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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.”
I think those who are saying gays were never denied basic rights need to look up EUGENICS. And read this:
http://www.people1.org/eugenics/eugenics_article_6.htm
We have lost so much of our history because we are not tied by an ancestry. We can’t pass down our history the way other minorities do.
Homosexuality was once considered a mental defect. Gays were institutionalized. Are we different because some of us can’t say “my great uncle was locked away because he was gay”?
I am a third generation gay woman in my family. I have a gay aunt and I had a gay great-aunt. My Great-Aunt Jackie was caught in bed with another woman, and for her time that meant she was insane. I don’t know much about her because my family doesn’t talk about it.
It was only after I came out that my aunt came out, and then the knowledge that my great aunt was also gay surfaced. Although to this day the story goes that she “turned gay” because her husband left her. But I’ve heard the other story that her husband left her because he caught her with a woman.
The generations of gays before us may or may not be blood relatives, but they are family and they suffered under laws that criminalized who they were.
Gay rites are more important than black rites because GLBT rites encompass every race, both genders, all gender expressions, all cultures, all age groups… every kind of person that exists in the world. It is not only as important as black rites, it is MORE important.
Your ignorance of gay history is astounding!
’sly said’:
“Honestly, Gay Rights are not the same as Black Civil Rights.”
That’s right, because we don’t have any recent incidences of gay groups going out of their way to write discrimination against black people into state constitutions.
“In the beginning (1950’s), Black Americans were denied all basic forms of life – education, health care, jobs, etc., while gay americans, who if were white and hidden as a gay American”
Are you completely off your damn rocker? Job discrimination is not only COMMON but still LEGAL against gay Americans, unlike damn near every other minority. WTF are you talking about?? We just had several cases of health care discrimination as well as business establishments refusing to serve gays and lesbians, or do you not ever bother to read the 365gay news feeds???
“Not to say that gay civil rights isn’t as hearthelt…we should be given equal rights across the board”
Thank you for stating the obbvious, Auntie Tom, but with apologists like you around that is never going to happen!
[quote] in regards to hospitals, donation of blood, and marriage…and we still have lot of ground to cover[/quote]
I’m still waiting on you to explain where you EVER got the notion that anti-gay employment discrimination isn’t still as rampant today as it ever was. It was just 10 years ago that the 5th largest restaurant chain decided to stop OPENLY discriminating against gays by changing their employment policy. Until then they expressly prohibited hiring gays. This was in the 1990s, not the 1960s so your point above about employment discrimination is complete bullshit.
“but we aren’t being shot by waterhoses”
Prior to Stonewall, gay establishments were routinely raided and, YES, people were often dragged out and shot with waterhoses (as well as arrested and in many cases institutionalized).
“denied basic care”
Go back and read the news from THIS VERY SITE over the past year about doctors who have been REFUSING CARE to lesbians.
“and turned down for employment immediately because of our skin.”
Unlike people who are discriminated against for their skin color (who have a right to SUE FOR DISCRIMINATION IN EVERY STATE IN THE DAMN COUNTRY) GLBT Americans have NO SUCH RIGHT AT THE FEDERAL LEVEL and NO SUCH RIGHT IN OVER HALF THE STATES and only limited rights in most of the rest. Your ignorance of this issue is absolutely disgusting!
You need to educate yourself about the current state of affairs in this country!
We would do better to compare the struggle for GLBT rights to that of the Womens’ Rights movement. We have much more in common as history and experience goes.
To me it’s the same thing, the same movement. To deny this IS homophobic. Listen I am in my fifties and I worked along with other gay people in the civil rights movement and left wing politics. At that time we as gay people were excluded and expected to keep our sexual orientation to ourselves. At best it was “we wont bother you if you keep it a secret”(like dont ask, dont tell, now that I think of it). And that was the liberal environment. Now that I look back I see the hypocrisy of that and the price that closeted people pay…and the insanity of one minority group imposing their oppression on another group yet expecting these very same individual to support their rights. That insanity is still going on with 70-75% blacks voting against gay rights. I see now that back then, in the 60s and 70s, we gay civil rights workers were really fighting for our OWN rights but didnt know it consciously. We/I perhaps thought if we fought long and hard enough for another group then, in time, our turn would come. But gradually I saw that the people I was supporting didnt support me big time. This took years of realization. Now of course I wouldnt put up with that s#it, wouldnt get involved with people who dont support me as well. And I dont think gay people should support any other group who doesnt support them. For example, in grad school of five years ago, multi-cultural only meant racial, and that usually meant black. By now everyone has been brainwashed with black this and black that. And are expected to give a damn, to even be guilty. Who feels bad for us? But I have instigated my black professors with some gay consiousness and of the similarities of gay and racial civil rights movements. We all tied together as people on a higher level. Our experiences are more similar than dis-similar. On a psychological level gay people face enormous obstacles, esp growing up to be healthy, happy people. One movement is MEANT to positively affect the other, that’s why there are movements to begin with. Everything and everyone is tied together.
I’ll never feel like a straight person be they black or white. Never. More to the point is, I don’t want to. I don’t want to be a part of their failed institutions or hypocritical churches. I’m not interested then in anyway except how can I get more money from them for money knows no prejudice. Religion is for the weak minded. Men developed as tribes which became nationalities, death was unexplainable, so a myth called god was created and it made more sense than the truth – chaos. There is no order in the world there is chaos. When someone dies, they are gone. It happens to every living thing. Marriage? Adoption? Visiting the sick? Inheritance? all straight ideas leave me out, I am creative enough and resourceful enough I don’t need to mimic those who find me less than them, that is true folly. We need to develop our own ways to make gay life a more attractive alternative to the breeders.
The struggle for Black Rights, and Gay Rights are different in many ways, but please don’t belittle the gay struggle. No black man or woman has ever been disowned by their parents, or shunned by their families for coming up and saying to them, “Mom, Dad, I’m black.” Black people are not regularly accused of being child molesters or sexual deviants of the worst kind, for no reason. (Though they are accused, unfairly of may horrible things.) Being Black is not punishable by death in many countries around the world. Being a Black and in a relationship with another Black person was not enough to get you arrested in Texas several years ago. Being Black doesn’t get your children taken away from you, or stop you from having/adopting them.
Asking gay people to, or saying that they could “just hide” is like telling blacks they could just sit at the back of the bus. No one should have to deny who they are.
The struggles Blacks and Gays have gone through may be different, but the rights we are looking for are the same: to live a life free of strife and prejudice, to be allowed to pursue our goals, and development to the full extent, and to be treated equally – if not in regular daily life, at least, by the law.
Honestly, Gay Rights are not the same as Black Civil Rights. In the beginning (1950’s), Black Americans were denied all basic forms of life – education, health care, jobs, etc., while gay americans, who if were white and hidden as a gay American, who still be entitled to the same basic rights, but not the more personal rights such as marriage and adoption. Not to say that gay civil rights isn’t as hearthelt…we should be given equal rights across the board in regards to hospitals, donation of blood, and marriage…and we still have lot of ground to cover, but we aren’t being shot by waterhoses, denied basic care, and turned down for employment immediately because of our skin. Also, which is a bit of irony. Racism against blacks still exist in this nation, even in the gay community, so I wouldn’t exactly say that Black Americans have “equal” rights…we still have lots to contend with, even in the gay community.
Sorry! I meant *OUR president* lol
You’re so right in your words. I live in Brazil and we’re facing news everyday of parents throwing babies from their 5th floor windows, dads killing their sons and buring in the backyard… and I think to myself: is THIS the “normal” family picture the church and state wants us to be? Out president, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, supports gay marriage, yet doesn’t have the balls to go ahead and make this a reallity. ‘Till then we’ll keep living a lie and seeing children who could be happy with a gay couple being murdered.