No Kevin Levin, the LGBT community absolutely doesn't need "Confederate fabulous."

This is a recent posting by Kevin Levin

http://cwmemory.com/2016/09/28/charlottesvilles-lee-park-could-be-confederate-fabulous/

The title is "Charlottesville's Lee Park Could Be 'Confederate Fabulous.'"

The LGBT community doesn't need any "Confederate Fabulous." Indeed the concept is inimical to the LGBT community. Levin writes:

Though it was not sanctioned by the organization, at one point someone attached a bright multicolored boa around Traveler’s neck. It was eventually removed after a local resident complained to city officials.

Short of removing the Lee monument, I believe these acts of appropriation offer one way forward – a way for communities and groups to take ownership of public sites dedicated to the memory of the Confederacy.

It seems that the action of putting the gay items on the statue was to subvert it and I think that is okay as an action to subvert the statue.

Levin feels that putting a boa on the Robert E. Lee can reshape the meaning of Robert E. Lee park.

However, the following is a news article on the event.

http://www.c-ville.com/confederate-fabulous-gay-black-issues-collide-lee-park/#.WEwrl_krKiN

It isn't the happy appropriation that Levin represents it as being.

This is the response of one leader at the Gay pride event:

Schmidt is unlikely to be convinced. She compares groups that use the park like Cville Pride and Tom Tom to “the nice white people during segregation who continued to patronize segregated establishments and didn’t say anything publicly if they objected to it. Your private regrets, expressed sotto voce, do not make you an ally or promote change. It’s time to stand up and be counted, because silence equals consent.”

Yes, there are LGBT in leadership positions in the South who still have a plantation mentality. Indeed the major gay bar in Dallas used to be called The Old Plantation, and the mentality of the Dallas LGBT community still reflects that to a large extent.

The consequences of this is that many Southern towns have two annual gay pride events, one for white gays and one for African American gays. The LGBT communities all over the South are often quite divided and are separate worlds.

The whole point of the rainbow design of the Gay Pride flag is that the LGBT community necessarily needs to bring together diverse elements of all races, religions, nationalities, etc. Indeed the Gay Pride flag is global in its use from African to Asian from Latin American to Europe and everywhere.

The LGBT community both locally, nationally and internationally don't need to have some local individuals with a white attitude dividing the LGBT community. 

Persons in leadership positions in the LGBT community that still accommodate the Confederacy need to get kicked of the movement.

A couple of us are going to periscope the Robert E. Lee statue in Dallas, Texas on the 31st.

https://www.facebook.com/events/241643326251832/

See this blog to learn about the racism of Robert E. Lee.

http://roberteleepark.blogspot.com/

Sons of Confederate Veterans hysterically upset over gay rights

See this blog posting. Read their newsletter.

http://neo-confederatehomophobia.blogspot.com/2013/07/sons-of-confederate-veterans.html

Raging, delusional, frothing at the mouth.

The Civil War and Gay freedom in New York City; Gays 1 Neo-Confederates 0.

I was recently in New York City and on all days I might have been there, I was there on the weekend of the Gay Freedom Day parade.

I of course went to the Stonewall Inn and what is now Stonewall Plaza, a small park. New York City has some streets at odd angles and it leaves little triangular wedges of land which are made into parks. 

Stonewall Inn for those of you who don't know, is the location of the beginning of the riot which sparked the modern gay liberation movement. Fortunately the name doesn't seem to have any relation to the name Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson.  The police raided the place and the patrons decided not to take abuse and local gay crowds gathered and there was a riot, then protests and then a movement. The rest is history. 

The original patrons were marginal people in then gay society, drag queens, prostitutes, minority gay members. They weren't marginal in rebelling though. 

The original bar closed shortly after the riots, but now it has been reopened as a bar and historic landmark and gay tourist attraction and hundreds of thousands of middle class gay tourists go there. I had a Corona beer there. It made no sense in a way, because there was nothing of the original there. But still, remembering Karla Jay and Allen Young's book, "Out of the Closets and Into the Streets," I went. Reliving my youth in a way I suppose. CLICK ON PICTURES TO MAKE THEM LARGER. 

And then I went to the park and took this picture of these sculptures.

Then wouldn't you know it, I saw a statue of a Civil War American general Philip Sheridan. I was so pleased to see a statue of an American Civil War hero so I took a picture of him also.

As Madonna would say, "strike a pose" 

Philip Sheridan helped force Robert E. Lee into defeat at Appomattox. 

Doing his part to preserve the United States of America he insured American victory over the Confederates and the destruction of slavery. He helped keep the American story of expanding freedom going. Was he all good, I suppose not. 

He was however a part of the parade of American history and freedom which has led to the successes of the modern gay rights movement and the grinding of neo-Confederate teeth. 

Of course in visiting New York I drove through the Lincoln tunnel on the way to the Gay Pride Parade. 

The Chaplain's Corps of the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) may go on and on about R.L. Dabney, James Henley Thornwell, Benjamin M. Palmer, and others, but it is the raging of the increasingly irrelevant for an archaic past where they type could dominate and bully others.