All that can be done to avoid violence is education that it does not work to any positive end on either side. The American and French revolutions were largely about land rights and "unfair" taxation. In the case of the Americas it would be fair to say that we were the occupied party who fought quite poorly really, but who had the advantage of very long supply lines from Britain. Americans were also very stubborn as most had left England and Germany because of religious persecution.

We were about 95% a rural society then as opposed to being a 90+% urban society today. The same means and methods will not work. Violence would only work to set back our legitimacy much as it has the anarchists who have engaged in it in WTO cities.

Martin Luther King was never about violence or condoning it and I am sure that is a lesson from history that smart Gay college students have also been exposed to and have internalized. There will be mistakes and missteps and folks carried away be the moment or the mirage of what they are doing.

The old testament is so much better written than the new. Slightly further along in Ecclesiastes: "...God shall judge the righteous and the wicked: for there is a time for every purpose and every work."

Of course it also has more loopholes than a Philadelphia lawyer could devise :)

I want to point out 2 things.

1. I generally disagree with violence unless there is no other recourse even when last assaulted i refused to strike back on principle as a fight was what the attacker wanted.

2. if violence is not an acceptable way to assert human rights when they are abused then there is no legal legitimacy to the existance, the very existance of the U.S.A. or the constitutional monarchy of the U.K. or the democracy of France and the same is true in much of the world where rebellions and civil wars where citizens illegally fought the current legal state in order to obtain their rights.

Now that last bit isn't a 'might makes right' argument, but instead a Equal Human Rights when oppressed or denied may be asserted and demanded recognised by law-breaking, vandalism, violence, civil war and rebellion.

The state and the law's legitimacy is based upon the equal rights of it's citizens and it providing the mutual benefit of the social contract to all citizens. When there is not equality the law has no legitimacy (no matter how big a majority voted for it either, this is modern rights-based democracy not ancient greek majoritanism) but it still has plenty of power...

So while i'll happily endorse non-violently breaking illegitate laws to assert equal human rights I do not endorse violence except as a last resort.. if they start raiding gay bars and hauling crossdressers off to mental asylums and jails for electro-torture 'treatment' or labotomy like they did 40 years ago then sure, I'll riot like the crossdressers at Stonewall and Compton and fight back like they did at the first Sydney Mardi Gras.. after i tried appealing to the International Human Rights bodies and tried fighting it in the courts.

And remember our countries have legitimised wars over the notion that protecting human rights makes overthrowing governments of other nations legitimate. So then it makes it legitimate to invade or sanction Jamiaca and Kuwait over their state allowed or perpetrated violents attacks on and torture of crossdressers to mention just two examples.

And I repeat, i prefer non-violence. I'll only resort to it if they roll back my rights to the pre-stonewall era and I exhaust all non-violent avenues.

And how quickly the haters who call for the denial of equal rights for others resort to trying to get the protection of the law for themselves, protections they fought against being equally to protect us. And plenty of them are fine with terrorist acts against doctors and abortion clinics. Hypocracy is their daily bread it seems.

There are organizations which seek to teach LGBT people to defend themselves. Pink Pistols and Triangle Martial Arts are two of them.
At the martial arts schools that I have owned and taught at we have always made sure that we did outreach to the LGBT community to teach them to defend themselves. I also am involved in getting the Pink Pistols firing in the Boston area again. And I espouse obtaining a licence to carry for our people.
I think that defending oneself with violence is perfectly acceptable. I also think that violence in defending others is acceptable. I have been engaged in this debate since the mid 80's. And deciding where the line is has been an issue.
In the traditional martial arts world there has been discussion about where the line is. And I have been accused of having crossed it, but that has never been a secret.
Frankly, I have never had a problem with one of our people beating a basher to a pulp. If that basher comes to our bars and the parking lots outside and the streets around them or to our homes and businesses, he or she is already past the point of acting with civility and is owed no civility.
As for those who say that violence has never solved anything. I have to disagree. It may not be the favorite answer and may not be the generally best answer but sometimes it is the answer that is appropriate to the situation. There are people out there who I know will never again risk going after a queer person physically, and I am ok with how they were taught this lesson because it means that at least one bigot will not be going after another one of us. I can also say that I have seen the willingness of the queer community to start defending itself spark the police in Tallahassee FL on some beats to finally start stepping in and making the bashers stay away from certain places even if it was just to keep the bashers from getting beaten up.
Now as for our LGBTQ people becoming the initiators of violence, I dread that day but realize that it may come.

I have no hard and fast answer, but I once wrote this after I was a victim of someone else's violence:

Violence is a parasite- it cannot live without a host. But unlike most other parasites, it cannot live in a host that refuses it. If I can continue to refuse to accept it when it is presented to me, it will have difficulty spreading and be significantly weakened, maybe even die.

And what I experienced was violence. Anger, hatred, shame, abuse (both physical and emotional-including gossip), greed and fear are all violence in thin disguise, and I don’t want them in me.

I am reminded of a story of the Buddha:
A very angry and rude young man came up and began insulting the Buddha. “You have no right teaching others,” he shouted. “You are as stupid as everyone else. You are nothing but a fake.”

Buddha was not upset by these insults. Instead, he asked the young man, “tell me, if you buy a gift for someone, and that person does not take it, to whom does the gift belong ?”

The man was surprised to be asked such a strange question and answered, “it would belong to me because I bought the gift.”

Buddha smiled and said ” that is correct. And it is exactly the same with your anger. If you become angry with me and I do not get insulted, then the anger falls back on you. You are then the only one who becomes unhappy, not me. All you have done is hurt yourself.”

This is timely. I'm glad many in our camp are even considering violence as a tactic. In every civil rights struggle there are always two differing movements of violence and one of peaceful civil disobedience. It wouldn't surprise me if someone out there in our country is organizing to bomb a heterosexual wedding to take away their lives for taking away our civil rights. It's probably closer than we think. I agree that there's a season and a season for everything. The bigots think they will continue to control us. They are mistaken that they can play victim and call for our deaths using the Bible and enforcing their narrow view of life on us by beating the Bible and expecting us to lay down and taking it without fighting back. I encourage every gay man, woman and child to carry a gun to protect themselves. The time for bloodshed may have been upon us.

People always speak of Martin Luther King as if he was the only black civil rights leader. He wasn't. There was Malcolm X, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. The latter two were co-founders of the Black Panthers.

Riots often do produce sympathy in civil rights movements. It's not the same as the riots surrounding the WTO, which is politically motivated. Civil rights movements are personally motivated, we have an obvious personal stake in LGBT rights.

I'm not advocating or condoning any act of violence that is premeditated or organized. Domestic terrorism is just plain evil. But I wouldn't disown a spontaneous act. Like when that guy smashed that lady's foam cross at a protest, a lot of people were quick to disown it and condemn it. I don't.

Come while there is time to the nation of peace, the nation of Islam.

Allah will free you of your abomination.

Koran 4:16 - "Allah is forgiving and merciful."

Koran 27:55 - "Nay, ye are a people ignorant!"

Like many have said, it depends on what we mean by violence. I don't think it's inevitable, but it's really worth thinking about. What would each of us be willing to do? What would we be willing to tolerate others doing?

Smashing a foam cross?
Covering a mansion in a condom?
Graffiti?
Armed queers, Black Panther style?
Or anything else?

I am glad for people of faith having a discussion based upon an honest spiritual opposition to violence. We will continue to need your voices of peace I think for a very long time, and I promise to listen.

If the hatred, anger, and violence against us continues or grows, we will fight it.
I don't know how, but I do know
we won't ever be silent again.

Bill Clinton's catch phrase, "it is the economy stupid", in his 1992 presidential campaign against George Bush is relevant in this discussion. In addition to LGBT individuals I fear we'll see a significant escalation in violence in the upcoming years from members in other groups. Most people don't mind putting in a reasonable effort to be successful but the USA is drifting towards 3rd world status in how our economy is being mismanaged. LGBT individuals and particularly trans people are like canaries in mines. A bad economy affects us first and worse than other "normal" people.

A particular concern with LGBT individuals is, on average, we're more intelligent than other people. While this provides some mitigation against bigotry it is quickly getting to the point in the USA that even a highly educated intelligent person has less and less hope of living the American Dream.

Eventually an intelligent person, LGBT or otherwise, is going to get tired of killing themselves trying to have a decent life and is going to do some real damage.

Ironically liberals may be as much responsible for this as conservatives. Conservatives crush the human spirit by insisting on an obscene income distribution so very, very few people have the opportunity to do well. Conversely liberals crush the human spirit by insisting on having a shrinking slave class of workers to support them and their causes. God forbid, for example, a young person spend many years and great sums of money becoming a doctor and expect to make a decent income.

The solution is a reasonable but not overly generous social safety net for all of us along with mechanisms to ensure enough income inequality to motivate hard work, education and innovation. "Enough" does not mean "obscene." I doubt if a Wall Street person works a whole lot harder to make tens of millions of dollars a year than they would to make $250,000/year, for example.

I think a distinction needs to be made between pre-meditated violence (i.e. terrorism) and reactive violence. The former is never acceptable - it makes us no better than Al Quaeda - and it always has negative consequences for our cause. However reactive violence must be considered acceptable under some circumstances. I do not think it can be considered reasonable to object to using violence strictly in order to protect yourself, your friends or those unable to defend themselves.

However that leaves the area of serious non-defensive violence against those committing violent hate crimes - or, as Rob Barton put it, "beating a basher to a pulp". Such violence isn't legally acceptable of course - however law is an artificial construct that exists to ensure the smooth running of society, including ensuring that the rights of all citizens are protected.

Any government based on the consent of its citizens has an obligation to protect the rights of its citizens, including the right to freedom from violence; if it does not actively do so, that contract is void. Similarly each community has the obligation and right to defend itself and its members; typically this is done through an independent civil authority. However if a civil authority ignores the rights of one group its contract with those citizens is broken, and that community is no longer morally obliged to obey the relevant laws of that civil authority. This is the basis for civil disobedience.

So if a civil authority reneges on its obligation to protect a minority community from violent hate crimes, that community has the moral right to "beat a basher to a pulp" as a means of self-defence. Whether or not doing so is actually a wise move is a whole separate question that depends very heavily on context, but as a rule I'd say it's an unwise move.

To answer your question, Father Tony, yes.

Could I go there personally? After Nov. 3 (I was in Maine for 3 weeks) I'd probably have to say yes.

After all, the fundamentalists (of all religious faiths) have NEVER hesitated in advocating, committing, and justifying violence against our community.

And...excuse me, depending on the church, I could honestly care less how churchgoers feel. Sorry.

Is violence inevitable? Yes. Of course.

Look to the Boston Massacre and its affect on popular opinion for the revolution. Look to the violence that was used against peaceful protesters and that affect on support for the civil rights movement. Look to the color TV images from Vietnam and the erosion of public support for that cause.

Actually one could say its not the violence that matters, its the media coverage of that violence that makes the difference.

Violence is already in place against us; look no farther than the bar raids in Fort Worth and Atlanta. Does anybody think they are unlikely to stop? Neither event garnered real national media coverage. Sure for a week the incidents are all over the GLBT blogs, and protest signs proclaim "We're not gonna take it". However the police departments and city officials are quietly sitting in their offices saying, "Oh yes you will." Because it has been 40 years since a group of gays truly stood up and said "no, we're NOT going to take this". Name one peaceful protest or petition drive that we celebrate its anniversary 40 years later.

The bigger question will be whether that act of violence to come will be one lone gunman pushed to his brink, or whether it will be a gathering who will once again refused to be unfairly targeted? Will our community see the event as a rallying cry for justice or will we all criticize the loner for not falling in line with the agenda of the gay establishment? Big picture, will this act of violence move us forward or set us back?

But will it happen? Yes, of course it will.

I think violence in the fight for LGBT equality is next to impossible. Sure, maybe a couple people here or there will bash back. Maybe someone will pick on a drag queen and she'll stick a stilletto up their ass. That's stuff's already happened.

But carefully planned violence? I can't think of an instance in which that's happened in a movement for equality.

Liberation, on the other hand, has motivated people to violent demonstrations. But the queers gave up on that a long time ago.

I understand the frustration and anger. I feel it myself. And I do believe that nonviolent civil disobedience may well be an important next step for our movement, but if anyone is seriously considering rioting and/or physically attacking the people who oppress us, I have one word for you: DON'T.

Acts of violence are immoral, and acting as immorally as our oppressors do is simply wrong -- not to mention politically ineffective. The quickest way to roll back our gains and to stop the LGBT rights movement in its tracks would be for us to resort to violence. If we attack, we merely confirm people's worst stereotypes about us, and it is those stereotypes that keep us from winning equality.

One more thing... Did I really read a comment that implied that nonviolence worked for the Civil Rights Movement because white supremacists saw Blacks as full human beings? I had to have misread that because if that was what was meant, then my only response is to laugh.

No great cause has ever been won without building on the sacrifice of its own.

We shouldn’t advocate violence. It’s illegal and the cops and FBI just love it when we do. Advocating violent attacks on our enemies in cults and politics is just begging to be victimized. Although that should never be confused with our right to defend ourselves when physically attacked. Self defense is as necessary as pacifism is a dead end, and I do mean dead.

The problem is not violence by GLBT folks but violence by police and other thugs directed against us and promoted by the unending barrage of hate speech by cult leaders and the politicians who pander to them.

The problem is not violence by GLBT folks but the violence of the US government which has created such a thoroughly undemocratic society. The US is a banana republic that engages in massive genocidal wars to control oil and other resources. Those wars always promote internal violence (the US leads the world in schoolyard slaughter) and violence against minorities. US society is organized to allow the looting class to steal on a monumental scale. US society jails minority folks in enormous numbers. Its prosperity is based on genocidal wars against native Americans and slavery. The US is an extremely violent country and GLBT folks are often the victims of that violence.

The way out is to revolutionize our society by raising ideas that are reasonable but unattainable for the present. To end anti-LGBT violence we need to suppress the cults who are responsible for the violence against us. Hate speech by racists, misogynists, homohaters and immigrant bashers is the major cause of hate crimes.

We can reliably assume that the multiple crises of US society - unwinnable wars, economic failure, mass unemployment, the unsolved health care crisis and the beginnings of mass homelessness – are going to give us the chance to change things sooner rather than later.

The day is not too far off when the conservative social fabric that's held American society together grip will be ripped apart. We’re entering a pre-revolutionary period marked by a deep radicalization like the ones preceding the outbreaks of 1775 and 1860. The lack of genuine democracy in politics and in the workplace is beginning to tear US society to shreds.

As that process unfolds it’ll lead to the creation of a new and far more democratic economic and political society and GLBT folks, who’ll play a big role in that process, will be able to advance our agenda in a much friendlier context.

Part t of our agenda will be to enact laws to suppress the cults. We can speed that process along by demanding

• That cults, like other parts of the entertainment industry, pay their fair share of taxes.

• That cult schools be secularized to if eliminate most of the cases of child abuse by priests, pastors, rabbis, imams, ministers and other assorted clerical riff raff.

• That cult leaders be indicted for manslaughter if they advocate abstinence instead of safe sex methods to control HIV/AIDS and for murder if anyone dies because of their reckless disregard for medical standards for avoiding HIV/AIDS.

• That cultists staffing centers claiming to cure GLBT folks of our genetic heritage be jailed for child abuse, torture and kidnapping. Those snakepits should be closed and the children and young people who imprisoned in them by their parents should be offered the option of emancipation from their parents and social services (run by GLBT folks) until they come of age.

• We have to demand that cult leaders who advocate violence be indicted and prosecuted even if they can't be connected to any specific crime of violence and that laws be passed to make it easy to sue them and confiscate the assets of their cult to compensate victims of hate crimes.

As I said, we won’t get any real changes until society is revolutionized and fundamentally changed but fighting for them will hasten that day.

Great points Bill. I agree with most of what you said about cults and cultists. Let's take it one step further and let's come out and say it. We should go after the priests, pastors and ministers who preach hate and indict them, under the hate crime act, for being accomplices to murder, if and when members of their church engages in gay bashing. Why are we shying away from attacking hate speech from the pulpit? Why is it ok for the priests, pastors and ministers to use the Bible as a cover for their hate speech. We need to start raising hell and speaking up about how that is not acceptable. Calling for the death of gay people using the Bible should be seen as yelling fire in a crowded theater. If we take a stand against it and get everyone on board we can shut that shit down. Right now, the churches and bigots are being aided and abetted by society in causing death, injuries and torture against gays in the name of freedom of religion. Freedom of religion does not mean religion is above the law. What about freedom from religion. It's time we step up to the plate and begin holding the church accountable.

Great points Bill. I agree with most of what you said about cults and cultists. Let's take it one step further and let's come out and say it. We should go after the priests, pastors and ministers who preach hate and indict them, under the hate crime act, for being accomplices to murder, if and when members of their church engages in gay bashing. Why are we shying away from attacking hate speech from the pulpit? Why is it ok for the priests, pastors and ministers to use the Bible as a cover for their hate speech. We need to start raising hell and speaking up about how that is not acceptable. Calling for the death of gay people using the Bible should be seen as yelling fire in a crowded theater. If we take a stand against it and get everyone on board we can shut that shit down. Right now, the churches and bigots are being aided and abetted by society in causing death, injuries and torture against gays in the name of freedom of religion. Freedom of religion does not mean religion is above the law. What about freedom from religion. It's time we step up to the plate and begin holding the church accountable.

Bill I have an idea. Let's start a group called the Pink Avengers and we'll set up a network across the country where we have a website for gay parishioners to report instances of hate speech by their pastors, priests and ministers and the Pink Avengers will sue them under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr Hate Crimes Prevention Act. Ideally, this new group will also monitor the other cults and cultist people like you laid out above in your post, such as Exodus Int'l and other ex-gay ministries and aversion therapists, etc. What do you think? That's a strategy that we need to pursue. I need help thinking this through so anyone reading this board is interested please contact me. We have to get more creative. We got to go after our real nemesis, which are these fundamentalists bigoted priests, pastors and ministers.

I don't think our situation is the same today as it was 40 years ago when we rioted up and down Christopher Street. Things ARE better. The media will paint it as: 'gays and lesbians, pissy because they can't get married, destroy a bunch of stuff, hurt people and upset the general order.' I think it will undo a lot of the good work we've done in the arena of public opinion.

That doesn't mean we shouldn't be angry, every single day, on the BRINK of throwing a trashcan through a pizza parlor window... I just don't see a situation where we should go that extra step and burn the pizza parlor down.

Bill - There are some in our camp that is afraid of going after the preachers because the media will seize the opportunity to paint us as radicals trying to imprison preachers and parents from teaching "family values." How do we effectively counter that argument? I also agree with some of the comments in Ronald Gold's post that showing the general population that "we're just like them," is a failed strategy. The bigots will always see us as deviants and an abomination and nothing we say or do will convince them otherwise. Here's a link: http://www.bilerico.com/2009/11/time_for_gay_power_1.php. The assimilation movement has proven to not work. I'm grateful that people such as Ronald Gold, David Mixner and Don Kilhefner are still alive. I'm ready and willing to listen to what they have to say. Our movement needs a new direction. Education, public awareness and negotiation has taken us so far now we need to resort back to public demonstrations, street theater and other forms of direct actions that inconvenience the mass. I'm all ears!