It isn't a matter of how bad it is

It isn't a matter of "how bad it has to get" before people will do something, it's a matter of whether they think what they can accomplish will be worth the personal risk they take in doing it. I've used this analogy before: if the prisoners rush the fence one by one, they'll be electrocuted one by one and accomplish absolutely nothing except to discourage anyone else from trying it, but if they all rush it together they can tear down the fence and get their freedom.

Lindsay is a true hero of the movement, and if there had been a thousand others with the same courage at the same time, I would have been willing to join them, but I don't have enough courage to be one of three, or one of ten. Maybe we should take a poll, "How many other people doing what Lindsay Ashford did would it take for you to be willing to join them and come out openly?" Then if the numbers supported it, we'd reach the tipping point and all come out at once. Sign me up for a thousand, but I'd have to know that all the nicks claiming to be willing to come out were legit, not agents.

On the other hand, I've already tried to help get something started, back when Common Ground existed (note the dead link is still on top of the main GC index page). It was a project where one or two people would come out and do public interviews, but not with absolutely shitheaded talk show hosts (Jack's mistake taught us the uselessness of that), we would only approach fair-minded news professionals. I had Peter Jennnings in mind, but then he died. The rest of the group would remain anonymous, and help prepare the public ones for the interviews. We had about six to ten people interested, and then everything fell apart because I'm no politician and I'm no leader. (The measure of my influence is that I can't even get anyone to use correct punctuation, let alone get anyone to do anything important.) Nobody would do what I thought was the best plan, and then nobody else wanted to take over and be the leader and put together any other plan, so absolutely nothing came of all the talk. I haven't wasted my time trying to do anything since.