Front page hypocrisy: gays or gangs, it's all about the label

[Atman]

I hope I'm not the only Connecticutter (I am NOT a "Nutmegger") who picked up on the glaring hypocrisy of Connecticut's elected officials and dominant republican newspaper, the Hartford Courant. There on today's front page, abutting each other, were two fairly prominent stories. The first proclaimed that Connecticut Governor and Replacement Republican Corruptor, Jodi Rell, has...well, read it for yourself...



Rell Joins Backers Of Same-Sex Civil Unions

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The governor said she had not evaluated the civil-unions bill approved last week by the judiciary committee, but for the first time she offered unqualified support for the concept.

"The concept I don't have trouble with," Rell told reporters after a ceremony at the Capitol for new judges.

Rell has said repeatedly that she is opposed to same-sex marriage, but until Tuesday she had given mixed signals on civil unions that would convey to same-sex couples nearly all the rights of marriage.

Link to Civil Unions story

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Okay, okay, so maybe it's all good, maybe not. Personally, I think that we've become bogged down in the labeling. No one wants to call it a marriage, even though it talks like one, walks like one, whatever. We can't have that now, can we? Marriage is for us good, decent folk, and "civil unions" are for queers. Their love can't be the same love WE feel when both partners have outies (or innies), so we'll lable it something else.

It's a way to scare, label and pander all at once.

Now, about the gangs. Supposedly we've done a good job of eliminating gangs in Hartford. The days of the Latin Kings running downtown street corners are distant past, right? At least, that is the labeling Connecticut has sold us...no gangs. BUT...we have these kids, see, and they shoot each other, show up to funerals of fallen kids wearing hoods and masks, they march en masse to the services. But, don't worry NUT-meggers, we have no gangs. Just some rowdy kids downtown.

How convenient the hypocritical labeling on the Courant front page; labels to SCARE and labels not to scare, and they're both based upon the premise of simply calling something by a different name for no other valid reason other than to quell or incite flames, depending upon your stance. Case in point...the gang story right next to the Civil Unions story...remember, it's not about the acts, or the love, or the hate, or the whatever.

We just have to be careful what we CALL IT. Because we're just citizens. And the governor and the newspapers have determined were too fucking stupid to figure anything out without their labeling it for us...


If It Acts Like A Gang ...

March 2, 2005

I couldn't quite place the feeling I had outside the Greater Hartford Funeral Home Tuesday. Standing in the slush with a crowd of kids dressed in matching outfits, there was something eerily familiar about the bravado on display, the picture of Reynaldo Batista holding a gun, the bottle of beer in his coffin, the kids sitting with their faces masked. I felt as though I'd been there before.

And then I realized I had.

Flash back a decade and I could have been standing outside the DeLeon Funeral Home with a member of the Latin Kings being mourned inside, his "brothers" standing outside in their colors, chanting the "family's" name.

The bravado was certainly on display on Monday when, during a march to Reynaldo's wake, a group of kids joined in with a leader who conducted some urban version of "Simon Says": Whatever he told them to do, they did. Whatever he told them to say, they said.

What I saw at that funeral home Tuesday may not have been a gang - I hope not. But it looked like a gang, acted like a gang and, while we could quibble about what to call it, there was something going on there. And we better do something about it quick.

Some of the folks I asked cautioned me - none for the record - against using the word gang. The kids are more like a clique, a posse. Sounds safer, doesn't it?

I understand their hesitation. This city does not need a fit of gang hysteria. But the Madison Avenue area, where Reynaldo once lived, and where he hung out almost daily, is also home to a posse, a group of kids who are running together and growing in influence.

<snip>

Gang Column

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