of American civil rights, everything King knew about non-violence. That's like teaching Jesus how to please a crowd with free healthcare.

Rustin & King: BEST BROS 4 LYFE

If you think that's it, you don't know how fucking metal Bayard Rustin is. Making MLK Jr. his passive resistant Padawan was not enough for this man. Bayard Rustin was the organizer of the 1963 March on Washington. THE March on Washington. Rustin made this happen:

Yeah, that. The mother fucking mother of all peaceful protests, the 1963 March on Washington. Which, as all Americans who didn't sleep through fourth grade know, directly lead to this:

Yes ladies, gentlemen, variations thereof, and none of the above, that is the legendary "I Have a Dream" speech, by Martin Luther King, Jr. Bayard Rustin made that happen. Dude had SERIOUS civil rights street cred. So why didn't I learn to sing his praises along with all the rest before I needed a training bra?

Du Bois. NAACP. CORE. Montgomery Bus Boycotts. Stokely Carmichael. Freedom Riders. Passive Resistance. Martin Luther King Jr. The March on Washington. SNCC. SCLC. All of the buzzwords of the proudest moments of Americans of color are there. We spent a decent few weeks going over this stuff. It's important. So where is Bayard Rustin?

Well, in 1953, Rustin was in a Pasadena, California jail cell for consensual homosexual sex. Rustin served sixty days in prison but his conviction was forever public. He was forced out of the SCLC for that reason. Bayard Rustin was an open, public gay man and an open public black civil rights activist when it was horribly dangerous to be both. His courage and great accomplishments are inspiring and melt a warm, fuzzy place in my cold, cynical heart which freezes over when I think about how obscure this American hero is. And it's not like it's because the man was unphotogenic, either.

So I'll give the boys their civil rights. Boys love civil rights.

Of all the indecencies waged by the anti-gay movement, straightwashing in schools makes me the most sick. This champion of human liberty should have schools dedicated to him. Every American should be able to name this man's accomplishments, like we can with his ally, MLK Jr. In fact, let's give him a national holiday or something. And for once I'm not even making that proposal just so we can have more holidays from school.

This is the centennial year of the birth of Bayard Rustin. If I can do any one thing this year, it's to make this guy the star he deserves to be, in both the LGBT and the black communities.

In closing, some foresight from Mr. Rustin just in time for the November 2012 elections:

It may be premature to predict a Southern Democratic party of Negroes and white moderates and a Republican Party of refugee racists and economic conservatives, but there certainly is a strong tendency toward such a realignment...

Civil rights head honcho, gay rights dynamo, and prophet. What have you losers done with your life?