Category Archives: Gay Rights

Last weekend, we saw evidence—preliminary and tentative, to be sure—that the massive public participation generated by Obama’s Presidential campaign may prove more durable than most of us imagined. Spontaneous demonstrations protesting the November 4^th passage of California’s Proposition 8 erupted across the country. (Prop8, for the unaware, amended the California constitution and repealed the right to same-sex marriage).

Large crowds of protestors turned out across California. No surprise there. There were equally spirited turnouts in the nation’s largest cities—New York, Boston, Chicago, Washington D.C. Again, not surprising. But how do we explain demonstrations in places like Peoria, Illinois; Missoula, Montana; Greenville, South Carolina; Grand Forks, North Dakota; Lubbock, Texas; or Little Rock, Arkansas, to list just a few of the more unlikely venues? Even in Indianapolis, approximately three hundred people gathered on a rainy Saturday in front of the City-County Building sporting homemade signs and rainbow umbrellas.

The protestors were not all gay, as evidenced by signs saying things like “Straight but not Narrow” and “If everyone doesn’t have rights, no one does.”  All across America, citizens got off their couches and rallied for equal civil rights for their neighbors, their families and their friends.

With so much opposition, why did Proposition 8 pass?

The New York Times reported on the “11^th hour effort that saved the ban,” which ultimately garnered 52% of the vote. According to the Times, “Interviews with the main forces behind the ballot measure show how close its backers believe it came to defeat—and the extraordinary role Mormons played in helping to pass it with money, institutional support and dedicated volunteers.”

Now, religious people have every right to contribute to causes they believe in, and to make their positions known in the public square. Religious crusaders helped end slavery. Churches and religiously-motivated opponents of segregation worked tirelessly in the 1960s to put an end to Jim Crow laws. The more legitimate issue raised by the Times concerned the shady tactics employed  in the guise of religion and morality.

When the campaign began, a clear majority of California voters opposed Proposition 8. When polls in mid-October showed voters continuing to reject the ban, supporters raised enormous amounts of money for advertisements claiming that churches would lose their tax exemptions if they refused to perform same-sex ceremonies, and that elementary schools would be forced to “teach homosexuality” to young children. Both of these claims were demonstrably false. Worse, proponents clearly knew their ads were dishonest. But they were effective.

California is a huge state, and advertising is costly. Opponents of Prop 8 simply didn’t have the resources to effectively counter the distortions, even though Governor Schwarzenegger, Senator Feinstein and the California teacher’s association all cut ads rebutting the charges. In the end, money talked. It was politics as usual.

But then a strange thing happened. Citizens all across America decided to flex the civic muscles they had just discovered they had.

I don’t know what comes next, but it promises to be very interesting.

 

   

 

 

 

                                               

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The good news is that after November 4^th—okay, after January 20^th—the grown-ups will replace the adolescents in the White House, and America can begin the arduous work needed to repair the wreckage that was once our country.

 

The bad news, of course, is that anti-gay initiatives around the country passed. The defeat in California of “No on Proposition 8” was particularly painful, because early polls suggested a win for the good guys. However,  opponents of equality spent millions of dollars on misleading advertisements and outright lies, and they were aided by the vastly expanded turnout of what pundits delicately call “low-information” voters.

 

We all know that this is just a setback—that history, and the attitudes of younger voting cohorts make equality inevitable. But it will be later rather than sooner, and it’s a painful loss for those who worked so hard to defeat this hateful effort. My son was among those working to defeat Proposition 8, and among his efforts was a letter I want to share, because it puts a personal face on what can sometimes devolve into an abstract argument about rights. 

 

Stephen’s best friend lives in Berkeley with her husband, also a close friend. She told him that she could no longer talk politics with her father, that he was unwilling to hear any argument and would definitely be voting for McCain and most probably be voting for Prop 8.  Stephen asked if it would help if he made a personal appeal to him in a letter, and she said it couldn’t hurt. He shared the letter with me, and agreed that I could share it with the readers of the Word.

 

Dear Dr. [redacted]

 

I hope you remember me. I am your daughter Marites’ best friend, as she is mine. We met 23 years ago while we were at the University of Cincinnati studying architecture, and over the years have developed the deepest affinity for each other. Marites, Keith, Anika and Teah are as much my family as my own flesh and blood. Many years ago, I came to your house in Ashtabula a couple of times and we shared dinner and conversation. We have also had a couple of brief exchanges at Marites’ house in Berkeley over the years since you moved out to California.

 

I am writing to ask you a personal favor. I am writing to ask you to vote NO on Proposition 8 on the ballot this November. As you may or may not be aware, Prop 8 would remove the right of same-sex couples to marry. In essence, it would render me a 2nd class citizen in our shared state of California.

 

I remember stories that Marites would tell me of growing up in Ohio and feeling different because she didn’t “look like” everyone else, because her family was from the Philippines. I’m sure when you moved to Ohio for the opportunity it gave you, you had no idea what it would be like, and what kind of reception you would get from the people there. It must have been tough, speaking with an accent and looking so different from most of the people in that rural community. But you soldiered on, for the well being of your family, to raise them and provide for them and to give them a chance to flourish here. We all want that same chance. And it doesn’t matter how different we are culturally or racially, we share a common humanity.

 

Marites tells me that for a variety of reasons, she thinks that you are opposed to same-sex marriage. I’m not sure if you think that being gay is somehow a choice, but if you do I would ask: do you believe that you chose to be straight? That, assuming there was no hatred or prejudice in the world, you could have chosen to be gay instead? That it is only for the betterment of society that you chose to enter into marriage and have children? Or perhaps you don’t think orientation is a choice, but a challenge God gave to certain people, and that they must deny who they are? Why do you think a loving god would do such a thing? Perhaps you think it is “against nature” despite the overwhelming scientific consensus to the contrary?

 

There are a lot of reasons I could give you to vote against Prop 8. That it is as wrong to discriminate against someone for their orientation as it is their race or ethnic background. That it is no threat to your marriage. Do you realize that Keith and Marites would not have been allowed to get married in a previous era? Surely, you must think that that was wrong and racist. Even if your church is opposed, you know that this has nothing to do with anyone’s church. Not a single church will be forced to perform any marriage with which they disagree. This only has to do with equality before the law, and insuring that all citizens are treated equally.

 

There are so many good reasons, but I will ask you in the name of the deep love and friendship that I have with your daughter, and the love that she has for you and me and her entire family. That, ultimately, is what opposing this measure is about. The love and respect of families, and the equal participation of all parts of the human family in our society and in our lives. Like any good family, we don’t have to always agree on every issue to see the human worth and dignity in all of us. And to act on that by opposing hatred and intolerance where we see it. Will you please join me and Marites (and Keith and so many other people) in voting NO on proposition 8?

 

Whatever your decision, I want to thank you for taking the time to read my letter and consider my request."

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The American economy has been strained to the breaking point by eight years of reckless fiscal policies. Our international stature has been compromised and diminished by arrogant and unilateral foreign policies. Our government has helped create a global energy crisis, and has done nothing about climate change. You could be forgiven for assuming that those issues are central to the upcoming elections, but I’m going to suggest that war and peace, economic prosperity and even national self-respect are in a very real sense subsidiary to what is truly at stake on November 4th. 

This election is a contest between the past and the future; its outcome will determine whether Enlightenment rationalism or religious fundamentalism prevails. In short, this is the election that will determine who wins the “culture wars.”

There are some arenas where the culture clash is front and center; even James Dobson has said that losing the referendum on same-sex marriage in California would mean that the Christian Right has unambiguously lost the culture war. But the conflict is more consequential than the future of same-sex marriage and gay rights, important as that is. This election will determine who gets to control what America will look like in the 21^st century. It is a fight between absolutely incompatible worldviews.

I’d been convinced for some time that this election would be a fateful battle between culture warriors, but the choice of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate confirmed my thesis.  I don’t say this simply because Palin represents everything that is wrong with social conservatives’ ideology, although she does. (She’s anti-choice even in cases of rape or incest, she opposes stem-cell research, she’s anti-gay, and she’s really anti-science—she’s an advocate of teaching creationism in the schools who does not believe that human activities contribute to global warming).

I also don’t say this simply because her social conservatism was more important to John McCain than her absolute lack of any qualification to be a heartbeat away from the Presidency.

I say this because her selection was part and parcel of the way in which culture warriors really see the issue of gender—and by extension, how they see every other issue of diversity, including but certainly not limited to gays and lesbians.

Think about it. Had McCain chosen a male running-mate with Sarah Palin’s resume, the choice would have been laughed off the national stage, dismissed as absolutely unserious. Tim Pawlenty, the equally socially conservative Minnesota governor who was on the McCain short list, was widely criticized for being too insubstantial, for having qualifications too likely to be dwarfed by Biden’s greater experience and gravitas. And Pawlenty looks like a seasoned elder statesman compared to Palen. What, then, did she bring to the table, other than (excuse me) a vagina? And just how cynical—and revealing—does that make this selection?

Here’s the calculus as I see McCain’s folks analyzing it: 1) a lot of women voted for Hillary; 2) social conservatives in the GOP base still aren’t excited by McCain. We can energize the base by choosing one of their own, and as a  bonus, we can pick up disappointed Hillary voters because she’s a woman, and women are interchangeable. Women just want to see someone who looks like them in office, bless their pretty little heads.  It seems genuinely never to have occurred to the McCain camp that for women voters to believe that a candidate “looks like them” might require more than shared secondary sexual characteristics.  At the very least, it means sharing a particular worldview, being a particular kind of woman.

The Christian Right approaches issues of gay equality the same way, by constructing a monolithic “gay agenda” that everyone in the gay community is assumed to share. It is also the way they see African-Americans—and in fact, as one friend of mine remarked, the choice of Palin is based on precisely the same worldview that put Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court. He’s black, so the black folks should be happy. So what if everything Thomas stands for is in stark contrast to what the vast majority of African-Americans believe? So what if Sarah Palin’s positions are profoundly anti-woman? She’s female. Surely that’s all Hillary’s supporters—and by extension, other women—care about.

It is ironic that, as the Democratic party has moved past tokenism toward genuinely pluralist politics, the Republicans have bought into the worst kind of identity politics. Those differences between contemporary Republican and Democratic worldviews are consequential for all of us.

• The emerging Democratic philosophy requires that we look at individuals—gay, straight, Christian, Jewish, black or white—and evaluate those individuals on their merits, their talents, their characters. It isn’t that race or religion or gender or orientation becomes irrelevant;  it’s just that those markers of identity aren’t material—they’re just one aspect of this particular human being, and we are grading this human being on the basis of everything he or she brings to the table. Everybody gets to compete on a level playing field, where being gay, female or purple is neither an asset nor a liability. It’s simply a description.
• The worldview of the right-wingers who control today’s GOP, on the other hand, is paternalistic. It begins by assigning people to categories, by dividing the world into “us versus them.” Members of the group labeled “us” are the elect, the rightful rulers of the universe. Political considerations do, however, require some concessions to the fact that “they” have the right to vote, and so some tokenism is required. (It never seems to occur to those holding this worldview that tokenism is as insulting as outright bigotry. Tokenism assumes that members of those “other” groups are interchangeable, that unlike white Protestant straight males, they are not entitled to be accepted or rejected on the basis of their individual merits.) When you view the political landscape through this lens, you believe every debate must have winners and losers. There is no “win-win.” There is no “live and let live,” because allowing people to live their lives in accordance with any rules other than your own is—by definition—defeat.

At its base, this election is a choice between those two worldviews. It’s a choice between the past—where the color of your skin, the denomination of your church, your gender and/or your sexual orientation determined your place in the social order—and a future where behavior, and not identity, determines how far a person can go.

 

Comments

The American economy has been strained to the breaking point by eight years of reckless fiscal policies. Our international stature has been compromised and diminished by arrogant and unilateral foreign policies. Our government has helped create a global energy crisis, and has done nothing about climate change. You could be forgiven for assuming that those issues are central to the upcoming elections, but I’m going to suggest that war and peace, economic prosperity and even national self-respect are in a very real sense subsidiary to what is truly at stake on November 4th. 

This election is a contest between the past and the future; its outcome will determine whether Enlightenment rationalism or religious fundamentalism prevails. In short, this is the election that will determine who wins the “culture wars.”

There are some arenas where the culture clash is front and center; even James Dobson has said that losing the referendum on same-sex marriage in California would mean that the Christian Right has unambiguously lost the culture war. But the conflict is more consequential than the future of same-sex marriage and gay rights, important as that is. This election will determine who gets to control what America will look like in the 21^st century. It is a fight between absolutely incompatible worldviews.

I’d been convinced for some time that this election would be a fateful battle between culture warriors, but the choice of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate confirmed my thesis.  I don’t say this simply because Palin represents everything that is wrong with social conservatives’ ideology, although she does. (She’s anti-choice even in cases of rape or incest, she opposes stem-cell research, she’s anti-gay, and she’s really anti-science—she’s an advocate of teaching creationism in the schools who does not believe that human activities contribute to global warming).

I also don’t say this simply because her social conservatism was more important to John McCain than her absolute lack of any qualification to be a heartbeat away from the Presidency.

I say this because her selection was part and parcel of the way in which culture warriors really see the issue of gender—and by extension, how they see every other issue of diversity, including but certainly not limited to gays and lesbians.

Think about it. Had McCain chosen a male running-mate with Sarah Palin’s resume, the choice would have been laughed off the national stage, dismissed as absolutely unserious. Tim Pawlenty, the equally socially conservative Minnesota governor who was on the McCain short list, was widely criticized for being too insubstantial, for having qualifications too likely to be dwarfed by Biden’s greater experience and gravitas. And Pawlenty looks like a seasoned elder statesman compared to Palen. What, then, did she bring to the table, other than (excuse me) a vagina? And just how cynical—and revealing—does that make this selection?

Here’s the calculus as I see McCain’s folks analyzing it: 1) a lot of women voted for Hillary; 2) social conservatives in the GOP base still aren’t excited by McCain. We can energize the base by choosing one of their own, and as a  bonus, we can pick up disappointed Hillary voters because she’s a woman, and women are interchangeable. Women just want to see someone who looks like them in office, bless their pretty little heads.  It seems genuinely never to have occurred to the McCain camp that for women voters to believe that a candidate “looks like them” might require more than shared secondary sexual characteristics.  At the very least, it means sharing a particular worldview, being a particular kind of woman.

The Christian Right approaches issues of gay equality the same way, by constructing a monolithic “gay agenda” that everyone in the gay community is assumed to share. It is also the way they see African-Americans—and in fact, as one friend of mine remarked, the choice of Palin is based on precisely the same worldview that put Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court. He’s black, so the black folks should be happy. So what if everything Thomas stands for is in stark contrast to what the vast majority of African-Americans believe? So what if Sarah Palin’s positions are profoundly anti-woman? She’s female. Surely that’s all Hillary’s supporters—and by extension, other women—care about.

It is ironic that, as the Democratic party has moved past tokenism toward genuinely pluralist politics, the Republicans have bought into the worst kind of identity politics. Those differences between contemporary Republican and Democratic worldviews are consequential for all of us.

• The emerging Democratic philosophy requires that we look at individuals—gay, straight, Christian, Jewish, black or white—and evaluate those individuals on their merits, their talents, their characters. It isn’t that race or religion or gender or orientation becomes irrelevant;  it’s just that those markers of identity aren’t material—they’re just one aspect of this particular human being, and we are grading this human being on the basis of everything he or she brings to the table. Everybody gets to compete on a level playing field, where being gay, female or purple is neither an asset nor a liability. It’s simply a description.
• The worldview of the right-wingers who control today’s GOP, on the other hand, is paternalistic. It begins by assigning people to categories, by dividing the world into “us versus them.” Members of the group labeled “us” are the elect, the rightful rulers of the universe. Political considerations do, however, require some concessions to the fact that “they” have the right to vote, and so some tokenism is required. (It never seems to occur to those holding this worldview that tokenism is as insulting as outright bigotry. Tokenism assumes that members of those “other” groups are interchangeable, that unlike white Protestant straight males, they are not entitled to be accepted or rejected on the basis of their individual merits.) When you view the political landscape through this lens, you believe every debate must have winners and losers. There is no “win-win.” There is no “live and let live,” because allowing people to live their lives in accordance with any rules other than your own is—by definition—defeat.

At its base, this election is a choice between those two worldviews. It’s a choice between the past—where the color of your skin, the denomination of your church, your gender and/or your sexual orientation determined your place in the social order—and a future where behavior, and not identity, determines how far a person can go.

 

Comments

The jury is still out.

In the upcoming election, the real question is not whether the individual named John McCain or the individual named Barack Obama will be elected President. The choice before us is ultimately not between persons or even parties; it is nothing less than a choice between the past and the future, and that choice will have particular significance for the gay community.

As readers of the Word know all too well, the last decade will not rank among America’s shining hours. (Okay, the metaphor is mixed, but you know what I mean.) The country has been in the throes of a cultural and religious chauvinism not seen since the last Great Awakening/Nativist eruption. Such eras are never kind to minority groups or marginalized communities, and this most recent period has been no exception. The broader problem is that, unlike previous episodes, this prolonged national snit has occurred at a time that the globe has been shrinking. The threats we face—to national security, to public safety, and to our economic interests—require genuine partnerships with other nations, a partnership beyond the capacities of an arrogant “decider” intent on unilateral action.

This November, the American electorate will decide whether to abandon an approach to national affairs that has caused us to be disdained internationally and that has turned us into a fiscal banana republic at home. Voters in California will decide whether to snatch the hard-won right to marry from its gay and lesbian citizens, and bigots in Arizona will try again to add a same-sex marriage ban to that state’s constitution. In other cities and states around the country, voters will have to decide whether to risk similarly dramatic changes in the way we do the public’s business.

In any change election—which this one is shaping up to be—there will be winners and losers. One of the reasons that people fear change is that they fear being one of the losers.

If America is really on the cusp of a paradigm shift, what will be lost? For white people, the privileged status that we still enjoy simply by virtue of skin color, the “default” judgment that light skin denotes acceptability, if not superiority. For heterosexuals, the confidence that our orientation is “normal,” that non-heterosexuals are somehow deviants to be tolerated at best and scorned or abused at worst. For corporate bigwigs, the ability to hire lobbyists and obtain legislation that exempts them from the forces of the market they try to evade even while verbally extolling its virtues. Those who enjoy these and other advantages are unlikely to view their loss as insignificant.

But if we take the risk, and opt for a new governing paradigm, most ordinary Americans have a great deal to gain, because bigotry and anxiety burden both the oppressed and the oppressor. A refusal to understand that we are all in this together—that ultimately, we cannot escape the consequences of our neighbors’ misfortunes, that we all are poorer when stereotypes deprive us of our neighbors’ talents—is what has gotten us into the mess we’re in.

The election of Barack Obama—even with a Democratic House and Senate—will not usher in utopia or anything remotely like it. The damage that has been done to our constitution, our governing institutions, our economy and our ability to trust each other has been great; if it is reparable—and it may not be—that repair will take a generation or more. Obama is brilliant and talented, and he’s read and taught the constitution (a fact I find comforting), but he’s just one man and certainly not perfect.

The election of John McCain, on the other hand, would mean Americans have chosen the past over the future. It would be evidence that Americans fear change, that we simply cannot find the courage and discipline to extricate ourselves from a culture that has proven to be not just poisonous, but inimical to our own national interests and ideals. McCain is undoubtedly a good person (and surely must be brighter than he seems on the campaign trail) but he is firmly wedded to a cultural moment that needs to pass.

Somewhere, I read a description of John McCain as “an analog candidate for a digital age.” The quip was a reaction to the fact that McCain has not used the internet or “done a google,” as he phrases it. But the characterization rings true across the board, not just in the context of technology.

The basic question voters will face in November is whether we are going to upgrade from Bush 1.0 to 2.0, or whether we are going to adopt a new operating system.

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