The view from my desk

“When witches were burned in the middle ages,

the Inquisitors ordered the good burghers

   (all of them men, of course)

   to scour the jungle for jailed queers

   drag them out and tie them together in bundles,

   mix them in with bundles of wood

      at the feet of the women,

      and set them on fire

         to kindle a flame

         foul enough for a witch to burn in

   The sticks of wood in bundles like that

      were called faggots

   and that’s what they called the queers; too,

   and call us still,

   meaning our extinction, our complete

      extermination,

   anthrocide and gynocide their one response to 

   any heretical blasphemy against

   a god-given manliness.”

A poem by the Flaming Faggots Collective. Quoted from Dennis Altman, Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation, 1993, p. 52, first published in 1971.