Among the most annoying, if not the prime annoyance on its own, for anyone who advocates for any minority’s rights are those people not of those groups and have none of the attendant life experiences yet explain to those who are members what their lives were like and what their experiences have been.
I know some very well meaning white people in an organization to which I had been a founding member until recently. My exit occurred after the leader of the group explained to a woman of color why she was not correct in her perception of how people of color are treated locally because she had only grown up in the area and had not done the extensive reading the leader of the group had, and that I did not understand the Gay experience of which she was an ally for pretty much the same reasons.
She was not advocating for people as they were, but as she perceived them to be, and that is how she approached things.
Many have been the times when advocating for Gay rights in general and Gay student rights in particular I would be scheduled to speak at a meeting after a series of people wanting to deny these rights began by professing their innocence and purity by letting everyone in the room know, “I don’t truck with no homosexuals, don’t know any, have none in my family, and don’t associate with them in any way, shape, or form”, and then launch into telling the audience what Gay people think, say, and do, and why.
They confessed total ignorance of their subject and then launched into dissertations about which they just informed their audience they had no knowledge.
I have been told authoritatively after recounting an experience to illustrate a point that that isn’t how it was because I may have spent 18 years in Oklahoma City and had a few interesting Buckle of the Bible Belt moments but I had been born in Massachusetts, so, I really didn’t know about living in a red state, and the editor of my life in the state in which I live now proceeded to explain my time in Oklahoma to me and what he had heard roughly about Oklahoma during my years there and its politics on a podcast or two.
I, unlike the events at a rally one night, haven’t been attacked at a demonstration in L.A. by police horses, was never thrown in jail for a weekend for being gay in public, was never in the bar raids I was in, was never attacked and assaulted with leather bound Bibles during a Pride Parade by a famous local celebrity pastor and his congregation in Southern California, and never had my job threatened because of Gay student advocacy because the laws in Massachusetts protect me from that.
The fact that these events did not happen in Massachusetts but out of state over a period of a quarter century seems a detail apparently hard to grasp.
Somehow, where I was born negated where I had lived.
When I came out to my parents it was after a lot of soul searching and self discovery. I had had to separate what Gay really was from what I had been led to believe it was by people with as much knowledge as I had. There were some things that simply were not me and others that were to some degree, and it took some time to realize there was no model Gay man. You were Gay as yourself.
I didn’t need to start wearing dresses.
When I began my journey out, my parents being Boston/Irish Catholic, went through a bit of Catholic guilt as being Gay was still not that easy to accept some 45 years ago, and they wanted to know if it was something they did that caused this or what. They were victims of the popular and religion promoted propaganda. They did not know how to get a good grasp on things and went to a counselor to find answers.
After a few sessions, the counselor asked me to come in for one session to answer questions in a monitored atmosphere that was guaranteed to be awkward for all concerned. Two Boston/Irish Catholic men, one Straight one Gay, were actually going to discuss sex out loud, possibly a lot of Gay sex stuff, with one man’s mother and the other’s wife, and another woman I did not know in the room. My mother had moved along in acceptance quicker than my father who did come around a great deal over time, but with residual Catholicism.
At one point my father said that what made the acceptance so hard is that he just could not accept the terrible things Gay people enjoy doing.
And then the moment came that actually influenced every encounter in my future that was similar.
“Rubicund of visage” my father, when asked, listed the immoral acts he had heard of like he was foreseeing the future interests page on Grindr.
When he trailed off, the counselor calmly asked my father if he got that list from a Gay person or from other straight people, and followed the lowering of his head with the simple question, “Have you asked your son what being Gay is for him and not your friends?”
On future occasions I always asked the politician or religious leaders what the source of their information was as I would like to approach things from an informed point of view as this gave me the advantage of having facts while they had to defend their beliefs which in reality they could not.
Women, Racial Minorities, non-heterosexual minorities are all told what their experiences are by those who have no clue, and are treated, not according to realty, but how others think realities is.
I was actually accused in a pubic meeting of just using Gay student rights as a political, pawn because there was nothing about me that was Gay. I didn’t lisp, mince when I walked, or wear any female articles of clothing. I was a straight man making political hay.
My boyfriend at the time did not agree.
Getting as many Gay rights as we have finally gotten, the rights all men are endowed with by their creator and no one should have to fight for, was not an easy fight and not only were we aware of the cost of the fight, but we had experienced the conditions we were fighting and knew only too well what we should have and the cost to live without it or fighting against it.
When SCOTUS killed Roe, immediately, without any pause for people to deal with that decision, Clarence Thomas brought up the possibility of doing the same to Marriage Equality.
Legal sanctioned marriages come with the right to file joint federal and state tax returns, joint bank accounts, receiving a marriage rate or family rate discount on life, health, car, and liability insurance, and more.
This is why citizen taxpayers wanted marriage. Not for any religious detritus.
Losing rights is a horrible concept.
And considering the battles fought and the cost in people’s energy and lives up to this point and knowing pre-rights conditions (I moved from Oklahoma to Massachusetts, I known there are differences in citizenship) this is not acceptable.
There is concern in the Gay Community about Thomas’s idea, and many are speaking up about it.
One such person is Marco Rubio, a conservative, cisgender, Heterosexual male. He understands that this potential loss of won rights is a concern for the Gay Community, but, he is also certain that the Gay Community is confused as to what it wants and is willing to be our voice.
The House passed the Respect for Marriage Act last week, and as it heads to the Senate.
After the Supreme Court decided to overturn Roe v Wade, red states began passing Bills and gleefully welcoming those Trigger Bills with the alacrity of the covered wagons in the 1889 Oklahoma Land Run, and reasonable people saw the brakes needed to be applied.
Senator Marco Rubio sees the fear of losing Marriage Equality, as it does not affect him a “non issue.”
Yeah To him.
Well at least for now, until he goes back and reads the actual language of Jim Crow laws. I have a copy of a law book containing them that I bought at a used book sale in Oklahoma City, the capitol of the only state in the Union with Jim Grow written into the state’s Constitution, which lumps Hispanics in with the “Coloreds” as they are not, well, totally white.
“I don’t know why we’re doing that bill, there’s no threat to its status in America.”
Does he so easily dismiss Clarence Thomas and his statement he wants to look at it again.
But it was when he continued and spoke for the Gay Community letting the public know, and us, the Gay Community along with them, what Gay people are really concerned about, and it is not the loss of our hard won rights. His words let me see how wrong we all have been wasting our time getting human and constitutional rights when we just long for the days when gas was lower than a dollar and we could enjoy getting physically attacked, denied housing and healthcare, and being treated like second class citizens even though we pay taxes .
“But I know plenty of Gay people in Florida that are pissed off about gas prices.”
And here I am with a bicycle and an electric street scooter, but no husband.
According to Little Marco, though, since I don’t buy much gas so my cost is always low, I am the most fulfilled Gay citizen I know.
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