Not-So-Great Expectations

It's a Catch-22, in my opinion. A vast number of unreflected bigots out there believe that gays and lesbians are immoral simply because they are gay or lesbian. Where does this hugely wrong idea come from? I would argue that it's an inextricable aspect of patriarchy, which we still live in, somewhat diluted though it is.

Patriarchy in its undiluted form, which remains the basis of our social order, insists on rigidly separate gender roles which are meant to underscore its fundamental(ist) concept, male superiority. Everything is set up in neat (and oversimplified) dualisms. Every characteristic a person possesses is labeled "masculine" or "feminine," and these characteristics are traditionally presented as overdetermined "opposites." "Rational" versus "irrational," "strong" versus "gentle," "aggressive" versus "submissive," and so on and so forth ad nauseam. And for every one of this infinite series of dyads, the one labeled "female" or "feminine" is seen as inherently inferior to the one labeled "male" or "masculine," even if the consequences of either "masculine" or "feminine" concepts running amok, unleavened, are quite obviously destructive to the entire society. And even though it's quite obvious to any person with common sense that everybody has traits of both kinds, as well as others that don't fit neatly under either rubric.

Rigid policing of gender roles starts at birth, as many a classic experiment has shown. Boy babies are identified with the color blue (true blue), girl babies with the color pink (soft, gentle, unthreatening). Instead of being dressed in practical, unisex baby clothes, colors for boys and girls remain, on the whole, quite gendered. You'll hardly ever see a boy baby in any item of clothing featuring a floral print, and very few girl babies will be decked out in overalls embroidered with trucks and earth movers. You'll see more of the latter than the former, because for a girl to be a tomboy means she's aspiring to the higher order, while gods forbid a boy embrace anything "girly," be a "sissy"! People play more actively and roughly with boy babies while girls are coddled and cuddled and carefully kept away from harm (and a lot of learning experiences). Boys are stifled emotionally very early on, while girls' emotions are sometimes overdeveloped by constant indulgence. Names, colors, how we're treated -- we're pushed to embody one or the other gender role or gender type from Day One.

I feel for gay and lesbian kids. Even if they're lucky enough to have parents who don't think homosexuality is intrinsically wrong, they're surrounded by a society pervaded by homophobia. Long before we're old enough to be able to critically analyze the ideas with which we're bombarded, we're overwhelmed by a tide of prejudice and stereotypes. Elementary school kids -- sometimes even kindergarten or playschool kids -- already know that if you're called "fag," it isn't a compliment. They know it's a swear-word long before they have any idea what it means.

Children are shaped by what is expected of them. This is basic psychology. And our society, on the whole, tells gay and lesbian kids that they are abnormal, wrong, sick, perverted, pretty much doomed. At its most "positive," it makes them feel that they have to fit into a set of gay and lesbian stereotypes: gay men are all supposed to be sissy, lesbians are all supposed to be butch. In other words, if you're a gay man, you're supposed to tend toward the "female" stereotype, while lesbians are supposed to resemble the "male" one. No room for full development of one's true individual characteristics, whether you happen to be gay or straight. But for homosexual youth, the added, huge burden of being assumed to be morally inferior. And this not-so-great expectation is reinforced by ongoing, massive legal discrimination.

It's so incredibly obvious to me that separate can never be equal. "Allowing" gay or lesbian couples "civil unions" isn't a generous gesture, it's a means for the condescending majority to reinforce the idea that their partnerships are at best less than marriages. What presumption! We in the United States are raised with the notion that our country is the best, in every way. Right. The truth of the matter is that a goodly number of industrialized Western nations, including our neighbor to the north, Canada, are light-years ahead of us in terms of eliminating legalized bigotry against gays and lesbians. In much of Canada, gays and lesbians have been able to marry for years. They can also marry in Spain, home of the Spanish Inquisition! And even Britain, from which we inherited much of our knee-jerk homophobia, has dropped any form of "gay ban" in its armed forces. I had to laugh when I read that an American reporter covering a story about "gay integration" in the Dutch army -- Holland is another nation that's way ahead of us on this score -- asked some Dutch soldiers if they weren't concerned about having to share a tent with their openly gay captain. "Sure," they answered. "He snores!"

Sometimes I get very frustrated with my beloved country. There's so much blinkered religious dogma, unconsidered, self-righteous bigotry, an apparent total unwillingness to stop wasting energy on labeling, segregating and hurting people because of how and whom they love. Just think what we could do if we had all the energy at our disposal that's now being squandered on policing gender boundaries, trying to enact legislation that actually worsens legalized discrimination. Why do people think they should be able to force anyone "different" to live a lie, either depriving them of rights or making what limited rights they do have (or their ability to keep their job, live in their home, etc.) contingent on how well they pretend to be someone they're not? It's exactly as Harry Truman (not a past U.S. president I entirely love, but a man with a lot of good sense) said about racial discrimination: "For every black man you want to keep in the gutter, there'll have to be a white man in the gutter to keep him there." We need to wake up and realize that as long as our society continues to prescribe second-class status for gays and lesbians, and preach hate at them, the whole of the society will remain much less than it could be. Time to stop judging by sexual preference or orientation, and start setting our sights on the goal of making ourselves better individuals and making our country the truly great place it might become.

What Difference Does It Make?

Well, posts will be few and far between, it seems. But the topic of the last one remains very pertinent, since yesterday saw the courts of the state of Iowa OK same-sex marriage. I always thought Iowa had more than its share of common sense, and it's nice to have that confirmed. One of my favorite people in the world grew up in Iowa, though I fear her very fervent Catholicism may put her on the other side of this issue (she may well surprise me though, she has before!).

Anyway, I'm still with Keith Olbermann in his famous Special Comment on the horrific Proposition 8 in California last year (see "What Is It To You?" post, November 2008). What difference does it make to anyone if someone else chooses to be happy in a different way? If two people are responsible and respectful and faithful to each other, who cares if they are of different genders or not? How does the same-sex marriage of two people damage the heterosexual marriage of two others who don't even know them? Why do we need to gin up tons of energy and create tons of bad feeling on this issue?

I've read the whole bible and Jesus said nothing at all about gays (let alone lesbians). The few repudiations or condemnations of homosexual behavior in the Old Testament seem to focus on temple prostitution, which was part of the religions of some of the Jews' pagan neighbors. The men of Sodom who threaten to gang-rape Lot's guests in one incident are out to show their disrespect for and power over the "strangers," and are condemned for violating the laws of hospitality in general. (When Lot offers to send out his virgin daughters to be raped instead, no one seems to think that is out of line, either!) And the quote that all the bigots harp on, about men not being allowed to "lie with" other men as they do with women, is in my opinion the contribution of a writer freaked out about (a) the idea that a man, in patriarchy, is being "used" like women are "supposed to be" used and (b) the very notion of non-procreative sex, i.e. sex that can't result in a baby.

Well, we are, I hope, in a declining patriarchy where sex is no longer exclusively a sphere in which we re-enact patriarchal power relations (i.e., men on top). We are also on a planet which is over-populated to a critical extent, and should be grateful when people of whatever sexual persuasion express their sexuality without abetting the population explosion!

I remain true to my previously stated opinion that sexual preference does not determine character. There is nothing intrinsically immoral or dirty or shameful about feeling attracted to someone of your own gender. It's immoral to cheat someone, anyone, whom you supposedly love, it's immoral to lie to them or put them at risk, it's immoral to treat them irresponsibly, disrespectfully and cruelly. But what's most immoral, plain downright wrong, is discriminating against people on the basis of whom they love, preventing them from enjoying full civil rights and all the legal and financial protections and safeguards of marriage. I will stand by that until I die.

Responsibility, Change, and Character

So, it's December 6th and I haven't posted in four days. The holiday preparations continue to rev into ramming speed, and I suspect posts will be fewer and farther between until after the New Year. But I wanted to touch upon a subject I've already mentioned and develop it a bit, in preparation for more concentrated treatment when life becomes a bit less harried (ha, ha).

One of Barack Obama's most attractive, to me, themes during the recent presidential campaign was the concept that the restoration of American liberties and freedoms must go hand in hand with a general re-shouldering of individual and social responsibilities. "We are the change we've been waiting for" is not a new slogan, but remains a true one. Jim Hightower's most recent monthly newsletter (Dec. 2008, Vol. 10, No. 12: if you're a political progressive and don't read the Hightower Lowdown, look into it) takes up this message:

"If last month’s sweeping vote for change is to come to fruition, We the People must be the ones who nurture it. We can’t just crank back in our La-Z-Boys and say, “We did our job – now Barack can do the heavy lifting for us.” We tried this laid-back approach after Clinton won in 1992 – with unpleasant and unprogressive results.
"If you think your job is done, look who’s waiting for Obama in Washington: a swarm of Wall Street bankers, the war machine, 13,000 corporate lobbyists, naysaying Republican Congress critters, right-wing yackety-yackers, weak-kneed Democrats, the conformist media, and other powerful forces of business-as-usual politics. These insiders intend to shape his presidency in their image.
"We have to be the counterforce, pushing insistently, vociferously, and persistently from the outside. Who’s “we”? You and me – determined citizens, working through our personal networks, public-interest organizations, progressive media, the netroots nation, unions, community groups, and other connections to grassroots activism.
"Obama was the candidate of change, but he’ll be the president of change ONLY if we buck him up and back him up. We must stand up and speak out on every move the insiders make; we must propose and push progressive ideas and ideals; and we must certainly expose and vigorously oppose any capitulations he will be pressured to make to the corporate powers.
"If his presidency is to be worthy of the enormous effort that so many put into it, worthy of the deep potential of this political moment in American history, you and I have to be on the alert and in the face of power...
"From the start, I’ve felt that the most significant thing about the Obama phenomenon was not Obama, but the phenomenon – the fact that millions of ordinary Americans (especially young people) were not merely enthusiastic but were engaged, organizing and mobilizing, taking possession of their democracy, and doing the grunt work that is the essence of self-government.
"People really do want change – not as a political buzzword, but as a fundamental matter of national direction and policy. In fact, for some time, folks have been shouting: CHANGE! Get our troops and America’s reputation out of Iraq. Provide good health care for all. Rein in greedheaded CEOs and corporate lobbyists. End “tinkle down” economics. Re-invest in America’s infrastructure. Rebuild middle-class opportunities. Deal with global climate change. End the use of torture. Get serious about green energy. Restore our stolen liberties. Stop polluters. And, generally, reinstate the Common Good as America’s governing ethic.
"As Obama himself often said on the campaign trail, he is not the change. We are. By electing him, we opened the White House door to the possibility of change. Now we must see it through."

This kind of collective effort is part of what I, personally, mean when I talk of social responsibility. Effecting political change by continuing to work, noodge, speak out, demand and protest. Individual responsibility includes doing so in an honest, researched, thought-through and consistent fashion.

Which takes me back to the issue of gay and lesbian civil rights. Like much of the rest of America, I've seen "Proposition 8: The Musical," which I think is a brilliant piece of agit-prop. If by some chance you haven't encountered this three-minute tour de force, check it out on YouTube. Touching back upon the December 2008 Hightower Lowdown, which disappointed me by not addressing the horrific anti-gay legislation that was passed in four states even as Obama was elected, it did trash James Dobson and his Focus on the Family Christian-right organization for publishing an apocalyptic anti-Obama brochure right before the election. Written from the perspective of a shell-shocked "Christian" chronicling the abominations of four years of the Obama administration in the year 2012, one of its many fear-mongering prophecies was that a liberalized Supreme Court would force schools to teach first-graders that homosexuality is good.

Well, that set me to thinking. Of course the Dobson brochure is despicable, and largely ludicrous. But somehow it made something very clear to me. I think homosexuality, in and of itself, isn't good and isn't bad. It just is. Just like heterosexuality, in and of itself, isn't good or bad, it just is. Some of us are 100% homosexual, some of us are 100% heterosexual, and some of us fall somewhere inbetween. I've come to believe that each individual's possible spectrum of sexual preferences is almost as hard-wired as hair and eye color. Which means legislating discrimination against gays and lesbians is about as sensible as legislating discrimination against blond-haired or green-eyed people. Whether someone is gay, or blond, or green-eyed does not determine whether or not that individual is a decent person.

The only factor that may affect the character of gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered people is a societal one, the still far too commonly parrotted lie that anyone who isn't easily classifiable as "straight" is somehow "less moral" than "the rest of us." If as you grow up you realize that you are homosexual, or attracted to either gender, or don't fit with the sex characteristics with which you were born, you can't escape being bombarded by the societal expectation that you will be a "lesser" or "bad" person. Since expectations do shape us up to a point, those who aren't vanilla/straight have a harder row to hoe -- they have to fight against a whole set of external and internalized expectations of failure (much like people of color or women in general) on top of all the common vicissitudes and adversities.

Nonetheless, a large part of every identifiable population -- whether it's white straight women, gays, African-Americans, or transgenders -- consists of plain old good people. People who are honest with their friends, loyal to their partners and children, responsible about their duties to themselves, their families, their community, their employers or employees. Whatever the difficulties we face, we are capable of demonstrating good character. The capacity to live as a responsible human being is not affected by our sexual preference or orientation. Unfortunately, the capacity to participate equally in the benefits offered by our society still is.