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Loading ...Analysis: Gay rights in a post modern world
12.01.2008 8:32am EST
(New York City) Gay is the new black, say the protest signs and magazine covers, casting the gay marriage battle as the last frontier of equal rights for all.
Gay marriage is not a civil right, opponents counter, insisting that minority status comes from who you are rather than what you do.The gay rights movement entered a new era when Barack Obama was elected the first black president the same day that voters in California and Florida passed referendums to prevent gays and lesbians from marrying, while Arizonans turned down civil unions and Arkansans said no to adoptions by same-sex couples.
Racism was defanged by Obama’s triumph, leaving gays as perhaps the last group of Americans claiming that their basic rights are being systematically denied.
“Black people are equal now, and gay people aren’t,” said Emil Wilbekin, a black gay man and the editor of Giant magazine. “I always have this discussion with my friends: What’s worse, being a black man or a black gay man?”
“Civil rights have come much further than gay rights,” he said. “A lot of people in the gay community have been condemned for their lifestyle and promiscuity and drugs and sex, so it’s odd that when they want to conform and model themselves after straight people and have the same rights for marriage and domestic partnership and adoption, they’re being blocked.”
In a cover story for the Advocate magazine titled “Gay is the New Black,” Michael Joseph Gross wrote, “These past few years we’ve made so much progress that we’d begun to think everybody saw us as we see ourselves. Suddenly we were faced with the reality that a majority of voters don’t like us, don’t think we’re normal, don’t believe our lives and loves count as much or are worth as much as theirs.”
Yet even some gay leaders are reluctant to directly tie their fight to the African-American legacy. They acknowledge significant differences in the experiences of gays and blacks, ranging from slavery to the relative affluence of white gay men to the choice made by some gays to conceal their sexual orientation, which is not an option for those with darker skin.
“I believe we are very much in a modern-day civil rights struggle,” said Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay rights organization.
“We liken some of the experiences that we have had and will have to the (black) civil rights struggle. We also are enormously respectful of the differences,” he said. “What we are best served doing is when we take lessons from the civil rights experience and apply them to our work.”
Complicating the issue is the domination of minority politics by blacks and Latinos, who can be less than friendly to gay issues.
In the vote on Proposition 8 in California, which repealed gay marriage, about 70 percent of blacks favored the ban, according to an exit poll; Latinos’ close vote may have favored it, though the poll’s small sample left some uncertainty. In Florida, 71 percent of blacks and 64 percent of Latinos favored a similar ban.
Opposition to gay rights often has a religious basis, and blacks and Latinos are more churchgoing than society at large. Twenty-six percent of blacks attend religious services more than once per week, compared with 16 percent of Latinos and 14 percent of whites, according to a 2007 survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.
“I do not consider (gays) to be a minority in legal and adjudicated terms, the same way people who only like to eat broccoli with butter aren’t a minority,” said the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference. “We can’t categorize things according to behavior. It’s based on ethnicity, on who we are rather than what we do.”
“Who am I to say that you weren’t born that way … (but) sexual activity, what you do, who you sleep with, is your business,” Rodriguez said. “That’s between you, your lover, and the good God Almighty in heaven. I don’t want to know. Let’s leave sexual activity in the bedroom. The government shouldn’t be legislating what we do behind closed doors between two consenting adults. And to compare it to the African-American struggle, to me that’s an abomination.”
So is gay the new black, or did the election define a new and unique set of gay challenges?
“The gay fight for marriage has its own integrity, its own background,” said Andrew Cherlin, a professor of sociology and public policy at Johns Hopkins University. “The experience of blacks in the United States is very different. … I don’t think it helps the fight for equality to make that claim.”
Cherlin says that fight began in the 1980s when the AIDS epidemic unfolded. Gay partners had few rights to help their ailing loved ones, visit them in hospitals or inherit their property, which led to the push for civil unions.
Today, only Connecticut and Massachusetts permit gay marriage, and a few states allow civil unions or domestic partnerships that grant some rights of marriage. Galvanized by the stinging Nov. 4 defeat in liberal California, the marriage movement is now as much symbolic as practical.
“There was a shift in the ’90s, from rights to the symbolism of being married,” Cherlin said. “This is not primarily a battle about rights now. If it was, all you’d be hearing about is domestic partnerships. Now it’s at two levels simultaneously. One is the level of rights; the second is the level of symbols.”
One symbol that some see missing from the gay rights movement is a figurehead. There are famous people who are out and proud, such as Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., or Ellen DeGeneres. But “we don’t have our Martin Luther King or Malcolm X or Barack Obama,” Wilbekin said.
Yet the nature of activism has changed since the days when King proposed the idea of a mass march on Washington. The recent nationwide gay protests were instigated by a Seattle blogger who set up a Web page three days after the California vote.
And in some ways, gays see Obama himself as a symbol of gay progress – even though he opposes gay marriage.
Obama is in favor of civil unions, and during his victory speech, when he included gays in his description of America, it made them feel part of the historic racial milestone.
Solmonese said that the election defeats of Nov. 4 have inspired a level of gay activism not seen since the early days of the AIDS epidemic.
“That is buoyed by equal parts anger and rage about Proposition 8,” he said, “but also hope and inspiration about doing something that for a long time we didn’t think possible – like electing Barack Obama as our president.”
Gay rights, Black rights, and Women’s Rights are all Civil Rights having to do with Equality and the Fundamental Guarantees of the Constitution. Churches can not stop marriage except within their churches and even then it is their blessing they are stopping. Marriage is a government licensed contract between two consenting adults. Guaranteed by the Government. If it wasn’t there wouldn’t be any reason for certain people to take away existing, given rights from other people. The religious people twist and re define to suit they own agenda, which is to take away equal rights from gays and lesbians. That is discrimination, based on fear and ignorance, regardless of color , gender, or sexual identity.
There’s something wrong in this world. We have many actions that are not acceptable or not fair for all people. (If I had a million dollars) Let’s stop playing a wounded person.
Why is it that the GLBT struggle has to be so different than everyone elses? Let us go back through history and take a look at a few. We have women’s rights, race rights, interracial marriage rights, religious rights, along side our current struggle. The main theme that unifies them all is something called “FREEDOM”. Just so we are all clear, freedom is not a civil rights issue, it is a human rights issue. Everyone is so busy arguing who’s struggle is more important or of more value than another groups when the principles being represented and fought for are the SAME. As human beings why can’t we have the same things and be treated with respect and dignity. It should make everyone in this country sick to their stomachs that there needs to be violence, bigotry, hate, and ignorance thrown around(regardless of the issue) to get people to realize that we all are the SAME. Why should anyone or any group have to prove their worth, or their value as human beings. We live on the same planet, breath the same air, have emotions, have the capacity for love, and mainly, have the same goal in life: TO BE HAPPY! Why are these just not human principles? Things need to be argued from a human rights stand point instead of as civil rights. There is nothing civil about: denying a woman’s right to vote, denying a woman a right to an abortion, denying a woman her right to be equal to men in the workplace or in society, denying any person of color the right to live and be respected and treated as a human being, denying people who are racially or ethnically different from being together when they love each other, denying a person the ability to honor God the way they CHOOSE without fear or punishment, denying any man, woman, or child regardless of racial or ethnic background the right to be who they are straight, gay, bi-sexual, or transgender. We all have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, most importantly: RESPECT. These are inalienable rights and all human beings should and must continue to fight for them!
“Racism was defanged by Obama’s triumph, leaving gays as perhaps the last group of Americans claiming that their basic rights are being systematically denied.”
Because putting one person in power totally ended a whole culture of institutional racism. The projects totally don’t exist anymore.
Oh yeah and I guess once again gay people forgot about us trans folk.
The Civil Rights Movement was not about rights, but about discrimination. Before the Civil Rights Movement Blacks had all the same rights as whites. They had a right to attend public schools, as long as they were Black schools. They had a right to ride public transportation, as long as they rode in the back. They had a right to stay in hotels, as long as they stayed in their own hotels. They had a right to eat in a restaurant, as long as they ate in their own. They had a right to live inh houses and apartments, as long as they were in their own neighborhoods. They had a right to serve in the military, as long as they served in separate units. They had a right to marry, as long as they did not marry whites. The Civil Rights movement was about integration, not about rights.
Today, Gays are denied two rights that blacks have always had: the right to serve in the military and the right to get married. So, the Gay Rights Movement is an actual movement about Civil Rights whereas the Black Civil Rights Movement was just a faux “rights” movement that was actually about “separate but equal” rights.
Post Modern refers to the current, post-industrial era; a term found in sociological, educational, and linguistic studies.
The solution to Prop 8 is simple. Just have gay friendly churches file suite stating that there right to religous freedom is being denied.
Just because most churches do not wish to marry gay people, dose not mean that all churches agree.
Prop. 8 denies gay friendly churches there right to pratice their religion as they see fit.
One more thing, I understand that Black citizens have been treated horribly throughout our 500 year history.
And ours is not comparable, but it wasn’t a picnic either.
Furthermore, our mistreatment goes back at least five thousand years. During the witch burnings. During the religious courts. During the political strife of Europe, Asia and Africa. During the Holocaust. During the raids. During the beatings During the hangings. During the burning men from the inside out. During the condemnations. During the castrations. During the disownership. During the rapes. During names of Queer, Faggot, Dyke, Fag, and the rest. During the firings from jobs. During the evictions. During the lies. During the stereotypes. During the forced separation of our partners in health care issues and death.
No we haven’t had dogs. We weren’t segregated in school. We went to school and hid or were beaten.
We weren’t sprayed with hoses (get your minds out of the gutters gentlemen.) We were spit upon, pushed into the dirt and mud.
We have had different journeys. But different does not mean less. We just want the rights and freedoms everyone else has.
I have been talking to some straight people who do not agree with “gay people changing the definition of marriage.” I always ask them what definition? The religion issue always avails itself. Just this past weekend, in the incubator known as a family holiday weekend, I told my cousin that marriage is a civil term. That the religious words is “Holy Matrimony.” And we can’t redefine religious words. But there is no such thing as Holy Matrimony in legal terms.
My cousin actually bought it as long as we weren’t going to force ministers to marry us. I told him that there is no way in heck that I was going to ask a person who could preach that I am going to hell in the middle of the ceremony against me to officiate on my big day. He laughed.
One down. Many million to go. Marriage not Holy Matrimony,
Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference stupidly said: “We can’t categorize things according to behavior. It’s (equal rights) based on ethnicity, on who we are rather than what we do.”
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Guess what moron, RELIGION is a CHOICE! Let’s see how exclusive you are about celebrating “ethnic” only civil rights when your “religious aka choice of behavior” is banned or segregated from the mainstream by an officially approved religion that leaves you out. What an f*cking idiot!
More typical phony rationalizations by another vile bigot with a fascist sense of entitlement.
And as far as comparing the history of the persecution of Gays versus Blacks, that’s just plain silly. Gay people have been tortured, killed, and even burned alive at the stake, in countless numbers, over the long course of history since the advent of Christianity many, many centuries before Blacks in Africa began to sell their own kind into slavery to the White man in colonial times four hundred years ago.
In case anyone forgets, the word FAGGOT refers to a bundle of sticks that was used to fed the flames and keep them ablaze when roasting witches, heretics and homosexuals on the bonfires. Gays were also the first ones to be marched into the gas chambers in Nazi Germany by the tens of thousands. Then after the so-called liberation of the death camps by the allies, the few Gay survivors (wearing descriptive pink triangles) were then sent to regular German prison to finish their sentence as convicted sexual criminals along side the likes of murderers, rapists and child molesters.
So let’s not make any further excuses for bigotry based on some sort of “degree of past suffering quotient” by comparison. The fact of the matter is that the GLBT community are still persecuted in the present. We ARE the last minority in United States to be disenfranchised and to be denied their equality under the law. It is ILLEGAL to treat any other minority in the same manner as tens of millions in the GLBT community are still treated today in America.
Bigotry is wrong wherever it rears its ugly head — and for whatever reason. Immoral acts of prejudice, hate, and violence based upon someone’s sexual orientation is NO different than similar acts committed against someone based upon their pigmentation or religion or disability or age or gender or for what ever goddamn excuse is used to rationalize the irrational. The humiliation, the pain, and the injustice is exactly the same. No different.
~ Bud Evans
Sara, marriage is the commitment of two people (ideally for a lifetime) to each other. Nothing more. The various religious ceremonies do not define what the government sees as a marriage. I agree that religious institutions must have the right to decide who they will marry just as they do now. There are still churches that refuse to marry people who have been divorced. There are those who refuse to perform interracial marriages or interfaith marriages.
What the churches must be allowed to do has nothing to do with what the government does.
And if we fight for civil unions will we be successful? Yes. And, as courts are beginning to find out, separate but equal is never equal. If we fight for marriage will we be successful? It might take a little longer, but yes we will be.
Its a sad day when people try to change the true definition of a word like CIVIL RIGHTS; this is not a black meaning this is our 21st struggle for us. Why are we not pushing back harder on those who think this is a choice? If the Black Community thinks they own this word than they should have slapped a patten pending on it. Until than; Homophobic breeders across this country need to be told and educated that this is not a choice of who we are; the bible thumpers planted that in the media, I was born gay and will always be gay.
Just because Obama was elected does not mean rasism over black americans does not exist. There will always be rasism, and no matter what your ethicity is. I do believe we will have our time. Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference. “We can’t categorize things according to behavior. It’s based on ethnicity, on who we are rather than what we do.” As radical as a man he is, I do have to agree with him on that statement. The gay rights issue is nothing compared to what African Americans had to face.
My own personal view on gay marriage I know will leave a lot of people steaming. I do believe the church has the right to deny ANYONE marriage. Marriage is a union “within the eyes of God”. There are many people who have problems getting married due to difference in religion and the church has the right to deny them. On that principle they should be able to deny anyone they want. I can guarantee you there will be someone else willing to do the honors; you just have to look.
Civil union is a noteworthy cause to fight. But please keep in mind civil unions are not just for same sex couples. There are many men and women who are together who want civil unions. If we can unite same sex and hetreo couples together I think the civil union issue will be tackled quicker.
We all know it will happen. Sometimes things just take time. Keep supporting civil unions and one day they will be recognized.
What does this author mean by the strange, nebulous, but erudite-sounding term “post modern”?.
Just speaking from my own perspective of what this term means, most of the best of the modern has already occured and what we are getting with some exceptions here and there judging by what I see out there and on TV as well, is an abandonment of the best and classiest of the modern for the “cheap”, the “cheesy” and the “disposable” in so many things out there these days from food, to music to clothes.
All is I see is an ongoing struggle by GLBT, for equality, and justifiable outrage, hurt and anger following the passing of especially Prop 8 as well as Arizona and Florida and Arkansas’s ugly amendments. All that matters is that it’s been “open season” on GLBT rights on both coasts and in the middle of the land as well.
Right now is the time to put away the booze, the tobacco, the illegal drugs and the party-induced stupor, and spend the money otherwise spent on health-destroying substances on volunteering money and time toward fighting for 100% precise and exact equality throughout this land.
USA needs to be yanked into the 21st century and be on a level along with other lands that manage to preserve the best of old and new and to make both work together. Countries that can both preserve beautiful architecture and traditions and advance rights and equality and rmbrace modernity in a creative and tasteful way in their own way and not necessarily the American way are some of the best places in my opinion.
Perhaps we’d do better relying on the existing First Amendment of the US Constitution that DOES protects choices, even unpopular political and religious choices. We choose to come out of the closet. Our main opponents seem to argue against us on a religious basis. If even one percent of the US were a religious minority, they would be guaranteed protection; what if 4-10 percent were?