Into Battle

My initial premonitions of doom aside, I'm taking the results of this election as a sign.

I need to, more than ever, find ways to keep engaged and active in the fight for what I believe in.  For all this talk I make regarding my political leanings, gay rights, support for the arts, and so forth, it's long overdue that I actually turn my words into action. 

I wonder what this actually involves.  I know for sure I am going to have to eventually stop hiding who I am from people if I want to actually make a difference.  I'm at the point where I wonder who knows, who can guess, and who is still in the dark.  I've become more outspoken this last year, but I really want to get myself involved in a flesh-and-blood manner.  I feel like whatever action I'm taking right now is undermined by my unwillingness to be openly and unashamedly queer.

I want to join a political party and start volunteering for different causes I believe in.  And the more I dread what the Conservative contempt for the arts may mean for my lofty dreams of writing or photography or general careers in the cultural field, the more this is something I realize I have to do.

It's not easy being a gay man in the more rural parts of Atlantic Canada.  There's this unspoken magnification of the disapproval one gets for falling outside of the familiar and the norm most of the time, and every so often that manifests itself in the letter to the editor from the 80-year-old still harping about "sexual immorality" and touting baked beans over contraceptives (actual letter, no joke).  Is there a unified GLBT organization that serves the entire province or does New Brunswick only have the different regional ones that for the most part are in the more urbanized, cosmopolitan and tolerant areas?

If Stephen Harper wants a fight, he'll get one.