I Have a Dream…

In light of recent events, I thought it would be fitting to revise Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream” speach for LGBT’S.
My fellow Americans, gay and straight sisters and brothers alike,
I have a dream…
… In a sense, I have come to you to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all people would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We have a humanitarian crisis today that stretches from Maine to California, which is made worse every day by the ignorant behavior and hateful rhetoric of political parties, voters, politicians, churches, and schools, who are using their social and political power to take away the human rights of gay people to be free to love. These shackles of oppression significantly undermine the liberty and pursuit of happiness of all Americans because a loss of freedom for one group is a loss of freedom for all groups who are proud to call themselves Americans.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her non-heterosexual citizens are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given her gay people a bad check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation… the opportunity to freely choose and live your life, just as all heterosexuals are allowed to do. So I have come to cash this check–a check that will give all Americans upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice… This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to rise from the dark stifling shadows of the closet to the sunlit path of equal justice for all. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God’s children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of homophobia to the solid rock of peoplehood.
It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of gay Americans. 2008 is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that lesbians and gays in California needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening as that state returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until all Americans are granted their equal citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt and protest will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.
But there is something that I must say to my friends and allies in California. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom and equality by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. Let us roll up our sleeves again and seek freedom with our arms wide open, looking to embrace our friends and foes with arms of appreciation and respect.
We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. We must not allow the ignorance and hate of others lead us to internalize hate against ourselves. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting electoral, political, and social force with soul force. Seek not the closet of shadows, self-loathing, and death, but rather the company of others (gay or straight) who have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.
And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “Isn’t allowing you to live enough? As long as you are silent, you will be left alone… isn’t that enough? When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as our visibility is punished by your law, by your religious doctrines, by your churches, by your schools, by your government, which is supposed to be my government too. I will be satisfied when my love is validated equally by federal and state law, when my family is accepted and not ridiculed in the halls of justice and around the watercoolers of the workplace, and when my life is appreciated by political parties, rather than publicly degraded and exploited for votes. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.
I am not unmindful that some of you have survived great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come… from narrow jail cells as the victims of anti-gay laws. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police harassment and brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.
Go back to California, go back to Florida, go back to Arkansas, go back to Michigan, go back to the slums and suburbia of hate and ignorance, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.
I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American Dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all people are created equal.”
I have a dream that one day on the pictured rocks of Michigan the children of LGBTs and the children of religious fundamentalists will be able to sit down together at a table of peoplehood.
I have a dream that one day even the state of Michigan, a social desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression against its gay people, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom, equality, and justice.
I have a dream that my niece and future children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the gender of my/their love but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day the Republican Party leadership, whose lips are presently dripping with the words of ignorance and hate, will be transformed into a Party where they identify patriotic behavior based on love… actions that require gay and lesbian people and straight people to join hands and walk together as sisters and brothers.
I have a dream today.
I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the shadowed corners of closets be made visible without punishment, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.
This is my hope. This is faith with which I return to Michigan. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of peoplehood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to go to the ballot box together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day. Free to live without fear of discrimination and violence for confidently living our lives as God intended it.
This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom and equality ring.”
And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the courthouses of Conneticut and Massachusetts. Let freedom ring from the executive office of New York.
Let freedom ring from the Congressional halls of Washington, D.C.
Let freedom ring from the bench of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Let freedom ring from the executive offices from Maine to California.
Let freedom ring from every ballot box, every governmental office, every church pew, and every community enclave of Michigan. From every corner, let freedom ring.
When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black people and white people, Christians and Muslims, men and women, gays and straights, will be able join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”
See Bible verses:
I Corinthians 13:13
I Peter 3: 8-12