I've made fun of gay people in my life. True, much of the fun-making was done when I was an ignorant, culturally-conditioned young person who didn't understand that, well, gay people are just people. But I don't think that excuses me in full. I contributed to homophobic bigotry in my youth. I still sometimes say things like "that's gay" or "you're gay," though I have thankfully removed the word "faggot" from my vocabulary (except when I jokingly call someone a "faggot" and then remind them that it means a "cigarette"). Change didn't really come for me until my mother came out to us (my sister, my brother, and myself). I don't really remember that moment, to be honest, but I recall kind of shrugging about it (internally more than externally). My mother is gay. So what?
And then the gay rights movement got in full swing. Maybe it had always been in full swing and we just hadn't noticed it in the small town of Placerville, California (where we all eventually moved a year or so after my mother "came out"). I don't know. But once I knew that my mother was gay, I also knew that a lot of the things I had done in my younger years (and was still doing at that time) were, at the very least, problematic (and, at the worst, offensive). I never hurt any gay people physically, because I have never been one for violence, but I know I hurt
many people, gay or otherwise, by calling them names (I say "gay or otherwise" because I don't know if any of the people I called "faggot" or "gay" were gay -- they were usually those on the lower end of the social scale from where I stood, which was pretty damn low on that scale in the first place). And when my mother said she was gay and started bringing around other gay people, male and female, it brought home not only the need for personal reflection, which I was pretty poor at in my high school years, but also the bigotry and hatred so many gay people experience day in and day out.
It started with a group whose name I have thankfully forgotten who used to park what they called "Truth Trucks" by the side of the highway (Placerville has three stoplights on H50, which is a fairly major highway in the Foothills above the Central Valley). The group would sit out there on the side of the road waving their signs, which are variations on things like this:
That's when things got nasty. The "Truth Trucks" people didn't like the "No Hate Zone" resolution, and they set out in full force to protest the passage. And so did we -- my mother and siblings and a good chunk of the gay people in the county. We stood out there on the side of the road cheering for honks from cars. And we tried to ignore when the "Truth Trucks" people yelled at us or people in cars screamed obscenities or threw half-empty cups of soda at friends and supporters. When the skinheads showed up (no joke), things didn't get much better. There were debates, screams, condemnations, and violent rhetoric, along with large influx of police officers (who, thankfully, acted as one would expect them to act -- like they deserved the badges on their belts).
I learned some time later that my brother was told he would burn in hell because our mother was gay (at a protest I couldn't attend). Someone I worked with told me he didn't want gay people teaching his kids because he didn't want them to turn out queer (I got really upset and told him off; he apologized later for upsetting me, which was nice, but that didn't really fix the issue). I know worse things were said to my mother, who attended many Gay Pride events in her slightly younger years, and participated in a few protests.
When the protests "ended," the "Truth Trucks" people didn't. I had to drive past the "Truth Trucks" almost every single day for work. On MLK Day, they would hold up signs saying he didn't support gay rights (when in fact he did, to a certain degree, having retracted earlier comments he made about gay people in his life; but using his words is really unfair, considering they are nearly 50 years old). Then I moved out of Placerville and things improved, in large part because Santa Cruz is where the Hippy Revolution went to be immortal. There were protesters in town, but I never saw them. Rather, I was surrounded, for the most part, by people who supported gay rights. It was a town where marching for what was right occurred frequently.
And it continued: friends of mine were called names, and only by then did I understand the impact those words had on gay people (I had no gay friends when I was younger, but after my mother came out, I met more gay people and befriended some of them). Another friend had numerous altercations with her father, some of which boiled down to "you're barely my daughter because you're barely human." The website I run for young writers has a strong gay membership. Two of them experienced things I can't comprehend because I've never had my sexuality questioned. The first still has to deal with his mother thinking that his gayness is somehow connected to sexual promiscuity (even though he's opposed to such things himself). The other went through weeks of torment wondering what would happen if he came out to his family, and even more torment when people at school started to suspect he was gay, while others found out the truth and spread it around.
Many of the early stuff turned me away from religion. The "Truth Trucks" were bad enough, but it was the apprehension by other churches to get involved (i.e., to take a stand) that was the catalyst that pushed me away from faith altogether (I was already losing it at the time; I just needed a nudge). At times, I've been downright hostile to religion, in large part because the kinds of people I routinely conversed with who were religious were of the radical anti-gay camp. Some of my fierce anti-religion rhetoric died down as I got older (it feels something like what many feminist women must experience when they've repeated the same arguments "for" or "against" something enough times to go cross-eyed). I'm still critical, but I try to keep that oriented towards the "church" rather than the people (and like all human beings, I fail at such things).
The fact that I didn't experience many of the above incidences personally only points to my sexual privilege: being heterosexual. But the people above are people I care about. Many are friends and family, and I've seen first hand a lot of the things that others do to hurt them. They are, in many respects, people with a strength I can't imagine. It's unlikely I'll ever get jumped in an alley or have someone spit in my face or have my rights trampled on, left and right. Few people would be inclined to video tape me in relations with my girlfriend and post it on the Internet to show the world how "abnormal" I am. Or tie a noose around my neck and drag me behind a truck. Or gang rape me to "learn me the right way." I will always be sexually privileged, and I know that's not fair.
I may not be gay, but having a gay mother and meeting gay people, old and young, and getting to know them as people has made it clear to me that there isn't a difference between us. They love just like anyone else.
What inspired me to write this post? Emotion, if I'm being honest. In many (most) respects, the issue of gay rights is an emotional one for me. I can't bring myself to divorce emotion from gay rights, because I have an intimate connection to it. I may not know what gay people feel inside when people trample on them, but I still can't help getting upset when someone proposes a law that directly targets them or says something ignorant about them or links them to pedophilia or whatever. Because I think about the people I know and the ways in which words and laws and so on affect them, and, by proxy, affect me. I don't like it. You wouldn't like it either...
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What is your experience with homophobia? Let me know in the comments!
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I'll never forget a conversation I had with my brother after a friend made a joke on my facebook that I should give up on men and try women. My friend on facebook is aware that I'm bisexual, my brother and the rest of my family, not so much. He questioned me on the comment, fearful that I may one day indeed go for another woman. I told him I wouldn't just to avoid an argument. He said to me, "good, because if you were we'd have to have a serious talk about your influence on my son."
ReplyDeleteI'm always amazed at people who think homosexuals will have influence over their children's sexuality. My mother is gay. I'm not. Nothing about having sex with a man is appealing to me. In many respects, it's repulsive to me in much the same way, I imagine, a purely homosexual person would find sex with a member of the opposite sex repulsive.
ReplyDeleteBeing around gay people didn't change that. It made me understand gay people more, but no part of homosexuality influenced me to want to be gay or whatever. I'm straight. That's who I am. My mother is gay. That's who she is. She'll hang around my kids and they'll turn out gay or straight of their own accord. The only difference between my family and anti-gay families is that my kids won't deal with the terror of coming out to me and my future wife. Because we won't care. In other families, those poor children realize who they are inside and spend years being afraid to tell their families because they know they'll be rejected (or feel like they will be).
It's sad...
Every time I see that picture I think "Homosexuals would be awesomer if we were possessed by demons, because then we would have powers."
ReplyDeleteAnd for what it's worth, even though I have a gay uncle it was still hard coming out, even to my parents. It turned out okay (they were a bit awkward about it, but that was all) but I was worried anyway. Then again I worry a lot generally.
I hope any children I have don't feel apprehensive about such things. The way I intend to raise them would suggest to me that they won't be, though.
ReplyDelete