We are often told, especially by gay-left organizations and leaders, that we cannot go it alone. To achieve our political aims, we must form coalitions. What they do not tell us is that they seem willing to play down the most important objective of the movement - marriage - to avoid offending our coalition partners.
This latest bit of folly has come out of the recent 40th anniversary commemoration of the original 1963 black civil rights March on Washington. At that march, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his famous "I Have a Dream" speech.
The National Gay & Lesbian Task Force, the standard-bearer for the gay left, contributed money and personnel to the march. NGLTF's executive director, Matt Foreman, spoke to the rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.
What did Foreman do with his unique opportunity to speak to our coalition allies? "On behalf of an incredibly diverse gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community, " he opened, "I thank you for inviting us ... to walk with you on the road to jobs, peace and freedom." Foreman acknowledged "there are differences" between gay-rights and black civil-rights activists, but he did not say what they were. Instead, he passed over this unpleasantry by asserting that "what we agree on far outweighs our differences. "
As examples of agreement, Foreman cited support for "full equality" for "everyone, " opposition to "hate violence, " and support for "forceful and affirmative action" to end "racial oppression. " The first is so vague it says nothing. The second is an apparent reference to hate-crimes legislation, which will accomplish nothing of substance for gays. And the third is not a gay issue at all. So the areas of agreement among the civil rights groups offer gays little beyond warm words.
Foreman held up the example of the political right, who "know how to set aside their differences." They have mastered the art of using wedge issues, he said, to "fracture us. " He ended with a plea to "walk proudly together to defeat our common enemies. "
There was not one word in Foreman's platitudinous speech about gay marriage. Yet, after the elimination of sodomy laws, marriage is now the gay issue. He didn't need to harangue the crowd about it, but he needed at least to mention it.
It is obvious why Foreman left it out. Polls show that while Americans overall oppose same-sex marriage by perhaps 15-20 percentage points, black Americans oppose it by a margin of 65-28 percent.
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Even among black leaders there is opposition and equivocation on gay marriage. |
Even among black leaders there is opposition and equivocation on gay marriage. Martin Luther King III said recently that he wasn't sure how he felt about the issue because he works with gay leaders and "some of them have not formed an opinion on the issue of marriage." Oh yeah? Which ones?
Apparently, gay leaders on the left have given "our allies" a pass on this critical question. Is this the "wedge issue" that Foreman refuses to discuss with the progressive coalition because it might "fracture us"?
Even at a special mini-rally honoring Bayard Rustin, the now-deceased gay man who organized the 1963 march, gay equality seemed an afterthought. Rustin's role in the 1963 march was downplayed because of the homophobia of both black civil rights leaders and their racist opponents.
Frank Kameny, an early gay-rights pioneer who attended both the 1963 march and this year's commemoration, went to the mini-rally honoring Rustin. Kameny describes the people who marched to the event honoring Rustin as "a raggle-taggle gaggle of people advocating everything but gay issues - Cuba, [Howard] Dean, D.C. representation, Palestinians, Get Out of Iraq, and so on - but nothing gay."
NGLTF is right that we need political allies. Gays make up perhaps three to five percent of the population. But even if every last progressive in Congress voted our way, we'd still lose. For that reason, gay Republicans have been emphasizing the necessity of working for change within the Republican Party. A coalition of gays and fair-minded Republicans, if it ever materialized, could finally secure substantive equality.
But suppose a gay Republican stood before a Republican convention and gave the following speech:
"On behalf of an incredibly diverse gay community, I thank you for letting us walk with you on the road to low taxes, less regulation, and a strong defense. Sure, we disagree about some things. But we will set aside our differences with you because what we agree on far outweighs our differences. We all favor equality and oppose violence and think abortion is terrible. We will not let the left drive a wedge between you and us by discussing our differences or by trying to persuade you on them. It is critical right now that we think only of what we agree about and walk together proudly to defeat our common enemies. "
He would be hooted out of the gay movement for that speech, and rightly so. He would be called a traitor to the gay-rights cause. He would be excoriated for presuming to speak "on behalf of the gay community" in such an obsequious way. Yet with a few changes in wording (among other things, substitute "jobs, peace, and freedom" for "lower taxes, less regulation, and a strong defense"), that is the speech Foreman gave. Foreman's omissions and obfuscations are even less forgivable than that gay Republican's would be since Foreman was speaking to our putative friends.
Sometimes friendship means challenging your friends on the things that matter most. Instead, like Bayard Rustin four decades ago, what matters most is getting pushed into the closet.