But we deserve basic rights. No, we are not Black, though some of us are. We are not Women, though some of us are. Queer includes many kinds of PEOPLE, who all deserve Civil Rights not BECAUSE of their queerness, but despite it, regardless of it. We deserve not to be erased but EMbraced, because we are part of the national body, as wonderful and crude, as polite and confused as any fully realized biologically male heterosexual.

In the face of doubt about the similarities between Matthew Shepard and Frederick Douglass, remember that intolerance and hate and discrimination are hurtful to individuals and to society, regardless of the degree of their manifestation.

And so with Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday marked on yesterday's calendar, let's wonder: