I read in the NY Times magazine section today about how increasingly middle-school students as young as 11 and 12 are declaring their sexual-affectional identities to friends, family, and teachers. This is a welcome evolution of gay liberation that has resulted from decades of gay activism and the gradual inclusion of more accurate images of LGBT people in media. It is significant that young people with no sexual experience recognize their sexual-affectional identities at such young ages because being gay is more about whom and how we love and how this colors our experience of the world than about sex only. The article points out that parents never question their children when they admit to opposite-sex attractions at a young age, but they nearly always do with same-sex attractions. The common question, ”How can you know for sure at your age?“ is just another form of denial of their gay child’s reality that they would never think to impose on non-gay children. The article goes on to describe some support programs for gay youth, but it also reports what we all assume, that anti-gay bullying and harassment is still pervasive in schools and almost never challenged by teachers or administrators even in relatively liberal school districts.

Although it is tempting to jump to the conclusion that the work of gay liberation is nearly complete when we learn of such openness in the young, the passage of Proposition 8 in California last year provided a stunning wake-up call to young people who grew up watching ”Will & Grace“ and ”Queer as Folk“ who mostly assumed equal rights once granted could never be taken away. I marched with some of these young people in protests in Los Angeles this past fall as I did with Harvey Milk in the gay pride parade in San Francisco in 1978 when I was all of twenty-five years old. We, too, thought full equality was just around the corner back then, and then Harvey was murdered, and AIDS struck just as Reagan’s reign of silence and studied indifference to our suffering delayed research and multiplied deaths. Although we showed the world how we could love and care for one another as even our biological families often did not, by the time Bill Clinton came into office promising to end discrimination in the military and then passed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and DOMA, we were too exhausted, it seemed, to do much but weakly protest. Who needed military service or marriage equality anyway? We were just glad we survived.

What is absolutely clear to me looking back over the history of gay liberation is that our work will not be finished until every person in every country in the world can live openly and proudly as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender, without fear of ridicule, discrimination, violence, prosecution, and death just for being different. Toby Johnson in his book Gay Spirituality makes the point that the validity of any religion can be judged in part by how it treats us. We are the litmus test for churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, and also for governments and social institutions to be judged how valid they truly are. If they treat us with anything less than full equality and respect, they must be judged as lacking. And we must never rest satisfied with limited success in one or another state or country for marriage equality, military service, or hate-crimes laws until it is simply unacceptable everywhere at all times to treat us as less-than other members of the human family.

It is unacceptable that gay youth are bullied and beaten every day in schools across this country with little support from teachers, administrators, or even their own families. It is unacceptable that rich, powerful churches can pour tens of millions of tax-exempt dollars into an election to enable a slim majority to deny equal marriage rights to a minority. It is unacceptable that church and government officials can stand up and say openly that we do not deserve equal rights or even of basic human dignity, to treat us as if we do not have the right even to exist. It is unacceptable that gay men are literally hunted and killed every day in Iraq and our leaders say nothing. It is unacceptable that gay men are killed by members of their own families in so-called “honor killings” in Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and other countries. It is unacceptable that Islamic Republic of Iran executes gay men while funding sex-reassignment surgery for those who are transgender or who are merely effeminate. It is unacceptable for the Pope to stand up and declare to the world that we must remain celibate to be acceptable in the eyes of God. It is unacceptable for China to deny there are any gay people in China. It is unacceptable for homophobes to be given equal time in media to express “opposing views” when no one would dream of giving Neo-Nazis or other racists equal time to express an opposing view to Jews or racial minorities.

When will we stop tearing down those among us who stand up as leaders and unite for the benefit of our worldwide family? When will we finally speak out with one voice to say, “Enough!”?

Gay liberation begins with the personal awakening of each individual to his or her sexual-affectional identity. It grows every time we refuse to hide or lie about who we are to friends, family, coworkers, etc. But our liberation as a people only ends when gay or queer persons everywhere enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness equally with all other members of the human race.