It is times like today, when a President holds a national press conference to launch a gaybashing fest in order to whore for votes from America's worst citizens, that I remember what it means to be a gay American.
Unfortunately, it doesn't take a lot to bring me back to a time when I remember the sting of the taunts and namecalling that comes from being singled out from the rest of the community. As a teenager and young adult, I saw that most often happening to others, although I know the times I was the brunt of such bullying in the halls of a high school. Of course, back in the early 1970's, it was a common occurence. . .I can remember walking home in the evenings from the library, doing work on a paper or just trying to get out of the house, and every now and then a car would go by with other high schoolers screaming that "faggot" slur out of their mouths. I would always feel the hairs rising up on the back of my neck and the fear almost choking off my breathing, and yet I would walk just a little faster and tell myself that I knew the neighborhood and how to find places to hide.
Several years went by. . .I was a young adult pretty much on my own, though most of my friends were still heterosexuals who just never talked much to me about my own dating life. I had learned how to act just enough to be thought of as everyone's "best friend" - you know, the kind of guy both young women and guys could go to and talk about their dating woes. I had no real love life of my own - my few experiences didn't start until I was a 19 year old college student who was lured by a 28 year old Navy man and a glass of straight whiskey. . .which I pretended to be capable of gulping down until I choked.
I was nearly 22 before I was able to really tell anyone about myself - and I can still remember playing this Diana Ross album while housesitting at a friends - and asking my best friend over to tell him. That was a delicate situation - he was probably the first person I had ever fallen in love with - or at least what I knew for love. . .the kind of adolescent awareness of waking up one morning and having all these warm emotional feelings about someone I had been getting to know for over a year. Naturally, he was straight, and though there is a story behind that, it's not the point of this thread or the issues I want to raise here. I was lucky, however - true to being the man he was, he accepted me as openly as he could and tried to never make me feel self-conscious about who I was inside.
From there it was a journey from denial and the struggle to fit in, the conflicts of growing up in a very large, very conservative family often grated on me, and I got used to being considered the black sheep of the family. Oh, I had close relationships with a few of my many brothers and sisters - they knew about me and were fine - but my relationship with my parents was strained and those remnants exist still today, though not pronounced.
It is with those memories that I listened to the President of the United States holding court today with some of the most deceptive and vile "religious" and "spiritual" leaders of the Right. While he tried to keep them out of view of the cameras, I knew they were there - his rhetoric echoed their incredible depth of hatred and bullying. His calls for a tolerant and respectful debate meant nothing, just as they meant nothing when he first announced his support for this disgraceful constitutional amendment. What he meant was that these professional bigots would drag out every junk "scientist" and even junkier "religious" interpretation in order to tell me that I'm not entitled to petition for a contract about the most basic individual life experiences with my state. They have no real argument to deny such a right which every citizen in this nation should have as an American. . .they merely need a human sacrifice for the erupting volcano god which they imagine to be a Supreme Being. I'm used to that.
I was used to that embarassment and self-humiliation back in the early 1970's, when, dropping by my bank to draw some money from my checking account, a teller loudly slammed her stamp against the top of her pad as she told me that she didn't understand why she had to wait on a faggot. I could feel my cheeks getting redder as I fumbled for something to say, and wondered if I could just turn away and walk out of the building before anyone would notice me. Of course she loudly repeated the statement, and I could see other tellers looking over at us but couldn't sense any reaction on their faces. I just froze - right there at the teller's station, almost afraid to look up, and waited for the next abusive statement.
But in that moment, something else started to grow inside of me, a slow anger that surprised me and yet started to rise up in indignation at this treatment. I often think of this moment as perhaps the beginning of taking my own stand for myself in the world, because as I slowly looked up and she glared at me as if expecting me to turn around and leave, I suddenly glared back at her and took a long, deep breath. "I don't know who told you that I came in here to listen to your personal opinions of customers," I said. "But if you can't do your job here, I'd like you to find someone else who can."
Oh, her response was nasty, and I could feel the gutteral hate coming from her throat. "I don't wait on faggots!" she said loudly. I could feel myself starting to build beads of sweat upon my brow. . .but I stood my ground. "Then please get a manager."
She refused, glaring at me as if she was waiting for me to take my checkbook and leave the lobby. But this time I was the one who raised my voice - and the entire lobby heard me. "I came in here to cash a goddamned check from my own damned account, and this teller seems to have a problem waiting on customers. Is there a manager here who knows how to cash a check?"
It seemed as if everyone froze and just stared at me. Customers, lending reps, people milling around. . .and I had to take another deep breath wondering when the security guard was going to come over and take me out. Instead I was surprised. . .some manager rushed over to me and asked me what the problem was - and I told him that his teller wouldn't let me pull funds out of my account. He asked me if there was a problem with the account and I shook my head - the problem, apparently was with ME. Now granted, this was the early 1970's. . .and I expected that manager to just tell me to leave. Instead he looked over at the teller, who glared but said nothing. . .and he took me over to the door to a small office. I was still waiting for him to tell me to leave.
He asked for my check and motioned for a teller on the end of the line to come over and attend to my transaction. . .then he looked at me and asked why I had lost my temper. I had to steel myself again. . .it was still hard for me to try to form the words to even admit who I was. . .
"Look - I'm sorry about disrupting things in here, but I've had an account at this bank since I was 14 years old, and I don't expect to be treated like crap. If you don't want my business, I can go elsewhere - and I'll make sure my entire family, who all have accounts here, understand the reasons why I would make that decision." Naturally, he pressed me, asking what the teller said to me - and that was the hardest part for me to get out of my mouth.
"She said she didn't see why she had to wait on a faggot," I finally said, fighting my urge to panic at the sound of the word. I waited for him to . . .well, I waited for him to tell me she was right and that people like me shouldn't be in the bank at all.
I was so surprised - and so lucky that day. . .my first real venture standing up alone in a situation. He looked at me and said "She said that?" And as I moved my head up and down, I felt that old familiar panic bracing for another shot. "I'm sorry," he said. "She should never had said anything like that, Sir. I'll be having a talk with her."
I could hardly believe my own ears. When the teller came back with my cash, I thanked him for the help and started to walk out of the bank, feeling a lot better but also still sensing a spotlight on my every step. I didn't look back.
These are the kinds of moments that the President of the United States and the people he gathered around today to support his constitutional amendment want to perpeturate. It is written all over the rhetoric of the Right - their whining that gay "activists" want to "normalize" their "perversion". Well, I hate to say it, but it IS normal. It is more a part of who I am than some harebrained superstitious addiction latched on to by some cynical fanatics who have to persecute others in order to adhere to their "religious" beliefs.
Oh, these people cross my path in life every now and again - once in the form of an older fast food order taker who ranted about "fucking faggots" the whole time she was placing my order for a damned roast beef sandwich. I never ate the sandwich. I waited patiently until it was served to me, then took the tray back to the counter and asked for the manager. In typical righteous fashion, the same clerk who ranted at me demanded to know why I wanted the manager. I looked clearly into her eyes and said "If I was interested in talking with you about your behavior, I wouldn't be asking for the manager. So either get the manager or I'll come back behind this counter and get him or her myself." She got the manager. And as I was handing my tray to the manager and she was asking if something was wrong with my food, I told her the only thing wrong was the store's lack of posting a sign that they don't wish to serve people like me. This time it was her face that turned red.
You see, every time one of these situations happen, or I listen to the whiny, cowardly trash that falls out of the mouths of Republican leaders crowing about their need to "protect" marriage, I remember that these are the moments the Right savors. this is what they mean by "family values" - a nice blizzard of a cliche that means they want gay Americans to feel as ostracized and as unwelcome in this country as possible. They played this card successfully for decades, first claiming we were mentally disturbed and advocating shock treatment, which was only marginally better than the earlier imprisonment. Then they preached and preached about the "sickness" until families with gay children often banished those kids rather than face the embarassment and the social humiliation that was sanctioned especially by the church. They encouraged people in the public to make public pronouncements about us - even in the years where mannerly people shouldn't speak of the subject, their slurs were always acceptable as a weapon of choice if you appeared to be more competent than them.
I encountered those attitudes many times when I started working for a telephone company years ago. Unlike the heterosexual men in my office, who, married or not, would regularly flirt with and hit on every woman working there, I had to be completely above the fray while putting up with the occasional jab from other workers about being the office fag. But I was also smart, and that social self-discipline that came from years of ostracization served me well - I learned how to turn company policies upside down and bully back - and I learned to do it with a smile. I actually gained friends among some of the roughest rednecks in the field because I had a reputation for not taking any sh*t. . .although when I first asked to be transferred out into that same field, there were threats to slit the tires on my truck.
These are the things the Right is fighting for - the implicit right to continue threatening others, shielded by their phony "God commands me to tell people they are going to hell" excuse - a rather shallow and cowardly cover for bullying. But what they want even more than that is to force us out of our families - they fear how mothers and fathers increasingly don't reject their gay children, and how much more accepting those families are of gay people around them. And like most bullies, what they understand best is when they are bullied back.
There is little doubt they were successful at this for many years. It used to be a joke among the gay community that it is perfectly okay if you can't go home for Christmas because your "family" can't accept you. . .just drive down to any gay bar and it will be packed with others who have been put into the same position, courtesy of the rantings of the "religious" Right. The gay community learned to look after each other - they would hold potlucks or bar dinners to make the holiday as festive as possible and help each other get through the lonely times. To the Right, their success was in their ability to interfere so deeply in the thoughts of families that parents and relatives would disown or ostracize their own child. THAT is what they are fighting for - with this amendment - with each of their little tantrums - with each of their public statements.
I was reading earlier today about a small demonstration outside of the Love In Action headquarters in Memphis, Tennessee - one of the televangelista-supported reparative therapy (translation = torture chamber) in which parents are urged (for a hefty price) to deposit their troublesome gay teenagers. A year ago, one young man received national attention when his parents "enrolled" him in the program - a program designed to humiliate and pray -the-gay-away. At this year's demonstration, another young man who was in the same program came to speak to the protesters of this travesty of American Taliban control. This young man told the group about how his family, after counseling from some 'religious" nutcase in St. Louis, told him (and likely his family) that no one is really gay, and this little therapy center would save the day. Naturally, it didn't. And when that young man didn't become straight, his mother verbally attacked him and then physically assaulted him, over and over again. . .including when he was trying to move away. Thankfully, another family took him in - but his story reminds me that the parents who attacked him were directly influenced by the lies and the hateful anti-family rhetoric of the "religious" Right.
You can read his story at this link:
http://fightinghomophobia.blogspot.com/For decades, it seems to me that these "religious" fanatics were the only citizens allowed to get away with torturing, abusing and attacking others, especially those in the very families they claim to "protect." They have no shame about thier behavior - but I am far and away long past giving them a break for claiming "deeply-held beliefs" about others. Freedom of religion may mean they have the right to choose, in the name of God, the right to persecute others - but those they seek to persecute have the right to fight back, and to do it decisively. I do not have to respect their right to persecute me - it is THEIR belief, and it only applies to THEIR lives - NOT mine. And if we are going to stand up to this constant onslaught of brutality and abuse in the name of God, then we need to do it with more than just confusion. The only thing they understand is when someone goes for their throat.
These people do not wish to protect anyone's family. They seek to control families. And I don't give a damn how many times they whine about being persecuted because we refuse to let them persecute US - they should have known the score about constitutional rights when they made their choice to follow a totalitarian religious belief. Instead, they want that constitution re-interpreted and re-written until this nation becomes the same tyrannical, totalitarian theocracy that guarantees them the right to control others.
When an American Taliban "representative" approaches you with the nonsense about America being founded on "christian" principles or as a "christian" nation - demand to hear the bible verses which speak of forming a republic with a President and Congress and not a King. Ask them why the American system of government is based on ancient Roman and Greek models - especially those that were void of christian influence. Demand to know why, if this is true, it took christianity some 1700 years to form the godly republic that the Biblical principles inspired. And then ask them why, in nations which the Church controlled, in which the King was considered appointed by God himself, that this Republic wasn't established directly from the Bible.
They have no answer. They don't have an answer because these people are liars. Lying and deception and manipulation is their industry - it is their way of making money in a country whose largest employer is not a retailer marketing mostly Chinese-made products.
In the next few days, the American Taliban's constitutional amendment will be coming up for a vote in the United States Senate. Whether diversion or tool of division, this travesty must not only be stopped but every effort made to shame a United States Congress who has thought nothing of trampling on every ideal which established this great nation.
I've noticed that John Aravosis at
http://americablog.blogspot.com launched a campaign today to confront senators who haven't done such a good job of protecting their OWN marriages. Tomorrow his web site is going to concentrate on those senators who have been divorced.
Bible followers understand that widely-accepted interpretations of the scriptures indicate that someone who divorces and remarries is permanently branded an adulterer. I would respectfully suggest that we contact these adulterers and either ask them why they aren't banning divorce in the Constitution, or to ask them to abstain from both voting and the debate on this amendment because they are not morally qualified to do so. That's right. Give the American Taliban their own divisive, demanding rhetoric back in their faces, and their lackeys in Congress who have betrayed the American people by bowing to their demands. If a senator has been divorced, he or she has no moral standing to discuss or vote on discrimination in the United States constitution of anyone else's relationship.
The next time you run across a news article or a fundie who decries how gays can be cured. ask them when they intend to open up their reparative therapy centers for the thousands of pedophiles which too many of their churches have covered up. After all, if they can pray away the gay among adults, they can certainly do so in order to really protect the children.
And the next time you drive by a filled parking lot at a gay club on Christmas Eve, think a moment about why all of those people are there instead of in the welcoming arms of their families. If your mind wanders to the likes of James Dobson, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Don Wildmon, Lou Sheldon, Gary Bauer and Tony Perkins - you've learned a lesson here.
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They say love will conquer all!, I think it's more like' Love,honor,tolerance and respect will conquer all! :yourock: http://rejectionhurts.com/nightclub/ :applause: :applause: :applause: 
