Category Archives: Gay Rights

Senator Coats Embarrasses Us in Washington

The U.S. Senate has finally passed the Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA), a measure that has been languishing in Congress for at least twenty years despite the fact that for a good part of that time, multiple polls have shown support for passage hovering around 80%. (Approval by the more dysfunctional House remains uncertain.)

ENDA extends the basic civil rights protections that currently prohibit employment discrimination on the basis of race, religion and gender to GLBT workers. In other words, if you are an employer who is subject to civil rights laws, you can no longer fire someone –or refuse to hire someone–solely because s/he is gay or lesbian.

Although a number of Republican Senators voted against the measure, only one Senator took the floor to urge its rejection: Indiana’s own Dan Coats.

Coats says ENDA “violates religious liberty.”  And it is certainly true that the law would prevent people whose religions preach intolerance from acting on that intolerance in the workplace.

Coats is making the same arguments that were used by those opposing the 1964 Civil Rights Act and subsequent state-level civil rights laws. “My religion teaches that women should tend the home.” “My religion teaches that black people shouldn’t mingle with whites.” And of course, the ever-popular, “A law telling me I can’t disapprove of certain people and refuse to serve/employ/educate them is an infringement of my liberty to run my establishment as I see fit.”

Well, yes it is. That’s the price we pay for living in a system that strives for equal protection of the laws, a system that separates civil law from religious beliefs.

I first met Dan Coats in 1980, when we were both Republican candidates for Congress. (He won his race; I lost mine.) When he later ran for Senate, he asked if I would host a fundraiser for him, and I agreed. I hadn’t paid much attention to his record, however, and when I asked several female friends if they would attend, I got an earful about his positions on reproductive rights and other issues affecting women. (For younger people who may be reading this, I kid you not: before the party effectively became an arm of fundamentalist Christianity, the GOP used to harbor lots of pro-choice women. Honest. Google it if you don’t believe me.)

When I explained to Dan that his votes to make abortion illegal made him persona non grata to pretty much anyone I’d invite, he was gracious about it. But I’ve never forgotten his explanation: “this is a religious issue for me.”

There are two problems with this defense. First, my religion (and that of many other Americans) had–and has– a very different view of reproductive morality, just as today religious denominations have very different positions on same-sex marriage. And second, the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause prohibits people like Dan Coats or Rick Santorum or anyone else from using the law to impose their religious beliefs on those who don’t share them.

Coats is a perfect illustration of a phenomenon that drives me batty–the (apparently sincere) belief that if the law isn’t forcing everyone to live by his religious rules, he is the one being discriminated against.

Take that position to its logical consequences, and a diverse society could neither exist nor function. Dan Coats doesn’t have to like gay people, or Jewish people, or any other people. He doesn’t have to invite us into his private club, or invite us over for dinner. He does, however, have to share civil society with us.

And that, Dan, requires giving unto others the same rights you demand for yourself.

Speaking of morality, I would submit that an inability to understand that simple truth–an inability to respect the equal human dignity of people who differ from you– is a pretty significant moral failure in the view of most religions.

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Because Freedom. Or Something.

Yesterday, Emmis Communication joined Freedom Indiana, the growing coalition opposed to HJR 6, the proposal to constitutionalize Indiana’s ban on same sex marriage and civil unions.

Also yesterday,  a northern Indiana Tea Party group joined the homophobes agitating for passage of that constitutional amendment. Because Tea Party folks are all about limited government.

Right.

Listen up, Tea Party people: limited government means limited. Not just low-tax, not just no pesky government interference when your business dumps toxic waste into the local river. Limited. As in “government doesn’t belong in my boardroom or my bedroom.” As in, “government doesn’t get to decide who or how I love, how many children I have, whether I use contraceptives, or even whether I carry a pregnancy to term. Government doesn’t get to dictate my religious beliefs or observances, doesn’t get to tell me what political positions to endorse, doesn’t get to prescribe my reading materials, and doesn’t get to choose the people with whom I associate.”

As George Bush Senior might say, read my lips: you are either genuinely for limited government or you aren’t. If you are truly a limited government advocate, you’re required to be at least moderately consistent. At the very least, you have to refrain from demanding that government impose your religious beliefs on your fellow citizens.

If you just want to “limit” government’s ability to tax you, you aren’t an advocate of limited government. You just don’t want to pay for the services government delivers.

You’re just one of those assholes who doesn’t want to pay his dues.

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The Times They are A’Changing

Last weekend, my husband and I attended the wedding of City-County Counselor Zach Adamson to his longtime partner Christian Mosberg.

The couple had been married legally the week before, in Washington, D.C., since Indiana does not recognize same-sex marriages, but a second celebration was conducted back home in Indiana. There was a religious ceremony, involving clergy from several faith traditions, and a reception at Talbott Street that doubled as a fundraiser for Freedom, Indiana–the organization formed to fight HJR6.

Indiana culture warriors Micah Clark and Eric Miller would have been in despair; indicators of social and cultural change were everywhere, and it went well beyond the enthusiastic participation of clergy.

The ceremony wasn’t just attended by friends and families, although there were lots of both. The sanctuary was crowded with local politicians from both political parties. The Republican Mayor was there, as were several Democratic and Republican members of the City-County Council. A number of them also came to the reception, where they mingled with the kind of large and diverse group of friends that is one of the great benefits of urban living.

I couldn’t help thinking about the first time I’d been to Talbott Street, back when it was a truly transgressive venue featuring female impersonators and frequented by patrons who were mostly still closeted. My husband and I were both in City Hall at the time, part of the Hudnut Administration, and we’d come to see a friend perform. We were enjoying the show, when I was approached by a young man I recognized as a city employee. He was absolutely ashen-faced. “Please, please,” he said, “don’t tell anyone you saw me here.”

That was approximately 35 years ago–a long time in my life (although the years certainly seem to have sped by) but a ridiculously brief period as social movements go.

It’s no wonder the pronouncements from the “Christian” Right have taken on a shrill and frantic quality. In what seems like the blink of an eye, GLBT folks have gone from a frightened, despised minority to a group of friends and neighbors with whom we are happy to celebrate life’s rites of passage.

Think I’m exaggerating the degree to which attitudes have changed? Yesterday, notoriously timid Indiana University announced it was joining Freedom Indiana.

Indiana’s legislators may be the last to get the memo, but homophobia is so last century!

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October is the Gayest Month

October 11th is Coming Out Day; October is also the month chosen for IUPUI’s Harvey Milk Dinner–an event sponsored by the university’s GLBT faculty and staff to bring “friends and family” together, to remember where the struggle for gay rights has been, and to remind us all that the fat lady hasn’t sung and the fight isn’t over. This was the fourth year of the event;  I’ve been honored to emcee last two. This year, 275 people attended, including a significant percentage of the campus administration, from the Chancellor on down.

As I looked over the crowd, I couldn’t help wondering what Harvey Milk would think if he were still alive to see what he and a few other brave pioneers had wrought.

Harvey Milk was the first openly gay person elected to public office in California (and probably, in the U.S.). Born in New York in 1930, Milk moved to San Francisco in 1972, a time when there was a significant migration of gay men to the city’s Castro District. Once there, he became politically active.

Milk ran losing campaigns for political office three times before being elected. But he was by all accounts charismatic, and he ran what have been called “highly theatrical” campaigns. He finally won a seat as a city supervisor (what most places call city councilors) in 1977.  He had served barely 11 months in office when he and Mayor George Moscone were murdered by Dan White.

Eleven months is a pretty short career.  But Milk had started something and that something has snowballed. Since his death, relatives have established a foundation in his name, he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Post Office has just announced the issuance of a Harvey Milk postage stamp.

Why did Milk have such an impact? Why did a brief 11-month stint in a relatively low-level office leave such a legacy?

I can only speculate, but I think most Americans—at least, those not deeply invested in hate and homophobia—respond to obvious injustice when they can’t avoid confronting it. What Harvey Milk did—and what every single gay person who has had the courage to come out has done—is insist on visibility.

I first recognized the importance of visibility several years ago, when I was the Executive Director of Indiana’s ACLU.  We wanted to give one of our annual awards to the West Lafayette City Council for adding sexual orientation to their Human Rights Ordinance’s list of protected categories. (They were the first in the state to do so.) Since awards from the ACLU can be a mixed blessing to elected officials, I called the clerk to see whether the councilors would accept the honor. She turned out to be a chatty soul, and confided that when the amendment was first offered, she thought it was silly. No one was discriminating against gay people—at least, not that she was aware.

Then there were public hearings on the proposed amendment, and the church buses rolled. People came out of the woodwork to oppose the measure, and their behavior was anything but Christian. She was appalled. As she said, “I’d had no idea! Those people showed me how wrong I  had been and how important the amendment really was.”

When you become visible,  it is no longer possible for the “good people” to ignore bigotry and injustice.

October is the month GLBT folks and those of us who count ourselves as allies remember that lesson.

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Tolerance

I don’t really like the word “tolerance.” Toleration suggests putting up with something that is substandard or otherwise unfortunate in the interests of civil peace. I prefer something more along the lines of “live and let live.” You do your thing, I do mine. Neither of us may approve of the other’s choices, but we respect our mutual right to differ.

My distaste for the word aside, I found it fascinating that The Heritage Foundation–that once-respectable, currently rabid source of right-wing “policy” positions–has announced its approval of a recent proposal out of Idaho, citing it as an example of “tolerance.”

Rep. Raúl Labrador of Idaho has proposed a new bill that would protect “religious liberty” by issuing licenses to discriminate against gay people. (I know that’s bizarre, but work with me here, people!)  The “logic” of this measure is simple, if daft. Because evidently not being able to discriminate against gay people does discriminate against Christians, the bill provides that there would be no adverse consequences for any organization, business or individual who refuses to recognize same-sex marriage. The text reads as follows:

“The Federal Government shall not take an adverse action against a person, on the basis that such person acts in accordance with a religious belief that marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman, or that sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage.”

Under that language, businesses could refuse benefits to same-sex partners, hospitals could refuse visitation rights, landlords could refuse to rent to gay couples, and pretty much anyone at all could refuse services to LGBT people. Note too that this language isn’t intended to reinforce already robust Free Exercise protections that exempt churches and many religious organizations from compliance with civil rights laws. This language is far broader.

Why do I think that if they could get away with it, these proponents of “religious liberty” would grant a similar “license” to people whose religious beliefs included a distaste for Jews or blacks or Muslims?

In this profoundly upside-down view, after all, any and all anti-discrimination laws can be seen as invasions of my civil liberties. How dare the government tell me I can’t pick on people my religion tells me to dislike?

In what alternate universe is official government approval of  discrimination “tolerance”?

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