New Year's Resoultions For The R.Q Kidd In All Of Us

Welcome to 2009! Its a new year and a new blog. I am R.Q Kidd, blogger,social activist,queer man of God,student of life and lover of people. I am 21 years old and and a proud gay Christian man who is working on building and bridging the gap between the LGBT community and the faith community. In my 21 years I have worked hard on what means to be a queer Christian activist and how I fit in with the rest of the activist circle. This blog will be my commentary on our movement and how you can be activist in your community no matter how big,how small, how big city, how rural america it may be. We need to all come together and stand as a one unified community.

From big campaigns to grass roots efforts all are important for creating the change we need and desire. For gay and trans people and our allies, the time has come for us to band together and stand as one unified front. So to kick off this new year and this new blog I am taking my cue from Queerty's 10 New Years Resolutions for the LGBT community, and putting the R.Q Kidd spin on it of course.

Build an army.

Now I know this sounds scary and militant but really an army can be as simple as a group of people who will stand and support you as well as work with you. You own army can be as simple as 5 friends that support our community by what brands they support or where you bank. Building your army means simply organizing your group of friends to do what you can to support our community and our fight for equality.

Don't fear visibility.

Visibility can mean standing on a street corner with a sign that says "Equal Right Now" with rainbows all over it. It can also mean something as simple as speaking up when you hear someone use language that is demeaning to the LGBT community. My partner works as the assistant manager at store in Virgina where we live. When ever he over hears a customer saying the word "fag" or "faggot" he asks the person to stop using the language or leave. By doing so he lets the other customers in his store where he stands and in turn becomes visible to those who are around him.

Realize that equal rights is not a popularity contest.

It seems to me that our movement has turned into a popularity contest. Whoever can be the best gay man, lesbian women, bisexual or trans person can be the face of the movement. We need to be more inclusive of all members of our community. We are all the face of the movement so let's leave the Jr. High Politics where they belong, in Jr. High.

Treat the gays just like straights.

Look, we can not get upset when our organizations come under fire. When it comes to LGBT organizations, people and communities we seek parallel and commonality because lets face it, we have a lot more in common than we think. We need to hold our own people accountable for their actions and words and when they step out of line we should be the ones to check them, not the rest of the world.

Make allies everywhere.

Remember the saying, you can never have enough friends? When comes to working for LGBT equality we so often forget our allies. Those people who have nothing to gain but to see a better world when we win. While it's great that we can get all our friends on the band wagon, we need to go into communites that are faith based and make allies. We need to go to communities of color and make allies. We need to make our own family allies. The more people we have willing to stand with us the sooner we will win.

Define the agenda.

Definition is key in any movement. We need to clearly define what we want for our community. Once we can articulately and concisely define our agenda, it will be hard for our adversaries to define it for us and us our own goals as firepower to keep us down.

Get a winning attitude.

We are winning. No doubt about it. It's slow and the win's may not be what we want right now but we need to take and hold onto the little victories and the big ones will come. Our country was founded and has a history of justice, albeit slow, the history is there so get a winning attitude, our time will come.

Hate the bigotry, love the bigot.

No, this is not like "love the sinner hate the sin". This is taking people and being patient with them. I am sure there are many people out there who have done lots of good in the world. While that is all good and well that should not keep us from calling out people's homophobia. At all times we need to remember the words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

Remember that it's not all about you.

It's pretty hard to for someone to take someone else seriously if they only care about themselves. Same rule applies. Show people that as the LGBT community care about other causes such as being more environmentally friendly, Dafur or one of many other causes. Don't just say you care, do something about it!

You can have your cake *ahem* and eat it, too.

Lets embrace our communities diversity. We are the embodiment of the the American melting pot. We have every color under the rainbow, pun intended. Our community has it all, from the loud flaming queens to the conservative business men. There is no reason why we all can't be at the front of the movement, standing side by side, to get things done.

At the end of the day we need to remember that all of us are part of the movement no matter where we come from, where we pray, where we work, or how we present our selves. Its going to take the community coming together to get anything done.

Standing With You On The Front Lines,

R.Q. Kidd