LGBT Rights: Up and Down and Up Again

I've been down with a flu from the depths of hell but have been mostly following the news. The instantaneous and massive mobilization around Indiana governor Pence's religious discrimination ordinance was fabulous! Nothing I could have dreamed of witnessing in the bad old days. Most of the USA has now made it abundantly clear that denial of service based on bigotry is unacceptable.

Of course, every step forward brings a certain amount of backlash so events like Springfield Missouri repealing a gay rights ordinance is no surprise. And, as much as I distrust mainstream politics, civil rights protections of queers and people of color will be a frontline issues in the 2016 presidential election.

Our support can be deceptive. We have not crossed the finish line yet. In fact, if we look to the Black civil rights struggle as a model,  not only are the last laps of the most difficult ones, but the struggle itself is endless. Things inevitably will get a lot worse before they get better.

The best alternative would be to stop doing things in a piecemeal fashion: non-discrimination in employment, marriage,  housing, adoption, all the issues together under one civil rights protection statute, preferably issued by the Supreme Court. That is easier said than done. The ERA, Equal Rights Amendment for women, never made it across that finish line. Now the right wing has opened an abyss full of snapping crocodiles they call "religious freedom." It is part of their victim-based strategy of persecution, an interesting reversal of the actual dynamic.

But we need not despair. Among young people organized religion is rapidly declining. The last time that happened was during the late sixties and early seventies when my generation was coming of age. And you know how that played out.

So there is hope. We are in this for the long haul. Whenever people say how quickly the LGBT struggle has achieved some rights I wonder what version of history they are reading. Certainly not the sixty plus years of my struggle or that of my predecessors in whose footsteps I have walked.

Lesbians, Women and Equality

As the endless struggle for equal pay has illustrated, women we have a long journey ahead of us before we can see any semblance of equality. After much struggle, women are now citizens of the USA who can vote and try for almost any job as long as it is not too high profile like being president or hosting a late night talk show. But we are still limited by sexism which defines us by gender, appearance, social agility and acceptability to those males in power.  

Just yesterday I was searching the database NewPages for anthology and literary journal submission venues.The first “feminist” one I found had just run a special issue that contained the voices of male writers expounding on the subject of women. The second one was soliciting for an upcoming issue on women’s relationships to “the men in our lives.” Seriously?

Let me make this clear: women are not to blame for sexism. Having said that, it is also imperative that we stop being collaborators! As Judy Grahn said in her poem, A Woman is Talking to Death, “We do each other in, that’s a fact!” Lesbians can be guilty of this just like our bib-dyke sisters, but since we have so much less power in society it hardly matters.

And there is the crux of the problem. When it comes to the big picture, our existence, our struggles are most often not even footnotes. The female equivalent of the male gay civil rights spokesperson doesn’t really exist. Harvey Milk, Tennessee Williams, Bayard Rustin, James Baldwin, Tony Kushner, all these are names that come to mind historically when thinking about notable LGBTs. I know that Audre Lorde, Gertrude Stein and Adrienne Rich are notable lesbians, but as far as name recognition they are undoubtedly second tier.

The “problem” of the unapologetic lesbian is being dealt with inside the LGBT community where the word “queer” is now touted as a substitute for “lesbian” because it is more “inclusive.” I’m all for inclusion, but I also have to post the question, what exactly is being lost?

As that old movie “Tootsie” posited and the transgender MTF movement seems to express: men believe that they are better at absolutely everything and that includes being women! The truth is that yes, a less oppressed person has more distance from an issue and that makes both your self-image and everything you undertake, less fraught and therefore a bit easier.  

And, for many of us bio-broads, “being a woman” is not a set of feelings or behaviors. It is just a genetic fact, an anatomical category!

I respect transgender women. But they are raised with the privilege of growing up and being treated as males. Due to class issues, I am used to working alongside people of greater privilege. I don’t hate them. I just think that we all must acknowledge these differences and, as class warriors, fight the tendency to relinquish our power to those with greater access to theirs.

Women have come a great distance since acquiring the vote in 1920. Lesbians have made huge strides since Stonewall. But genuine equality is still a distant dream and ignoring this fact will not make it go away.

Former Classmates and Mortality

I carry so much baggage around with me that, if you could see it, I would look like a bag-lady with the biggest shopping cart ever. A sizable percentage of that baggage comes from the experiences of youth, those formative years when everything seemed daunting and overwhelming. Family is a large component of this weight but high school and junior high loom large in my legend.

That’s why I was caught off guard when I looked at a web page of my high school classmates from the class of ’69 and saw the large number of folks who have already died (about 50 out of around 650). While this percentage isn’t huge, it still seems like a lot for folks in their early sixties. I know it will grow larger with each passing year. That really hit home with concrete evidence of my own mortality.

I remember hearing about Kim’s death in the late seventies. She was found hanging in a jail cell tripping her brains out on acid. She had hung herself with her belt. Neil was killed in a car accident. But these recent deaths were from more natural causes. I googled them for their obits and found out a little about their lives as well as their deaths. Studious David had run a bookstore in Seattle before his number came up and sexy Sarah had worked for a lumber company for 40 years then finally retired and died the same year.
 

These facts are neither earth-shattering nor startling. In fact, of the other living classmates I found online some moved away and some stayed in Ohio, had gotten married, divorced, had kids or didn’t, were prominent or impossible to find. Some others, like me, had even come out as queer. 

The ways they died weren’t particularly noteworthy either. They include the ways all of us will probably go. Marcia died from breast cancer, Donna succumbed to complications of lupus and with Carol it was Crohn’s disease.

Then I realized the truth: the kids who made my life a living hell as well as those who made it worth living were simply people, totally blown out of rational proportion because of the pressures and lack of perspective that are part and parcel of youth.

None of these folks caused me to feel inferior or less than the person I truly was. Even my misguided, neglectful parents didn’t do that intentionally. I still can’t figure out exactly what it is about being young that can make some people mean and heartless. When I read about the bullying that still happens at that age, I don’t find more clarity.

But I can find greater compassion. We all do the best we can with the tools that are available to us at the time. Can I humanize and forgive those who were imperfect actors in this short, one-act play called life? At this point, I think so.

Here, Queer and Becoming Visible

Just 118 years after Oscar Wilde’s arrest for sodomy, the LGBT struggle is finally being validated as a worthy cause. The news is full of LGBT issues, from a lesbian military widow being denied spousal benefits, queers being thrown out of restaurants, denied marriage venues and wedding cakes, anti-gay prom efforts in the Midwest and the Associated Press Style controversy over whether the words husband or wife should be used for same-gender couples. Even Obama refers to us with some regularity, linking Selma and Seneca Falls to Stonewall.

This is not to imply that we are winning these battles, actually, in many instances, the backlash has become stronger. Soul-numbing slights have been an expected occurrence for queers for centuries. But it takes public validation for many heterosexuals to be able to see the forest through the trees. And, as in the Black civil rights struggle, people are coming of the woodwork claiming they supported us all along. Well, they say that hindsight is 20/20 and that is definitely preferable to total blindness.

In the bad old days, as an inveterate leftist, mostly what our community faced was invisibility. Bringing up the subject of our oppression would sometimes elicit accusations of “bourgeois decadence” or in some way imply that we were diverting attention from class and racial struggles as though we didn’t occupy places in all other groups.

When a brave non-queer stood up for us, more often than not the comment would have been preceded by an “I’m straight but…” disclaimer. Even in the early gay pride parades straight folks could, more safely, employ the option of marching together as “straights for gay rights.”

But we have persisted and in the geological timeframe of historical change. Will we eventually see full equal rights in this country and perhaps even in this world? I can only live in hope. Still, we have to brace ourselves for the end game struggle. The laps directly before the finish line tend to be the most draining and exhausting of the entire race.

Closeted in the 21st Century

It still happens and not just in junior high school. LGBT people live double lives even today. My sister called me the other night so I could watch Jodie Foster come out publicly at the Golden Globe Awards. Anderson Cooper declared his gayness just last year. If it is still difficult for actors and media people to live proudly in the open, there must be a high degree of prejudice surrounding regular folks.

I have been completely out since 1970. Saying this is not meant to toot my own horn. In many ways this decision has caused me a whole boatload of suffering from outright job loss to social ostracism. I didn't want to be a token lesbian for the world to see, but I felt that I had to be. My rationale was that if I had learned anything from past persecution such as what took place during the holocaust, it was that huge groups of people can really despise you and those same huge groups can be wrong. I didn't ask to be born on the other side of the bed, or to be Jewish for that matter, it just happened.

The queers I have met who remain closeted are good people. I am in no position to pass judgement on anyone. An African-American woman I used to work with took two full years to come out at work even though about a third of her coworkers were openly gay and experiencing no problems. It was more difficult for her to make this move because, in her culture, there tends to be more religion and less support. She is in a more vulnerable position.

 A new friend I met in an predominantly heterosexual but alternative environment is a clandestine lesbian. Her language of origin is not English and she is from another part of the world. I respect her very much but still have trouble with this decision, perhaps due to some failing of my own.

I am certainly well aware of what it is like to be openly other in a society that prizes conformity and uses ridicule and contempt as weapons to maintain it. 

I wonder how straight people will learn of our rainbow of diversity if the most introverted and frightened among us remain hidden? Don't these closeted ones realize that Audre Lourde was telling the truth when she said, "Your silence will not protect you?" And Lorde was African-American and, according to her "biomythography," "Zami: a New Spelling of My Name," openly queer since the fifties.

Perhaps my need to have everyone be living openly is a selfish analysis. I can neither assess another's life decisions nor the cost of speaking out for individuals whose experience is different from my own. The best I can do is help to create a world of, not just tolerance, but acceptance, a place beyond the sad, and outdated artifacts of guilt and shame. Until then, I'll just keep in mind that, at any given time, we all do the best we can.

Newsflash! Lesbians are Women

In this day and age the title of this post seems ridiculous to have to justify. Of course lesbians are women. You would think this bit of information is quite obvious but, reading the articles about women and their/our issues, this point gets lost. It would be impossible to itemize the deluge of writing about "women's issues," that pours out from keyboard across the country, which excludes queer women, placing us outside their purview.

As a current example, examine the sections of that ever-popular leftist online news source, The Huffington Post which, quite recently, added the section, "Gay Voices." They had a "Women" category but everybody knows that "women's issues" involve men: dating them, marrying them, making babies with them, looking attractive for them, conversing with them, you get my drift. Articles about females very rarely include any references to those of that gender who are queer. In "Gay Voices" finally we see some articles about lesbians specifically. We take it for granted that those could never be applicable to any kind of universal human condition. After all what could we possibly extrapolate from a bunch of queers about life in the USA?

Alternet approaches the situation a bit differently. Under their Rights category they have separate sections for Civil Liberties and Gender. Queer rights pieces can and do occupy either of these classifications. But when the article is specifically about "women" the issues of lesbians are not dealt with. Smaller online news sites don't have categories at all. But that decision, which, depending on how it's approached, can be viewed either as a glaring absence or a window onto a less discriminatory future, doesn't seem to help much with inclusivity.

The film industry has a similar take. In "Women's Films," that particular genre that feature a group of women, the writers will sometimes install a token dyke, much in the same way they insert a woman of color. But you can be assured that the lesbian's character development and personal issues will get short shrift compared to the other characters in these movies.

What the world has yet to come to terms with is that lesbians are women. Perhaps the fear of the queer that was instilled in my generation will be carried within each member until death. But, on the bright side, there are girls being born every minute. Hopefully they will grow up in a society with fewer limitations on all their decisions including those regarding gender.

Friend Selection: Do I Know Too Many Jews?

Birds of a Feather?

I have been thinking a lot lately about the process of selecting friends. I don't know if I'm good at it, I think for the large part, I let them select me. Still, when I view them as a group there are some common themes. Yes, I do know a lot of Jews, tons of childless people, a good number of queers and an overwhelming amount of civil-service workers. Throw in a handful of starving artists as well. Almost all of my friends seem to be from lower middle class or working class families, who have backgrounds somewhat similar to mine.

Obviously, I never set out with a set of guidelines for friends, the results just evolved. It all seems random like it just happened. Friendship, like lovership is surrounded by an aura, a mystique. But clearly, the people we gather around us are folks we are drawn to for a myriad of reasons.

The Jewish dynamic can be a bit unsettling. I grew up in a neighborhood near Cleveland that was about 85% Jewish. This did not evolve through cliquishness, but was a natural consequence of "gentleman's agreements" that limited the places Jews were permitted to live. I despised the insular nature of this singular, ethnic community and couldn't wait for the time when I would try my luck in the, reputedly quite Anti-Semitic world. So why, in adulthood, do I return to my roots so often in the friendship realm?

The Jews who made up my world left deep marks on my psyche. Not just because of history and sad tales of persecution but due to cultural styles, modes of expression, ways of looking at life and both interpreting and expressing it to others. In later life, I was forced to come to the conclusion that, in spite of my best efforts, I am a terminal Jew. People of all ethnicities who appreciate my humor, my observations, my glass half-empty perspective gravitate towards me. Those who find it annoying, overly analytical or too negative head for the door.

Oppression has a language all its own. It's not a upbeat idiom but we learn it by heart when we are young.The more oppressed people are the thornier and more difficult they tend to be. Not because they are inherently inferior, but because they are more damaged. I don't think this is, in and of itself, a bad thing. Would you choose to eat bland food at every meal? Many Americans do.

The upside to a heritage of oppression is that we need each other more. This explanation applies to differences in gender orientation and socioeconomic class as well. The class thing is especially difficult to sort out. I tend to experience more working class people as more open, less what we used to call, snotty. When I worked at the San Francisco Water Department I would get into conversations about everything from laundry detergent to unrequited love.The topics were not necessarily deeply introspective but there was a free-flowing exchange of information that was not coated with suspicion and trepidation.

At the Main Library, people with master's degrees were circumspect. You were expected to keep your mouth shut and climb, baby, climb. In the striving class, to expose yourself is to give weapons to the potential enemy. The "appropriate" subjects of conversation are based upon work. Unless you found someone you could really trust you did not talk about real life experience. I found the walls that co-workers intentionally placed between one another jarring and upsetting. I was never acceptable in the upper middle-class world that I had worked so diligently to enter. My role was that of the square peg being relentlessly hammered into a round hole. Fortunately for me, those corners never got shaved off or worn down. I must be made of harder material than I'd previously imagined!

The War on Queers

More and more crazy pastors, ministers, even Louis Farrakhan are no longer satisfied with simple ostracism and condemnation of LGBTs and are now advocating internment in concentration camps and even the death penalty for non-gender conforming people in the USA. Like the war on women, the war on queers has been, of late, consumed with renewed vehemence and vigor. So much so that even prominent progressive theorists like Chris Hedges, are writing about that war.

It is a relatively new and welcome development to have heterosexuals write seriously about the Queer Struggle. One that signifies we are finally making it into the main stream of civil rights ideology. Bullying, suicide, gay parenting issues and all kinds of job discrimination cases are more in the news spotlight than ever before. They are not happening more often than before but are now receiving more critical attention.

Obama's "evolution" on same-sex marriage is part of the reason for both the push for civil rights and the backlash against it. But the biggest reason for this outbreak of culture war vituperation is the same one we saw in Germany in the thirties. The tanking economy along with rising prices (food, gas, sales tax) is a pressure-cooker for hatred of all sorts. When folks in desperation turn to their twisted notion God, he tends to tell them lies about who the real enemy is. The more "Christian" our country becomes, the more fear and hate its citizens seem to want to perpetrate.

As harassment of LGBT folks in small town and rural USA becomes more open and explicit, ordinary life becomes more difficult. Yes, there are places like New York City and San Francisco and other urban centers where things are relatively unchanged. As Reverend Otis Moss III does quite eloquently in this sermon, it is imperative that we expose and fight against what is happening to our people and get the word out that non-gender conforming and gay people are neither the enemy nor the ones who have brought our country to the brink of financial ruin.