This is a prose discussion of literal news events,
but this is an example where reality *is* surrealism.
Be careful, be very, very careful- you have no idea
how often that happens. Only a surrealist/absurdist
could truly understand.
-Tom Keske
The Dream is Reality- Gay Australian Separatists
I think that it was earlier this year, when I had
daydreamed aloud about gays trying to start a
separatist movement, and take some land of their
own, where they would not be subject to the whims
of bigoted majorities. I recall that some folks on
a UK newsgroup thought this to be a totally absurd
and impossible thing to imagine.
Guess what- nothing imaginable is too absurd to really happen,
in this world. According to "International News Briefs"
by Rex Wockner, as reported in Boston's "Bay Windows",
a group of Aussie gays has laid claim to the uninhabited
Cato Island in Australia's Coral Sea Island Territory,
and declared it to be independent.
Good for them. Who cares if it is an absurd or impossible
dream? It is a beautiful dream, and is to their credit for
dreaming it, now matter how it ends.
Sometimes, even attempts that fail dismally are helping
in ways that may not be apparent, to move things forward.
Even the tragi-comic, or merely comic, or merely
tragic. All part of a mosaic to be expected, as human
beings react to conditions, in all possible ways ordained
by human variety.
People will laugh at the attempt, no doubt, but the eccentric
Aussie leader, Dale Anderson, as quoted in the Sydney Star
Observer, says "We are very serious about it".
No one should complain about the attempt or hold it
in derision. There are other absurd and impossible dreams,
far less charming, that could also become tomorrow's
unexpected reality.
Oppression of gays is so widespread and so deep,
in many parts of the world, and pressure from the more
developed countries is so scant, that it would be easy
to imagine that there is little hope in many quarters,
short of gays starting to make just like Al-Quaeda, trying
to get their hands on plutonium, and make their own war
on much of the rest of the human race, everywhere from
Egypt to Jamaica to Zanzibar to Zimbabwe.
A lot of gays in developed countries think about gays in
places like Zanzibar, little more than their own governments
do. Complacence is not a terribly effective strategy.
Anyone who engages in it has little entitlement to
complaints about other forms of desperate strategy,
that widespread complacence helps to make
more necessary.
I would venture a small prediction, that the kinds of radicals
who would ever think about plutonium, would also be, for
reasons that I am not quite certain, also likely to be the
kinds of people who would spend a great deal of time thinking
about obscure places like Zanzibar, and what it must be
like for gays who are tragically trapped, trying to live
under such oppressive governments.
Actually, there is nothing even remotely absurd or impossible
about this vision. Gays would probably have an easier time,
because they have far better capacity to conceal their identities
and to infiltrate where it is necessary. There comes a point in all
defense schemes, where you have to trust someone- the
chief of security, the keeper of the passwords. If you are
in the role of a spy in a long-term war, then you just make sure
that you become that person. A single key contact could be
worth more than hundreds of millions of dollars, in pursuit of
a goal.
Gays may be far off the world's radar, as a concern,
but sometimes that is an advantage. If something is off the radar,
then no one can see what is incoming.
Don't you suppose that God would find it too delicious of
an irony to resist, when the West is faced with nuclear terrorism
of Islamic religious fanatics, that a gay group should arise that is
equally determined to drive Islamic anti-gay oppression
into the ground, by absolutely any means necessary?
What do you suppose would happen, if major Muslim
cities were taken out by smuggled-in bombs, with an
ultimatum to abolish all laws that criminalize gays?
Do you suppose that the issue would stop seeming so
trivial to most of the world?
There is no such thing as a helpless minority. The rules
are all changed, and the world's majorities had better
adapt to this reality. It cannot be solved with "get-tough"
attitudes, because the disenfranchised and powerless
groups with the plutonium are ultimately the tough
ones. Police state tactics are desperation tactics that
can delay the eventual outcome, but have nearly no chance
to prevent the eventual outcome. Dropping the
political games, the charades, the double-standards
- to give real equality, not just an insincere pretense of it-
that is most probably the only strategy that has even a
frail hope creating long-term stability.
It may be worth falling on your sword to protect your
own human dignity, but it will never be worth falling on
your sword for the sake of denying someone
else their human dignity. Majorities can have an
arrogance of power, just a like a tyrant. It allows
them to become brainwashed with their own
cultural and religious hate-propaganda. They
become long-accustomed to mistreating a
minority, because they have no fear of repercussion.
Is the human race really worth its collective life when
gays on more than half the planet are to this day treated like
criminals, with little hope of relief in sight?
The majority of the human race would probably think so.
There is no particular reason for the short-changed,
dehumanized, and unfairly-losing side to think so.
Can you picture the reaction of the world that was so
sure that a minority's desires could be ignored with impunity?
"This can't be real. This can't be happening."
Someday, you may be puzzled by the sight of sudden,
miraculous progress for gays, and but not be sure of how it
happened. Many will probably flatter themselves that their
own efforts and philosophies achieved it, or that this
is just the natural tendency of the world, to progress,
or that people are just nice, and that God is good.
Perhaps, though, it will be due to things totally censored
in the press, about which you will be forever without a clue.
If you see sudden mysteries, let this thought cross your
mind- perhaps a radical group, somewhere, gave a warning
demonstration of credible nuclear capability, that made
governments all around the world decide to "make nice",
abruptly.
I am planning to engage in no such things, personally.
This discussion is purely hypothetical.
Don't conspire yourself to bring about such
a future. But just imagine it, contemplate it,
write a play or short story about it, and discuss it-
because tomorrow, you might wake up to find that
this is the world's future. At least, this might be the
future's course, if there is no dramatic improvement
achieved by any other route.
Tom Keske
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