Getting Uppity

I wrote this is February 2005, but I think it's still relevant:


Now that gays are America's new whipping boy -- and the first culture to truly incite the nation's rural Christians since blacks freed themselves in the 1960s -- perhaps it's time to alter our tactics.

Time, maybe, to get retro and replace the oh-so-lofty Human Rights Campaign with the in-your-face Queer Nation, time to stop watching "Will and Grace" and move en mass to the hump-a-minute "Queer As Folk," time to pick up our guns -- figuratively speaking -- and take aim at Red Amerika.

Time, in other words, to fight back.

George Bush declared war on the gay community in 2004 by using gay marriage as a hateful wedge issue designed to inflame his benighted base. It worked. The Christian right helped return Bush to office and swatted down gay initiatives in state after state.

The message was simple: You disgust us.

We disgust them for many reasons, I assume, but foremost because of the way we have sex. I use the term "have sex" carefully, by the way, because I think that's the way straight people view our carnal activities. They make love; we have sex. By thinking of gays as perpetually sex-starved creatures who prey on boys in bathrooms, it demonizes us. Just as it did blacks in the 1950s, when it wasn't wise for a "colored" kid to look too long at a ruling-class white girl.

Not that the black-gay analogy should be overdone. Blacks were legally enslaved for 250 years and effectively enslaved for another century. The gay man's experience -- except for those 100,000 poor souls who wore pink triangles in the Holocaust -- has been infinitely easier. As long as you kept quiet.

If you kept quiet, you climbed up the corporate ladder, the social ladder, the church ladder quite briskly. It was the genesis, really, of Bill Clinton's don't ask/don't tell policy for the military. Clinton was a great president because he was a small-g governor. He sought consensus on every issue -- prompting critics to say he lacked a moral compass -- knowing that in a nation as diverse and polarized as the United States, compromise was essential to keep the glue from melting. Nevertheless, don't ask/don't tell was cowardly. Clinton, already suspect because of his anti-war draft-dodging youth, didn't want to alienate his generals. So he declined to order his troops to start regarding gay soldiers as human beings worthy of respect.

Instead, he told gay airmen, sailors, marines and soldiers to shut up. Have sex, if you must, but do it in private and don't tell anyone. Don't put a picture of your boyfriend next to your bunk. Don't bring him to the NCO club for lunch. Don't tell any of the guys -- your brothers in war -- that you like boys.

At the same time, however, Clinton fostered a climate of tolerance for gays. Note the word "tolerance," another indication of our status in America. If straights decide to be benevolent, they'll let us be. But, never forget, it's up to them. We're like dogs in the city. If we don't poop in the park, we're acceptable.

So, sanitized gays popped up everywhere in the '90s. "Will and Grace" was a mainstream television hit. Gays became ubiquitous on MTV, where a reality series without a queer would be like a loaf of Wonder Bread at Dean and Deluca -- decidedly un-hip. Actors and actresses, and even a few athletes, came out. It seemed like every politician had a gay child, sibling or lover. And, of course, everyone thought the boys on "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" were the personification of edgy, urban fun.

Then, we got uppity.

Out of nowhere, it seemed, gay couples were demanding the right to marry or at least the right to be recognized as a civil union. Some simply wanted the same legal benefits as straight families; for them a civil union would do just fine. Others, though, wanted more. They wanted the binding moral authority of a wedding ceremony, a ceremony where they would profess their love in front of friends and family, perhaps in a church and definitely with the blessing of the state.

Churches clearly have the right to embrace or condemn gay marriage. Governments do not. Governments represent the people, all the people. They exist at the pleasure of the people and, in the United States, they exist to protect the rights of minorities, whether that minority is black, Jewish or gay.

Regardless, it seems so obvious that gay marriage is a pro-family initiative. How many straight people would have walked out on their husbands or wives if they weren't legally married, if they hadn't committed their hearts and wallets to their spouses? I assume it would work the same way with gays, turning them -- for better or worse -- into homebodies.

Gay marriage is only the most obvious issue being fought by Red Amerika. In Virginia, a state legislator's bill to eliminate a gay club at Harrisonburg High School sailed through the House of Delegates 92-0, in part because its stated purpose was to outlaw student groups that promote sexual activity. The sponsor, however, has admitted he was motivated by the local gay kids' club. What a stupid assumption: that because gays want to socialize, it promotes sex more so than any other teenagers' club. Another bill in Virginia -- a state that tried to marginalize blacks by yanking whites out of public schools rather than integrate after Brown vs. Board of Education, and a state that banned interracial marriage until the Supreme Court told it to get real in 1967 -- singles out gays for background checks if they want to adopt children. Other states also are goose-stepping backward.

So what's a gay to do? Is it really better to fight back than to quietly try to get along? Nobody wants to be snickered at or sneered at or yelled at. Isn't it OK to just live our two-tier lives, one in the gay ghetto and bedroom, one everywhere else? After all, gays aren't being lynched, they aren't being kept out of universities, they don't have to drink out of separate water fountains. What's the big deal?

The big deal is human dignity. You can't live proudly and live a lie. It's taken some of us half a century to realize that. Fortunately, today's gay kids learn that lesson much earlier. They hold their boyfriend's hand on the street. They kiss him goodbye at the bus stop. They walk without shame, without fear.

That's why it's a big deal. And that's why, somehow, someway, we have to fight back. Just like black Americans fought back 40 years ago to achieve their dream, their rightful place in society, their dignity.