For another, they set up a toll-free phone number for us space junkies to call and listen to the astronauts talk. I did that, several times. Just to hear Sally Ride. I mean, wow. The first American woman in space. Space, the final frontier. A woman astronaut.

A woman astronaut who got asked ridiculous things like, “do you cry when things go wrong on the job” by my beloved colleagues after she was named to STS-7, never mind she had a Ph.D. in phucking physics. From fucking Stanford. And she helped develop the robot arm. My colleagues can be such idiots.

OK, but that was 1983 you say. How really different is it now? Quite, actually. For one thing, the United States doesn’t even have a shuttle program anymore, and depends on the Soviet Union … erm, I mean Russia, to get astronauts to the space station. And my colleagues pretty much ignore the whole thing anyway. I can probably count on my two hands how many know that Suni Williams is up there right now, and probably on only one hand the number who know she’ll be the station commander in September.

But Sally. Sally Ride. The name, the woman. Space. Sally was the ground communicator for the 2nd and 3rd shuttle flights, flew for a second time in 1984 and was set to fly for a third time when Challenger — the very shuttle she flew in both her space missions — exploded. NASA named Sally to the commission to investigate the accident, and then later to do strategic planning in Washington.

But politics and science don’t mix very well. Kinda like religion and science, actually, so Sally left and went off to do science, with a particular aim at bringing more kids, particularly girls, on board. She still worked with NASA on the side, and was named to the commission investigating the Columbia accident in 2003 — the only person to serve on both.

Oh, and she was a lesbian. We found out about this because the obituary that she and her 27-year partner, Tam O’Shaughnessy (also a scientist) wrote mentioned Tam as her first survivor. Hell, we didn’t even know Sally had cancer, and now we find out she was a lesbian too?

Good thing they wrote that obit, though, because NASA used its own. It doesn’t mention Tam.

But damn, some of us said, why the hell did she wait until after she was dead to let us in on this secret? Isn’t Sally Ride the very kind of person we want to show the nutjobs that we are not only just like everybody else, but in some cases we are way better than everybody else?

Well, yeah. But Sally didn’t see it that way. I don’t know what discussions went on behind closed doors between her and Tam (although I’m sure there were plenty), but I can guess at what kinds of things may have helped her decide not to come out publicly. Do you cry when things go wrong at work?

Sally wanted to do science, not give lessons on how it is that a lesbian can be America’s first female astronaut and be so fucking brilliant the rest of us should just fall down at her feet. Sally wanted to promote science in a country where half of it — oddly enough the same half that would condemn her to hell for her “lifestyle choice” — doesn’t get that science isn’t a matter of what you decide to believe. Sally wanted to get more little girls interested in science, not fend off ridiculous accusations that she’s a dyke child molester — accusations that my colleagues were bound to take just as seriously as anything she could say to the contrary.

In short, an out lesbian Sally Ride could never have accomplished what she accomplished because she would have been too busy dealing with both the idiots who think lesbians are women who hate men and those of us on our side who think famous lesbians should spend all their time in the spotlight talking about how great it is to be gay.

And that, my friends, is just so fucking sad it hurts to think about it.

Instead, I came away with my point of view expanded to encompass the successes and challenged of the LGBT movement on a wide range of issues, and a better understanding of how the successes and challenges of the LGBT movement mirror those of the progressive movement.

The diverse panel included: Maya Rupert, Federal Policy Director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights; Brad de Guzman,  Co-Director of Programs for theNational Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance; Brad Jacklin, Public Policy and Government Affairs Program Manager for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force; and Mara Keisling, Executive Director of the National Center for Transgender Equality. To a person, the panelists acknowledged and celebrated the success of the marriage equality movement, and voice concern for the potential limiting impact of that success on the work being done by LGBT activists and organizations on a number of issues the panelists saw as intrinsically linked to LGBT issues.

Mara Kiesling summed up the two responses best, calling the president’s announcement and the shift in public opinion towards supporting marriage equality “miraculous,” while worrying that the cost of that success may have a negative impact on the movement “for decades to come.”

Those changes seem miraculous, considering that neither a sitting president nor a majority of Americans supporting marriage equality seemed remotely possible just ten years ago; not impossible, just unlikely to happen anytime soon. If you’d asked me then, I’d probably have said I didn’t expect to see either in my lifetime. Even when considered in the context of more than fifty years of the gay rights movement in America, it raises a question that E.J. Graff: How did we win so much so fast?

Fifty years ago, being gay put you beyond the social pale. You could be savagely beaten, kicked out of public spaces and private clubs, arrested, fired, expelled from your family, and scorned as a pariah. Today, lesbians and gay men are all but equal, with full marriage rights in view—supported by President Barack Obama in action and words. How did we win so much so fast?

It’s a natural question after any major social change, especially for those hoping to apply the lessons elsewhere. How did smoking go from ubiquitous to despised? Why did feminism and black civil rights get so far, while unions gasped? Which made the difference: the low-lying social movement or the high-altitude legal and legislative efforts, the messy masses or the charismatic leaders? Historians can spend decades combing through public and private records before settling on their answers.

It’s a natural question, as Graff says, because we look to the successes of other movements for lessons we can apply to our own activism. Linda Hirshman, writes at the Daily Beast, “As progressive movements of every stripe falter and grind to a halt—who’s occupying Occupy Wall Street these days?—it pays to pay attention to how the gay movement broke the spell of right-wing triumph and progressive tragedy.” Hirshman cites the importance of local action and “ the deep, disciplined structure” of the marriage equality movement as reasons for its success.

There are certainly lessons to learn and apply here. As I wrote last month, the president moved on marriage because the movement made him do it.

We did that.

Bob Borosage led his post with Martin Luther King’s famous quote: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” As I’ve written before, that bend doesn’t just happen. If the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice, it’s because many of us have working hard to bend it in that direction. If the president is lending his hands to that work, even symbolically, I welcome him. There is no such thing as “too little, to late” in that work.

If the president had to take a public position, because public and political pressure forced his hand, it’s because our movement made him do it.

In the immediate sense, it was apparently the comments by Joe Biden (and to a secondary extent Education Secretary Arne Duncan) that forced the president’s hand, leading to his historic announcement in support of same-sex marriage. But in the deeper and more long-lasting sense, the movement made him do it. That’s exactly how politics on the left is supposed to work.

Franklin Roosevelt had the famous phrase: “Make me do it.” He was speaking to activists for the labor movement or some other faction fighting for a slice of the pie, and he was saying to them, don’t expect me to back you out of the kindness of my heart, even if in my heart I agree with you. This is politics, and you have to create the conditions that make it possible for me to support your cause. And that’s what the LGBT movement did.

How did the movement make him do it? That’s probably the most important lesson for the progressive movement to come out of marriage equality movement’s success. Progressive must realize that, as Richard Socarides wrote, “words are important, but we have to demand action from our friends.”

Clearly, until today, the President had been making a political calculation—one that had outlived its usefulness. In some ways, it’s amazing that he was able to maintain a not-yes-but-not-no position for as long as he did. While it was a useful electoral strategy, changes in public opinion and in the culture have created a new reality. Obama’s political advisers badly underestimated the extent to which the marriage issue would remain at the forefront of the national discussion—and the determination of those of us who work to keep it there.

So while this is an important moment in civil-rights history, it is also an important moment in political history—in which the lesson, for the gay community and, perhaps, for anyone advocating for change, is that words are important, but we have to insist on action from our friends.

For a long time, Democrats have taken the gay vote for granted. Political consultants tell Democrats that gay and lesbian voters have nowhere else to go, and thus, in effect, can be counted on, so long as politicians pay lip service to the issue. But that is old thinking, out of touch with the new reality of the gay-rights movement. While I know that most gays and lesbians would have supported President Obama, both with their votes and with their financial contributions, no matter what he did on the issue of marriage equality, we were also not going to take “no” for an answer on the most important civil-rights issue of our day. That meant holding the President’s feet to the fire—first on the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and then on marriage equality.

Last year, Governor Andrew Cuomo, of New York, decided to take on the issue of marriage equality as the first real test of his governorship. When people saw the leadership he demonstrated—in which victory wasn’t assured, and which depended on persuading people who were not already persuaded—they saw what was possible when politicians were willing to take a chance. From that moment on, you knew that Obama’s evolutionary days were numbered.

Yet, there is a potential price for that success. It may come at the expense of other concerns of equal or even greater concerns to LGBT Americans and communities across the country. Indeed panelists spent much of the discussion highlighting those concerns.

Some are being addressed by legislative efforts. Keisling mentioned the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, Jacklin pointed out that LGBT organizations have been very successful in developing public policy at the federal level, to be implemented by government agencies, on issues like hospital visitation and  HUD’s equal access rule.

Maya Rupert spoke about the new threat against advances made at the state and local level. The biggest challenge is at the local level, where cities like Nashville, TN, have extended local non-discrimination ordinances to include gay, lesbian and transgender workers. Rupert said state legislatures, like the Tennessee legislature, are “getting creative” by crafting and passing laws like that effectively nullify local non-discrimination ordinances without explicitly addressing discrimination against LGBT workers. Rupert cited Tennessee’s “Equal Access to Intrastate Commerce Act,” which prohibits local non-discrimination ordinances that go further than state or federal law.

Ben de Guzman underscored the work being done on immigration, by gay activists like Jose Antonio Vargas and the young DREAMers who have dared to “come out” as undocumented. Guzman cited both — along with LGBT and civil rights organizations banding together to protest New York City’s “stop and frisk” — practice  examples of the need for “two-tiered” communication across and between communities, and the importance of LGBT activists “making the connection” between issues like immigration and LGBT equality.

While panelists agreed that the progress made on marriage equality is both “miraculous” and important, they all shared concerns that success “super-zoomed” marriage, as Keisling put it, to the top of the LBGT movement agenda. This, Keisling, has the effect of “sucking all of the oxygen” away from other issues, like those above.

“We’ve trained our community to engage in checkbook activism,” Keisling added. The impact on fundraising, Keisling and other panelists agreed, has been that lions share of donor money has gone to organizations working on marriage and state organizations fighting anti-marriage equality ballot initiatives, resulting in a movement focus on the concerns of “mostly white, middle class queers,” to the detriment of work on other issues. Brad Jacklin further emphasized the impact on fundraising, suggesting that it’s not merely a “major donor” problem. The “$35 dollar donors,” Jacklin said, were often more likely to ask why his organization was doing work issues like poverty or prison reform than the “$100,000 donors.”

At that point, a member of the audience stood up and asked a question that focused the discussion and, for me, underscored the challenge that both the LGBT and progressive movements are struggling with.

“Why,” someone asked, “is it so hard to make the case to donors?”

As I listened to the panelists’ answers, it occurred to me that the difficulty in “making the case” to donors lies in answering the question that lies just beneath the surface of their concerns: “What does this have to do with me?” It’s a question that cuts across the lines race, class, gender, orientation that cut across both the LGBT and progressive movements, giving rise to so many other questions: “What does ‘stop and frisk’ have to do with me?”; “What does the DREAM Act have to do with me?”; “What does the ‘war on women’ have to do with me?”; “What does prison reform have to do with me?”

Answering those questions requires doing the delicate work of addressing privilege within our movements.

No one likes to be reminded of their privilege — whether it’s white privilege, heterosexual privilege, male privilege, or class privilege — because acknowledging that privilege commutes responsibility for that privilege, and the day-by-day, moment-to-moment decision to perpetuate that privilege or know — while knowing the consequences it imposes on others.

Whether we asked for our privilege or not — acknowledging it, if we don’t want to be responsible for perpetuating it and the injustice it perpetuates, means changing how we are in the world, day-by-day and moment-to-moment.

That is difficult and never-ending work, to be honest. It’s easier not to acknowledge it. It’s even easier to pretend it doesn’t exist. In fact, the first essential rule of perpetuating privilege is to pretend it doesn’t exist. That becomes difficult when the voices of those who can confirm the existence of that privilege, because they (a) do not possess it and (b) live with the consequence of its existence every day, become unavoidable.

And, the truth is that even though almost all of us enjoy one or more of the privileges above (especially if you consider class or economic privilege on a global scale), we also live with the consequences of nothaving one or more of the privileges above. The lack of one privilege can mask the existence of the other. (i.e. “What do mean I’m privileged? I’m barely making ends meet, just got laid off, and don’t have health insurance because my spouse and I aren’t married and he/she can’t carry me on hers, etc.”) That privilege doesn’t go away, but it becomes something taken for granted, as natural as breathing out and breathing in, so that we don’t take it as privilege anymore.

Perhaps a simpler answer acknowledges what de Guzman referred to as the “intersectionality” of diverse issues and experiences. Jacklin summed it up as “understanding that we’re in this together.”

Jacklin’s response echoed the “large-heartedness” President Obama defined in his speech to Congress on health care reform.

That large-heartedness—that concern and regard for the plight of others—is not a partisan feeling. It’s not a Republican or a Democratic feeling. It, too, is part of the American character—our ability to stand in other people’s shoes; a recognition that we are all in this together, and when fortune turns against one of us, others are there to lend a helping hand; a belief that in this country, hard work and responsibility should be rewarded by some measure of security and fair play; and an acknowledgment that sometimes government has to step in to help deliver on that promise.

The challenge facing the LGBT movement and the progressive movement are the same challenge facing the country as a whole; to “expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, andremind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together,” as President Obama said in his Tucson speech. It hasn’t changed much since Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote from the Birmingham jail to remind us, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

Fortunately, progressives have a long history of understanding all of the above.

Think about where we are now and how far from the birth of this country, when its promises were reserved for a narrow portion of its population. Yet, its principles provided the basis for ever progressive movement that had as its goal the extension of those promises to the full spectrum of the population.

And yes, they were progressive movements. By the very nature of their work, they could hardly be otherwise.

… From the abolitionists movement, to the labor movement, to the suffragists movement, to the civil rights movement, to the feminist movement, to the LGBT movement; every progressive movement that has advocated for change “as opposed to wishing to maintain things as they are.”

They were and are driven by individuals lending their strength and their hearts to bending the arc of the universe towards justice, because they are comprised of people for whom the status quo is the opposite of justice and people for whom injustice — even though visited upon others, and even though it afforded them some privileges — is intolerable.

And in each case they were opposed by people for whom the status quo and its injustices were and had to be the natural order. People who were (and yes, I love to pick on this quote) standing athwart history yelling “Stop!”

They were yelling “Stop!” as every progressive movement above marched forward, pushing the envelope of change and expanding the the qualifications for full citizenship in this country and full membership in the human family. They were yelling “Stop!” as every one of those movements marched passed them towards freedom, enfranchisement, and equality.

They are still yelling. And we are passing them by, on our way to the same destinations. We may not all  have reached all of them yet, but we’re closer than we were, and some of them are already in sight.

Perhaps that was what was most encouraging about the LGBT panel at the end. I came expecting a sort of victory celebration, and was instead reminded that our strength is in the shared history that not only makes it possible for us to have honest discussions about the challenges we face and the differences among us, but also means that doing so ultimately makes us stronger.

Don’t get me wrong. I was thrilled to hear the news; especially since it was accompanied by a poll suggesting that Maryland voters would vote “overwhelmingly” to uphold a law allowing same-sex marriage (passed by the legislature and signed into law by Gov. Martin O’Malley). It was even more heartening that a report on the poll said that the shift could be attributed “almost entirely” by a shift towards support for marriage equality among African American voters. That the NAACP announced its support for marriage equality just a few days earlier made for a pretty inspiring week.

As a black gay man, a husband, and father, I’m hopeful. As one who hasexperienced and written extensively over the years about the roots and intensity ofhomophobia in African-American communities, I’m heartened, but also skeptical.

Here’s the important bits from the report on the Maryland poll.

- The movement over the last two months can be explained almost entirely by a major shift in opinion about same-sex marriage among black voters. Previously 56% said they would vote against the new law with only 39% planning to uphold it. Those numbers have now almost completely flipped, with 55% of African Americans planning to vote for the law and only 36% now opposed.

-The big shift in attitudes toward same-sex marriage among black voters in Maryland is reflective of what’s happening nationally right now.  A new ABC/Washington Post poll finds 59% of African Americans across the country supportive of same-sex marriage.  A PPP poll in the critical swing state of Pennsylvania last weekend found a shift of 19 points in favor of same-sex marriage among black voters.

While the media has been focused on what impact President Obama’s announcement will have on his own reelection prospects, the more important fallout may be the impact his position is having on public opinion about same-sex marriage itself.

Maryland voters were already prepared to support marriage equality at the polls this fall even before President Obama’s announcement. But now it appears that passage will come by a much stronger margin.

When President Obama announced his support for marriage equality, there was speculation that the president’s announcement would catalyze a shift in public support that would “move the needle” further towards support for marriage equality,alter the debate in the states, and cause African American voters to follow his lead. Immediately after the president’s announcement there was some evidence that Obama’s stance on same-sex marriage would not cost him African-Americansupport or votes. And an early poll showed that 68% of African-Americans said Obama’s support for same-sex marriage “did not alter” their support for him. (Interestingly enough, 60% of independents said the same.)

All good news, right?

Right.

So here’s why I’m skeptical.

Historically Black Homophobia

As much as I’m encouraged by how much change President Obama seems to have catalyzed, I’m equally aware that there is much that a mere statement cannot change in a matter of days. Historically black homophobia is one of them, but not for the reasons one might think.

Let me make a few things clear from the start. African-Americans are not ”more homophobic” than anyone else; certainly no more homophobic than society at large. African-Americans as a group are not monolithic. There is no monolithic “African-American community,” “African-American family,” or “African-American church” that is representative of all of us. We are as varied and diverse as any other group. Thus, I try not to speak in singular terms about any of the above, but tend to speak in terms of “some African-American communities,” etc.

That said, the reality of homophobia in some African-American communities and institutions is undeniable. The vehemence of that homophobia, where present, has been noted. The history and deep roots of that homophobia is what makes me skeptical about the sudden shift towards support for marriage equality.

Six years ago, I reviewed Their Own Receive Them Not: African American Lesbians And Gays in Black Churches, by Horace L. Griffin. At the time, I wrote that if I had the resources, I would send a copy of Griffin’s book to every African-American minister in the country. I’d still do so today, if I could. There may not be as much of a need as there, but it certainly couldn’t hurt. If nothing else, those who read it might come away with a little more understanding about the roots and the impact of homophobia in their churches and communities.

Griffin starts by drawing on his own experience to explain the role Black churches, families and communities as “safe havens” for African-Americans, and the contradiction that these “wonderful institutions of support, nurture and uplift” are at the same time “resistant and even closed in treating gay and heterosexual congregants equally or, in many cases offering simple compassion to the suffering of gay people.”

But Griffin’s explanation of how the development of a particular brand of Black Christianity, popular sexual myths about Black people, and the anxiety of a nascent Black middle class combined to produce a virulent strain of homophobia.

From there, Griffin delves into an overview of American religious history that actually parallels with the one in Kevin Phillips’ American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21stCentury, detailing how many African Americans who converted to Christianity during slavery joined conservative denominations that were also big on biblical literalism/inerrancy. (Those Black Christians found ways to ignore or dispense with some biblical passages used to justify slavery, but more about that in a bit.)

What’s most intriguing is Griffin’s suggestion that this particular brand of religion combined with the popular sexual myths about Blacks at that time — that Black men and women were insatiable sexual savages, prone to predation, seduction and violence — and the strict sexual morality of the Victorian era, to produce Black churches and communities that still respond vehemently and even violently to the very concept of homosexuality let alone actual homosexuals in Black churches, families and communities. In fact, is the most cogent explanation I’ve heard yet of a reality that still tends to mystify me.

Following slavery, the racist attitudes that defined black men as sex predators caused black men extreme hardship and death. By appealing to the age-old stereotype that black men harbor an insatiable desire for white women, black men existed as targets for to be blamed for raping white women. Indeed as Paula Giddings notes, it was black women themselves who were identified as culprits for their own rape due to the purported sexual appetite that blacks had for sex. … Given the majority culture’s racism and sexual attitudes, African Americans soon learned that their very survival depended on distancing themselves from “sexual perversions.” Much of black heterosexuals’ anti-homosexual sentiment exists as a means of countering the perception of black sexuality as perverse in order to survive and gain respectability and acceptance by the majority. Thus, it is understandable that African Americans would approach homosexuality with more dread and disdain than others, often denying a black homosexual presence to avoid being further maligned in a racist society.

I’m reminded of my freshman year of college, when I “came out” in a very public way — during a debate with a traveling evangelist, who spent a week haranguing students from the university’s free speech platform. The news reached my hallway in the freshmen dorm long before I made it back at the end of the day.

The Resident Assistant for my hall, who was African-American took me aside when he saw me, to tell me that the news was all over the hall, and to ask if I was OK. I assured him that I was, and his response echoed all that Griffin outlined.

After expressing relief that I was OK (and that I’d come out to my roommate months earlier, and he had “no problems with it”), my R.A. sighed and shook his head. “Man, it’s hard enough being black,” he said, “but to be black and gay? That’s rough.”

It has been rough, and it is rough. It’s why conservative organizations like the “National Organization for Marriage” have been able to exploit successfully homophobia among African-Americans, despite being tied to a movement bent on rolling back civil rights protections. That’s been the sad irony of the Black vote for longer than I care to recall.

That kind of history just isn’t wiped out by a single statement, even from the first African-American U.S. President.

When a Leader Leads

Yet, I’m hopeful. Here’s why.

Change is happening. America is evolving towards justice on marriage equality, and African-Americans are part of that evolution. Part of the reason is because, as Joan Walsh writes, that’s what happens when leaders actually lead.

Now, I’m not going to argue that Obama’s turnaround alone caused this sea change. The arc of the moral universe has been bending toward justice on gay rights for a long time, and as I wrote last week, the president gave it an additional tug. There have been advocates within the NAACP working to make this happen for a long time, and they deserve a lot of credit. African-American voter opinion had already been trending in this direction, even if black voters had been less receptive to gay marriage than other demographic groups. There is also an emotional and personal component to the president’s stance that makes his moral suasion hard to replicate on behalf of, say, the jobs bill or the public option. (And let’s also remember it’s white voters who are most hostile on some of those economic issues, thanks to the divide and conquer politics of the GOP over the last 40 years.)

Still, it’s hard not to conclude that Obama’s words made a significant difference in the political course of this debate. Ironically, it was once critics of Obama who mocked the power of words, and specifically the candidate’s own oratorical gifts. Obama shot back at them many times.

What happens when a leader of Obama’s stature leads on an issue like this is that it creates space for other leaders to lead, like Rev. Otis Moss III of Trinity United Church of Christ, in Chicago, IL, who used an address to his church to read a letter he sent to a fellow clergyman regarding the president’s support for marriage equality.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Of course, Moss isn’t alone. In the last decade, a number of African-American leaders have come out in favor of LGBT equality on issues ranging from employment discrimination to marriage equality. Shortly after President Obama’s statement, four influential African-American leaders signed an open letter of support for President Obama’s “evolution” towards supporting marriage equality.

What’s most interesting is that at least one of those four leaders was influence by personal experience. Seven years ago, Al Sharpton launched an initiative to counter homophobia among African Americans. For Sharpton, the issue was personal. Sharpton was mentored by Bayard Rustin, the activist and strategist credited with organizing the 1963 March on Washington, who was “silenced, threatened, arrested, beaten, imprisoned and fired from important leadership positions, largely because he was an openly gay man in a fiercely homophobic era.” This month, by the way, marks the centennial of Rustin’s birth.

That same year, Sharpton explained he was influenced by someone even closer to home: his sister. Sharpton revealed toThe Advocate that his sister is a lesbian, and her experience inspired him to launch his initiative.

“My sister is gay. I understood the pain of having to lead a double life in the system [since] we grew up in church. She is gay, and she fought that perception in church while she embraced it in her private life.”

Of course, Sharpton’s 2005 initiative is one of many efforts to shift African-Americans towards support for marriage equality, and LGBT equality in general. In 2003, the National Black Justice Coalition announced a campaign to increase African-American support for marriage equality, and& counter conservative effort to exploit the issue as a wedge between African-Americans and Democrats. For years, the organization has sponsored events and published resources —& like Jumping the Broom: A Black Perspective on Same-Gender Marriage and LGBT Families of Color: Facts At A Glance — aimed at at informing and changing opinions among African-Americans on a wide rage of LGBT related issues. That work has been complemented by the work of state and local organizations, like the Maryland Black Families Alliance.

But perhaps the biggest impact happens, like Sharpton said, closer to home by people like his sister, yours truly, and countless others who make the often difficult decision to speak up and let those nearest and dearest to us know who wereally are. In 2007, a Pew Research Center report said that four out of ten Americans had close friends or relatives who were gay. Two years later, a Gallup survey showed that people who know someone who is gay or lesbian are more likely to support equality. That goes for African Americans, too — including the one in the oval office.

I tend to agree with Adam Serwer that the opposition to marriage equality among African-Americans is “wide, but for the most part not particularly deep.” I’d expand on that a bit, however. Opposition to marriage equality among Africa-Americans is wide, but not nearly as deep as it used to be. That change is due to the work of activists and organizations over a number of years, and the courage of ordinary people —like David Wilson, Alicia Health-Toby and Saundra Heath-Toby, and Nigel Simon and Alvin Williams — who put a “black face” on marriage equality every day in their families, churches, and communities.

Click here to view the embedded video.

When Leaders Are Led To Lead

This all goes back to a point I made when after President Obama made his announcement.

We evolved, and the country is evolving with us. If it’s politically safer to support marriage equality now, because public support for marriage equality has increased rapidly in a just a few years, it’s because we made that happen. We evolved and have brought the country with us, one commitment ceremony or PTA meeting at a time.

Two years ago, President Barack Obama was not quite ready to say, as he did Wednesday, that he supports same sex marriage, but he conceded at the time that “attitudes evolve, including mine.” In a question and answer session with progressive bloggers in October 2010, Obama was quoted by Americablog’s Joe Sudbay saying “it’s pretty clear where the trendlines are going.”

If the president was thinking of the trends in public opinion polls, his read was dead-on. Surveys by various national media pollsters have shown a consistent, ongoing trend toward support of same-sex marriage, with slightly more Americans offering support than opposition in measurements taken over the past year.

For example, a just completed national Gallup poll fielded May 3-6 shows 50 percent in support of same-sex marriage and 48 percent opposed, slightly down from 53 percent support a year ago. As Gallup explained, the latest result marks “only the second time in Gallup’s history of tracking this question” that support exceeded opposition.

We did that.

Bob Borosage led his post with Martin Luther King’s famous quote: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” As I’ve written before, that bend doesn’t just happen. If the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice, it’s because many of us have working hard to bend it in that direction. If the president is lending his hands to that work, even symbolically, I welcome him. There is no such thing as “too little, to late” in that work.

If the president had to take a public position, because public and political pressure forced his hand, it’s because our movement made him do it.

I came to Washington in 1994. It was the year after the Hawaii Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage launched the issue into the national spotlight, and the conservative right capitalized on the issue, declaring it “a major battleground of the 1990s.” The result was the Defense of Marriage Act, prohibiting the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages, and absolving states from having to recognize same-sex marriages recognized in other states.

Back then, marriage equality was an issue few gay organizations wanted to touch, because the “numbers” were abysmal. No matter how we looked at the polling results, they were overwhelmingly against marriage equality. It was unthinkable, then, that in less than 20 years we would see the day when a majority of Americans support marriage equality, and our opponents are in the minority.

Yet it happened. The trend on marriage equality is clear. It happened in without the support of a sitting president. It happened because our movement — like other progressive movements before — understood that creating change is the people’s job, and made it happen.

From where I stand, something more interesting is going on. We’ve examined ourselves and found a fundamental weakness: We placed too much hope and faith in the president. It was a mistake, but not because this president has somehow betrayed us. He’s done what presidents do: governed under all the stresses of competing pressures.

It was a mistake because we—not just the president—have to be the agents of change in our society. Electoral victories without sustained movements will never address inequality, poverty, or any of the major issues we face. Abolitionists gave us abolition, not Lincoln. Powerful movements focus on issues, not on presidents. The civil rights movement gave us voting rights for blacks. The suffragette movement gave women the right to vote. The gay rights movement gave gays the right to marry and put an end to “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.” Union victories created the modern middle class.

Increasingly, those who are engaging in this more interesting conversation are asking: How do we extend our electoral organizing beyond the elections?

This is a far more exciting question because answering it correctly will give us a chance at the real prize:building a society governed by progressive values and policies that move us all forward together.

Evolution, political or otherwise, doesn’t happen overnight. It doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It happens because the environment, political or otherwise, changes in such a way that means survival for those capable of adapting and extinction for those who don’t.

It’s great “when a leader actually leads” as President Obama did on same-sex marriage. But his “evolution” happened because individuals and organizations doing the day-to-day work of building and sustaining a movement changed the political environment. We made it possible, safe, and possibly even advantageous for a sitting president to endorse marriage equality, by changing our families, our communities, and the country. The movement didn’t force the president’s hand. We took the president by the hand, and brought him with us.

Political evolutions of the kind that “move us all forward together,” don’t happen from the top down. That kind of change doesn’t happen “when leaders actually lead.” It happens when leaders are led to lead. Led, that is, by people like you and me.

There’s a lesson for the progressive community in that. It’s something I plan to address in an upcoming post.

But the personal is almost always political. The more I thought about it, the more I saw the story in a political context; and the parallels between Romney’s prep-school bullying and the politics, policies, and tactics of present-day conservatism became clear.

The Personal

First, the personal. When people ask what growing up was like for me, I usually give them this thumbnail sketch: “I grew up a skinny, effeminate, nonathletic, bespectacled, black gay boy. In the south. During the Reagan era.” Invariably, they respond one of two ways. They shudder with the knowledge of what that experience must have been like for me, growing up in an extremely conservative region during an extremely conservative era. Or their eye’s grow wide with horror, and they ask me “How did you survive?”

How, indeed. It wasn’t easy. I usually tell people that about five minutes after I realized I was gay (around the age of 12 or 13) I looked around me and had another realization, “I’ve got to get the hell out of here.” But I didn’t get the hell out of there until years later. For most of my middle school years, and some of high school I was bullied, physically and verbally harassed, and psychologically tormented on a daily basis. Like another of Romney’s classmates, my attempts to speak up in class and participate were often meet with remarks that were the 80′s versions of Romney’s “atta girl.” One of the teachers even joined in sometimes. The physical and verbal harassment got so bad that I failed P.E. for a couple of semesters, because I refused to “dress-out.” That would mean going into the locker room. And since teachers rarely entered the locker room, It was like stepping into Lord of the Flies.

No one took scissors to my hair, but I could relate to the terror John Lauber must have felt, evidenced by the screams and tears described by others who witnessed the incident. I could relate to knowing what was coming, and the utter helplessness at being unable to stop it. I could relate to the horror of realizing that no one else was going to try to stop it, and knowing that the perpetrators would suffer no consequences.

Like Lauber, I never forgot my experiences. I never told anyone about most of it, because I learned early on that they would probably a) not believe it, b) minimize it as “boys being boys” or “just what kids do,” c) tell me to “just ignore it” or “toughen up, and d) even suggest that I somehow brought it on myself — that it was my fault, and that I somehow deserved it. After I heard all of that from my own parents, I gave up.

My experience mirrors almost exactly what the impact experts say bullying has on kids, and LGBT kids in particular. According to StopBullying.Gov, bullied kids are:

• more likely to experience depression and anxiety that may persist into adulthood;
• more likely to experience health complaints
• more likely experience decreased academic achievement.

A 2009 Yale study suggested that bullied students are 2 to 9 times more likely to take their lives. For LGBT students, bullying can increase the risk of self harm.

I grew depressed. I came home upset and angry. I invented excuses not to go to school. I was too afraid of the consequences of cutting school, but I faked being sick as often as I could get away with it. Sometimes the anxiety of going to school and facing it another day was enough to really make me sick.

Eventually, I became suicidal. I ended up in a therapist’s office not long after my mom heard me say that I wanted to take a gun to school, blow the other kids away, and then use it on myself. It probably saved my life.

The confidentiality of our first session made it safe for me to say to him, “If we’re going to do this, there are two things you need to know about me. First, I’m gay. Second, I’m not here to change. that.” Once he got over the shock of hearing that from someone so young, he said to me, “Why don’t we work on the whole person, and just let that part fall into place where it will.” He basically said to me “It’s OK.” He was the first adult ever to say that to me.

The Political

From personal experience, I know bullying is first and foremost about power. StopBullying.Gov defines bullying as a “unwanted or aggressive” behavior that “involves a real or perceived imbalance of power.” In fact, an imbalance of power is inherent in defining behavior as bullying.

In order to be considered bullying, the behavior must be aggressive and include:

An Imbalance of Power: Kids who bully use their power—such as physical strength, access to embarrassing information, or popularity—to control or harm others. Power imbalances can change over time and in different situations, even if they involve the same people.

Repetition: Bullying behaviors happen more than once or have the potential to happen more than once.

Bullying basically comes down to the old principle, “Might makes right.” Or, put another way, “the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.”

From the playground to prep school to the political arena, the old principles don’t change much. The old principles have become the ethos of contemporary conservatism. That’s why “bullygate,” as Jay Michaelson calls it, matters.

Finally, there is the clear linkage that Romney’s bullying draws between the meanness of the bully and the meanness of the latter-day conservative. Life is unfair, they say. Sometimes people are just losers. If they can’t afford health care, let them die. And if they can’t stick up for themselves, well, they deserve to get beaten up.

This is the ethos both of the bully and the bull-market ideologue: the weak, the poor, and the wretched probably deserve it. And in any case, better to let them suffer than to risk too much compassion or care-taking. I’ve got mine, and too bad that you don’t.

The “Some people are losers” sentiment itself echoes Rick Sanetlli’s infamous rant against subsidizing “the losers’ mortgages, and in favor of giving money to “the people who have a chance to actually prosper down the road.” It’s hard not to note with bitter irony that instead we subsidized, and are still subsidizing the bad bets of losers like JPMorgan Chase and Jamie Dimon. The “losers” are homeowners hardest hit by the very subprime debacle, foreclosure fraud, and rampant robosigning driven by Wall Street dealmakers like Dimon. The “winners” are guys like those working the phones behind Santelli, on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade, and like guys like Dimon himself. Santelli divides Americans into people who “carry the water” and people who “drink the water,” and its clear the latter could die of thirst for all he cares (Or drown with their “underwater” mortgages).

Santelli’s is not the only familiar echo. The ethos of today’s conservative right can be heard in the cheers of “Let him die!” from the audience at Republican debate, when Wolf Blitzer queried Ron Paul about the fate of an uninsured theoretical thirty-something young man. We heard it in cheers of the audience at another Republican debate, where Texas governor Rick Perry touted his record of executions. We heard it when Herman Cain joked about electrocuting undocumented immigrants. We heard it in the cry, “We are the 53%!”

We’ve heard the conservative ethos from Republicans in Congress. We heard it in the remarks of countless congressional Republicans, that the unemployed are “lazy,” drug addicted parasites simply to lazy to got out and get a job. We heard it when House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s speech on economic inequality focused on “how we make sure the people at the top stay there.” We heard it in Speaker John Boehner’s succinct response to question about the number of jobs the GOP’s budget cuts would kill: “So be it.”

The conservative ethos has its origins, in the conservative worldview described by George Lakoff, in which material wealth and well-being is an indicator of moral strength, poverty and want are indicators of moral weakness, moral strength is to be rewarded, and moral weakness is to be punished. That worldview forms the basis of what Sarah Seltzer called conservatism’s “victim-blaming script,” which has its own basis in what psychologists call the “just world fallacy.”

The process is simple. It begins with the assumption that outcomes in various situations are guided by some unseen, universal force of justice or stability — be it God, the Market, or both. That assumption gives rise to a tendency to “assign negative moral value to those who suffer.” Seltzer describes in detail how that process played out with the murder of Trayvon Martin, as conservatives not only convinced themselves that Martin “had it coming,” but tried to convince the rest of the country as well. The process can be and has been employed to blame victims of violence, rape, and bullying for their fates.

The assumption that wealth and power are indicators of moral strength and virtue make it easy to assume that bad things must happen to people because it’s what they deserve. The assumption that people deserve whatever happens to them makes it easy to dismiss broad injustices. Once we can safely, and in good conscience, dismiss broad injustices, it becomes even easier to perpetuate them.

Thus is the Bully Economy born.

The Bully Economy

Social activist “Mother” Mary Jones, borrowing from humorist Finley Peter Dunne, once said of her work, “My business is to comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable.” The Bully Economy, in which politics and policy are inform by today’s conservative ethos, flips this script — the already comfortable are further comforted, and the already afflicted are further afflicted.

The same “just world” fallacy that makes it easy to blame the victims of violence, rape, and bullying for what happened to them, makes it easy to blame the poor, the unemployed, and uninsured for their fate — and to deny any external, systemic causes of those conditions. Problems that have no systemic causes,it follows, don’t require systemic solutions. That’s where politics and policy come in.

From the “just world” fallacy, we go back to Lakoff’s definition of the conservative worldview:

Worldly success is an indicator of sufficient moral strength; lack of success suggests lack of sufficient discipline. Dependency is immoral. The undisciplined will be weak and poor, and deservedly so.

To understand the role of government in this worldview, let’s return to the bullying frame. Lakoff uses the family as a metaphor to describe the role of government in the conservative and progressive worldviews. Along the same line, I’m going to use the school playground as a metaphor to explain the difference between the role of the government as you and I probably understand it, and the role of government in the Bully Economy.

Bullying on sometimes goes unnoticed and unchallenged on the school playground, but ideally a teacher or school administrator who sees a bigger child bullying a smaller child will intervene. Whether the bigger child is kicking the smaller child off the monkey bars or shaking him down for his lunch money, the teacher’s role is clear: to stop the bigger, stronger children form taking advantage of the smaller children who can’t really fight back.

The playground rules in the Bully Economy are a bit different. Before, the teacher’s job was to keep the bigger, stronger children from running roughshod over the smaller, weaker children. Now, the teacher is more inclined to favor the bigger, stronger children. After all, protecting the smaller, weaker children would just impede the bigger, stronger children, and deprive them of the freedom their entitled to by virtue of their size and strength. Again, “the strong do what they will,” and “the weak suffer what they must. Hell, on this playground the teacher might even demand the smaller kid give the bigger, stronger kid his lunch money.

As Lakoff explains, when it comes to the economy this means promoting unimpeded economic activity, and “favoring those who control wealth and power” and “who are seen as the best people”; the “job creators,” the “producers” and such. Government regulations impede the right of those who control wealth and power to use that wealth and power any way they see fit. That especially goes for consumer protections and environmental protections, intended to protect the interests of ordinary citizens from violation by bigger, wealthier, more powerful “corporate citizens.”

The best citizens are rewarded with lower taxes. And since government shouldn’t do more than protect the country, promote unimpeded economic activity, and maintain order and discipline, tax cuts can be paid by reducing or eliminating social programs designed to help and protect low-income, middle- and working class citizens.

It doesn’t matter if unemployment has become a national emergency. It doesn’t matter if there are 3.4 job seekers for every job opening. It doesn’t matter if budget shortfalls (and balanced budget requirements) cause state and local governments to cut hundreds of thousands of jobs. Conservatives will vote down aid to states that might keep teachers and first responders on the job, even though the crisis on the state level is turning into a national unemployment emergency. (It doesn’t even matter that aid to state and local governments mostly helps private-sector workers.) doesn’t matter if, in the middle of all this, 230,000 people are about to lose unemployment benefits that are all that stand between them and destitution. It doesn’t matter that these people are merely joining the 490,000 who have lost unemployment benefits.

It doesn’t matter, government is helping the wrong people when it does all these things? Dontcha see? Taken to the extreme (which is where at least some very vocal conservatives want to take it), and the result is an economy and an America rendered unrecognizable.

No government except the police, courts of law, and the armed services.

No regulation of anything by any government.

No Medicare or Medicaid.

No Social Security.

No public schools.

No public hospitals.

No public anything, in fact. Just individuals, each looking out for himself, not asking for help or giving help to anyone.

Perhaps nothing better represents the Bully Economy conservatives would like to make America’s reality than the budget proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan, embraced by Mitt Romney, and passed by Republicans in the House and Senate.

Romney showed us his priorities with a budget that includes a 20% “across-the-board” tax cut that essentially requires across-the-board cuts to programs that serve and support the poor, as well as the working- and middle-classes. Romney showed us his priorities with a budget that preserves his 15% tax rate on capital gains and dividends, eliminate taxes on investment income for those earning more than $200,000 per year, and lower the corporate tax rate from 35% to 25%.

Romney showed us what and whom he is willing 10 sacrifice, with a budget that would require cutting non-defense programs by $637 billion in 2016 alone, and $6.5 trillion between 2014 and 2021. Romney showed us who and what he is willing to sacrifice with a budget that would shred the safety net, throwing 10 million off the benefit rolls for food stamps, and leave 30 million without health care coverage provided by the Affordable Care Act.

Romney showed us what and whom he is willing to sacrifice with his embrace of Paul Ryan’s budget. Romney showed us what and whom he is willing to sacrifice with his support of a budget that would end Medicare as we know it, and render America itself unrecognizable.

Most of all, Mitt Romney showed us his priorities by presenting and supporting budget plans that do all of the above without deducing the deficit, but actually increase it by $2.6 trillion

Conservatives like Paul Ryan define this budget — a “Robin-Hood-in-reverse” budget that literally comforts the already comfortable, and afflicts the already afflicted — as a moral document.

Romney’s tax plan would cut revenue by some $4.9 trillion over a decade, less some unspecified loophole closings. Millionaires would pocket an average tax cut of $250,000 and those making $10,000 to $20,000 per year would end up paying an average $174 more in taxes.

If Social Security and Medicare were protected for those near retirement, as Romney sometimes suggests, then the domestic side of government—everything from the FBI to food safety to Medicaid and food stamps—would have to be cut by over one half in 10 years. Romney can sell that plan only by denying its effects.

The Bully Economy reflects their ethos, their values, and their desire for an America where economic might makes right for those who who control wealth and power; “where the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”

Taking it Personally

Or do they? I’ve written about how desperation and despair have driven Europeans from Greece to France to refuse to be bullied into austerity. Dean Baker and Kevin Hassett, writing in the New York Describe a “Human Disaster of Unemployment” that sounds like a prelude to what man Europeans have already experienced. The impact of long-term unemployment, due to “de facto austerity” in the U.S., sounds a lot like the impact of bullying on its victims.

• Older male workers experience a 50 to 100% increase in death rates in the years following a job loss.
• A recent study found that a 10% increase in the unemployment rate increased the suicide rate for makes 1.47%, leading to an additional 128 suicides per year in the U.S.
• The duration of unemployment is the driving force in the relationship between joblessness and suicide.
• Studies have linked unemployment to increased risks of health complaints, psychological problems, and divorce.
• The impact is felt for generations, as children whose fathers lose a job when they are kids have reduced earnings as adults.

Ultimately, like bullying itself, the Bully Economy is a vicious cycle.

My own experience taught me one thing. Bullies don’t stop if you ask them nicely. They don’t stop if you give them what they want. They don’t’ stop out of the goodness of their hearts. They stop when people stand up to them, and refuse to be bullied or to allow others to be bullied.

It looks like Europeans have learned the same lesson. If our government trades “de facto austerity” for the real thing, my guess is that Americans will learn the same lesson; sooner, rather than later.

“Fixed expectations can kill relationships.”

“True dat.”

“That’s why I block you when you try to lock it down.”

“It’s FIXED expectations that kill. Expectations are necessary things, but they need to be mutable.”

“Touchy.”

There was more, I think, but it doesn’t matter. My point was that there’s nothing wrong with expectations, but we have to be able to let them go, let them change. Life just isn’t static. It’s fluid, and messy.

We work really hard at making sense of it, and often that means we put things in boxes, stick labels on ‘em. But circumstances are ever evolving, and sooner or later, those boxes and labels don’t fit anymore.

I suspect something like that may have happened to Cynthia Nixon. And now, because she experienced her own life in her own uniquely messy way — and talked about it — some folks in the “gay community” are a little annoyed with her.

OK, some of them are more than a little annoyed.

Hey, I get it. Cynthia said that for her, being gay is a choice, and boy, that just set the gay intelligensia off. “The bigots will pick that up and run with it!” they said. Sure they will. That’s what they do. But it really doesn’t matter to them. They already think it’s a choice, and no amount of us asking when they chose to be straight is gonna change that.

Here’s what John Aravosis wrote on his AmericaBlog Gay site:

If you like both flavors, men and women, you’re bisexual, you’re not gay, so please don’t tell people that you are gay, and that gay people can “choose” their sexual orientation, i.e., will it out of nowhere. Because they can’t. Every religious right hatemonger is now going to quote this woman every single time they want to deny us our civil rights.

But so what if it is a choice? Do we really want to let a bunch of back-asswards bigots define the boundaries of who we are and why? I don’t.

See, here’s what I think. I think that human sexuality, like the rest of our lives, is pretty fluid. I’m not saying we all float from absolute homosexual to absolute heterosexual, but there’s a degree of fluidity up and down the scale. Me, I’m pretty damn close to absolute homosexual, and I firmly believe I was born this way, that it’s hardwired into my system. But even I have been attracted to men, sexually. Well, to a man. One. I “chose” not to act on it. So, did I “choose” to be lesbian?

And maybe it’s not about “orientation,” or even the dreaded “preference” at all. Maybe it’s just that the qualities I want in a sexual partner are just pretty rarely found in men. This particular man had them, and I’m hard-pressed to think of another I’ve met who does. In fact, I can’t. Maybe I’m not really so “gay” as I am just really picky?

Here’s what Nixon, who was in a relationship with her male college sweetheart for 15 years — and has now been with her female partner for eight — said that so ticked off everybody, in an interview with the New York Times Magazine:

I gave a speech recently, an empowerment speech to a gay audience, and it included the line “I’ve been straight and I’ve been gay, and gay is better.” And they tried to get me to change it, because they said it implies that homosexuality can be a choice. And for me, it is a choice. I understand that for many people it’s not, but for me it’s a choice, and you don’t get to define my gayness for me. A certain section of our community is very concerned that it not be seen as a choice, because if it’s a choice, then we could opt out. I say it doesn’t matter if we flew here or we swam here, it matters that we are here and we are one group and let us stop trying to make a litmus test for who is considered gay and who is not. As you can tell, I am very annoyed about this issue. Why can’t it be a choice? Why is that any less legitimate? It seems we’re just ceding this point to bigots who are demanding it, and I don’t think that they should define the terms of the debate. I also feel like people think I was walking around in a cloud and didn’t realize I was gay, which I find really offensive. I find it offensive to me, but I also find it offensive to all the men I’ve been out with.

When it comes right down to it, I pretty much think everything is fluid, even, oh, say, rocks. They just change very, very slowly, like in millions of years. Some things change quicker. It’s pretty easy to maintain fixed expectations about a rock because short of an explosion or maybe a good volcano, we’re not likely to be around to see it change. But for more animate objects, especially human ones, we’ll see lots of change. Sheeit, Mitt Romney changes every few minutes. He says it’s just the evolution of his thought processes, although I’m sure he’d avoid using that word, but why isn’t that a choice?

I once hated Bruce Springsteen. I don’t even know why. But now I love the man (not sexually, though). Hell, he’s 60 years old and still rockin’ out. I could stubbornly cling to my earlier idea of Bruce, but my tastes in music have evolved, my mind has changed, and I’ve chosen not to cling to outmoded ideas.

So Cynthia Nixon slept with men and women and found that women were better. So what? I just don’t think we’re made to be stuffed into boxes, even three — gay, straight, bi — that would seem to define the possibilities of human sexuality but really don’t even come close. It’s just not that easy to do, and if you think it is — maybe you’re not so sure about your own choices in life. The bigots want everybody to be like them, and most of the time, I’m pretty darn sure it’s because they fear expanding their horizons.

Let’s not emulate that. Give Cynthia a break. All she did was speak her truth. She’s on our side, not the side of those who would have us disappear.

And that’s another annoying thing. The gay “lifestyle.” What the hell is that? As comedian Liz Feldman so aptly put it,

It’s very dear to me, the issue of gay marriage, or, as I like to call it, “marriage.” You know, because I had lunch this afternoon, not gay lunch. I parked my car, I didn’t gay park it.

Yeah, and I like to grill out. I don’t gay grill. I also read a lot, but I don’t gay read. I just read. I just grill. I just park the car. I just have lunch. And were I to get married (which, incidentally, is not something I would do), I would just get married.

Maybe that’s why I don’t like nouns. They get adjectives attached to them. I don’t like to call myself a writer, because it too often gets “gay” or “lesbian” or “political” or “bad” attached to it. Yes, I am a lesbian, and yes I am a writer, but the two aren’t very related, you dig? I prefer to say I write, because that’s something I do. I am a lesbian, and I write. Verbs, they get adverbs attached, but it’s not the same. I do, actually, gaily write sometimes.

I’m fine with being a lesbian, because that’s something I am, not something I do. It doesn’t come with a lifestyle or an agenda. It just signifies that I’m gonna find intimate companionship among members of my own gender, if, of course, you buy it that there are only two, but that’s a whole ‘nother column.

A lifestyle tends to be something chosen. You know, like living in a cabin on top of a mountain or living in a cute little house on the beach and all the attendant lifestyle matters that come with those choices. But I could be gay or straight living on top of the mountain or on the beach, and very little else would be different. Oh, sure, maybe I have more k.d. lang on my iPod than the average heterosexual woman, but so what?

Being a vegetarian is another lifestyle choice, as are having an iPod and dressing in drag. So is religion. Yes, religion. Religion is 100 percent a choice, and your choice about that is 100 percent protected by the constitution, unless you’re Muslim. Of course, it doesn’t actually have a Muslim exclusion clause, but it’s the standard interpretation among the otherwise strict constructionist extremists who think the constitution only deals with things that were available and in use in the late 18th century. Except of course for Rick Perry, who thinks the Constitution was written in the late 1500s.

But religion. Man, that’s a lifestyle. This group doesn’t eat meat, that group doesn’t drink coffee, this group doesn’t dance, this group doesn’t drink alcohol. And all the groups think they’re right, and everybody else is wrong.

I happen to think that as well. I’m right, y’know, that religion is quite possibly the source of all our problems, right after money, although religion and money do tend to go hand in hand. For some, money is religion. But the whole idea of an invisible god … well, let’s just say there are an awful lot of contradictions. And then there’s the deification of human beings. That’s a little much in my book. I bet I could get a buncha fools to follow me around and then declare I’m holy if I gave them enough wine and fish. I’m just sayin’.

But religion, man. Those religionists like to say we queers “recruit.” Seriously? Please. But what the hell is proselytizing if not recruitment by an unspellable name? And what about all this religionist effort to impose some arbitrary “moral” code on us all if not an agenda? And don’t even get me started on what’s “moral” and what’s not after the state of Kansas decriminalized “light” wife-beating.

See, I’m thinking all this bullshit about the “gay agenda” and the “gay lifestyle” and “recruiting” is just one big example of projection, because nobody does those any better than unthinking religious fanatics.

Now, I know that not all adherents of religions are like that, nor do all religions require stupidity as a prerequisite for membership. Buddhism, for example. In my limited experience with Buddhism, actually, I tend to think of it as less of a religion and more of an experiential philosophy. There really aren’t any deities to speak of, just as far as I can tell some interesting symbolic characters, some guy who lived a long time ago known as “the Buddha” who told everybody he taught not to believe a word he says until they’ve experienced it for themselves and a bunch of really peaceful, calm practitioners, some of whom have experienced more of what the Buddha talked about than others and spend a lot of their time teaching what they’ve learned. And saying not to believe it unless you experience it for yourself.

Not at all the same as some of the Christianists who encourage others to experience Lord Jesus in their lives and who, in my humble opinion, are just a tad bit delusional about what that experience was.

It is a bit of a lifestyle, although unless you consider peace and harmony with the universe an agenda, there’s not much of one of those. I know, some people do, mostly the aforementioned religionists. Me, I tend to think of peace and harmony with the universe as The Way Things Were Meant To Be before humanity got a little carried away with the free will thing.

I do have a personal lifestyle. It involves reading a lot, watching cop shows On Demand, being outside as much as possible, keeping my car in decent working order, keeping the cats fed and their litter boxes clean, some travel, staying up late because I work late, visiting friends and seeing the Buddhist Girl, who tells me not to believe a word she says unless I experience it myself, as much as possible. Oh, and gadgets. I love gadgets. And coding, which is poetry. I also like flying kites and running radio controlled boats. Very little of that has anything to do with my being a lesbian.

I also have a personal agenda, or, as I like to call it, ulterior motives. Those have nothing to do with you and never will. Some are directly connected to my being a lesbian, but again, not gonna mess with your life.

That whole “agenda” and “lifestyle” idea is just so foreign to me, really. It makes no sense, complicates things way too much. Involves too many people sticking their noses in things that have nothing to do with them. I’m not particularly fond of marriage, so I’m not gonna do that. Maybe you do like marriage, but don’t like gay marriage. Fine. Don’t marry someone of the same gender. Problem solved.

And please, don’t gay park your car or have gay lunch. It’ll just confuse people.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The combination of homophobia and the closet produces a lot of twisted people, including some who internalize the belief in their own inferiority and unworthiness…

This video, made possible by the end of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” is great example of the other side of that equation.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This story, and others like it, reminds of something I quoted from another blogger years ago, who put it much better tan I could. Since his blog seems to have disappeared, I’ll repost his words here.

It’s been said before, but it always bears repeating. Horace Griffin said it when he declared, “This black-church-sanctioned homophobia produces a lot of twisted black people,” in his book about black church homophobia. I’ve pointed it out myself, in reference to guys like Ted Haggard and Paul Barnes.

But I haven’t heard it put as eloquently as Bruce says it over Crablaw, in response to Dorothy Donahue’s letter to the editor in the Boston Globe.

If you hide your body inside a twisted hole for years, it will become twisted. If you hide your mind inside a twisted hole for years, it will become twisted. If you hide your soul inside a twisted hole for years, it will become twisted. You don’t have to be GLBT to understand that a mind, body and soul cannot live life inside a twisted hole.

If you want people to walk upright and straight, so to speak, you cannot cram them – any part of them – into a twisted hole. Your GLBT neighbor is your sister, your brother. If we forget their humanity, may humanity forget us, until we return to humanity.

Telling is the beginning of believing in and embracing your own humanity, and reminding others of your shared humanity.

But it’s important to remember that it’s just a beginning, as Adam Serwer wrote.

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is dead. But the fight for equality in the military is nowhere near finished. While the official end of DADT at midnight on Monday is a historic turning point, unresolved issues with the Defense of Marriage Act and military regulations mean that servicemembers and their partners in same-sex relationships will continue to suffer second-class treatment.

Stephen Peters knows what it’s like to live a lie, both as a servicemember and as a servicemember’s partner. In 2007 he was discharged under DADT after informing his commanding officer that he was gay. Peters had just reenlisted in the Marines—but he didn’t want to hide who he was anymore.

…As of Tuesday, Peters won’t have to hide his life from his co-workers anymore and neither will his partner. But many of the hardships that he and other same-sex partners of servicemembers have faced will remain, because of legal restrictions that prevent same-sex couples from receiving the same benefits that married, heterosexual servicemembers get. That includes health care benefits, help finding work, and financial assistance that eases the difficulty of moving and paying for a new home. Same-sex couples won’t be eligible for the additional pay given to partners when a servicemember is given an assignment that prevents his or her family from coming along. They won’t have access to family-support services provided by the military that often serve as crucial conduits of information regarding what forms of assistance are available and how to take advantage of them.

And, when a servicemember makes the ultimate sacrifice, his or her partner will be denied the same financial support that heterosexual families receive. Unless the two had children together, the partner may not even be the first to know about the death.

This is a moment to celebrate, certainly. But it’s also a reminder of how much is left to do. Martin Luther King famously said “Let us realize that, the moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” This is a moment to remember that it does not bend of its own accord

In other words, the man who said “Let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice,” would probably add that it bends not of its own accord, or because it can do no other — but because of countless hands reaching up to bend it towards justice sooner rather than later.

…Do we assume that justice has its own gravity that pulls our world, our country and our communities ever closer to it? Do we wait for that gravitational pull to finally take effect? Or do we become that gravitational force, actively pulling, pushing, and prodding our world, our country and our communities closer to justice?

“Telling” is bending the moral arc of the universe closer to justice.

I came to Washington about six months after “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was enacted. Its repeal is a reminder to me that while work we do as activists often feels like a Sisyphean task — we face defeat after defeat, suffer seemingly endless setbacks, and watch people in our community suffer injustice without remedy or relief — it wears away bigotry and justice in the same way a steady drip of water can wear away stone over countless years.

The same it true of the work of the countless people who contributed to the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” The stone of discrimination gave way because of that steady drip of activism. The same will be true of DOMA. The same will be true for employment discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered Americans. The stone will give way.

That long moral arc of the universe shifted close to justice today. For some of us it was an almost imperceptible shift. But for others it was seismic. We’re not “there” yet, as far as “justice for all” is concerned. Still, today is a day to celebrate how far we’ve come, and how much closer we are to that goal. Celebrate, and remember that the only way justice doesn’t prevail is if we stop working for it.

This post originally appeared at The Republic of T.

Submissive Wives & Gay Husbands

You’ve probably saw this coming already, if the title of this post is what drew you in to begin with. Part of the threat of same-sex marriage is that it both calls biblical gender roles into question, and undermines complimentarity.

But the article reminded me of something else. One of the reasons for the opposition to same-sex marriage is the potential of marriage equality to call gender roles more into question.

 

The threat of legal same-sex marriage, then, is actually doubled. It carries one step further the progress that’s lead to women no longer having to “submit to their husbands”; they might volunteer, a’la the “surrendered wife” model, but not many women have to marry and thus “submit to their husbands” as a necessity for survival. Social progress changed the status of women, and the same people who oppose same-sex marriage would like to undo that progress to whatever degree they can. Legal same-sex marriage further cements those social changes, and makes it even harder to turn back the clock.

The threat of legal same-sex marriage, then, is actually doubled. It carries one step further the progress that’s lead to women no longer having to “submit to their husbands”; they might volunteer, a’la the “surrendered wife” model, but not many women have to marry and thus “submit to their husbands” as a necessity for survival. Social progress changed the status of women, and the same people who oppose same-sex marriage would like to undo that progress to whatever degree they can. Legal same-sex marriage further cements those social changes, and makes it even harder to turn back the clock.

It’s no coincidence that the political forces opposed to same-sex marriage or marriage equality also oppose gender equality and advocate returning to more strictly enforced gender roles. The Institute for Progressive Christianity recently published a paper titled “The KIngdom of God and the Witness of Gay Marriage,” which includes among it’s premises:

1. Gay marriages demonstrate the possibility and desirability of gender equality in any marriage by modeling a relationship where the parties to the marriage do not distribute roles and responsibilities based on gender.This modeling supports the positive transformation of the curse of gender conflict, and subsequent patriarchal domination pronounced at the Fall from Paradise into gender egalitarianism .

2. Gay marriage’s ascendancy and resilience in society participates in a fundamental shift of the culture’s understanding of marriage. That is, marriage is being transformed from a utilitarian arraignment grounded in the idea that women are sexual property to an egalitarian life journey with a partner who one chooses to develop and share mutual love, affection, respect, and support.

… One of the most obvious issues to which gay marriage speaks is gender equality. One of the strongest and most relied upon objections to gay marriage from the Right is that it violates the concept of gender complementarity. Gender complementarity is the metaphysical claim that men’s and women’s social functions in the world are determined dichotomously by their biological sex, such that where men are convex women are concave.

… Undergirding the concept of gender complementarity is the assumption that men are metaphysically meant to rule over women (ideally in the spirit of love, of course) and women are metaphysically meant to serve men

… Thus, from the gender complementarian perspective, those who act as though women and men gain equal spiritual, emotional, psychological, and existential satisfaction and dignity from leading and serving, and are meant to experience both of these sides of the human psyche, are disordered, as are those who advocate this notion of equality and balance.

The possibility of gay marriage invites heterosexuals to view their intimate partners (or potential intimate partners) not through a lens of gendered otherness primarily —that is through the lens of gender complementarity — but through the lens of sameness, that is through the lens of sharing a common human dignity, as it was in the beginning.

As much as it may seem like a tangent, the above both reinforces the relationship between sexism and homophobia, and places gay & lesbian equality in general and marriage equality specifically in the context of earlier progressive social movements, all of which — from the abolitionist movement, to women’s suffrage to the civil rights movement — had strong foundations in moral principles; progressive moral principles like those Pitt referenced in his column.

After all, if you’ve got two husbands, who’s supposed to submit to whom? If you’ve got two wives, who’s the head of whom? It calls into question assumptions about gender and gender roles. It’s no longer clear that one person is in charge and one must submit to the other’s will.

Like with housework, in our home.

Talk about “desperate housewives.” This AlterNet article brings to mind something I’d noticed before. In even the most progressive households, the lion’s share of the housework and childcare falls to the woman.

…It’s interesting, because in our house we don’t have gender-based division of labor to fall back on. That doesn’t mean we don’t have disagreements about housework. But it’s based more on personal traits than gender. (For example, as I tell the hubby, it’s not that clutter doesn’t bother me. It just bothers him sooner than it bothers me.) For the most part, who does what in our house depends on who’s free, and who prefers to do it. (Gardening, for example, I cede to him. But, I usually clean the downstairs bathroom, etc.)

Sometimes, it’s a matter of consideration. For example, I’m going to come home late tomorrow, which means the hubby will have the boys by himself tomorrow night. Thus, before I go to bed tonight, I’ll probably load and run the dishwasher, and pick up the toys, shoes, etc., scattered around the family room. So at least he can come home to an empty sink and a relatively tidy house. (It makes a difference when you’re parenting solo.)

There’s no assumption that one of us is primarily responsible for the kids and the house. If Dylan has a fever and needs to come home, and stay home the next day, there’s no assumption about which one of us will stay at home with him. Likewise with Parker, if he has to be at home for the day. Sometimes, my husband will pick up the kid in question and stay home with him. Other times, I may do the same. Or he’ll pick up the kid and I’ll meet them at home and stay for the day. Either way, it depends more on who can take time away from work (or, in my case, work from home), who did it last time, and any other issues that may apply.

It requires communication and negotiation sometimes. We have to discuss it, and come to some sort of agreement as to who’s going to do what. But the point is, we have to discuss it and come to a decision together. Neither of us is making a final decision alone, unless the other isn’t wedded to one outcome or another and says something to the effect of “You decide. One way or the other doesn’t make a difference to me.” Neither of us is making a final decision while merely keeping the other’s opinion in mind.

Neither of us is the “head” of the other, and neither of us is “submissive” to the other. We don’t have to be. As partners and parents, we’re equals and we work together as such.

Irreducible Complexity, Reduced

The problem with same-sex couples, especially with kids, is that we show that it’s possible to live and live well, without the straightjacket (pun intended) of strict gender roles. It’s a somewhat more complex arrangement that the traditional gender roles Bachmann simultaneously invokes and refutes as a presidential candidate. It’s that complexity, and its attendant uncertainty seems to be driving Bachmann’s twisting of history and gender roles.

What all these people seem to have in common is an inability to cope with complexity. Complexity results inevitably from our ever-expanding knowledge of reality, and so is one of the core challenges posed by living in the modern world. Much of the turmoil we now see around the world originates with those who are failing to meet that challenge. Things were a lot simpler when we knew less, so their solution is to try to know less once again. No doubt this also driving a lot of substance abuse.

But the trouble with knowledge is that — absent a Dark Ages, or unconsciousness — it’s hard to make it go away. We need to learn to handle it, to live with complexity. We should be able to celebrate the courage and genius of the founders, and the magnificence of the Constitution, without having to pretend away their flaws. We should be able to debate interpretations of history without falsifying history itself.

It is that falsification, not their opinions, that is the risk posed by Barton, Bachmann and their fellows. Democracy depends on freedom of opinion based on a shared trust in evidence and reason. Without that shared trust, opinions just become a matter of who has more power. Ironically, this is where American right-wing extremists line up with French, left-wing post modernists.

No matter how much Bachmann and the far-right would like to return to the Dark Ages, it ain’t gonna happen. Still, sometimes it seems that their legislative efforts are an attempt to turn back time, while their apocalyptic economic policies seemdesigned to hasten economic collapse and clear the way for their “Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome” fantasies to finally be realized.

Achieving that is going to require a lot of destruction (and a lot of collateral damage), and a long period of time — like another “Dark Age” — for people to “forget” everything humanity has learned since the Rennaisance.

But that doesn’t mean they won’t try, because uncertainty is inherent in complexity. Simple answers don’t readily offer themselves up, because there may not be any. Outcomes may not be predictable. The world might just not work the way be think it does, believe it should, want it to, or need it to. That throws everything in to question.

The flip side of a fear of complexity is a fear of uncertainty, which drives an addiction to certainty.

It is as though you are standing in a room, and at the other end of that room is the gate to hell. You arm is outstretched, and in your hand is the key to that date. Every question asked and answered by scientific inquiry is a step that takes you closer to that gate. Ask one question, and you take a step closer. Answer another one and you take another step. Keep asking and you’re walking across the room. Before you know it, the key is in the lock, and one more question may turn the key.

But not only must you stop asking questions, but you must stop others from asking questions if you believe in a “designer” that punishes entire cities and entire nations for tolerating disbelief. Because every step they take, every inquiry, every question asked takes them towards that gate that must stay locked, not just to keep out what’s on the other side, but because if the gate is ever opened, only one thing can be worse than what it unleashes, and that’s if it unleashes nothing at all.

At least if the very foundations of your reality depends on that gate staying closed and what you say is on the other side of it staying what you say it is and where you say it is.

It goes back to the Pema Chodron quote I keep coming back to.

The difference between theism and nontheism is not whether one does or does not believe in God. It is an issue that applies to everyone, including both Buddhists and nonBuddhists.Theism is a deep-seated conviction that there’s some hand to hold: if we just do the right things, someone will appreciate us and take care of us. It means thinking there’s always going to be a babysitter available when we need one. We all are inclined to abdicate our responsibilities and delegate our authority to something outside ourselves. Nontheism is relaxing with the ambiguity and uncertainty of the present moment without reaching for anything to protect ourselves.

… For those who want something to hold on to, life is even more inconvenient. From this point of view, theism is an addiction. We’re all addicted to hope — hope that the doubt and mystery will go away. This addiction has a painful effect on society: a society based on lots of people addicted to getting ground under their feet is not a very compassionate place.

That ambiguity and uncertainty that Chodron talks about embracing is intolerable because of precisely the reasons Sheila Kennedy God and Country: America in Red and Blue.

[Gordon] Allport believed that the former group could be educated to see past their casually adopted, culturally sanctioned attitudes. Those whose worldviews were rigid, however, who were so emotionally invested in a particular view of reality that the loss of any one piece of it would be experienced as a threat to their very identity, were beyond reach.

After all, according to some people the real torment of hell — as with the frozen heart of Date’s vision — is separation from one’s god. That’s what’s on the other side of the gate. That’s why you must not open it, and you must prevent others from getting to close to opening it.

And anyone who stands between an addict and his fix is going to suffer. That means all of us.

That Bachmann doesn’t appear to exemplify a submissive wife, or the proper role for a woman according to the evangelical view she seems to embrace doesn’t matter any more than the inconvenient truth that she’s apparently working to restore a world that wouldn’t hold a place for her outside of the kitchen. In that sense, she reminds of Serena Joy, the Commander’s wife in The Handmaid’s Tale. The world she wants and is working to bring about is likely to leave her stifled, invisible, and embittered.

The question is, what will it — or what it may take to get there, do to us?

This post originally appeared at the Campaign for America’s Future.

I figured at some point the gay jokes would fly and I’m well prepared for a good ribbing of straight gay humor. I have very thick skin when it comes to humor; I can dish and I can take. What I can’t take is when Mr. Morgan took it upon himself to mention about how he feels all this gay shit was crazy and that women are a gift from God and that “Born this Way” is bullshit, gay is a choice, and the reason he knows this is exactly because “God don’t make no mistakes” (referring to God not making someone gay cause that would be a mistake).

He said that there is no way a woman could love and have sexual desire for another woman, that’s just a woman pretending because she hates a fucking man.

He took time to visit the bullshit of this bullying stuff and informed us that the gays needed to quit being pussies and not be whining about something as insignificant as bullying. He mentioned that gay was something kids learn from the media and programming, and that bullied kids should just bust some ass and beat those other little fuckers that bully them, not whine about it.

He said if his son that was gay he better come home and talk to him like a man and not [he mimicked a gay, high pitched voice] or he would pull out a knife and stab that little N (one word I refuse to use) to death.

He mentioned that Barack Obama needed to man up and quit being all down with this just because he has a wife and two daughters.

Morgan has since issued an apology “to my fans & the gay & lesbian community” for his “choice of words” and a routine that “went too far.”

Well.

I am not a Tracy Morgan fan. But as a member of the community to which he apologized, I do not accept his apology, nor do I forgive him. I am not sure what could persuade me to do either at this point.

Apologizing for his “choice of words” is nearly as offensive as the “comedy” routine that landed him trouble in the first place. There are no words, however carefully chosen, that can make the sentiments Morgan expressed remotely defensible.

Words can be tremendously hurtful, but the issue here is not mere words. Word reflect the thoughts and beliefs that inform and inspire them. Those same thoughts and beliefs drive choices and actions that have devastating, and often deadly, consequences for real people with real lives, resulting in realities that are far from funny.

When I read that Morgan said “there is no way a woman could love and have sexual desire for another woman, that’s just a woman pretending because she hates a fucking man,” I thought of the phenomenon of “corrective rape”, that’s made headlines most recently in South Africa.

The unending cases of “corrective rape” that have plagued South Africa at alarming levels are still on the rise. Corrective rape is a criminal practice, whereby men rape lesbian women, purportedly as a means of “curing” the woman of her sexual orientation.

The latest victim is a twenty-four year old soccer player from Johannesburg who was stabbed to death minutes after dropping off her girlfriend. DA newsroom reports:

Ms Nogwaza’s murder – she was stoned, stabbed and gang-raped – is now the latest in what has become a string of violent assaults known as “corrective rapes”, which are allegedly intended to “cure” members of the gay and lesbian community of their sexual orientation. The Democratic Alliance (DA) unequivocally condemns these crimes and the contemptible motives behind them in the strongest terms. They are an affront to the constitutional values of freedom and equality which we all hold dear, and have rightly outraged progressive South Africans everywhere who recognise that gay rights are also human rights.

Noxolo was an avid LGBT campaigner and also worked at the Ekurhuleni Pride Organizing Committee. This is a continuous series of several rapes, some leading to death in South Africa; a month before another thirteen year old lesbian was also raped in Pretoria.

Tracy Morgan didn’t advocate “corrective rape.” He just gave voice to one of the thoughts or beliefs behind it: that lesbian sexuality it “disordered,” and that a woman who loves other women just “hates fucking a man”. The journey from thought/belief to words and actions isn’t a long one. It begins with beliefs like the one Morgan expressed, and only takes the idea that one has the right to “fix” such an egregious wrong.

How many lesbians have been told by heterosexual men that they are lesbians, “because you just haven’t had a real man yet”, who then decide to “cure” them? It’s impossible to tell, but the practice of “corrective rape” isn’t just a South African phenomenon.

• December 22, 2008: A lesbian woman in the San Francisco Area was jumped by four men, taunted for being a lesbian, repeatedly raped, and left naked outside an abandoned apartment building.
• March, 2009: A teenage lesbian in the United Kingdom was raped by a man after she rejected his advances, and he refused to accept that she was gay.

When I read that Morgan said that “the gays needed to quit being pussies and not be whining about something as insignificant as bullying,” I thought of Tyler Clementi,Asher Brown, Billy Lucas, Seth Walsh, Zach Harrington, Ty Smalley, Raymond Chase, Eric Mohat, Brandon Bitner, Corey Jackson, Justin Aaberg, Jeheem Herrera, Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover and other kids who were bullied to the point of suicide because they were or were perceived to be gay.

I thought of how close I came to being one of them.

I wonder if Morgan could face their families and tell them that “bullied kids should just bust some ass and beat those other little fuckers that bully them”. I wonder if he couldface them. If he wants to apologize to someone, let him face them and apologize in person after he hears their stories.

When I read that Morgan said that if his son was gay, he’d better “come home and talk to him like a man,” or he’d “stab the little n***** to death,” I thought of Ronnie Paris.

I decided to start with the story of Ronnie Paris.

Ronnie Antonio Paris (2001 – January 28, 2005) was a three-year-old African American boy who lived with his parents in Tampa, Florida. He died on January 28, 2005, due to brain injuries stemming from severe abuse at the hands of his father, who forced the child would turn out to be gay, and forced the boy to box with him in an effort to keep him from growing up “soft” or becoming a “sissy.”

The Background

In May 2002, the Florida Department of Children and Family Services removed Ronnie from his home and placed him in protective custody, after he was admitted to the hospital for repeated vomiting, and doctors determined he was undernourished and had a broken arm.

On December 14, 2004, five days after his third birthday, Ronnie was returned to his parents. On January 22, Ronnie slipped into a coma after falling asleep on a couch at a family friend’s house, where his parents were attending a Bible study. Upon realizing he was unconscious, his parents rushed in to the hospital. Ronnie died six days later, when he was removed from life support.[1]

During an investigation of the child’s death, his mother — Nysheera Paris — told detectives that her husband — Ronnie Paris, Jr. — had repeatedly abused the child, slapping him in the back of the head, slamming him into walls, and forcing the child to participate in father-son boxing matches until the boy began to shake, cry, and wet himself.[2]

The Trial

The child’s father was charged with murder and aggravated child abuse. His mother was charged with child neglect and failing to get medical attention for her son.[3]

In July 2005 Ronnie Paris Jr. went on trial for his son’s murder.

During the trial, Nysheera Parish testified that her husband thought their son might be gay, and that he would smack the boy in the back of the head and slam him into walls because he didn’t want his son to grow up “soft.” Her testimony was corroborated by her sister, Shanita Powell, who said “He was trying to teach him how to fight,” and told the court “He was afraid the child might be gay.

Family friend Sheldon Bostick, who attended Bible study with the Paris family, testified that Ronnie Paris, Jr., “slap-boxed” with his son because “He didn’t want him to be a sissy.”[4]

Forensic pathologist Dr. Sam Gulino noted the child’s scarred face and bruised head, and told the court that the lethargy and vomiting spells, the coma and eventual death were due to head trauma that was not accidental but deliberately inflicted.

The child’s foster mother testified that during the two years he lived with her, Ronnie never vomited, and had a healthy appetite.[5]

The Aftermath

In July 2005, after three hours of deliberation[6], a jury convicted Ronnie Paris, Jr. of second degree manslaughter and aggravated child abuse in the death of his son [7], Ronnie Antonio Paris. On August 19, 2004, he was sentenced to 30 years imprisonment. [8] Nysheera Paris was later sentenced to 5 years probation for culpable negligence in the death of her son[9]

I thought of Steen Fenrich.

Next was Steen Fenrich (And, no, I didn’t realize the similarity between the stories until after I’d finished with both.)

Steen Fenrich (1981 – September 9, 1999) was a 19-year-old African American gay man who lived in Bayside, Queens New York. In March 2001 his dismembered remains were discovered. Police believe his stepfather, John Fenrich, killed his stepson in a homophobic rage.

The Background

Steen Fenrich entered the Army in July 1997, and served 9 months before he was discharged. In September 1999 he left his parent’s home in Dix Hills, and went missing. However, no one filed a missing person’s report on Fenrich.[1]

The Discovery

On March 21, 2000 the remains of Steen Fenrich were found by a man walking through Alley Pond Park, in Bayside, Queens, stored in a plastic blue tub. The tub contained a skull that had been burned by acid, a foot with some flesh still on it, and other body parts.

The remains were identified as those of Steen Fenrich by his Social Security Number, which had been written on the skull, along with racial and homophobic slurs. [2]

The Stepfather

Shortly after being told that his stepson’s remains had been found, John Fenrich called News 12 in Long Island and suggested a motive. Along with suggesting that his stepson had been killed “because he was gay.” The station later reported that Steen Fenrich had posed for gay pornographic photographs and had a contentious relationship with his stepfather.

Police said they had not yet told family members that Steen Fenrich’s remains had been dismembered. John Fenrich’s knowledge of the dismemberment led police to believe he killed his stepson.

The Motive

Police reported to Newsday[3] that they believed John Fenrich killed Steen on September 9, after an argument stemming from his stepson’s desire to move back home after an argument with his partner. Fenrich disapproved of his son’s homosexuality and was angered by his request to return home.[4]

Steen Fenrich’s partner told police that John Fenrich had always treated him with contempt, and had called him a few days after the argument to say that Steen was “going away for a couple of weeks.”

The Aftermath

On May 22, 2000, after talking to News 12, John Fenrich suddenly bolted from an interview with police in his home, climbed on the roof, fired guns and begged police to shoot him after declaring “I’m a failure as a father.”[5]

After an eight-hour standoff, John Fenrich committed suicide by shooting himself in the head.

I thought of Mikey Valeho Seiber.

Michael “Mikey” Vallejo-Seiber (August 12, 2002 – August 29, 2005) was a three year old boy who lived in Riverside, CA. On August 27, 2005, he was kicked, beaten, stomped, burned, sodomized, and forced to eat dog food and his own excrement by his mother’s boyfriend – Alex Kermith Mendoza. Mendoza critical of Vallejo-Seiber’s upbringing, calling the child a “sissy” and saying he wanted to make him a “soldier.”

The Background

Pamela Sieber, 23, met aspiring rapper Alex Kermith Mendoza, 27, in July 2005, at the nightclub where she worked as a dancer. In early August, she and her son – Mikey Vallejo-Seiber – began spending time at Mendoza’s home in Rubidoux. On August.1) Mendoza had spent time in prison for drug dealing and domestic violence.2) He also faced charges of elder abuse in the mistreatment of his now-deceased 87-year-old father.3)

Francisco Vallejo, Seiber-Vallejo’s father, was in prison before the child was born.4)

On August 15, 2006, Riverside Child Protective Services received a call from a pediatrician’s office concerning possible abuse. An investigator was dispatched to the address given for Vallejo-Seiber’s mother. On the following day, a CPS investigator was made contact with Sieber and interviewed her at the Riverside apartment. The investigator submitted the case for closure on August 22, saying the abuse allegations were unfounded.5)

The investigator determined that a bruise on Vallejo-Seiber’s face, that had been reported by his pediatrician, was not the result of abuse. The boy first told his pediatrician, “Mom hit me.” When the doctor asked if he had fallen and hit his eye, Vallejo-Seiber said “I fell.” Sieber told social workers that the child ran into a table or counter when Medoza’s dog came into the house. Later she said she was not at home when the abuse took place.6)

On August 23, 2005, Sieber witnessed Mendoza slapping her son on the back of he head, and broke up with him. She reconciled with Mendoza and returned to his home when he promised to be more affectionate with her son. Sieber left Vallejo-Seiber at Mendoza’s house on at least six occasions, including August 27, 2005.7)

The Attack

Sieber later told investigators that she left her son with Mendoza, whom she’d known for three weeks, because she trouble finding someone to watch him while she worked as a dancer at a local nightclub. On August 27, 2006, she left the child in the care of Mendoza and Mendoza’s roommate, Richard Daniel Cox, 19, who.

On Augut 27, 2006, according to the CPS investigation narrative and trial testimony, Vallejo-Seiber was slapped, kicked, stomped, dropped on his head, burned, punched and sodomized by Mendoza on the night of August 27, 2006.8) He was hung by his arms, and forced to eat dog food and his own excrement.

An autopsy determined that Vallejo-Seiber suffered a lacerated liver and pancreas, a hemorrhaged diaphragm and kidneys, a fractured skull, broken ribs, and burns to his genitals and anus. 9)

Mendoza and Cox then left the injured boy on the floor, and went to a video store where they rented Coach Carter and a video game.10)

On August 28, 2005, Sieber and Mendoza brought Vallejo-Seiber to Riverside Community hospital. The child was not breathing. After he was necessitated, Vallejo-Seiber was transfered to Lorna Linda University Medical Center.11)

Vallejo-Seiber died while in surgery at Lorna Linda University Medical Center.12) Court documents show that he died as a result of a massive blow to the stomach, which lacerated his liver and caused internal bleeding.13)

The Motive

At the preliminary trial for Mendoza and Cox, Sieber said that Mendoza was critical of her parenting, and called her son a “sissy.” Mendoza said he wanted to make a “soldier” of the boy, and at one point urged him to beat up his Elmo doll.14) Mendoza’s defense lawyer said, “He loved the child. He wanted to turn him into a little soldier.15)
The Arrest

Mendoza was arrested on August 28, after he and Sieber brought the child to Riverside Community hospital.16)

Sieber was arrested for endangering her son by leaving him in Mendoza’s care.

During questioning Cox first called Mendoza a “caring person” who was “there for” Vallejo-Seiber. Then he admitted having seen both Mendoza and Sieber disciplining the boy. Later, Cox admitted that “maybe” he disciplined the boy five or six times, including purposely tripping the child once.17)

The Aftermath

Mendoza & the Death Penalty

On April 12 2006 Sieber, Cox and Mendoza entered not guilty pleas regarding the charges against them. Sieber pleaded not guilty to charges of child engangerment in connection with her son’s death. She was released after posting $15,000 bail. Cox was charged with murder, along with Mendoza, and both faced special circumstances of torture, making them eligible for the death penalty.18)

In August 2006, Judge Elisabeth Sichel ruled that there was sufficient evidence to try Mendoza for first degree murder in Vallejo-Seiber’s death.19)

In January 2007, the Riverside district attorney’s office announced that it would seek the death penalty in the case against Mendoza.20)

Mendoza is being held at the Robert Pressley Detention Center since August 28, 2005, the day he and Sieber brought Mikey Vallejo-Seiber to Riverside Community Hospital.21) He is scheduled to appear in Riverside County Superior Court on January 1, 2008.22)

Sieber Trial & Sentencing

On August 14, 2006 – two day after what would have been her son’s fourth birthday, was sentenced to six years in prison for failing to protect her him from Mendoza and Cox. She was four month’s pregnant at the time of her sentencing.23)

Cox: Trial & Sentencing

In February 2007, Judge Robert Spitzer granted a motion that Medoza and Cox be tried separately. At trial in February, Cox’s defense team said he failed to call police to report Mendoza’s abuse and torture of Vallejo-Seiber, and took refuge in his room24), because he was afraid of Mendoza. Forensic pathologist, Dr. Stephen Trinkle, also testified about the injuries he noted on Vallejo-Seiber’s head, face, arm, thigh, penis and anus during his posthumous examination of the victim.25) Trauma to the rectum indicated that Vallejo-Seiber had been sodomized.26)

On March 7, 2007, Cox was sentenced to 25 years to life in state prison for his role in Vallejo-Seiber’s death.27)

In May 2007, the director of Riverside County’s Department of Public Social Services resigned. Cynthia Hinkley’s resignation came after an April 2007 letter from county social workers and union representatives saying that managers ignored suggested improvements in Child Protective Services, thus making Vallejo-Seiber’s death “inevitable.” In the wake of the letter, supervisors ordered a review of the department in response to complaints about the high turnover of social workers and managers.28)

I thought of the little boy in this video, and the response it got.

It’s not “too much Beyonce” any more than it was “too much Diana Ross” when I was growing up, or “too much Lena Horne,” or “too much Dorothy Dandridge,” before my time. It’s not that he doesn’t have a father in the home or a male role model in the home, or that there’s an ineffective male role model in the home. I had my dad at home, and a more traditional male role model I can’t imagine.

The reality is, more than likely the boy can’t help it. I couldn’t. I knew it. And though my parents tried to encourage me towards more acceptably masculine behavior, it didn’t work and it left me more hurt and frustrated than I might have been otherwise. Instead, it reinforced what I was experiencing elsewhere, and the result was that there wasn’t anywhere I was accepted just as I was. Not even at home. I couldn’t count on anyone to be on my side. The loved me, and did the best they could, but what happened happened.

Nothing will break this boy’s spirit more than requiring him to compete in an arena he’ll never be equipped for, judging him by a standard he’ll never measure up to, and then ridiculing him when he inevitably fails. Teach him shame, and he will be ashamed. Teach him that he deserves ridicule and somewhere deep down he’ll accept it.

Love him, and he will love himself. Respect him, and he will respect himself. Appreciate him, and he will appreciate himself. What’s more, teach him that who he is and the gifts he possesses have value, and he will not be convinced otherwise no matter what anyone may say or do to him later. He will know who he is and know that it is good. He will have a foundation. Thus his family will have helped him to stand up to almost anything.

Will he have a hard life? Unfortunately, it’s possible he will. But it will be even harder if he has to go it alone, even when he’s surrounded by his family and community. He’s too young to be abandoned. He’s too young to go it alone, and asking him to do so — to be someone other than who he is, or risk losing support — is asking too much.

Believe it or not, “I love you, now change,” is not unconditional love. However young he is, he’s old enough to know that.

Long story short, I survived. It took a lot of pain and loneliness, and more years after that to heal from it all. Time and energy that might have gone to something else if I’d had support and acceptance from the beginning.

I remember when I was older and we were visiting relatives in southern Georgia, a younger cousin of mine made a show of parading around in his mother’s high heels. He thought it was funny, and got a few laughs, but mingled among those laughs were admonitions to his mother to put a stop to his behavior, up to an including “whipping his ass.” I heard echos in the comments on this video.

It’s not right to judge this child or anyone for that matter but if I was this son’s father I would not be proud or impressed. I’d say he needs some prayer or therapy, whichever you believe in!

…

hahahaaaaaaa yall are right … he is going to be a homo…

…

This lil boy is going to grow up to be a homo. Yall are right he needs a FATHER in his life. To much goddamn time on his hands. And his moms thinks this shit is cute. I would of smaked the piss out the kid and tell him to go put some goddamn 2 Pac.

I thought the LGBT youth who don’t get the vital family support they need and deserve, and who suffer as a result. I thought of two college acquaintances of mine who were rejected by their families and committed suicide. I thought of the countlessLGBT youth who are homeless because they were rejected by their families or faced violence and abuse at home because of their orientation or gender identity.

I wondered if Morgan would take his act to Memphis next, in honor of Tiffany Berry,Duanna Johnson, and Ebony Whitaker — three transgender women who met death while “walking in Memphis”.

I wondered if Morgan would find any of these stories funny, after hearing them. His audience certainly did.

All of this being followed by thunderous cheer and “You go Tracys”. Tracy then said he didn’t fucking care if he pissed off some gays, because if they can take a fucking dick up their ass… they can take a fucking joke.

Or at least they got a big kick out of, and affirmed with their laughter, the thoughts and beliefs Morgan’s words reflected, and of which these stories are the all-too-real, and unfunny consequences.

To tell the truth, I was not surprised by Morgan’s rant any more than I was surprised by the same from D.L. Hughley. I’ve heard it all before. You can go into too many black churches and hear the same any day from ministers like Wellington Boone, Willie Wilson, Alfred Owens, Eddie Long, TD Jakes and others. You can go to any beauty parlor, barber shop, bust stop or historically black college and hear the same thing from their congregants. In a sense, Morgan wasn’t any different from the ministers who preached hatred from the pulpit, and the audience members who cheered him on no different from the folks nodding their heads in the pews and saying amen.

After all, the results are the same. And maybe that’s why I’m not in a forgiving mood. I’m sure Tracey Morgan is sorry that someone posted news of his rant to Facebook. I’m sure he’s sorry the days long gone when that kind of news spread slowly if at all. I’m even willing to believe that he’s sorry for his “choice of words,” though I don’t believe it’s possible to choose better words to express what he did. There are no words to make it better, let alone defensible.

And it’s that which suggests to me that Morgan isn’t truly sorry, because his “choice of words” apology shows he doesn’t get it. Tina Fey’s comment about Morgan’s rant was funnier than Morgan has probably been for most of his career.

“30 Rock” creator and star Tina Fey said in a statement that she was disturbed by “the violent imagery” Morgan used, adding that it “doesn’t line up with the Tracy Morgan I know, who is not a hateful man and is generally much too sleepy and self-centered to ever hurt another person.”

“I hope for his sake that Tracy’s apology will be accepted as sincere by his gay and lesbian co-workers at ‘30 Rock,’ without whom Tracy would not have lines to say, clothes to wear, sets to stand on, scene partners to act with, or a printed-out paycheck from accounting to put in his pocket,” Fey said.

Whether Morgan knows it or not most of the coworkers Fey mentioned probably know that he was talking about them too. They’ll also know how much he meant it when he apologized for his “choice of words.” Morgan may genuinely feel he was not talking about them, much in the same way some whites have followed up a racist comment by saying to the black acquaintance who existence and presence they may have forgotten, “Oh, I didn’t me you! You’re great! I didn’t mean you. I meant all those other n******. You know what I mean?”

Yeah. We know what you mean. And unless Tracy Morgan does more than apologize for his choice of words — unless he willing to take a hard look at the consequences for the “choice of words” he and so many others make, invests time and energy to do something about it, and does some time on the front lines fighting it — we’ll know what he meant too.

This post originally appeared at the Republic of T.