Category Archives: Gay Rights

The Bully Pulpit

Many years ago, when Chicago’s Second City was the source of then-scandalous satire, I attended a performance. This was during the Cold War (I’m old), and I still recall one skit titled “Kill a Commie for Christ”–a take-off on a widespread attitude of the times.

The more things change….Well, you know the rest of that saying.

In the Great State of Michigan, the state legislature has passed what one State Senator has condemned as the “License to Bully” bill.

The fact that school kids get bullied every day in our nation’s schools and elsewhere–and that gay youngsters are by far the most frequent target–is well-known. Over the past decade, the courts have ruled that the all-too-common “boys will be boys” dismissal of such behavior by school administrators will subject their schools to liability, and many state legislators have introduced bills to clarify the schools’ obligations to provide a safe environment for all students.

In the Michigan State Senate, the GOP amended a bill that would both have prohibited bullying and provided school districts with tools to combat it. They stripped out reporting and similar requirements, and provided an exception for bullying “based upon moral convictions.”

One appalled Senator described the language as providing a “roadmap” for bullying.

This too-clever-by-half strategy was clearly aimed at allowing the continued torment of gay children, but it’s hard not to wonder how these “moral” legislators would feel about children who suddenly demonstrated a “moral conviction” that their Christian schoolmates were evil. (As one of two Jewish students in my elementary school, I know what it’s like to be surrounded by Christian children whose parents had instilled in them a “moral conviction” that I had personally killed Christ.)

It’s obviously very difficult for mean-spirited people who are in the majority to comprehend that the tables might turn when they are no longer dominant.  It is evidently impossible for such people to demonstrate empathy or compassion for anyone who doesn’t belong to their own cramped moral universe.

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Priscilla–15 Years Later

We are in New York for a long weekend, and last night, my husband, son and I went to see the Broadway musical version of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. We’d loved the movie when it came out in the early 90s…a poignant, funny depiction of life from the perspective of three Australian drag queens.

The show was full of energy–with fabulous consumes, special effects and good music. The audience clearly loved it; there was lots of laughter and a standing ovation. But it was no longer the bittersweet portrayal of nonconformity that I remembered.

The world has changed a lot in the last 15 years, and as much as I use this space to complain about our increasingly bizarre political class, our gilded age economics and our collective historical amnesia, much of that change should be applauded.

When I first saw Priscilla, a lot of people still equated “gay” with “drag queen.” And those who were drag queens were objects of scorn within what a friend of mine called the “straight” gay community. The violence encountered by the protagonists was pretty common, and the notion that each of us should be free to be whatever it is we are was not part of the culture’s messaging.

As we were walking back to my son’s apartment, we talked about the cultural shift that made Priscilla resonate so differently a mere fifteen years later. While homophobia is still present and violence not nearly as rare as it should be, we have seen a sea change–especially in cities. (Rural and small-town America is a different story, although even there, things are better.) And it isn’t just better for the GLBT community; it is better for women and other minorities. When I was growing up, all the social messages I received defined a woman’s role very narrowly; women weren’t lawyers or college professors unless they were too unattractive to find a husband, and our worth was judged largely on how successful that husband was and how well our children turned out. Most of the African-Americans I met were servants, and if I knew anyone who was Hispanic or Muslim, I was unaware of it.

I’m approaching a very big birthday, and I’ve been mulling over the challenges and lessons that come with getting old. But living a long time also gives you a perspective that isn’t available to young people. From my perspective (which is clearly not shared by a whole lot of people), the cultural shifts during my lifetime have been primarily positive.

Constructing a society that celebrates our individuality and enables personal autonomy is a good thing, even if it makes an occasional Broadway show seem like a period piece.

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Supporting (some of) the Troops

As most readers of this blog probably already know, a gay soldier asked a question about gay service members at a recent GOP Presidential candidate debate, and was roundly booed by the audience. The Tea Party members who were present in large numbers in that audience—and the candidates who remained silent then and afterward—evidently saw nothing inconsistent between wrapping themselves in the Stars and Stripes and dishonoring a citizen who has put his life on the line for them.

In fact, it has been interesting to see just how far the Republican base has strayed from its previous “support the troops no matter what” posture.

Recently, Republican Representative Buck McKeon, the Chair of House Armed Services Committee, publically announced that he is willing to see the entire defense authorization bill fail if Congress refuses to pass his proposed provision preventing military chaplains from marrying same-sex military couples.

Think about that for a minute. A Republican who is the Chair of the Armed Services Committee is saying that he would hold up the funding for all our military men and women, including troops now in the field, just to keep military Chaplains from performing same-sex weddings.

Even in the wake of repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” Republican Presidential candidates are insisting that they will re-instate the ban if elected. I’m waiting for a reporter—assuming we still have some of those—to ask these critics who are oh-so-picky about who can be a soldier just how they intend to fill the ranks without a draft. Enlistments are down, and it isn’t exactly a secret that recruiters have been bending the rules, taking enlistees with low IQs and felonies—but not gays, heaven forbid!—in order to make their quotas. (Somehow, I doubt that the “patriots” will step up to fill the gap themselves.)

Wasn’t it just a few years ago that the GOP talking points included accusations of treason against people who just wanted to trim some of the Pentagon’s more wasteful budget requests?

If hypocrisy smelled, we’d all be suffocating these days. The troops are “our boys” and we owe them so much—unless they’re gay, in which case we don’t even owe them constitutional equality.

It isn’t only on GLBT issues, of course—look at the reactions to the “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrators. Right-wing commentators on Fox and elsewhere are waxing positively hysterical over the chutzpah of the lefties who dare to criticize corporate greed. Current front-runner Herman Cain (the self-styled mogul who grew his pizza business into something like the 8th largest chain in the country) has characterized the demonstrators as “too lazy” to hold jobs, and “jealous” of those who have made something of themselves. Lest he be misunderstood, he’s repeatedly said that the jobless have no one to blame but themselves. (Let them eat cake…er, pizza.)

These descriptions of the “hippy” protestors might have a bit more gravitas had the same people not reacted so differently to the emergence of the Tea Party. When Tea Party “patriots” took to the streets, those who now pooh-pooh and disparage Occupy Wall Street as an unruly mob celebrated the folks in tri-corner hats as citizen activists who were taking their country back. The excesses—the hateful rhetoric, the misspelled racist signs, were conveniently overlooked or attributed to a “small fringe.”

We need to work on some new political slogans for these folks. We’ve had “Free Speech for Me, but Not for Thee.” How about “Support Our Heterosexual Troops” or “God Bless the Americans Who Agree With Me”?

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A Question for the Godly

The New York Times recently reported on a town clerk in upstate New York who was refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, despite passage of the recent New York law recognizing such unions. She cited evangelical Christianity as a bar against performing her official duties.

“For me to participate in the same-sex marriage application process I don’t feel is right,” Rose Marie Belforti told The Times. “God doesn’t want me to do this, so I can’t do what God doesn’t want me to do, just like I can’t steal, or any of the other things that God doesn’t want me to do.”

I’m impressed by Ms. Belforti’s godliness. But since she seems to have an intimate relationship with God, and seems to know what He/She wants with such precision, I’d love to ask her a couple of questions. For example, how does God feel about her issuing licenses to divorced folks? People who’ve previously been convicted of crimes God disapproves of?

But most of all, I’d like to know how God feels about her continuing to take a government paycheck while refusing to perform the duties she’s being paid for. Isn’t that like stealing?

Ms. Belforti is absolutely entitled to her religious beliefs; however, she is not entitled to work for the government. If she can’t do her job–for whatever reason–she should be replaced by someone who can.

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Tell Me a Story

There’s a fair amount of research that confirms what most of us know–humans are hard-wired to respond more emotionally to individual stories of hardship than to news of large-scale tragedies. We may sympathize and even send contributions when we hear of famine in Africa, for example, but we are much more likely to empathize and offer help when we hear the story of one person’s suffering, or one family’s struggle.  Any PR person will confirm that the best way to get public attention for a cause is to tell a story.

Last night, my husband and I heard a story. We were at Lambda Legal’s annual fundraising dinner, and the speaker was Zach Wahls, the 19-year old whose testimony to the Iowa legislature went viral on You Tube last year. (If you missed it, you can watch it here.) The Iowa legislature was proposing to amend the state constitution to reverse the Iowa Supreme Court’s decision that the state must recognize same-sex marriages, a decision allowing Zach’s two moms to finally marry.

Zach is obviously a young man with a bright future–assured beyond his years, comfortable speaking to a large crowd, and able to convey both humor and passion. Above all, he seemed real–a bright kid who simply got fed up with politicians using his family as a wedge issue,  butting into his family’s life to score political points.

He began by answering the questions he says he most frequently gets. To the question “Are you gay?” (he’s not) he responds with another question: “Does a fork turn into a spoon because they occupy the same drawer?” To questions about growing up without a father figure to provide a role model, he concedes there are differences. “When you are raised by two moms, you learn to put the toilet seat down, and to ask for directions.”

Listening to Zach tell his story, I thought again about the surprisingly rapid cultural change we’ve experienced just in my lifetime. When I was Zach’s age, no one even discussed homosexuality. The word “gay” meant happy, and no one had ever heard the term GLBT. When Stonewall set off the gay-rights movement, gays were still reviled. The goal was basic civil rights, and protection from harassment. Today, a significant portion of the population lives in states that recognize same-sex marriage, and although there are still plenty of issues and lots of bigotry, full equality is just a matter of time.

I think this unusually swift change was a result of the decision to encourage people to “come out” and tell their stories. The efforts of Lambda, the ACLU, and numerous other civil liberties groups would have been less effective without those stories.

Zach’s story was compelling, but there are so many others. We need to listen to them.

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