God save the Queer

And when the Union Jack flew in our Country, weren’t you proud of it? Didn’t you stand up and sing “God save the Queen”?
And why did it flew in South Africa? ; Because we were once a part of the British Empire. The British Empire had 3 times as much people as the United States, 33% of the world’s inhabitants were under British rule and so many countries were part of this that there was not a single second on Earth where the Sun didn’t shine on one part of the empire; hence the slogan: the sun never sets on the British Empire. And we were proud of being part of this enormous Empire, proud to have the Union Jack as our flag and therefore we sang “God Save the Queen” from the debts of our hearts.
Naturally everybody wasn’t proud to be part of this and that was the Empire’s downfall; mot sticking together. Like the slogan says: If you can’t stand by your colors then get yourself a new flag and so they did; the new South African flag. But South Africans could not stick together and after 30 years another new flag flew. The downfall of another empire is in the air, because not all South Africans want to join the new colors in the air. A flag represent something, it shares a meaning it sends a message, a message of unity, but if the unity is only a dream; the empire falls.
In 1960 a gay flag was created; a flag that sends out a message of unity among queer people. That is Lesbians, gay men, transvestites, transgender, transsexuals, bisexual, hags, stallions, bears, queens, dikes and all other counting among the queers of our world. Our Empire might not be that big, but if you calculate the statistical 4 out of every 100 theory, our group is at least as large as the United States. Yes, you heard me right, if 4 out of every 100 people are queer (that is the general theory) then there are at least 240 million queers on this earth. So we deserved a symbol and at last we could be proud of our colors; we could stand by our flag and sing: “God save the Queer”.
Our queer community has one problem and that is sticking together, if we did a group of 240 million would hardly be a minority. In stead of sticking together we divide in the leather community, the bear community, the chubby community, the lesbian community, the bisexual, the transgender community, the drag community, and the rave community; to name but a few. How silly is that? We complain about discrimination, but we do not stand together as a group.
A while ago Cobragay sent out invitations to a free get together for the like-minded. Do you know what the biggest reaction was? The reaction of the average member was no reaction at all; the second largest reaction was “Please take us of your mailing list”. Maybe you could think that the venue was wrong, the theme or the wording, but you would be wrong; this is the reaction that most queer organizations get.
When I talk to individuals within our community they always complain about getting to know other members of the community and yet if you try to arrange something for the community the majority just ignore the invitation. I wonder how great the discrimination should be before we start to join hands. Individualization always predicts the downfall of every empire in the history of mankind, but discrimination always made an empire stronger. Maybe the general acceptance by the straight community wasn’t good for us at all.
Let us stand by our colors, let us raise our flag, let us stick together and let us join in singing “God save the Queer“.

Andrew Blade  


http://www.facebook.com/cobragay

-Andrew Blade’s Weekly Cobra-bite-
Taken from Andrew’s Column in

The Gayly Mail