Recently a dear southern friend instructed me passionately in the theory of "equal but separate." "It just happens," he said, "that in my town there are three new Negro schools not equal, but superior to the white schools. Now wouldn’t you think they would be satisfied with that? And in the bus station, the washrooms are exactly the same. What’s your answer to that?"
I said, "Maybe it’s a matter of ignorance. You could solve it and really put them in their places if you switched schools and toilets. The moment they realized your schools weren’t as good as theirs, they would realize their error."
And do you know what he said? He said, "You trouble-making son of a bitch." But he said it smiling.
-John Steinbeck, Travels With Charley (1962)
Shallow understanding from people of good will, is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will.
-Martin Luther King Jr.
I have a proposition along the lines of Steinbeck’s. If heterosexuals think civil unions really are equal to marriage, let them convert their marriages to civil unions. Once we gay folk see how well civil unions work for heterosexual couples after all, it’ll really put us in our place won’t it?
I jest of course. But I want you think about this. If separate but equal really is equal, then why does it have to be separate? The answer is, typically, that same-sex marriage is too controversial to be a realistic goal now. I can appreciate a tactical decision to pursue equality in stages, but only so long as we’re all clear what the ultimate goal is, and why we have to do it that way. But that’s not what I’m hearing in the wake of the California Supreme Court decision on marriage equality. What I’m hearing from various quarters, not all of them heterosexual, is that we blew it in California by going for marriage, when we already had a perfectly acceptable compromise in separate but equal civil unions.
It’s very frustrating to listen to the debate surrounding the California Supreme Court’s marriage decision to devolve into babbling talk radio crap about how foolish it is for gay people to fight this as though it’s all or nothing, and particularly in California where we already had perfectly good separate but equal civil unions. If I hear one more time about how we’re only fighting over a word I am going to fucking explode. Can anybody who says that just stop and think about what they’re saying for a moment?
A word. A word. A motherfucking word. Why does a motherfucking word matter? Say, I have an idea, why not ask the heterosexuals who are fighting bitterly to keep a mere word all to themselves if that’s what they’re fighting for. A word. A word. Ask them if it’s only a word. Go ahead. And when you ask them you need to listen to what they tell you. You need to pay attention. Especially when they explain to you why letting us have That Word devalues it for them.
This is not over a word. It’s not even over marriage as an institution. It’s not about what marriage is to heterosexuals, but about what we are to heterosexuals. When you understand why heterosexuals want to reserve the word ‘marriage’ for themselves, you understand why civil unions will never be equal to marriage.
After the California decision, USA Today posted an editorial that is eminently typical of the response from what King might have called the People Of Good Will. As USA Today likes to posture as a civilized foe of bigotry, you would think they’d have warmly congratulated Californian gays on this milestone, and on their courage and fortitude the for the sake of their love. You would think this…if you weren’t paying attention….
Last week, when California became the second state after Massachusetts to allow gay marriage, same-sex couples celebrated and began planning June weddings. Good for them. But the unfortunate and unnecessary impact of the California Supreme Court ruling might well have been to set back the cause of gay rights more broadly.
The judges ruled 4-3 that gays’ inability to get married amounts to discrimination under California’s constitution, even though the state’s domestic partnership laws give them the benefits and responsibilities of marriage.
In other words, pragmatic political compromise on the intensely controversial issue is not allowed in California. It’s all or nothing, and recent political history leaves little doubt about what will follow.
Never mind for a moment that it’s always easy to be pragmatic about someone else’s lives. Pay attention to this. The instinct in the "mainstream" "moderate" pews the moment, the instant, same-sex couples get a chance to marry isn’t to be happy for them, it isn’t even to raise a red flag of warning, though if you skim that editorial you might think that’s what they’re doing. They’re not. The point of the editorial isn’t to warn of a backlash, it assumes one. The point is to blame the gay community for causing it. We are always to blame for the hate leveled at us. It is always our fault. The distance between bigots who say the "gay lifestyle" is self destructive, and the People Of Good Will who say that we are needlessly provoking our enemies and whatever comes of that is Our Fault, is thinner then the paint on one of Fred Phelp’s God Hates Fags posters. As far as they’re both concerned, we bring it on ourselves.
How? The bigots say we bring it upon ourselves just by being homosexuals. The People Of Good Will say we do it by provoking our enemies. In other words, by defending ourselves from the bigots. The bigots say we are unclean. The People Of Good Will say that we should at least act like we are unclean for the sake of keeping the peace. Besides they say, we already have all the legal protections we need. To ask for more is just selfishly causing trouble. We are always the trouble makers in this story. And this story goes back a long, long way.
Once upon a time, before there was civil unions, let alone same sex marriage anywhere in the United States, the argument was that same-sex couples already had all the legal rights they need, because we could always avail ourselves of things like medical directives and powers of attorney. The case of William Robert Flanigan Jr. and Robert Lee Daniel back in March of 2002 is instructive here. For four hours, officials at the Maryland Shock Trauma Center barred Flanigan from his dying partner’s bedside, saying he was not "family", and that ‘partners’ did not qualify. Though Flanigan had legal power of attorney for his partner, Robert Lee Daniel, officials at the Shock Trauma Center kept him away from his partner’s bedside. Only when Daniel’s mother arrived from New Mexico, was Flanigan allowed into Daniel’s room. By that time, Daniel had lost consciousness. He would die two days later.
Because Flanigan was not present during Daniel’s final four hours of consciousness, Flanigan was unable to tell Shock Trauma that Daniel did not want breathing tubes or a respirator. When Daniel tried to rip the tubes out of his throat, staff members put his arms in restraints.
At first glance all this seems irrelevant to a discussion of civil unions. Because Maryland at that time did not have a medical directives registry, and did not then and does not now recognize civil unions, they didn’t enter at all into the legal considerations of this case. But look at it. In the context of making health care decisions for his beloved, Flanigan’s durable power of attorney gave him, in theory, for all practical purposes exactly the same rights as a spouse. But in practice, in the moment of crisis, that durable power of attorney couldn’t have been more worthless. United in a mere legal arrangement, as opposed to being Married, Daniel and Flanigan simply weren’t regarded as a family. That was the immediate reflex of the hospital staff. Their relationship wasn’t a marriage. It was something else. Something other then marriage. And so Daniel died apart from his lover, with the tubes he was terrified of shoved down his throat, and his arms strapped to the bed. There was no family there to say otherwise, as far as the hospital was concerned. Something other then marriage, is inevitably something less then marriage.
Flanigan later sued the hospital. After trying different excuses, first saying they never got the paperwork on Flanigan;’s power of attorney, Maryland Shock Trauma decided to tell the jury that their emergency room was simply too busy to let him into where Daniel was being treated. That he was allowed in when Daniel’s mother, the legitimate family, arrived, had to have been just sheer coincidence. Ask yourself what jury would buy that if it were a heterosexual couple. Yes…the jury bought it. Maryland Shock Trauma was let off the hook. Flanigan was left only with his memories of not being able to keep his beloved from the thing he feared most in his last hours on earth, and to be there with him. The usual words of condolences, worth their weight in gold, were spoken all around.
Make no mistake, had Flanigan and Daniel been anything other then a gay couple that power of attorney would have allowed the one to make medical decisions for the other. But what the hospital staff saw in that document wasn’t a power of attorney, but two homosexuals asking to be treated as if they were married, and that was an attack on their own marriages. That is where the reflex came from. When the staff told Flanigan he could not be with Daniel or have any say in how he was treated, because he was Not Family, they were not simply enforcing hospital rules, they were defending the sanctity of their own marriages.
Sanctity. You hear the word a lot in this struggle. Of all the careless brain dead claims being made here by People Of Good Will, the claim that gay activists have turned the fight over same-sex marriage into an all or nothing battle is the most nefarious. In state after state, and even in California, the enemies of gay equality have either tried to, or enacted amendments that sweep away both same-sex marriage And civil unions, And anything and everything else that gives same sex couples even the passing rights that married couples enjoy, in the name of preserving the sanctity of marriage. In the vast majority of states, this was long before same-sex marriage could even have been a possibility. How close to same sex marriage was Virginia, when it passed its constitutional amendment barring it, as well as anything even remotely like it? In fact, he entire history of the fight against gay equality has been waged as an all or nothing struggle by our enemies, and was long before the gay community began seeking marriage in earnest.
Our enemies understand the logic of this fight a lot better then some of us seem to. What’s confusing, or more likely what a lot of us are in denial about, is that the fight over same-sex marriage isn’t a fight over same-sex marriage specifically. It’s a furious, bitter, scorched earth battle over the status of gay people. That is the root of it, that is the thing we are all fighting over. Are we your neighbors, or are we an abomination in the eyes of god? Are we as human as anyone else, or are we the victims of a kind of sexual sickness? Is the fact that we mate to our own sex just a simple and unremarkable variation like being left-handed or green-eyed, or is it a damaging distortion of natural sexuality? If it’s the latter, it should be suppressed like any other illness afflicting humankind. The kinder, gentler view is that we are merely some sort of unfortunate sexual cripples. But in the eyes of the homophobes, we are a curse on humanity and you don’t grant rights to a curse on humanity.
They have been waging this war against granting us human status for decades now. It is not about marriage specifically, but marriage is both their trump card and the end of pretense. Like raising the fear of homosexual child molesters, waving same-sex marriage in people’s faces frightens people into thinking gay rights is an attack on their families, on their most intimate sense of self, on that which is sacred to them. If people who engage in unnatural, distorted sexual behavior can have their brokenness treated the same as the wholesome love of two normal heterosexuals, then that reduces the love and devotion of heterosexual couples to the level of pornography. But the other edge to that sword is that letting same sex couples marry acknowledges their shared humanity with the heterosexual majority. Same sex marriage is both the homophobe’s weapon, and their greatest fear, because then the battle is simply over.
I have watched this fight for decades. Not the marriage fight. The gay civil rights fight. And I tell you, Every Step Of The Way, whether it was over the right to hold down a job, to the right to simply have sex with the one you love without being thrown in jail for sodomy, our enemies have turned every single solitary step we have taken, every meager right we have ever fought for, into a fight over same-sex marriage. Oh, we can’t give them hospital visitation rights, it would lead to homosexual marriage!!! Oh we can’t give them protection from discrimination in the workplace, that will lead to homosexual marriage!!! What was the first thing they started screaming about after the U.S. Supreme Court voided the sodomy laws? It wasn’t that the queers would start having sex now. They know we’re having sex. They immediately started babbling about same-sex marriage. They don’t give a rat’s ass about our having sex. Animals have sex too. But only human beings marry.
So much, so obvious. What should have been more illuminating then it seems to have been, was how after Lawrence v. Texas the mainstream news media and all the so-called liberal and moderate middle of the spectrum pundits started worrying about the possibility of same-sex marriage too. Mostly to re-assure each other that Justice Kennedy had said their decision shouldn’t wouldn’t lead to that. This was the reaction on the part of the self described sensible middle of the roaders, the People Of Good Will, to the fact that we were no longer presumptive criminals simply by virtue of being homosexual: Gosh…I hope this doesn’t lead to them getting married or anything. But why shouldn’t it? Why shouldn’t people who say they’re against ignorant bigotry towards their gay neighbors, want us to have the same status they do?
Because, they don’t really mean it. For the People Of Good Will, we may not be a curse on all mankind, but we are still sexual cripples at best, if not disgusting perverts at worst. They might agree that civil society should tolerate our existence the sake of the freedoms of all. They may not go on crusades against homosexuality. But you need to not mistake that for enlightenment or even tolerance. It is disgust. They just don’t want to deal with it. They aren’t going on crusades because they find the entire subject distasteful. And that distaste has consequences.
When they say civil unions is a rational compromise between two extremes, look at that, really look at it. It is the middle ground between your being wholly and completely human, and being cursed by God that they are saying is a rational compromise we should gratefully accept if we weren’t so stubborn. In exchange for just shutting up so they don’t have to deal with our existence, we are being offered the compromise status of damaged goods. But you don’t treat damaged goods as though they are anything but damaged.
Here is how USA Today viewed the decision of the California Supreme Court:
…the domestic partnership laws in California are hardly equivalent to the egregious racial discrimination of the Jim Crow era. Far from denying rights, they guarantee gays equal treatment in such important areas as raising children, assigning responsibility for medical choices and settling financial matters.
By pushing the envelope, the California ruling will help those who want to deny gays such rights — blatant discrimination that reaches far beyond understandable differences rooted in the religious meaning of marriage. Even in California, an initiative is already underway to put a same-sex marriage ban into the state constitution. Similar bans are likely to be considered in Arizona and Florida. Failed attempts to amend the U.S. Constitution will revive.
The special status and sanctity of marriage is the ultimate blessing for couples who want to spend their lives together. Eventually, the nation might be ready to extend the institution to same-sex couples. But, as New Jersey’s top judges wrote in a 2006 gay marriage decision, courts "cannot guarantee social acceptance, which must come through the evolving ethos of a maturing society."
It will be regrettable if the impact of the California decision is to slow or reverse that evolution.
Look at that first paragraph I quoted, where they offer the separate but (at least somewhat) equal defense of civil unions. But just how egregeous could Jim Crow have been, if black people merely had to drink out of separate fountains. After all…it was the same water…right…?
There is separate but equal. But if all you see in that photograph is the black guy has equal access to water you are missing the egregious nature of Jim Crow, just as the editors of USA Today are missing the egregious nature of civil unions. In point of fact, all it takes to see nothing wrong with what is happening in that photo, is to not see the humanity of the black man. He has water…what’s the problem?
The special status and sanctity of marriage is the ultimate blessing for couples who want to spend their lives together. Eventually, the nation might be ready to extend the institution to same-sex couples. Here the editors of USA Today admit out of the other side of their mouths, that this special status, that sanctity, that Ultimate Blessing, is precisely what civil unions are meant to exclude us from. It does not, and you have to understand this, signify a legal status, so much as a social understanding. And that social understanding is that our unions, that our love, does not rise to the sacred level of heterosexual love, and does not merit the same special status, the same blessing, that heterosexual love does. This is the premise, spoken and unspoken, behind every appeal to the "special status of marriage". It is not that marriage is so special after all, but that we are not worthy.
This is why giving same-sex couples access to marriage desecrates it. That is why they use the language of desecration when we agitate for the right to marry. By enacting the rites of marriage, we don’t celebrate it, we can only desecrate it. That can only make sense if you regard gay people as incapable of experiencing love and intimacy as profoundly, as urgently, as heterosexuals do. And that only make sense if you see gay people as irredeemably damaged goods. And that is the thinking. Same-sex marriage desecrates the Institution of marriage because homosexual love is only one step removed from pornography, if that. That is why, exactly why, you hear them saying that same-sex marriage means "anything goes." That simply does not follow absent the view that homosexuals don’t really love, they just have sterile, barren, pitiable sexual assignations, and pretend that it’s love.
The People Of Good Will may be disgusted at the thought of gay sex, or they may feel pity for us and think themselves progressive because they would have us be treated with compassion and concern, just as you would treat anyone with a profound handicap. But you don’t hang forgeries in an art museum, you don’t sell water as whiskey, you don’t treat someone who bought a degree over the Internet as though they’d actually been to college, and you don’t treat a same-sex couple as though they are married. To do otherwise is to cheapen marriage into meaninglessness. Same sex couples do not experience intimate romantic love as profoundly as heterosexuals do. That Is the thinking.
And that is why civil unions will never be equal to marriage. The statutes defining them could read absolutely identically, word for word, comma for comma, period for period, and they will not be treated equally to marriages, because the basic premise defining them, the bedrock they rest upon, is that homosexual love is not the real thing, but a cheap, if not ugly mockery of the real thing. No injury, no foul. Civil unions, as a substitute for marriage, are not even a consolation prize. They are a facade of respect, erected upon what heterosexuals consider to be a facade of love.
And that understanding of our love lives, of our humanity, has consequences. Does anyone actually believe that most people voting against both same sex marriage and civil unions really don’t understand they are voting away both? Do you really think that people who believe we desecrate the institution of marriage will respect our unions if they merely go by another name? Wake up please. Ask William Robert Flanigan Jr. how well a substitute for marriage works. Ask the civil union’ed couples in New Jersey and Vermont who found out the difference between a marriage and a civil union that had all the same rights on paper, but not the same regard in the eyes of people who know that a civil union is a civil union precisely because it does not represent a sacred human bond like marriage does, but at best a pale imitation of one. In the courts, in the public square, in the neighborhoods and villages, in the emergency rooms and in the funeral homes, absent the kind of recognition of our humanity that would make civil unions superfluous anyway, every civil union they encounter will be weighed by heterosexual people for what it is, not for what it isn’t, and what it isn’t is a marriage.
This is not a fight over a word. It’s a fight for that acknowledgment of our humanity, and to have our human needs and our human dignity respected. As long as heterosexuals view our relationships as being something fundamentally different from their own, they will treat them as something fundamentally less then their own. And they will, never doubt it, apply the law as though they are something fundamentally less from their own. Something other then marriage, is inevitably something less then marriage. That has in fact, been the documented experience in at least one state, New Jersey. Nothing should have been less surprising. It is simply, it is inevitably, because applying two different labels, one to the union of opposite sex couples, and a different one to the union of same-sex couples, establishes that they are different things, and gives people permission to treat them as different things. And as long as people believe they have that permission in the spirit of the law, they will use it regardless of the letter of the law.
There is no ‘but’ in equal. We know who our friends are. They are the ones who may worry about a backlash, may question tactics and means, but not that the fight is necessary and just. They understand that love is something to be cherished and defended from hate, not compromised in the face of it. They know how important it is to us to defend the honor and the dignity of our love, because they can look at us, and see people not unlike themselves and they would do the same in our shoes. We are not damaged goods. We are friends and neighbors. Fellow citizens of the American Dream. Shallow understanding, is no understanding at all. It is the person that is shallow, not the understanding. All it takes to understand why we fight, is to have ever loved someone.
To the folks who don’t want to fight this as an all or nothing battle: I’m sorry. Nobody should have to grow up and go through life taking one wound to the heart after another. This fight tears people apart. I’ve seen it. I hate it. I don’t blame you for not wanting to deal with it. But you need to understand this: you found yourself in an all or nothing battle with hate, the moment you first realized that you are gay.
The hated Earl Warren was appointed by Eisenhower, arguably a republican although in this day and age I doubt he could even get his party’s nomination. And as it turns out, the majority on the California Supreme Court that decided equal rights under law means equal, not separate but equal, were all appointed by republicans too. The Chief Justice Ronald M. George, who wrote the opinion, was appointed by Pete Wilson no less. But even Pete Wilson is old school, compared to the Bush republicans. Think, Samuel Alito. When you can put a man on the court who thinks the warrantless strip searching of 10 year old girls isn’t any big deal, let alone poses a constitutional issue, you can safely know the gutter Eisenhower would have recognized, though not as American, has ascended to power.
I am elated on the one hand, and terrified on the other. There is a referendum coming. Californians have not won this yet. Millions will be spent to put the knife back in the hearts of same sex couples in the Golden State. Only two things give me slender hope. The right wing there has become more insane since Wilson. And Schwarzenegger says he will oppose it. If he lives up to his word, we could yet win this now. If not, there may well be more bitter years of fighting to come. I am not dancing yet.
This, as Annie Wagner over at SLOG points out, is the nugget of gold in this decision…
Furthermore, the circumstance that the current California statutes assign a different name for the official family relationship of same-sex couples as contrasted with the name for the official family relationship of opposite-sex couples raises constitutional concerns not only under the state constitutional right to marry, but also under the state constitutional equal protection clause. In analyzing the validity of this differential treatment under the latter clause, we first must determine which standard of review should be applied to the statutory classification here at issue. Although in most instances the deferential “rational basis” standard of review is applicable in determining whether different treatment accorded by a statutory provision violates the state equal protection clause, a more exacting and rigorous standard of review — “strict scrutiny” — is applied when the distinction drawn by a statute rests upon a so-called “suspect classification” or impinges upon a fundamental right. As we shall explain, although we do not agree with the claim advanced by the parties challenging the validity of the current statutory scheme that the applicable statutes properly should be viewed as an instance of discrimination on the basis of the suspect characteristic of sex or gender and should be subjected to strict scrutiny on that ground, we conclude that strict scrutiny nonetheless is applicable here because (1) the statutes in question properly must be understood as classifying or discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation, a characteristic that we conclude represents — like gender, race, and religion —a constitutionally suspect basis upon which to impose differential treatment, and (2) the differential treatment at issue impinges upon a same-sex couple’s fundamental interest in having their family relationship accorded the same respect and dignity enjoyed by an opposite-sex couple.
Suspect class…Strict Scrutiny… This is what we, gay Americans, have needed for so very long. Without this, the statehouses and congress will continue to stack the deck against us, whenever the hate vote demands it.
I’ll endure lectures on how gays don’t actually want marriage rights from a lot of people…even from some other gay people…but not from another gay person who refers to gays as "same sex-attracted" not once, not twice, but eight times in a single column, as though he just can’t bring himself to utter the word ‘gay’ let alone ‘homosexual’. Still looking for that cure are we…?
During the course of his speech, in which Sorba falsely claimed among other things that Bruce Bagemihl’s Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity was not a "correct study" and had not been cited by other researchers, including Paul Vasey and Volker Sommer (Biological Exuberance was cited by Vasey and Sommer thirteen times), a group of gay folk got up and began chanting and banging pans to drown him out. He eventually had to leave the stage.
Kyle Bristow, the chairman of the MSU chapter of the Young Americans for Freedom, said, "Sexual deviancy poses as a dire threat to our civilization; is an affront to God; corrupts culture with decadence; and is an attack on the institution of the family, which is the crux of our society."
They say the glbt progressives will not allow free discussion of homosexuality, especially by Christians. They compare glbt techniques of silencing Christians to Hitler in the 1930’s. I think the Freepers go overboard. But there is no doubt that the Smith students and the Toledo University President are stifling Christian oppositional speech against homosexuality.
Just like we would stifle speech advocating slavery, anti-Semitism, or racism. When Andy Humm, the host of Gay USA on Free Speech TV, found himself on a TV Talk Show opposite a reparative therapy counselor, he refused to speak with the counselor. Instead he spent the entire time speaking with the host of the show. He wanted to know how the host dared invite such an irresponsible person as the reparative therapist to the TV show. Andy went on and on about how the therapist and others like him hurt so very many people … but he never engaged the therapist … he ignored him completely.
I think Andy’s tactic was brilliant. I have to admit, I think those bloggers who criticized the Smith women were wrong. The Smith lesbian were right on the money. We do NOT need to invite crazy people to our campuses, churches, or civic centers. The whole western world already knows that homosexuality is completely normal. The jury is back, the verdict is in, the case is over. Case closed. Debate over.
The wingnuts can argue among themselves. They can hold the debate right along side an explanation of the world being only 6,000 years old and the earth being flat. Have at it.
Increasingly, one finds people on both sides who object not merely to their opponents’ position but even to engaging that position. Why debate the obvious, they ask. Surely anyone who holds THAT position must be too stubborn, brainwashed or dumb to reason with.
The upshot is that supporters and opponents of gay rights are talking to each other less and less. This fact distresses me.
It distresses me for several reasons. First, it lulls gay-rights advocates into a complacency where we mistake others’ silence for acquiescence. Then we are shocked—shocked!—when, for example, an Oklahoma state representative says that gays pose a greater threat than terrorism—and her constituents rally around her. Think Sally Kern will have a hard time getting re-elected? Think again.
It distresses me, too, because dialogue works. Not always, and not easily, but it makes a difference. Indeed, ironically enough, healthy dialogue about our issues helped move many people from the “supportive – but – open – to – discussion” camp to the “so – supportive – I – can’t – believe – we’re – discussing – this” camp.
Corvino is right of course in the basic idea: dialogue works. But was Sorba engaging in dialogue?
The born gay hoax was invented in 1985 by pro-sodomy activists in effort to overturn anti-sodomy laws by way of minority status.
If that amounts to dialogue, then I suppose so is a burning cross.
Yes…dialogue works. Absolutely. When it’s dialogue. But dialogue has one inescapable prerequisite: good faith. I have three conditions for dialogue with anyone on the other side of the gay rights issue. I think they are reasonable ones.
Stop lying.
Stop lying.
Stop lying.
When you have a talk with someone who angrily waves Paul Cameron’s junk science in your face, and you point out to them how Cameron’s facts cannot be trusted, and they concede the point and stop waving Cameron in your face, but then go on to angrily wave something else just as bogus in your face…yes, actually, you Are having a dialogue. There is a willingness there to at least listen, even if it is a very slight one. They really are engaging you…albeit between bouts of finger pointing at the perverted gay lifestyle. But if that same person later goes on to wave Cameron in Someone Else’s face as though they’d never conceded the point at all when they were talking with you, there was no dialogue. You need to see that for what it is. There was no dialogue. You may have thought there was, but there was no dialogue. And there is no dialogue possible with that person because they are not and never were engaging you in good faith. What was going on there is if Cameron doesn’t work on you, he can still work on someone else. What was going on there is if they can’t make you hate yourself at least they can try to make other people hate you, and if enough people hate you then no matter how proud you are, you will still be afraid.
That’s what’s going on behind the anti-gay mask of dialogue. Not having an open and frank discussion of the issue, but hate mongering. And you need to know the difference because when you sit down with hate mongers, people who have a history of falsifying the evidence, hiding the truth, ignoring the facts, you are elevating them by virtue of your own willingness to be persuaded. You are granting them a status they have not earned, do not deserve, and in any case do not want apart from its usefulness as a tool in their Kulturkampf . They are not interested in being persuaded. They are not interested in listening to you. That measuring gaze in their eyes as you tell them your story isn’t listening. It’s calculating. They are interested in only one thing: demonizing homosexuals. The world must hate us, as much as they hate us. That is all that matters to them. And if they can get you to help them demonize you, so much the better.
This isn’t rocket science. Starting in 2003, various anti-gay sources started peddling, as an argument against same sex marriage, a study by Dutch researchers led by Dr. Maria Xiradou which they claimed proved that not only were gay relationships very short lived, none that lasted longer then a few years were monogamous. And indeed, none of the gay male relationships in that study were long lived, or monogamous. But as Jim Burroway later found out by…well…actually reading the study…that would have been hardly surprising as it was intended to show how HIV infection was spreading through the young gay male population of Amsterdam and the researchers excluded older couples and monogamous couples from the study.
When you see people doing that kind of thing it is telling you all you need to know about the possibility of dialogue with them. You cannot sit down and have a dialogue with someone where you are trying your level best to understand their point of view and tell your own side of the story as simply and as honestly as you can and they are looking you right in the eye and lying through their teeth. That is not a dialogue, and you are being used. It is not that there is no point in sitting down with hate mongers. It’s that sitting down with hate mongers makes them seem like something they are not, and that allows them to keep right on spreading their poison into the dialogue the rest of the human family needs to have.
Earlier this year the Vermont legislature appointed an 11-member Vermont Commission on Family Recognition and Protection to explore the idea of gay marriage and hear how Vermonters feel about it. They conducted hearings all over the state, and something amazing happened. The conversation was civil. There was no cat-calling, no screaming and shouting, no personal attacks. Why? Because the anti-gay opposition boycotted the hearings. They weren’t silenced. They weren’t shouted down. They weren’t censored. They simply chose not to participate, claiming that the hearings were stacked against them. But with the hate mongers out of it, the people were able to have what they weren’t supposed to have, what the hate mongers didn’t want them to have. Dialogue. See how that works?
Religion doesn’t matter. Party doesn’t matter. Education and culture do not matter. Only one thing matters when it comes to dialogue and that is good faith. Unless that one thing is present, there is no dialogue. At best there is only flag waving. At worst, all you are doing is helping hate mongers to destroy the possibility of dialogue. Because, yes, dialogue works. Dialogue brings people together. Dialogue kills hate. And that is why the hate mongers want to be wherever there is a chance of dialogue occurring.
In this country even hate has a right to speak it’s mind. And that’s well and good. Better hate comes out into the open where it can be seen for what it is. But that doesn’t mean we need to engage hate as though it is something it is not. I am perfectly willing to have a dialogue. I am all about dialogue. But if you want to wave your hate flag you will have to do it all by yourself because I was not born into this world just to help the likes of you make people hate me. Here are my conditions for having a dialogue about homosexuality:
As 14-year-old Brandon McInerney prepares to be arraigned today in the slaying of 15-year-old Lawrence "Larry" King at E.O. Green Junior High School in Oxnard, his lawyer is advancing a defense that at least partly blames school officials for the tragedy.
Educators should have moved aggressively to quell rising tensions between the two boys, which began when King openly flirted with McInerney, said Deputy Public Defender William Quest.
No. The tensions pre-existed that. The flirting was Kings way of dealing with the abuse he was getting from the other kids. But look at this carefully. Quest is hanging a dead skunk on a sliver of truth obvious to everyone in hindsight. Educators should have moved aggressively to quell rising tensions between the two boys… Yes. And right here is the poison Quest is trying to slip in along with that…
Instead, administrators were so intent on nurturing King as he explored his sexuality, allowing him to come to school wearing feminine makeup and accessories, that they downplayed the turmoil that his behavior was causing on campus, Quest said.
You’d think the boy was going to school in drag…which is exactly the image Quest is creating there. Quest is slyly turning a murdered 15 year old gay kid into a drag queen exploring his sexuality on other terrified teenagers. He’s pushing all the usual buttons there. But look past that. King’s behavior was creating turmoil on campus. Quest has probably figured out that blaming a 15 year old gay kid for his own murder isn’t going to play well…at least with California juries. He might get away with it, but considering Matthew Shepard’s killers couldn’t even in Wyoming, it’s a risk. So what to do? Simple. Blame the school for not blaming the victim.
Instead, administrators were so intent on nurturing King as he explored his sexuality, allowing him to come to school wearing feminine makeup and accessories, that they downplayed the turmoil that his behavior was causing on campus…
Isn’t that a neat trick? The school was siding with the gay kid, which left the other kids in turmoil, which caused Brandon McInerney to bring a gun to school and shoot Lawrence King in the back of the head. Poor Branden was so traumatized over having a gay classmate, and even worse being flirted at, that he couldn’t even look him in the eye when he pulled the trigger. And it’s all the school’s fault. For nurturing the gay kid. When they should have been keeping him under control. So the other kids wouldn’t be in turmoil. So Branden McInerney wouldn’t have been in turmoil.
You have never seen the gay panic defense so slickly inserted into a murder trial.
Users of the portable media player can now download friends’ nine most recently played songs, as well as nine tunes flagged as favorites.
Microsoft, which trails far behind Apple in the portable media player market, tried to narrow the gap Tuesday with the release of new technology that enables Zune users to share more of their music libraries with friends.
The latest update to the Zune software that synchronizes the player with a person’s music library on the PC and Microsoft’s online store reflects how Microsoft is hoping to grab market share from the Apple iPod by encouraging Zune users to build online social networks. Microsoft last November launched a music community Web site called Zune Social, where users could browse each other’s playlists and share opinions on songs and bands.
Along with the three new Zune players, including Microsoft’s first-ever flash-based model, Microsoft announced a new community site, dubbed Zune Social that it will fire up as beta in November. According to Microsoft, Zune owners can automatically share their current playlists with friends using a Zune-to-Zune Social sync.
That sync will rely on user-made profiles that Microsoft’s calling Zune Cards; other Zune owners will be able to view a friend’s Card, then play short samples of those tracks and/or buy the tunes at the also-redesigned Zune MarketPlace online store. The sharing concept isn’t new, as several services — notably iLike — already promote something similar.
"Microsoft must find a way to grow the coolness of the Zune," said JupiterResearch’s Michael Gartenberg. "This isn’t a bad strategy, and at least it’s found a way to differentiate from Apple."
Super Cool! And…oh look…here’s another way they can differentiate themselves from Apple…
If you like to download the latest episodes of “Heroes” or other NBC shows from BitTorrent, maybe you shouldn’t buy a Microsoft Zune to watch them on.
A future update of the software for Microsoft’s portable media player may well include a feature that will block unauthorized copies of copyrighted videos from being played on it.
…
Late Tuesday afternoon I reached J. B. Perrette, the president of digital distribution for NBC Universal, to ask why NBC found Microsoft’s video store more appealing than Apple’s.
He explained that NBC, like most studios, would like the broadest distribution possible for its programming. But it has two disputes with Apple.
First, Apple insists that all TV shows have an identical wholesale price so that it can sell all of them at $1.99. NBC wants to sell its programs for whatever price it chooses.
Second, Apple refused to cooperate with NBC on building filters into its iPod player to remove pirated movies and videos.
Microsoft, by contrast, will accept NBC’s pricing scheme and will work with it to try to develop a copyright “cop” to be installed on its devices.
…
Mr. Perrette said the plan is to create “filtering technology that allows for playback of legitimately purchased content versus non-legitimately purchased content.”
He said this would be similar to systems being tested by Microsoft, Google and others that are meant to block pirated clips from video sharing sites. NBC is also working with Internet service providers like AT&T to put similar filters right into the network.
…
Adam Sohn, a spokesman for Microsoft, declined to discuss details of this effort other than to say that the software company is exploring anti-piracy measures with NBC. He said Microsoft, which suffers from its own piracy problems, is sympathetic to Hollywood’s concerns.
Let me unpack that for you: NBC agreed to let its content be sold by Microsoft, because Microsoft is willing to make it’s products block the playback of unauthorized copies. They’re talking about videos there, but does anyone doubt for a moment that same technology will be used to prevent the playback of music too. And remember, The Music Industry Regards Copying From CDs To Players Like The iPod As Theft.
Microsoft is going to help the industry make that impossible. If they can get the technology developed, the industry will then press congress to make it manditory. Never doubt it.
Oh…wait… Microsoft says it’s all been a terrible mistake…
In the Zune Insider Blog, Cesar Menendez, a member of Microsoft’s Zune team, refers to this post, and the blog discussion it prompted. He writes:
We have no plans or commitments to implement any new type of content filtering in the Zune devices as part of our content distribution deal with NBC.
Microsoft, let it be said, is second to no one in its skill at deploying tactical syntax. Let’s unpack all the weasel words in that statement, shall we? We have no plans… Right. Why not say "We will not…"? as opposed to "We have no plans…" How about, "We are not in the planning stage, but the proof of concept stage." Any new type of content filtering… Why not just say "Any content filtering"? New Type? Fine. They already have something on the drawing boards. It isn’t new. As part of our content distribution deal with NBC. Fine. But that isn’t the only deal you have with NBC is it? So are you developing any content filtering, based on an already existing "type", apart from any deals you may have made with NBC, or anyone else…? Do you have any internal efforts directed at content filtering or blocking?.
No…no… It’s just not possible to get straight answers out of Microsoft if they don’t want to give you any. And besides, all you need is to look at Windows Vista to see how devoted Microsoft is to DRM.
Windows Vista is the bloated pig it is, in large measure because of all the DRM technology packed into it. Vendors are having nightmares getting it to work with hardware because of the DRM requirements Vista imposes and Redmond mandates. Your video and audio circuitry must literally have no possible point on it for a user to tap a signal from before it can be certified and Vista will allow the highest quality signals through it. Otherwise it cripples the output. That Redmond would develop technology to allow the music and film industries to control what you can and can not play on your own playback devices is as unsurprising, as the fact that they’ll be deploying it on paltforms running their software with or without the owner’s consent.
They say that men don’t change, they reveal themselves. Once upon a time I made my living programming exclusively on Microsoft platforms. And I felt proud to be a part of a revolution that was bringing power, as the slogan of my generation went, to the people. But empowering the common folk was never what Bill was in it for. He just wanted to own the world. Bill Gates is to computer technology what Mao was to government. He spoke the language of revolution, he posed as a friend of the common people against the powerful. He told them he was about returning to them the power that was rightfully theirs. The computers would be taken out of the big data processing centers and put right there on your own desktop. Your data would belong to you, not big business or big government. Information you need would be directly accessible to you. Bill Gates promised the world would be at your fingertips. And if he really meant that, I wouldn’t care if he was ten times as rich as he is. Instead, he became one of the biggest despots the world ever saw. Your computer belongs to him now. And to his friends in the penthouse board rooms. Men don’t change, they reveal themselves. Here’s to the new boss…
Morgan has posted to YouTube the rough cut he currently has of the opening sequence to This Is What Love In Action Looks Like. It looks to be a fantastic documentary when he gets it all put together. And for the first time, people will get a chance to hear Zach speak for himself about what happened to him.
In this clip via the historical footage Morgan managed to dig up, you get a taste of what it was like before the gay rights movement came of age. The captioning Morgan adds to it captures the sense of the times perfectly…
Once upon a time…
There were some monsters…
Everybody was scared of them…
I was a gay teen back in those days, although I spent most of it in a comfortable cocoon of ignorance. But that’s exactly how it was. Homosexuals were monsters. And then one day I realized I was one of the monsters they were talking about. Watching those clips Morgan found brought that whole period of time back to me. And for the haters, it’s still true to this day. We are monsters, not human beings. That is why the Ex-Gay ministries appeared. Not to save our souls, but to impress upon us that we are monsters.
There’s only a small portion of the interview Zach gave Morgan here. And I think I can say now that this is out, that I was privileged to be there to witness and photograph it (I agreed that Morgan would have the copyright to the photos). There is so much I haven’t been able to say these years, biting my tongue while others waved Zach’s first blog post after leaving Love In Action as proof that he had taken LIA’s side of things and ultimately agreed with what had been done to him. And Zach, let it be said, isn’t interested now, and wasn’t really then, in being the center of a media storm. The poor kid just wanted to live his life. When he cried out for help, it was to his friends. That it quickly spread all over the Internet and became an international media storm was as much a surprise to him as to anyone. But he’s smart, he’s got a good heart, and he’s perfectly capable of speaking for himself when he wants to. I think that comes through pretty clearly in the few moments you see of him in this clip.
There will be more of the interview with Zach, and much more of the events surrounding the Love In Action protests, when Morgan finally finishes his edits and premieres the documentary. I have no ETA and I don’t think Morgan does either…he’s working hard on getting it right, because its so important. It’ll be done when it’s done.
And before you ask…yes, I am listed as an Executive Producer on this documentary. But seriously…all a producer does is produce money. The film is 100 percent Morgan’s, and I cannot speak for or about anyone involved in the production or anyone interviewed in it beyond what you can already see here. Morgan and crew can all speak for themselves, and probably will if you ask them. Morgan can be reached Here, at the Sawed-Off Film’s web site. You can see a collection of Sawed-Off YouTube clips Here.
I’m 30 years old, from rural Ohio, and met my German boyfriend in Boston 8 years ago.
We moved to Berlin together when his visa expired, where we lived for 5 years and eventually got married (okay, "entered into a civil union" is more accurate, if not as eloquent). We work online, which affords us a lot of freedom, and have lived in Ireland and now Spain. Thanks to the "Freedom of Movement" policy, I can legally reside anywhere in the EU, because Juergen and I are married. But, I can’t move home.
An American and a German can legally reside in Ireland, Spain and Slovenia, but not America. When I think about it like that, I want to punch a wall.
Trying to explain our situation to my American friends inevitably results in confusion and disbelief. People are truly unaware of the situation gay, bi-national pairs have to deal with. "You could get married in Massachusetts!" Um, no. "You could get Juergen a work visa!" Not likely. "He could marry a woman, and then you guys just, like, live together anyway!" Seriously, a suggestion I’ve heard more than once.
It’s not that people don’t understand our situation — but that they don’t even know it. And, honestly, the chances that we ever move back to the States are getting more and more remote with each year.
Thanks for continuing to expose this problem…
The virtuous god-fearing lying connivers of the religious right have done a bang-up job convincing people that all their attacks on same sex marriage aren’t intended to deny same sex couples any rights so much as preserve marriage as a union of one man and one woman. So a lot of people apparently think that same sex couples aren’t really as utterly bereft of legal standing as they are. You could get married in Massachusetts… Right. And that and a few bucks will get them both a couple Big Macs…but not the right to live together here in the United States. Repeat After Me: The Defense Of Marriage Act. Or, as Peter Sprigg of the Family Research Council put it succinctly…
“I would much prefer to export homosexuals from the United States than to import them into the United States because we believe homosexuality is destructive to society.”
Gotta love that loving the sinner stuff…
I’ve said this before: the only reason I’m as free to move around my own country as I am is because I am single. If I was coupled, the two of us could not travel in or even through most of the states in this union because if something were to happen to one of us it could quickly become a nightmare for both of us. That was the intent. Not to protect marriage, but to persecute gay people for doing what we are emphatically not allowed to do: Fall in love. Commit to one another. Make a life together. If gay people can find love, can find in it peace and fulfillment and joy and contentment, then clearly the righteous aren’t loving Jesus enough.
AoTP: You very seldom, if ever, write about gay and lesbian issues per se. Yet discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation directly affects where you live, since you and your domestic partner — who is Brazilian — cannot be together on any regular basis in the U.S. Do you hold strong views about anti-gay laws in your own country?
GG: The state of American law with regard to same-sex couples is an ongoing disgrace. America is one of the very few countries in the world — along side countries such as China and Yemen — to continue to ban HIV-positive individuals from immigrating. And the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibits the federal government from extending any benefits (including immigration rights) to same-sex couples means that we put our gay citizens whose partners are foreign nationals in the excruciating predicament of being forced either to live apart from their life partner or live outside of their own country. That is reprehensible.
Most civilized countries, even those that don’t yet recognize same-sex marriage, refuse to put their citizens in that situation. Brazil was a military dictatorship until 1985. It has the largest Catholic population of any country in the world. And yet I’m able to obtain from the Brazilian government a permanent visa because my Brazilian partner’s government recognizes our relationship for immigration purposes, while the government of my supposedly “free,” liberty-loving country enacted a law explicitly barring such recognition.
The difference between a nation with a large protestant fundamentalist population and one with a large Catholic one. The pope can be a raving Nazi bigot and the flock can still know what it feels like to have a human heart.
But it won’t just be the bi-national couples leaving the USA if same sex couples must remain strangers in the eyes of the law…
A new study shows that many lesbian and gay youths, much like their heterosexual peers, expect to have long-term committed relationships and raise families in the future, according to an April 23 press release from Rockway Institute.
The study questioned about 133 gay New York City youths on various topics, including long-term relationships, family, and adoption. Researchers found that "more than 90% of females and more than 80% of males expect to be partnered in a monogamous relationship after age 30." About 67% of males and 55% of females expressed the desire to raise children. In terms of adoption, 42% of males and 32% of females said they were likely to adopt children.
"We seem to be witnessing the mainstreaming of lesbian/gay youth, with many of them wanting exactly what heterosexual youth have always wanted — the whole American dream complete with kids and the minivan," Robert-Jay Green of the Rockway Institute said in a statement. "Most agree that the primary issue is whether these youth will be given the equal legal rights to realize their couple and family aspirations just like their heterosexual peers."
…which they won’t be able to achieve here in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave if the religious right has its way. But they will elsewhere in the civilized world. And this is a generation raised on the Internet. The world is, literally, their oyster. They’ll go where they have the opportunities they need. They may always call themselves Americans. They may always think of themselves as Americans. But if they can’t find their American Dream here in America, they’ll go live where they Can find it.
My generation fled the sticks for the urban centers. In the future, they’ll speak of the gay American diaspora…
Same sex couples in the Australian Capital Territory thought they were going to be treated like human beings soon. Hahahahaha….
Australian Christian groups Monday welcomed a decision by a local territory government to abandon its plans to legalise same-sex civil unions after intervention from Canberra.
The Australian Capital Territory government, home to the national capital, wanted to introduce Civil Partnerships Legislation to allow gay couples to hold ceremonies legally recognising their relationship.
But it was forced to water down the proposal after the federal centre-left Labor government of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said Sunday it would override any such legislation on the grounds that such unions would too closely resemble marriage.
The ACT government will now introduce laws under which gay couples can formally register their relationships, but any ceremony will have no legal recognition.
The Australian Christian Lobby group said it was pleased the federal government had got involved.
"We can’t allow marriage to become a political trophy for two percent of the population," head of the group Jim Wallace told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
Trophy. Marriage is a trophy. Not a union between two people in love, body and soul. Not a commitment to love honor and cherish. But a trophy. Well that clears it up doesn’t it?
And here’s another trophy they can proudly display on their mantle…
As the nation’s culture changes in diverse ways, one of the most significant shifts is the declining reputation of Christianity, especially among young Americans. A new study by The Barna Group conducted among 16- to 29-year-olds shows that a new generation is more skeptical of and resistant to Christianity than were people of the same age just a decade ago.
…The study shows that 16- to 29-year-olds exhibit a greater degree of criticism toward Christianity than did previous generations when they were at the same stage of life. In fact, in just a decade, many of the Barna measures of the Christian image have shifted substantially downward, fueled in part by a growing sense of disengagement and disillusionment among young people. For instance, a decade ago the vast majority of Americans outside the Christian faith, including young people, felt favorably toward Christianity’s role in society. Currently, however, just 16% of non-Christians in their late teens and twenties said they have a "good impression" of Christianity.
One of the groups hit hardest by the criticism is evangelicals. Such believers have always been viewed with skepticism in the broader culture. However, those negative views are crystallizing and intensifying among young non-Christians…
…Interestingly, the study discovered a new image that has steadily grown in prominence over the last decade. Today, the most common perception is that present-day Christianity is "anti-homosexual." Overall, 91% of young non-Christians and 80% of young churchgoers say this phrase describes Christianity. As the research probed this perception, non-Christians and Christians explained that beyond their recognition that Christians oppose homosexuality, they believe that Christians show excessive contempt and unloving attitudes towards gays and lesbians. One of the most frequent criticisms of young Christians was that they believe the church has made homosexuality a "bigger sin" than anything else. Moreover, they claim that the church has not helped them apply the biblical teaching on homosexuality to their friendships with gays and lesbians.
Emphasis mine. I can’t imagine where this negative perception of Christianity is coming from…
Because if we don’t bleed, then they’re not righteous. Because if they can’t stick a knife into our dreams of love then they’re not following in Jesus’ footsteps. Because if they can’t turn our lives into a desolate nightmare then how on earth will God ever know how much they love him?
In fact, since the American Psychological Association says homosexuality is not a choice, some have even labeled sexuality an “undebatable” topic. While the APA did indeed make this claim, I prefer to go straight to the evidence itself rather than rely on the authority of the APA, the only professional institution to be censured by Congress by a unanimous vote.
He’s probably referring to This little bit of manufactured outrage…but never mind. Science holds no sway that a reasoned and considered vote of the impartial members of congress cannot overrule. If congress voted to make the value of Pi three exactly, then of course that would be its value…right?
…let’s jump straight into the facts, starting with Spitzer.
No, not Eliot Spitzer, Dr. Robert Spitzer of Columbia University. Some may recognize him for his role in removing homosexuality as mental disorder in 1973, and while many have praised his willingness to reject the dogma of the day in the name of science, few know the sequel to his story. 30 years later, Spitzer published a surprising paper based on his research, one which suggested that therapy can change the orientation of an individual. Spitzer still had the same commitment to follow the evidence, but many of his colleagues who vigorously supported him in 1973 had a sudden change of heart. In fact, in the most ironic twist of fate, Spitzer, an atheist, interviewed with Christianity Today in April 2005, elaborating on the consequences of his rigorous and scientific studies. “Many colleagues were outraged,” said Spitzer, later adding, “I feel a little battle fatigue.”
"…his rigorous and scientific studies." Sometimes you don’t know whether the winger children are laughing in your face or whether they’re really the gullible sheep they seem to be. If anything about Spitzer’s study was rigorous it was how meticulously rigged it was. In part and unforgivably with Spitzer’s willing consent, but also right under his nose, to produce a particular outcome. And nobody understands better how the rigging was accomplished then participants like Arana…
In fact, I know Dr. Robert Spitzer’s study well. Dr. Nicolosi asked me to participate in it, but instructed me not to reveal that he had referred me; while he wanted his organization’s views represented, he did not want to bring into question the study’s integrity. Wacker must not have read Dr. Spitzer’s study, or perhaps he has a naïve understanding of scientific inquiry. Otherwise he would know that the study consisted of informal interviews with ex-gays and those still in therapy; it was merely a report of what they had said. The APA and the psychological community have criticized the ex-gay movement for not providing controlled, long-term studies — to date, none exist.
Arana went into ex-gay therapy willingly, and left it feeling cheated. It’s a part of his life he says now that he does not revisit, "…not because it hurts especially but because it has become increasingly irrelevant." Thankfully, he was willing to share some of it in his article. For those of you who think the ex-gay movement isn’t about demonizing homosexuals so much as lovingly helping them with their same sex attraction disorder, read this:
Disgust with what was termed the “gay lifestyle” was implicit in therapy. I remember Dr. Nicolosi telling me, in response to the question of whether one could easily contract HIV from semen, that if this were the case then gays would be “jerking off in hamburgers all over” to infect people.
There’s the mindset right there that animates the pews in this particular congregation from one end to the other. And it’s why the patients ultimately don’t matter, and why the leaders of this movement don’t give a good goddamn about what happens to the people they treat or to their families after they leave therapy. You can’t harm someone who isn’t really fully human to start with. And you can’t destroy a family where no Real family exists as far as you are concerned…
I learned to be a man: I was encouraged to play catch with my father, work out, watch football. At one point Dr. Nicolosi assigned me a therapy partner who was my age. Ryan and I used to speak by phone (he was in Colorado, I in Arizona), gossiping about school, at one point promising to send each other pictures of ourselves (the canker was already on the rose). After not hearing from him for a few weeks I called his family, who told me that Ryan had gone to court and emancipated himself from them. His father, in tears, told me this had ruined his life.
Presumably, that father didn’t get a refund on his son’s ex-gay treatments either.
I wake up…roll out of bed…hit the bathroom for a bit and shave and freshen up…get dressed…halfway…and wander across the hall to my front office and sit down at Mowgli, my office computer. Mowgli runs CentOS, a Linux variant based on Red Hat Enterprise which I let run constantly. I check Thunderbird, my email client for any new mail…glancing at my Institute mailbox for any problems that may have cropped up. I have several processes that run overnight that check on systems I am responsible for and they email me reports when they’re finished. In one of my other mailboxes, usually every morning, is an email from Google News. I have a search set up to send me headlines every day relevant to GLBT news. I am also on several GLBT news mailing lists.
Here’s a smattering of the headlines that greeted me as I sat down to my computer this morning. They are eminently typical…
This being Louisiana, I wondered if the bill was as doomed for adding race to its language as sexual orientation. Naturally it was sponsored by democrats and bulldozed by the republicans, one of whom was proud to say the bill was opposed by the Louisiana Family Forum. Why does a group that claims to be about families hate children…you ask?
He says gay people can get married…just not to someone of their own sex…and that proves the law does not discriminate against us. And atheists had to obey the anti-religion laws in the old Soviet Union too, which proves the communists weren’t discriminating against Christians…
There is a gay candidate running in North Carolina. Granted it’s a pretty red state, but he’s doing well in the polls despite the fact that the democratic national committee is trying its level best to sabotage his candidacy. That’s bad enough. But then along comes our ersatz national gay rights organization and they won’t endorse the gay man’s candidacy because that might offend their beltway party pals in the DNC…who don’t want gay people running in high profile national races.
Meanwhile, grown adults in Louisiana voted throw gay school kids to the bullies, republicans in Pennsylvania are claiming that they’re not bigots simply because they want to write gay citizens out of their state constitution, haters are threatening one gay religious figure while another religious figure incites religious passions at gay people at the National Press Club, the right is thumping keep gay people out of the military, they’re pushing anti-gay shareholder resolutions at gay friendly corporations and I just woke up and sat down to look at the news.
Welcome to the typical day of a gay American. Now I have to finish getting dressed for work.
The anti-gay religious right is mounting Yet Another protest against the Day Of Silence, itself a protest against anti-gay violence in schools. First it was the misnamed Day Of Truth. Now it’s the Golden Rule Day. Jim Burroway over at Box Turtle Bulletin writes about the competing religious right activity, and sums it up pretty thoroughly here…
More than a year ago, I attended a Love Won Out conference in Phoenix put on jointly by Exodus International and Focus On the Family. That’s where I heard Focus’s Mike Haley address anti-LGBT violence in a Q&A session:
I think, too, we also have to be just as quick to also stand up when we do see the gay and lesbian community being come against as the Body of Christ. We need to be the first to speak out to say that what happened to Matthew Shepard was a terrible incident and should never happen again. And that we within the Body of Christ are wanting to protect that community and put our money where our mouth is…
That was a real “Wow!” moment for me. I thought finally, someone gets it. I can’t tell you how encouraged I was to hear Mike Haley say that. It was an ultimate Golden Rule moment. And I can’t begin to describe how disappointed I’ve been since then.
One year later, Lawrence King was killed in cold blood on February 12 in front of his teachers and classmates. Since then, conservative Christians leaders have celebrated seventy-three consecutive Days of Silence.
Emphasis mine. You should go read the whole thing. Day of Silence? How about seventy-three Days of Silence after a 15 year old gay boy was shot in the head.
That says it all. Can we please stop talking about their "sincerely held religious beliefs" now? This isn’t about faith. This isn’t about how much they love God. It’s about how much they hate us.
Many times on this site, I have offered to anti-gay Christians the idea that they could still oppose homosexuality without spewing hate or contributing to the culture of violence that exists for gay people. I still truly believe that can be done. I would like to start offering some concrete suggestions that anti-gay, Christian organizations could use to oppose homosexuality but without the hate speech.
But then he goes a little further…
I would appreciate pro-gay folks taking a moment to empathize with those who are oppose gay rights and give them some concrete requests to how they can voice religious opposition to homosexuality and gay marriage without promoting violence or hate toward gays. Understanding that some people believe homosexuality is against their religion, not everyone who voices opposition to us is a religious extremist. Some people just hold different beliefs. Perhaps we can talk about better ways to voice those beliefs and even run organizations that lobby for anti-gay rights groups without hate.
I have several problems with this Joe. Thirdly, you shouldn’t assume that us "pro-gay" folks haven’t tried…hard…to understand what is motivating the opposition. Do not assume that its easier to write off the opposition as malicious and hateful unless you’ve looked, really looked, into that Pit called Hate. There is nothing easy about walking up to that terrible edge, and looking in. There is nothing easy about having to go on living with what you saw. Nietzsche was right about the danger of gazing into an abyss.
Secondly, opposition to some things, like same sex marriage, is predicated upon the very dehumanization of gay people you’re asking them to refrain from. There is just no way to oppose same sex marriage while upholding opposite sex marriage without dehumanizing gay people first. It’s one thing to assert that marriage is essentially a religious rite and another to oppose even civil unions, let alone civil marriage. A lot of deeply religious people see the difference there perfectly well. The problem is that haters tend give their principle objection to same sex marriage a religious gloss to prevent people from actually looking right at it and seeing it for what it is.
If atheists can marry in ceremonies utterly bereft of any acknowledgment of God, then what, really, is the objection? It isn’t religious. It’s constitutional in the sense that they regard same sex relationships as a perversion of normal love. That’s what is being said in the opposition to same sex marriage. They’re not objecting to sinners marrying in sin. Someone else’s sin does not defile their own marriages or every 24 hour church in Las Vegas would have been closed down decades ago. Sinners are free to marry every day of the year as long as it’s to a person of the opposite sex. What the haters have been saying, unambiguously for decades now, is that letting gay couples marry defiles their own marriages. By making a mockery of their feelings for one another. Because homosexuals are incapable of those same feelings. Because all we can do, as Orson Scott Card once put it, is play at house.
Witness their insistence lately on that so-called complementary essence of heterosexual unions. Really look at it. What they’re saying is we don’t even have genuine sex, let alone authentically love the person in our arms. What they’re saying is that by calling our damaged, degenerate, empty assignations marriages we are mocking, deliberately mocking, their authentic humanity. That is not about sin, it’s about how they regard gay people as subhuman deviants. Perverts. Degenerates. That is what we are to them, and that is the basis for their opposition to same sex marriage, or they wouldn’t be using the language of defilement to describe their opposition. Two heterosexual drunks getting married after having sex in a Las Vegas hotel doesn’t devalue marriage. Two sober homosexuals claiming to love and cherish one another just like heterosexuals do does. You are asking them to stop dehumanizing gay people in their opposition to same sex marriage when the bedrock of that opposition is how thoroughly they’ve dehumanized us.
But my first and biggest problem with your suggestion is that the folks who aren’t extremists have never acted toward us in hateful ways. There are many devout people out there who aren’t waging kulturkampf against us but are simply and sincerely, if misguidedly, trying to steer us away from what they regard as sin. They aren’t lobbying against us in the statehouses and in Washington. They aren’t flinging mud at us, at our relationships, at our homes, at our hearts. They are instead, offering us a kind of hospitality. The "Good News" as they say. But that hospitality is hard to see beneath all the static the religious right is throwing out into the public discourse.
We don’t need to give those folks any of this advice because they know it all instinctively. And…this is important…they know it instinctively because They Can See The People For The Homosexuals. We are not some faceless other to them. We are not monsters. We are their neighbors. We are human beings to them, as real and as human as they. They have always known this, and they have always treated us as they would treat any neighbor in this life.
Joe…I think you should look…really look…at the advice you are giving the ones you think should hear it, and ask yourself in all seriousness, what sort of person needs to be told any of this…
…start talking about anti-gay violence and condemning it very vocally…
…be sure your information is balanced and based on PEER REVIEWED research…
…If your message is truly about “reaching out” to gays and lesbians than stay away from calling us insulting and dehumanizing names like sodomite and militant…
…Promote youth safety. If you are opposed to teaching about homosexuality in schools or anti-bullying campaigns that include homosexuality as a subject, then you damn well better have a solution to offer that stops the violence and shame that makes life miserable for these kids…
…Gays and lesbians want the same things out of life that you do. I cannot and will not believe that you unable to come up with ways to present your message without the barrage of negative pictures of gays and lesbians…
…Gays and lesbians really are reasonable human beings. Have you ever thought of setting up some meetings with your organization and pro-gay organizations to see what you can work on together and what you can agree on…
…The only reason this is a “war” is because you continue to promote it as one. If you promoted it as a collaboration or a disagreement, then it would be that instead of a war…
…Admit it when someone on your side just goes too far. Comparing us to terrorist went too far…
…We would appreciate it if you could acknowledge that our requests are valid requests even if you disagree with what we want. There is no secret agenda. We want equality and safety…
…Lastly, vow yourself and your organization to abandon myths about homosexuality, especially the one about us choosing to be gay. No one chooses to be gay. Each time you say that you minimize the whole issue to a simple choice and if it were so simple, I wouldn’t be writing this list of requests right now…
Exodus has been saying out of both sides of its mouth for years how "thousands have made the choice to leave homosexuality" and at the same time when asked to back that up with some cold hard facts admits that it is not, as you say, so simple after all. Do you think they cannot hear themselves talking out of both sides of their mouths?
Who needs this advice Joe? No one who would actually take it is who. You are looking for good faith where there is none. What does opposition to homosexuality minus the hate look like? Well I’ve seen it…rarely…but I’ve seen it, and it looks like hospitality. Nothing more. Nothing less.
I would also ask pro-gay folks to try their best to frame their request in Positive Actions Language. In other words, ask people what you DO want them to do, not what you DON’T want them to do.
I want them to get off my back. I want them to get the hell out of my garden. I want them to finally one day look at themselves in a mirror and die of that shame they’ve been running away from ever since they sold their soul to hate because it was easier then living in a world where other people are happy and content. That positive enough?
Another thing about the homosexual/Christian “issue” is that it seems to me that we Christians should be clear on the fact that asserting homosexuals should stop acting homosexual necessarily means asserting that they should spend their lives never knowing the loving intimacy with another that straight people enjoy and know to be the best and richest experience in life.
If I were gay, and I lived and behaved in the way most Christians (understandably!) defend as biblical, I would live alone. I wouldn’t wake up every morning next to my wife. I’d never hold hands with my wife. I’d never kiss my wife. I’d never cuddle with my wife. I’d not know the profound pleasure of every day growing older with my wife. Remaining as sinless as possible would, for me, mean never knowing love of the sort that all straight people, Christian or not, understand as pretty much the best thing life has to offer.
Again: I’m not saying that it’s manifestly absurd and even cruel to suggest that everyone within a broad swath of our population spend their lives in emotional and physical isolation. I believe in the tenets of Christianity as ferociously as any Christian in the world. All I’m saying is that, as far as I can tell, we Christians (insofar as we ever speak with one voice) are saying that it is morally incumbent upon homosexuals to spend their lives in emotional and physical isolation. I hear a lot of Christians asserting that gays and lesbians should stop acting like gays and lesbians. But I never hear anyone saying the unavoidable follow-up to that — saying what that really means — which is that gay and lesbian men and women should spend their lives never experiencing what people most commonly mean when they use the word “love.”
This is what I’ve been waiting to see…someone who believes the bible categorically forbids same sex relationships admit what that really means to gay people. Not babble that homosexuals don’t love, they just have sex. Not witlessly deny that there is ever any fulfilling, romantic, body and soul and spirit component to same sex relationships. But honestly and seriously look at what denying intimate romantic love to gay people does to their lives, to their inner lives, to their heart and soul. To our spirit.
Someone who is at least willing to both see human beings when they look at us, and honestly acknowledge the hell we are being put through for the sake of these biblical passages, can be talked with.
Thank you Mr. Shore. I’ve been waiting for literally decades to see a Christian writer make this connection. Usually it’s just quickly glossed over. I think the reason why is pretty obvious.
When my mom passed away a few years ago, I inherited her diaries. We never discussed my sexual orientation…it was a Don’t Ask Don’t Tell household. I was, like her, raised a Baptist, and the time of my coming of age coincided, not coincidentally, with the period of my leaving the faith. What I expected to read in her diaries from that time was grief over my slow but steady walk away from our church. But no. Grief there was, but it was almost exclusively over how the bright and cheerful son she once had turned into a moody, sullen, angry young man. It makes me cry to read those entries.
When you take the possibility of love away from someone…what do they have left? Think about that, the next time you see an angry homosexual.
Bruce: Perfectly said. Just … perfect. And what a touching, heart-wrenching story.
Liberal Christians like Fred Clark have never had any trouble acknowledging the spiritual potential of same sex love. But they’re not generally biblical literalists. Hopefully I’ll see more of this from those in the coming years. The people who don’t care and just don’t want to know have had the stage for far too long.
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