The White Side of History

From Binghamton University's Right Side of History Page: "A civil rights struggle is brewing in America, and we want to be on the right side of history. Get involved to support equal rights for our lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) friends!"


From the official Right Side of History website: "After extensive research, RSOH launched a pilot on Facebook to test the power of personalizing equality as a way to collect names of new supporters. RSOH Founder Brian Elliot invited 600 straight friends to join a group supporting his right to be a full citizen. Four weeks later, more than 19,000 people had joined "Give Brian Equality" - an effort to galvanize support for a single LGBT American's legal equality. Most of these supporters were straight, and few had ever been on an LGBT organization's constituent list before. The huge potential impact of rolling this out to LGBT Americans and their tens of millions of friends was immediately clear.

Based on this proof-of-concept pilot, we're building a platform that will have the power to amass the largest list of straight supporters of LGBT equality in the country. This standing army of supporters will be mobilized at critical times to take actions on behalf of their LGBT friends.

This is not your typical gay rights organization. We're losing the rainbow. We're reframing the issues. And we're making it easier than ever to get involved whether you're a frat guy in Alabama, a stay at home mom in Utah, or an activist in New York. Sign up and we'll keep you up to date on our progress. This will change everything."

Before I continue, it is worth noting the Herculean effort that it is taking for me to contain my laughter long enough to continue this blog post.

Firstly, the Right Side of History frames it's particular course of political action in that of the democratic process, filled with all its inspiring and humanizing discourse as well as all its insidiously problematic assertions about who deserves rights.

The movement is all about getting legislation passed to ensure legal equality across the board for people who's lifestyles are not considered in the current language of the law. It is about egalitarianism, and justice for all. I am all about these things too. And that's where our commonalities end...

The democratic process works like this: If one can reason with the folks in power, appeal to THEIR (monocultural) conception of "the law" (Themis) and make them believe that you are worthy of THEIR rights, then maybe they will redefine the boundaries of the law.

For example, Black Americans could not get in a word edge-wise with the white-washed, negrophobic US legislatures until they assimilated, adopted their Anglo-Saxon model of humanity/familial bonds/lifestyles and made them feel that they were "just like them" (see boomerang perception). Once Blacks in America appropriated the Anglo-Saxon legal language of "liberty," "justice" and "fairness," used their own cultural more of shame against them and made the Anglo-American government percieve them as American enough to have their rights. In order to progress in society, Blacks had to mimic the cultural ideal of the Anglo-Saxon imagination. Consequently, homosexual, non-Christian, financially disadvantaged, natural-haired and even female African Americans had to be placed to the background of the movement.