Nyet

While I have been posting updates on the disaster in Moscow, I have had underlying guilt about the whole sordid mess. Sara Whitman expressed many of the same thoughts I had about being in the US and having a whole bundle of rights as compared to my Russian brothers and sisters.

Yes, I cannot get married in California but I did get married in Boston. We have a house with animals and family around. Muscovites felt compelled to throw eggs and rocks at queers in the streets.

I remember sitting in line to get across the US/Mexico border after spending the weekend with gay men living with AIDS in Juarez. It had been a long time since I had seen someone dying of AIDS. It was shocking to me, the family there trying to get the dying man to eat, all his roommates seeing their future on the couch. After all the years I had spent working so everyone living with AIDS had access to medicine and then my family in Mexico was without. The clinic I had been at was literally next door to a farmacia and they couldn't go get aspirin next door because there was no money.

Seeing the pictures on various web pages of the religious Russian types pelting people is nauseating. But then what can I do I ask myself. Can I get my Democratic club to send a letter? Can I ask Barney Frank to send a letter? What more can I do besides feel guilty? Being so Catholic guilty doesn't really help so I must ponder how to best support my Russian family.