This article from today’s NY Times Magazine, looking at the Christian-centered anti-gay-marriage movement, depresses me.
For [anti-gay-marriage Christians], the issue isn’t one of civil rights, because the term implies something inherent in the individual — being black, say, or a woman — and they deny that homosexuality is inherent. It can’t be, because that would mean God had created some people who are damned from birth, morally blackened. This really is the inescapable root of the whole issue, the key to understanding those working against gay marriage as well as the engine driving their vehicle in the larger culture war: the commitment, on the part of a growing number of people, to a variety of religious belief that is so thoroughgoing it permeates every facet of life and thought, that rejects the secular, pluralistic grounding of society and that answers all questions internally.
How do you communicate with people who have such a completely different world view from your own?
”My concern is the health issue,” said Evalena Gray, an activist in southern Maryland. ”I want to get these people away from AIDS, out of that unhealthy lifestyle.”
Then wouldn’t you want to support gay marriage? Monogamous marriage, particularly? Even most gay people weren’t thinking about gay marriage in the 1970s, and that’s when HIV first started to spread. How is keeping the status quo going to change the number of people seroconverting? And haven’t you heard of protected sex? I get so angered and frustrated by people who don’t know how to think.
When I met [Lisa] Polyak [a lesbian who is raising two children in a committed relationship], she told me how, when she first testified before a legislative committee, an anti-gay-marriage activist, a woman, confronted her with bitter language, asking her why she was ”doing this” to the woman’s children and grandchildren. Polyak said the encounter left her shaken. A few days later, as I sat in Evalena Gray’s Christmas-lighted basement office, she told me a story of how during the same testimony she approached a blond lesbian and talked to her about the effect that gay marriage would have on her grandchildren. ”Then I hugged her neck,” she said, ”and I said, ‘We love you.’ I was kind of consoling her to some extent, out of compassion.”
I realized I was hearing about the same encounter from both sides. What was expressed as love was received as something close to hate. That’s a hard gap to bridge.
How do we bridge this gap? I used to think that conversation was the way to do it – that if I could sit down one-on-one with someone like Evalena Gray, and have a calm conversation in which she and I explained our views to each other, that my appeals to logic and compassion couldn’t help but win her over. Actually, I still think it can help. It requires not a lecture, but communication based on empathy – putting yourself in another’s shoes and “understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing” that person’s “feelings, thoughts, and experience.” People don’t like being lectured to, so in order to change people’s minds, you have to communicate with them on their own terms. And even if they don’t admit to agreeing with you, your words can leave some impression on them.
Barring that, though, sometimes I think the best move is to focus our energy on the moderates, those who are more open-minded and more amenable to rethinking their position on this. And I also sometimes think it’s best to focus on civil unions, if calling it a different name will garner more support. After all, calling it “marriage” isn’t going to give it any more legitimacy in some people’s eyes than calling it a civil union; if the goal of calling it “marriage” is to give us social legitimacy, then sorry, that’s not going to do it. People who oppose us and think we’re evil will continue to do so. Why waste our time trying to make people like us when we’d be better off focusing on the pragmatic goal of getting solid rights, whatever we wind up calling them?
“How do you communicate with people who have such a completely different world view from your own?”
You don’t. There’s no talking to the Evalena Gray’s of this world. Take it from someone who has tried for half a century!
And you don’t waste your time looking for “moderates” either, because there aren’t any.
What you do is state your position clearly and resolutely, holding your ground, and taking on the opposition by any means necessary.
This article is a living demonstration of the fact that the Log Cabinettes are more than a mere waste of time and energy. They’re an active impediment to clear thought and resolute action.
it’s pretty simple, i think. We have to wait until they die. The next generation will be more tolerant, and ditto the one after it. It’s a slow process, because after a certain age, you really can change a mass’s mind. You have to get at them while they’re younger, which is, in a sense, the gay agenda. The Real World and Queer Eye, etc., are doing far more good than bad, I think. Not for the present, but for the future.
Maybe it’s cynical, but i think it’s closer to reality than people who actually think sitting down and talking to a 40 year old activist will accomplish anything.
but i have to disagree with David on the LCRs. Unless David has a plan for Democrats to take over all three branches of government permanently, you have to concede that people working on both sides of the aisle is a necessity. I daresay LCRs have a great deal more fortitude than a group like HRC, blindly spewing talking points without a thought in their head.
For [anti-gay-marriage Christians], the issue isn’t one of civil rights, because the term implies something inherent in the individual — being black, say, or a woman — and they deny that homosexuality is inherent. It can’t be, because that would mean God had created some people who are damned from birth, morally blackened.
Interesting, since that’s actually a pretty concise view of classical Calvinist theology, the bedrock of a lot of Presbyterian and Baptist thought. They’ve gotten away from stating it quite so boldly, but the notion that God creates some to be saved and others to be damned goes back for centuries.
“And I also sometimes think it’s best to focus on civil unions, if calling it a different name will garner more support.”
It’s called a different name because it’s a different — and lesser — thing.
If we learned only one lesson from the civil rights movements of the 60s and 70s, it should be this: “Separate but equal” isn’t equal.
Civil unions are the equivalent of a seat at the back of the bus. Yes, it’s nice that we’re finally being allowed on the bus at all, but it’s not enough.
Perhaps we should make them all sit down and watch George Bernard Shaw’s “Androclese And The Lion” (or if they could bring themselves to watch anything as gay as a musical) the Richard Rodgers TV verision. It’s all about throwing Christian’s to the lion because they’re different and not ‘normal’ Romans.
I agree that we should not accede to being second-class citizens in any way.
We’re fighting for the capacity to commit monogamy. Doesn’t that say something enough to the “moderates”?
The political and judicial fight should be centered on equal rights, plain and simple.
We are not morally inferior and need not condescend to debate the point. I am gay; I am a believer; I celebrate liturgy; I am not conflicted.
I also think the younger generation will be the ones who provide the votes for equal rights. The hardcore Christians aren’t going to allow civil unions or ANY legislation granting “special” rights to gays. I read the article and all I could think was how deeply religious people suffer from some form of mental illness.
jon, the Democrats are irrelevant — and always have been. Like all in the “mainstream” they’re resolutely resistent to change of any kind.
Face facts: We’re outlaws. Always have been, and probably always will be. The changes that have taken place in this culture over the last 40 years have been significant yet marginal. I’m old enough to remember a time whn you could get arrested for dancing with someone of the same sex, and when gay bars in New York City had ruels about how close the customers were allowed to stand near one another. Any man seen picking up another man on the premises was thrown out and told never to return. You damned kids have absolutely no idea of what it was like.
The battles the post-Stonewall gay movement fought for have yet to be truly won. We’re under constant seige from an enemy that will not go away quietly. And then we’ve got AIDS on top of it. And for some Crystal Meth on top of that.
We cannot pretend that ANY politician or legal ruling will save us. Laws are broken every day and politicans are scum.
LIVE WITH IT!!!
And learn to FIGHT BACK!!!
Okay, David, how do you plan to “fight back” without using the government or the courts? Politicians and judges are the people who make and interpret laws. Getting wrapped up in anger and passion (which you seem to do a lot) is pointless if you have no practical method for achieving your goals.
And Keith, to play devil’s advocate: a gay civil union and Vermont and a gay marriage in Massachusetts are essentially the same thing: they both give all the state rights and responsibilities of marriage to same-sex couples. But federal law doesn’t recognize same-sex marriage, so, on the state level (which is where everything is happening right now), the distinction is useless.
“Separate but equal” was a real problem in the context of school segregation, because the thing is, the schools were not equal. Minority-only schools often had inferior resources, fewer teachers, fewer teaching materials, etc. There were real, practical differences. But there is no practical difference between a civil union and marriage.
I go to church (a very progressive one which welcomes and fully accepts gays and lesbians.) The minister at my church is himself gay and is married to a man. They are personal friends. It hurts me deeply when I read blank statements like “all I could think was how deeply religious people suffer from some form of mental illness.” That is not true of all of us.
I applaud and embrace every word of i.bendito’s comment. “The political and judicial fight should be centered on equal rights, plain and simple.
We are not morally inferior and need not condescend to debate the point. I am gay; I am a believer; I celebrate liturgy; I am not conflicted.”
There are some of us for whom our love and compassion are the universal spiritual language which binds us; transforming, anxiety dissolving, unifying love …
“Okay, David, how do you plan to “fight back†without using the government or the courts? “
We shoudl use them the way we always have — as props.
What we need to do is organize. And by that I mean starting from scratch as the HRC thinks gay rights are a photo op for Janet Fucking Jackson!
“Politicians and judges are the people who make and interpret laws. “
And do they live our lives for us? I THINK NOT!!!
“Getting wrapped up in anger and passion (which you seem to do a lot) is pointless if you have no practical method for achieving your goals.”
And what has being calm done?
Turned us all into fucking doormats.
I’m not quite sure what you were saying there. Can you elaborate? I still don’t understand how you plan to achieve things. All I hear is undirected anger.
Read Larry Kramer’s latest.
Better still call Larry Kramer.
Despite his fearsome reputation, Larry’s very nice. You can be seething with anger and nice too, you know.
Meanwhile I’m going to get more involved in local (L.A.) gay politics than I have been for the past few years and see if there’s anyone breathing out there.
All politics is local, you know.
New grass roots orgs need to be started. The NLGTF and the HRC are useless.
This is about MUCH MORE than Gay Marriage.
I’ve spent a fair amount of time on both sides of this conflict. And, i’ve had a good number of chances to see both sides slash it out in face-to-face debates.
Here’s something i’ve noticed…
The more scholarly the anti-gay Christian, the more likely they are to concede that homosexuality 1) is present in nature, and thus 2) it can be an innate trait from birth, but also 3) it can be a learned behavior. Homosexuality, to them, merely reflects humanity’s (and nature’s) “fallen” state.
Myself, i find it very, very politically dangerous to argue for homosexual rights merely because our urges are natural. That path, potentially, sells out such lifestyles as drag, fetish culture, and the other less-than-politically-marketable factions within our movement.
It’s wiser to argue for our civil rights on the merits of liberty.
rob@egoz.ort
David:
I was responding to your slur against the LCRs, and your rather crazed response had little to do with what I was trying to say. I have read Kramer’s latest essay (and I thought Toni Morrison’s foreward was quite lovely) and while I agree with him that the religious right would like nothing better than for us to disappear, I think Kramer is missing something: namely that we’re moving in a positive direction globally (look at spain, look at brazil, etc.). He sees the current backlash as the sign of the apocalypse, and I see it as the last dying gasp of a desperately out of date segment of society.
And if you think the political process isn’t the way to go, that’s your business. But you can’t claim that if we can gain from the political process (as I believe) then we don’t need people like LCR. We do. LCR is a great deal more independent and thoughtful than the Stonewall Democrats or HRC.
“I was responding to your slur against the LCRs, and your rather crazed response had little to do with what I was trying to say.”
I have not yet begun to slur !
(crazed as I am.)
The Log Cabinettes have contributed nothing save to the coffers of the boy-procurers of Thailand (a favorite pre-tsunami retreat.)
“He sees the current backlash as the sign of the apocalypse, and I see it as the last dying gasp of a desperately out of date segment of society.”
You say “potayto” — he says “potahto”
“LCR is a great deal more independent and thoughtful than the Stonewall Democrats or HRC.”
If speaking to Republicans is your idea of “thought” and craven apologies for defending those who want us all dead is your idea of “independence.”
I would love to believe as Jon does and as my boyfriend does that the currently extremely loud and looking to be successful anti-gay movement is a product of a dying generation. But I don’t. Because if it’s dying why are so many young people going Republican (the party that uses the hate so well to get votes) ? Seriously. If the generation of bigotry is dying… why is there a rise in evangelicals. It can’t be just old people becoming born again.
I guess I feel pretty fucking scared these days. Thank God I live in NYC.
The latest from BLOGActive
Well looky here — Tim and Beverly LaHaye have a gay son!