Category Archives: Gay Rights

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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When You Turn Over a Rock….

You never know what will slither out when you turn over a rock. This time, I couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry….

There is a website called “Christwire: Conservative Values for an Unsaved World.” A friend sent it and at first, I thought it was a more realistic version of Betty Bowers: America’s Best Christian; then I decided it was for real. Further checking was needed to convince me that it really was intended to be satirical.

This gem is titled “14 Outrageous Secrets a Homosexual Will Not Tell You,” and it begins with a dark introduction about corrupt legislators and “activist” judges. It then lets its readers into the details of the satanic “homosexual world.” (You can see why I thought it was real; I’ve seen very similar material from self-professed Christian sources.)

For example, did you know that gay men bleach their anuses? That the primary reason gay men join gyms is for mutual masturbation? That homosexual activity in the animal kingdom is not, as reported, a natural occurrence, but has been deliberately introduced into the animal population by gay trainers? That gay bars are just like Muslim terror cells?That Glee is a sinister plot to recruit children into “the homosexual lifestyle”?

These fevered imaginings sound very much like the bizarre fantasies conjured up by terrified–or titallated– good “Christians” we’ve all encountered.

There’s evidently something about the human psyche that needs to attribute horrific practices to people who are in some way different, that demands the utter dehumanizing of those who are in some way “other.”  Mere disapproval is presumably insufficient.

It’s the long history of that phenomenon that made this particular takeoff so believable.

Christians used to accuse Jews of killing Christian children and using their blood to make matzohs. Southerners used to swap stories of “endowed” black men “having their way” with the delicate flowers of Southern femininity. More recently, right-wing zealots mutter about the “terrorist cells” disguised as Mosques. These are real accusations–not satirical ones.

Here in Indiana, as the effort to place a ban on same-sex marriage in the Indiana Constitution heats up, I’m afraid we can expect genuine–and outrageous–efforts to paint our GLBT friends and neighbors as alien and forbidding. Because after all, why would they want to get married if they weren’t plotting the destruction of Western Civilization As We’ve Known It?

They couldn’t possibly just want to enter into socially-sanctioned relationships with someone they love, buy a house and file joint tax returns.

Hate must come from a very twisted place; it encourages beliefs that are so outlandish, so uncomfortably close to satire, that it can be extremely difficult to tell which is which.

It wouldn’t surprise me a bit if Eric Miller and Micah Clark started citing Christwire’s “research.”

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Whoring After Primary Votes

The New York Times tells us that Liz Cheney has publicly opposed her sister Mary on the latter’s very non-abstract support for same-sex marriage.  By making this declaration, Liz has officially defined herself as more despicable than her father–no mean feat.

Whatever the twisted views of the elder Cheney–or “Darth Vader” as he is un-affectionately known– it is pretty clear that those views were genuinely his. He was and is a chickenhawk, ready to send other people’s children to die in wars that fattened the pocketbooks of his cronies and his old firm Halliburton; he was and is an advocate of the blatantly a-historical  “unitary” theory of Presidential Powers; he was and is a sneering, heartless, self-righteous extremist. But give him credit–repulsive as it all was, it was also authentic.

And he loved his child enough to influence his stance on marriage–enough to recognize the inhumanity of his own party’s retrograde position.

Cheney’s daughter Liz has been a longtime harridan on the talk show circuit. She clearly inherited all of her father’s warmth, which is to say that none has been visible, along with his smug self-certainty. Recently, she decided to return to Wyoming–a state she hasn’t lived in for years, a state she returned to so recently that she can’t even qualify for a hunting permit–to mount a primary challenge to that state’s popular Republican Senator. (Can we spell “sense of entitlement”?)

Of course, opposition to same-sex marriage is part  of the litmus test applied to candidates by today’s rabid Republican primary voters. And Liz Cheney, who has previously expressed no interest in nor opinion on the issue, has chosen to pander to those voters, signaling where her priorities lie. Self-interest trumps both authenticity and any loyalty to her only sister: big surprise.

Science continues to confirm that sexual orientation is heritable and inborn. So, evidently, is being utterly without humanity.

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From Russia, Without Love

There is a lesson for all of us in Russia’s dramatic repression of gays and gay advocacy, and it isn’t necessarily the lesson we think.

For readers who may have spent the last few weeks on an ice floe in Antartica, here’s the quick-and-dirty: Russia strongman Vladimir Putin suddenly (at least it seemed sudden from an American vantage point) announced what amounted to an official war on homosexuality. The Russian legislature unanimously rubber-stamped a measure imposing huge fines on people found to have engaged in “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations,” which has increasingly been used to harass, fine and imprison anyone expressing pro-gay sentiments.

Although same-sex relationships are not criminal in Russia, anti-gay sentiment is very strong there, and support for Putin’s vendetta against the GLBT community is high.

Putin is engaging in a time-honored tactic employed by autocrats when things aren’t going so well. His personal prejudices or lack thereof are irrelevant. His goal is distraction, and his  tactic is to identify the most useful “shiny object”—a group sufficiently powerless and unpopular to guarantee that a high-profile campaign against its members will shift citizens’ focus away from what’s wrong with the country.

Eventually, history suggests that the group won’t just be used as a distraction; it will be made the scapegoat for all the things that are wrong with the country. Hitler blamed Germany’s problems on the Jews; in other countries, it has been communists or Muslims or Shi’ites. An academic paper on scapegoating explains why it works:

A strong advantage in scapegoating is that the whole society or a whole social group is raised in status against the targeted minority or individual, and any societal behavior is at the same time legitimized (“Of course we are full of defects, but we do not act like them”).

In order to reap the political benefits of scapegoating, however, it is first necessary to dehumanize members of the targeted group. So gays are promiscuous pedophiles, Jews are scheming, rapacious businessmen, lazy black men lust for white women, Muslims are obsessed with jihad…. Whoever they may be, “they” aren’t people like us. History provides us with a long list of convenient and available stereotypes for almost any group you might want to target.

Scapegoating as a political tactic almost always arises in times of national stress—times  when things aren’t going well, and those in charge need someone to blame.

What is happening in Russia right now is a textbook example. The dissolution of the Soviet Union did not bring nirvana to the long-suffering people of Russia—far from it. Russians have struggled to form democratic governing institutions in a country that has never had them, a country without a culture of self-rule. Much the same upheaval—for many of the same reasons—is occurring in the Middle East, in the wake of the Arab Spring. For that matter, there is unrest in many other parts of the world, including much of Africa.

These are profoundly dangerous times for people who belong to marginalized groups. The temptation to “pull a Putin” will be very great in many of the countries experiencing upheaval. (And yes, if we don’t address America’s growing inequality, it can happen here.)

Gay people are at risk in Russia. We must bring political pressure to bear, and we must work to moderate and reverse Putin’s discriminatory policies. But the real lesson to be learned from this is that we are all in this together. In a dangerous world, we are all vulnerable.

When I was director of Indiana’s ACLU, I constantly reminded people that rights are indivisible. If everyone doesn’t have them, no one really does. A country that can pick on gay people today can pick on Muslims or Christians—or redheads—tomorrow.

As a friend of mine once put it, “Poison gas is a great weapon until the wind shifts.”

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Looking for a Diagnosis

Behaviors that mystify and depress me:

A few days ago, the news carried a poignant story about an Ohio man named John Arthur. Arthur is in the terminal stages of Lou Gehrig’s disease, and is dying.  He and his partner of twenty-plus years recently flew to Maryland together, in a specially-equipped aircraft, in order to be legally married before Arthur died, something their home state of Ohio would not permit.  According to news reports, Arthur was unable to rise from his hospice bed.

When they returned to Ohio, they won a court decision that allowed Arthur to fulfill his dying wish. As Think Progress reported:

In his final days, Arthur wants to honor his commitment to his husband. He wants his own death certificate to list Obergefell as his “surviving spouse.” And he wants to die knowing that his partner of 20 years can someday be buried next to him in a family plot bound by a directive that only permits his lawfully wedded spouse to be interred alongside him. And, on Monday, a federal judge ruled that Arthur should indeed have the dignity of dying alongside a man that Ohio will recognize as his husband.

And now, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine (R) wants to take that dignity away from Mr. Arthur. The day after a judge issued a temporary restraining order requiring Ohio to list Arthur’s husband as his “surviving spouse” on his death certificate, DeWine announced that he would appeal this decision and try to strip a dying man of his final wish.

The judge’s order is limited exclusively to Arthur and Obergefell. Indeed, as the judge explains, “there is absolutely no evidence that the State of Ohio or its citizens will be harmed by the issuance” of an order requiring Ohio to acknowledge the two men’s marriage. “No one beyond Plaintiffs themselves will be affected by such a limited order at all.”

Closer to home, a relative I dearly love has been in a same-sex relationship for 5 1/2  years. From all indications, the relationship was mutually-supportive and loving. The only issue that has troubled them has been the refusal of her partner’s parents to accept the fact that their daughter is gay. When it appeared that she would not “grow out” of “this phase,” they issued an ultimatum: renounce what you are and terminate this relationship, or we will no longer consider you our daughter.  She acquiesced.

My relative is heartbroken, and I ache for her, but I know she will eventually find someone less conflicted. My deeper sympathies are for the girl torn between her family and her identity–the girl without the inner strength to be who she is in the face of her family’s twisted and selfish “love.”

I don’t understand people like these. I don’t know what it is that makes them so vicious and judgmental, so willing to hurt other human beings who are just trying to live their lives. I don’t understand politicians who define success by how well they can marginalize and demonize other people.   I especially don’t understand parents who would reject an accomplished and dutiful child simply because she loves differently–parents who would consign a child to a life of pretense and loneliness rather than reconsider beliefs that are already headed for the dustbin of history.

There must be a psychiatric diagnosis that explains these poor excuses for human beings, but I don’t know what it is.

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