No More Prisons

January 2001

Many gay publications are eager to tout the upscale demographics of their supposed readership. Moneyed readers not only appeal to advertisers, but also– in some minds– confer respectability to magazines and newspapers otherwise "compromised" by their gay identity.

Here at The Guide, we value all our readers, of course. But we are particularly proud that we reach hundreds of prisoners. Some incarcerated readers simply want outside contact (for all sorts of reasons) through their pen pals ads. But many report that The Guide gets passed around to dozens of inmates and is read voraciously. Though a small fraction of our audience, prisoners are some of our most enthusiastic subscribers. Our editorial message of liberation resonates with those deemed scum by most of society.

It is probably easy for many of us to think of prisoners as "bad people," deserving whatever tortures and indignities they're forced to suffer. But consider: many people are locked up for behavior that a rational society wouldn't consider criminal. Non-violent drug and sex offenses account for a tremendous percentage of those incarcerated. Such prisoners are paying the price not for their own actions, but for society's screwed up laws.

Many others convicted of real crimes would never be in prison were they not poor. Well-to-do folks can get competent lawyers and will be thought of as "colleagues" by judges and juries. Indigent defendants who've committed no worse crimes will have weaker advocates, be seen as expendable, and find themselves far more likely to serve time than their wealthier counterparts.

And others in prison would never have been locked up if they were white.

But whether in prison unjustly or not, all prisoners suffer being treated as trash. Some people falsely think that heaping condemnation and degrading treatment on "bad" convicts somehow elevates and ennobles the "good" people who've avoided prison. But we can use our experience as gay people to recognize that no one proves themselves good by maltreating others.

Alienation, unhappiness, and anti-social behavior are guaranteed whenever people are treated as despicable and irredeemably "not of us." Conversely, whenever people are given attention and made to feel part of a larger community, bonds form and destructive and criminal behaviors are reduced. We all know that straight or closeted people who vaunt their perceived superiority by denigrating gay people can– and do– create needless misery, both for others and themselves. Similarly, those eager to put down prisoners, no matter how righteous their condemnation, only perpetuate the erroneous notion that society proves itself moral by being punitively mean to "bad" people.

Jesus, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King were all imprisoned by those disquieted by their confrontations of injustice. Notably, they did not protest that it was unfair to mix them in with riffraff and "real" criminals. They understood that the fundamental problem was with societies all-too eager to divide themselves into good people who merited respect and rights, and bad people who deserved derision and punishment.

As gay people, we have had to free ourselves from the delusion that only good (i.e., straight) people deserve the right to openly-expressed sexuality. Once liberated from the destructive notion that we were bad people for being gay, we not only allowed ourselves more rewarding sex lives, but also much improved, more productive lives in all sorts of ways.

Some people may, regrettably, need to be restrained from doing harm to others. But let us use our insight as sexual outlaws to recognize that we do only harm whenever we fool ourselves into thinking that caring and compassion are only for "good" people.

Pasted from <http://guidemag.com/magcontent/invokemagcontent.cfm?ID=0C4B25C9-CDAA-11D4-A7BA00A0C9D84F02>