First time I left Disney World and walked back into the real one it was to headlines screaming at me that over 170 people had been killed in coordinated terrorist attacks in India.   This time:

Binghamton Rampage Leaves 14 Dead, Police Don’t Know Motive

By 10:33 a.m., the shooting was over and 14 people — including the gunman — lay dead, the chief said.

At least four people were listed in critical condition. Earlier, sources said as many as 26 people were wounded.

3 Pittsburgh officers killed; suspect taken after standoff

An ambush that resulted in the shooting deaths of three Pittsburgh policemen was precipitated by an emergency call from the gunman’s mother over a dog urinating in the house.

…later identified as Richard “Pop” Poplawski, 22. A dishonorably charged Marine, he adhered to a number of right-wing conspiracy theories and expressed fears of a “Zionist nation” revoking his right to own guns.

Breakup ignited dad’s deadly rage in Graham

He jumped in a car with oldest daughter Maxine, 16, who tracked her mother through a cellphone global-positioning system.

They homed in on a convenience store 20 miles away in Auburn, north of the Muckleshoot Casino. James confronted his wife, who was with another man. He wanted her home. She said she wasn’t coming back.

He stormed home, consulted relatives and calmed down. Maxine went to bed about 11 p.m. with her four younger siblings. She sent a classmate a text message from her cellphone: “I’m tired of crying. I’m going to bed.”

Within hours, James Harrison, 34, grabbed a rifle and shot each child multiple times. Four were found in bed. One of the girls died in the bathroom after a violent struggle.

Armed with a second rifle, he returned to Auburn on Saturday morning, perhaps in hopes of finding his wife. Perhaps to kill again. Instead, sitting inside his running SUV, he turned the rifle on himself. His body was discovered about 8 a.m. by children playing in the area.

Welcome back to Realityland Bruce…

Oh…and the Iowa Supreme Court Unanimously decided that not letting same sex couples marry was an unconstitutional denial of equal protection.   I should be happy about that and I am, but I dread reading the news accounts because inevitably they have to give the gutter a chance to spit on gay people, happy couples, and all their hopes and dreams.   But more and more I’m seeing words like these, finally…

There was a time, not that long ago, when it was possible to imagine, however inaccurately, that gay sex was in and of itself a self-destructive pathology, something no happy, healthy person would willingly engage in. That time is past. The evidence of stable, loving relationships between well-adjusted, successful people is all around us. Indeed, this abundant evidence–and not the tides of the sexual revolution, which peaked more than three decades ago and have since receded–is the reason that gay rights, and in particular the question of gay marriage, have moved so quickly in recent years.

That time is past…   Yes, for the people willing to let reality speak for itself.   I am of a generation of Americans who were taught all kinds of horrible, filthy lies about gay people, and not simply in school, but in church, in the movies, in magazines and newspapers, and on TV.   Where we were not dangerous sexual psychopaths we were contemptible faggots.   When I was 17, and just beginning to grasp that I was gay myself, I got the message about how people felt about homosexuals from just about every direction I looked…

Mad #145, Sept ‘71, from “Greeting Cards For The
Sexual Revolution” – “To A Gay Liberationist”

At the beginning of James Burke’s PBS series The Day The Universe Changed, he tells a story of some students of philosophy, bragging to the teacher about how ignorant people were to think that the earth was the center of the universe, and that the sun orbited around the earth rather then the other way around.   How ignorant, said the students, when all they had to do was just look up and observe the sun rising as the earth turned.   Yes, said the teacher, but I wonder how it would have looked to them had the sun actually been orbiting the earth?   The point being that it would have looked the same.   Sometimes what we see is what our knowledge tells us we’re seeing.   And for generation upon generation, people have been taught to see gay people as monsters…sick, perverted, disgusting, pathological monsters.

Which was how we saw ourselves for so very long.   That time is past.   And years of living openly and proudly are having their effect on anyone open to the evidence.   But there’s one more movement to go in this civil rights dance…

Gay Bashing Suspect: ‘The Faggot Deserved It’

A 62-year-old man assaulted in an alleged hate crime in a Vancouver gay bar remains in hospital care.

In the wake of the attack, the local GLBT community has mounted protests against the attack, as well as a string of earlier incidents that may also have been anti-gay hate crimes.

On March 17, Xtra.ca reported that a witness described how the suspect, 35-year-old Shawn Woodward, declared, “He’s a faggot. He deserved it” after allegedly striking Richie Dowrey in the face, knocking him down.

The suspect also reportedly declared, “I’m not a fag. The faggot touched me. He deserved it.”

The alleged bashing took place at a gay bar, The Fountainhead Pub, in Vancouver’s West End.

Said the witness, Dowrey’s friend Lindsay Wincherauk, “[Dowrey] fell like a board to the ground so hard that a hollow thud could be heard throughout the bar.”

Dowrey reportedly suffered severe brain damage.

Said Wincherauk, “There’s a chance if he survives he won’t walk again.”

The sun doesn’t just suddenly rise on a day when we are an equal and respected part of our communities.   What happens is gradually, step by step, the chains that hate put on our lives slowly loose their power over us, and we walk free.   But we are not free yet.   The simple, elegant, beautiful gesture of couples simply holding hands as they walk together, is still enough to get us beaten to death.   What happens is that as we walk out of the shadow of hate our heterosexual neighbors begin to see us, finally, as the people we really are.   What happens is that hate, greedy, envious, hungry, follows us out of the shadows also, and into the light, where it can be seen by everyone too…

Community responds to gay bashing near campus

The two men charged in the gay bashing of two University of Cincinnati students near the Main Campus will each reappear before a judge within the next week.

Ethan Kirkwood, 20, of Meadow Creek Drive in Anderson Township, and Matthew Kafagolis, 20, of Ramundo Court in Anderson Township, were arrested on two counts of felonious assault and released on bond. Since the arrest, the charges have been dropped to two counts of misdemeanor assault, according to the Hamilton County Clerk of Courts Web site. The charges were lowered on March 20 and March 19, respectively.

The maximum penalty for a misdemeanor assault charge is less than one year in jail.

…The two men are being charged with allegedly assaulting two men – both are UC students – after the men found out one of the victims was gay, around 4 a.m., Friday, March 6, in the 2500 block of Clifton Avenue.

The gay man was knocked to the ground, kicked and punched after the assailants found out he was gay, according to court records. The other victim was attempting to defend his friend when he was also beaten.

That our neighbors see us for the fellow human beings we are is good, but it is not the end of it.   They must also see the hate for what it is too.   That will be the end of it, finally.   But it is going to destroy more lives before this thing is over.