When I was a "fag" on the junior high playground, getting punched hurt even when I saw it coming. So too with Maine this past week.
Like many, I was dispirited but not surprised when we lost. The rights of minorities (gays especially) generally don't do well when put to a popular vote. And the opposition's central message-that gays want to influence schoolchildren-remains as effective as it is sinister.
The message conjures up the image of gays as child molesters-a myth debunked but never fully extinguished.
A slightly less sinister (but still false) version portrays us as anti-family and anti-morality. Still another falsehood is that we're trying to "recruit."
Then there's the underlying truth that sustains the myth as plausible. Yes, of course marriage equality will affect what children are taught in schools, because if same-sex marriage is legal, they will naturally be taught that it's legal. That it's an option for consenting adults who want it. That women sometimes fall in love with women, and men with men, and live happily ever after.
We should not shrink from saying these things, but we do. No doubt, the ugliness of the sinister versions-not to mention our opponents' penchant for quoting us out of context-makes us nervous about discussing the truthful version. And that's surely one lesson of this loss: the closet is still powerful, and our opponents use it to their advantage.
But we will not go back in the closet again.
We will keep telling our stories. We will keep showing our faces. We will keep getting married, even if-for now-Maine doesn't legally recognize our relationships. We will not go back in the closet again.
And though we've lost this particular battle, we will continue to win the war.
On the same day that Maine voters took away marriage equality, Detroit (where I live) elected an openly gay City Council President. This, in a city that's 84% African-American and where churches exert considerable political influence. The rest of the country hardly noticed, but Detroit defied several stereotypes on Tuesday.
His name is Charles Pugh. A popular newscaster before running for City Council, Pugh was actually endorsed by both the Council of Baptist Pastors and the AME Ministerial Alliance. They knew he was gay and they endorsed him anyway.
One could argue that Pugh was endorsed-and won-because of name recognition. Detroit elects all nine council members at-large, and the top vote getter automatically becomes council president. It's a dumb system in several ways, and in the past it has resulted in famous but incompetent council members-Martha Reeves, of Martha and the Vandellas, leaps to mind. (Incidentally, in this year's primary Reeves was voted out, and in the general election voters overwhelming approved a referendum for council-by-district.)
But even if Pugh's landslide can be attributed to sheer popularity, it sends an encouraging message about the way the world is changing. Being openly gay is no longer an absolute bar to getting public support. And even those who regularly oppose us will sometimes let other factors trump whatever makes us scary otherwise.
Meanwhile, the more they know us, the less scary we become.
It's unfair and unfortunate that we need to work harder than our opponents to win. They win by exploiting fear, which is easy to do when you're in the majority. We win by building relationships-by letting voters know who we really are. That takes time.
So our opponents have a soundbite edge, but we have a long-term advantage. The closet is crumbling.
In the wake of the Maine loss, we will catch our breath and press on. We will continue to live our lives; we will keep speaking our truth. We will stand up in the firm conviction that our love is real, and valuable, and worthy of equal treatment under the law.
Because whatever legal roadblocks they may put in our way, we will never go back in the closet again.
6 Comments for “Maine, Detroit, and the Closet”
posted by Bill Herrmann on
Thank heavens someone has come out and said it. The anti-marriage folks in Maine presented teaching about gay marriage to kids in school as something not only sinister but something that will happen in the future if they don’t stop it now.
Well why didn’t we blankly admit that not only will gay marriage be taught about if it becomes law it’s being taught about right this very minute by their highly vocal and visible opposition to it. They’re the ones who are bringing it up. Schools don’t exist in a vacuum; the kids and teachers are already discussing it. Why didn’t we just plain assert that there’s nothing wrong with teaching about gay marriage, since there isn’t.
posted by TS on
And that is what makes being gay a technology. Nobody can say that being aware of and being open that I’m gay has made my life any better than it would have been if I were unable to conceptualize such a possibility, but now that it’s here, it’s stuck. Now everybody who happens to grow up with homosexual feelings has seen and heard enough to realize that he or she is gay. Regardless of whether they live in Iran, where they face the noose. Regardless of whether they live in mid-Africa, where their government considers them a Western conspiracy to import AIDS. Those people would have been better off never finding out. And, if some kind of singularity comes to rights and identities technology as it will eventually come to mechanized technology, we too will have been better off not knowing. But too late for that now. I just hope it all turns out okay.
posted by Amicus on
“sinister” – perfect word choice. [although you have a problem with the lead]
TS, ‘technology’? You mean something like Chomsky’s “Manufacturing Consent”.
posted by Jerry on
We should never have shied away from the scare tactic that we would be teaching children about “gay marriage”. It is also a fact that the schools in Maine can still teach about “gay marriage”. Same sex couples can marry in all of the states bordering Maine as well as the Canadian province that borders the state. There is nothing that prevents a teacher from telling a class that. It’s just information on the legal status of family groups. We should have stood up as bold as brass and said that if heterosexuals want to teach the children in school about the sexual aspects of marriage, then it would have to include all possible sexual practices that are legal. That, of course, was the lie implicit in the whole anti-gay campaign.
posted by Alex on
Regarding Mr. Pugh, in addition to name recognition another reason that he was elected is that he has not often (ever?) publicly addressed BGLT issues or stood against the homophobia of many African-American churches. It’s a baby step forward, but a step nonetheless.
posted by Carl on
“Now everybody who happens to grow up with homosexual feelings has seen and heard enough to realize that he or she is gay. ”
I doubt it. Many people who have homosexual feelings will always deny what they feel. Even if they see or hear about gay people they will just say, “It’s not me.”
I don’t see how hearing more about homosexuality has made life worse for gay people. Even when homosexuality was unspoken, many still sensed what they felt, and they still denied it, as they do now.