Day two of the Prop. 8 trial was History Day. Professor Nancy Cott testified about the history of marriage, and Yale's Professor George Chauncey took the stand to review the way gays have been treated historically.
Chauncey's testimony, in particular, impressed me. The irrational fear that homosexuals will molest and somehow recruit children is a regular feature of anti-gay bias. Historically, homosexuals were believed to have no control over their sexual urges, and that put innocent children at risk. While this notion neither has nor had any basis in fact, and while heterosexuals are far more likely to actually abuse children, it is a fear that has an ancient and exasperating pedigree.
After hearing Chauncey's testimony, the Prop. 8 commercials that were entered into evidence looked even more unfair and chilling, even to those of us who know all too well the groundless fear they exploit. But Chauncey's testimony helped to explain something else, something more important that today's somewhat more civilized vocabulary might obscure.
When the L.A. historian Stuart Timmons was staying with me researching his book, Gay L.A., he showed me the L.A. Times archives he could access, dating back to the early parts of the 20th Century. But he told me that at first, he wasn't sure there were many articles about homosexuality; he could not find more than a handful. He knew there were thousands of criminal cases, beatings and deaths from the court documents he had been reading. Did the mainstream press just not cover those stories? Was it a political bias at the historically very conservative L.A. Times?
Then he realized that he was searching for words and phrases he was used to using: "homosexual" and "gay" and "sexual orientation." But those were not the words journalists would have used prior to our own time.
Try it for yourself. If you have access to any database of news stories up to about the 1960s, see how many articles you can find about homosexuality using the words you know to describe sexual orientation.
Than try using these: "deviant;" "degenerate;" "pervert."
That is the way homosexuality was both understood and reported (when it was reported at all) in days gone by.
Those are the words, and the preconceptions, that would have been dominant, if not exclusive in the minds of the single demographic we can most reliably count on to vote against us today - seniors. Those who grew up in the 1930s and 40s and 50s would have, first, avoided any possible discussion of such an unpleasant and impolite subject as homosexuality. That is how the closet - the don't ask, don't tell of its day -- accommodated the times.
But denial on such a wide scale has to begin fraying at the edges. And when homosexuality did come up, as Chauncey so vividly described -- in criminal trials, bar raids, and mass arrests - the reporting had a condemnatory force built-in. The police arrested a dozen sexual perverts; a high-profile degenerate was found in a love nest; a bar owner lost his license because his business catered to deviants.
It is no surprise that so many older voters simply cannot stomach a vote for our equality; the surprise is how many have been able to get past that uniform view of our supposed depravity. That residue of our inescapable immorality shaped their entire consciousness about us.
The radically changed vocabulary and conversation about homosexuality over the last three decades is the most profound change that our opponents have to fight against. There is still no shortage of people who willfully misunderstand homosexuality. But they do that against the knowledge that other people believe differently. That was virtually non-existent in the world Chauncey described. If you can't take the immorality of all homosexuals for granted, you have to justify blanket rules somehow. We will see, soon enough, what justifications the other side has.
2 Comments for “Deviant. Degenerate. Pervert.”
posted by Jim on
Excellent piece. I noted similar language usage when I was researching how gay people were represented in 1940s-60s films and novels.
I do think that the simplicity of Harvey Milk’s message rings true, in that we change hearts/minds — including seniors — through individual relationships. My parents, now in their 80s, were racist, homophobic, conservative [southern white] christians for most of their lives. Then along I came, a big ol’ queer, and their attitudes began to change. When they met my partner [now of 17 years], who is a black man, things changed more. At this point, my parents support Obama [more than I do], and they both adore my partner. When I come across my man and my mom giggling in her kitchen, I know I’ve fallen through the looking-glass.
posted by Regan DuCasse on
I did just as Link has suggested because I was doing research for a literary project. In my research, I also found an equivocal obsession with black sexuality as a means of justifying JIm Crow.
Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdahl did a famous study “An American Dilemma” about the differences in perceptions between blacks and whites in the Jim Crow south and found that while blacks were concerned with fairness in employment, housing, and education as well as justice and protection from casual violence, whites expressed paranoia regarding sexual congress between blacks and whites.
Their words were identical to the notion of that.
If the opposition to equality really knew their American history, they would find that they echo the very worst of those who supported the cruelest institutions against their fellow men.
From slavery to the Holocaust, disenfranchished minorities have a great deal in common. No one’s history is identical, but it bears serving the historical context of what white segregationists said about blacks AND Jews for that matter.
Sexual myth, disinformation, fear and anxiety are all similar.
So much so that casual contact is risky for gay men, as it was for black men if they were near the perceived target of their supposed lust.
This is why this trial is so important.
Psychologists, historians and other witnesses were brought into the courtroom during Brwn vs. Brd of Ed. to inform on the pernicious damage that segregation did to black children.
It wasn’t just the separation, it was the demonizing of their attributes that was the problem. Being treated AS inferior, constantly and persistently told you are a problem to society at large and that you’re a doomed person in the eyes of God, is a powerful emotional abuse that gay children are just as at risk of.
Those of us familiar with this history, who have studied the similar and consistent tactics utilized to describe a minority like gay people know it’s familiar and useful to those opposed to equal treatment under the law.
I can understand why that coward William Tam claimed that he’d be in danger.
His own words are inflammatory, derogatory…and without merit.
He knows why gay people would be angry. He’s the provocateur and the material in which he expresses this view and the forum in which it’s exposed is out of his control.
That’s why the importance of the courts, and the discourse it allows.
The public would see for themselves and understand how the process of hate can permeate and hide behind civilized ads and usage of children as human shields in which to hide behind the rationale for discrimination.
His words and actions are appalling and he knows it.
In earlier years regarding landmark, important civil rights cases, we didn’t have the technology perhaps, and the public was hard pressed to form their opinions by watching proof and evidence as why the courts favored equality.
Rather than assume that the only thing that formed the final decision was opinions and not evidence, NOW we also hear the oft repeated words:
NOT ‘activist judges’.
No doubt that the circuit judges that have ruled in our favor have been called that.
And the cases have mostly been won precisely because the evidence of the opposing side was weak and relied heavily on inflammatory rhetoric, not evidence to their claims.
At any rate, the conflation of sexual demonization isn’t exclusive to gays. Gay men in particular. Nor is the exploitation of the female counter part.
Black women were used for the prurient interests of white men as surely as lesbians are for those of straight men.
It would be much easier to point this out to the public if they were able to witness this trial for themselves.
Okay, so…all we can do is get our information from third party observations.
Better than nothing.
But the opposition has a lot to answer to, and they are hating that.
They really are.