As everyone now knows, last Friday, the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision effectively prohibiting states from denying same sex partners the right to marry. It was the culmination of a long series of legal battles, and a key moment in a much longer civil rights struggle dating back several decades. Since the decision was released, the world of social media has predictably erupted – with reactions ranging from celebratory cries of joy and support, to angry shouts of derision and disgust. I’ve watched as people I know, or once knew, weighed in on both sides of the issue–from actions as simple as changing their facebook profile pictures the colors of the rainbow, to posting dire, end-of-the world prophecies. Until now, I’ve mostly kept quiet.
This isn’t because I’m on the fence about the issue, or haven’t wanted to weigh in. I personally support marriage equality, and view the decision as a major victory for civil rights. I want to celebrate the decision, because I know what it means to so many people, and what so many had to go through to achieve it. I want to congratulate the gay community, including some dear friends, and let them know that I support them. The lawyer and civil libertarian in me wants to laud the decision as perhaps the most significant civil rights case since Brown v. Board of Education. And I want my non-gay friends and family members to know that, while some of them may disagree, I personally believe the decision was just. I want to turn my facebook profile picture rainbow-colored, and join in the online victory parade.
Yet, something has been holding me back, something I haven’t quite understood. And after a few days of self-reflection, I think I know what it is, which has compelled me to write this blog post – my first.
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It starts with some of my earliest memories, as a country boy in the early 1970’s, living amidst a small cluster of farmhouses surrounded by corn and soybean fields in Northwest Ohio. It was a cluster like so many others in the American heartland, light years away from politically active hot spots like Berkeley and D.C. There was a church on the corner – a church I later became active in—and a small, conservative college town a few miles away.
There were two kinds of men living around me where I grew up– farmers and blue-collar workers. The farmers were modest, hardworking, wore overalls and John Deere caps, drove pickups, and went to church every Sunday. The blue-collar guys wore blue jeans, t-shirts and flannel shirts, smoked cigarettes, drove muscle cars, and drank copious quantities of Schlitz out of pull-tab cans. Most were decent people, who taught their sons to work hard, act tough, never cry, never stand out, and to always act like . . . well, “men.” And that’s what I set out to do.
There was a third group of men not far away—just a few miles down the very road I grew up on—who would ultimately have an important influence on my life as well. These were the professors at our local university—men of philosophy and science and thought, who drove station wagons and Volkswagen Beetles, and didn’t seem to care whether anyone thought they were “manly” or not. But at that time, the university was a mysterious, distant island to me, and played no real role in my life.
I spent my youth idolizing football and baseball players – tough guys who played hard, crushed home runs, took quarterbacks’ heads off, and always got the girls. My television hero was “the Fonz” from Happy Days, another tough guy who rode a motorcycle, wore a leather jacket, and always got the girls. Evel Knievel, Dirty Harry, Steve McQueen . . . butt-kickers, girl-getters, “manly men,” one and all.
One of our favorite games as a kid was called “smear the queer.” It involved passing a football to one kid (presumably, the “queer”), while all the other, presumably “non-queer,” kids ganged up on the queer one and tried smearing him into the ground. We loved it and thought nothing of the name until one day, when one of my neighbor’s moms – an educated and beautiful woman somehow connected with the mysterious university island—informed us that her sons wouldn’t be allowed to play the game unless we started calling it something else. Thus, “down the clown” was born, which I remember thinking was stupid at the time.
In fairness, I had no idea what a “queer” even was, or was supposed to be, back then, as homosexuality was a topic so taboo that it was never to be discussed. That was about to change, however.
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By the ‘80’s, the gay movement had indeed made inroads, and had managed to push its way into the public discourse, reaching even conservative outposts like ours. Popular talk show hosts like Phil Donahue began discussing gay issues openly. Gay personalities like Boy George and Richard Simmons were becoming household names. But while the movement may have been gaining support on the coasts, the reaction in places like the rural Midwest was predictably hostile. Whereas before we never discussed homosexuality, by the ‘80’s, it was openly derided. By my junior high and high school years, the worst insult one could hurl at another boy was the label “fag” or “faggot.” It became the battle cry for class bullies, who shoved weaker kids around and taunted, “what are you gonna do about it, fag?” Nothing—nothing—was a bigger threat to one’s man card than being labeled or regarded as a “fag.”
And while my friends and I were never the bullying types, some of us did find it perfectly fine to joke among ourselves about “gayness” and people “being gay.” We, like so many in society at the time, viewed gays in cartoonish, stereotypical ways. Gay men were skinny and feminine and talked like valley girls with pronounced lisps. Anti-gay sentiment became embedded into our humor. When a friend said something particularly “unmanly,” his man card was temporarily revoked with a joke about his sexual orientation. And when the same thing happened to you, you might attempt to save face by launching into an exaggerated “gay” routine, effectively denying any traces of “gayness” by mocking it overtly.
We were far from the only ones who did this. Anti-gay humor was everywhere. Late night talk show hosts made jokes about men who were “light in the loafers.” Comedians like Eddie Murphy, Andrew Dice Clay, and others routinely made light of gay men, always depicting them in the same lame, cartoonish ways – or worse, as vile, disgusting perverts, which no “real man” could possibly ever look upon with anything other than contempt. And we all tuned in, and we all kept laughing, and we nodded our heads in unison, making sure our contempt was duly registered.
Ironically, I don’t believe we had any real hatred in our hearts toward gay people back then. Hell, we didn’t even know any gay people back then, at least that we were aware of. A teenage boy would have had to be insane to come out as gay in the rural Midwest in the early 1980’s, and few, if any, did. Rather, we hated a lampooned notion of general “gayness,” and the make-believe threat it presented to our identities.
I don’t recall ever personally picking on any gay people, and I pray I never did, but I know I wasn’t really a friend to them, either. As it turns out, I wasn’t close to a single gay person in junior high or high school who subsequently came out, although I can see now that some of them were struggling. I didn’t reach out to offer my friendship, to see how they were doing. I didn’t stick up for them when others made jokes behind their backs. I was in my own little world, mostly clueless, but also mindful enough to keep a nice, safe distance away, and my fragile, peach-fuzzed “man card” out of harm’s reach.
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There was never any singular moment—no magical epiphany or awakening—when my heart opened up and I gained compassion for gay people. Rather, it was a slow and gradual process. Perhaps it started in college, when I finally met and got to know some actual gay people. Perhaps it had something to do with my undergraduate studies, learning about various other civil rights movements, and noticing their parallels. Perhaps it was later, in law school, reading civil liberties cases, studying the Supreme Court and its historical legacy, both proud and shameful. Along the way, my spiritual beliefs evolved, and I became less enamored with ancient notions of judgment, condemnation, and retribution, and more interested in the side of religion emphasizing compassion, equality, and justice. It may have had something to do with living in cities with a visible gay presence, or surrounding myself with more and more people who were tolerant and non-judgmental in their attitudes toward gays. Perhaps somewhere along the way I simply grew up, and became secure enough in my own “manhood” to no longer feel a need to constantly defend it.
If there was ever a nail in the coffin of my old beliefs, it might have been the gut-wrenching disgust I felt that day in October 1998, when Matthew Shepard, a 21-year old gay student at the University of Wyoming, was found hanging on a fence like a bludgeoned scarecrow, where he had been left to die for eighteen hours after being beaten mercilessly by two homophobic assailants. He died less than a week later.
However it happened, I somehow evolved. As a 47-year-old father of two, I’m now mortified looking back at my attitudes toward homosexuals as a kid in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s. I view marriage equality as a basic civil liberties issue, and a pretty simple one at that. I now know and work alongside gay people without fear or judgment, and count many as my friends. I’ve publicly supported marriage equality for many years, and have done a few things along the way to help. But not enough.
And that’s why I’m struggling with this—not with my beliefs, or with the Supreme Court’s decision—but in joining the parade alongside those who fought and struggled, as if I had been with them all along. And, because it’s easy, now, to support marriage equality—perhaps, in an odd sense, too easy.
And while the gay community still needs support, what it really needed was my support, and the support of people like me, in 1974 and 1986 and 1993—when it was difficult, when they were fighting mostly alone, against overwhelming odds—when supporting gay rights took compassion, conviction, and guts. It needed us in the ‘50’s, when gay men were being thrown in jail merely for being gay, and in the ‘60’s, when they were being fired from their jobs. They needed us in the ‘70’s, ‘80’s, and ‘90’s, when they were being bullied, beaten, and mocked. They needed us when they couldn’t get mortgages, or rent apartments, or obtain health insurance, or join the military, or be seen together in public, or become teachers, or adopt children, or form civil unions, or obtain surviving spouse benefits . . . and where were we all back then? Were we all in some sort of daze? Blatant inequality was staring us right in the face, and we did little or nothing to stop it.
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I wish now that I had handled it all differently. I wish that I had been the wise and decent one, like my neighbor’s mom, who recognized the danger of labels and the importance of civil discourse, and refused to allow her sons to use derogatory speech toward gays long before it became politically correct to do so. I wish that I had been the kind and aware one, who had noticed others struggling to fit in and had reached out to offer a hand in friendship. I wish I had been the strong and courageous one, who stood up to the loudmouths and bullies, or the principled one, who refused to cop cheap laughs at other people’s expense.
Instead, I have to own that I was once part of what the gay community was up against all along: a general public filled with fear, ignorance, and deliberate indifference. And it’s the same public that is always at the root of social injustice—not the occasional headline-grabbing fanatic, goose-stepping Nazi, or fire-breathing televangelist—but the masses of otherwise decent people who collectively turn a blind eye to injustice, tolerate inequality, and conform to baseless attitudes and biases that dehumanize and objectify other people. They—we—are the ones with the power to effect social change, and when that change comes too slowly, or not at all, must acknowledge our culpability.
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And there you have it. The reason I’ve been hesitant to hoist a rainbow this past week is because I know that mine casts this shadow. And the reason I’ve been uneasy with the nation’s celebration this week is because I know that America’s rainbow looks an awful lot like mine—with a similar arc and trajectory—and the same dark shadow.
So, I’m putting my rainbow out there, shadow-and-all, in the hope that perhaps we might start talking about our shadows—acknowledging their existence, thinking about what they mean. And I hope we will keep looking into these shadows, until we can see what else they are obscuring. Because it’s only beneath these shadows—of ignorance, fear, and indifference—that we can ever expect to fully connect with our humanity, and with the millions of others out there who continue to struggle for dignity, equality, and respect.
Best to all. – TF
