A BIT OF HISTORY
The single event which set the modern LGBT movement in motion was the Stonewall riot on the night of 28 Jun 1969. The patrons of the Stonewall Inn, a Greenwich Village gay bar which had been a frequent target of police harrasment, took to the streets to fight back against the latest in a series of raids. This catalyzed the nation's gay community such that within a couple of years there were Pride parades in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.
Five years after Stonewall, the first high profile piece of gay rights legislation was proposed: the 1974 Equality Act, sponsored by Ed Koch and Bella Abzug (both Democratic Representatives from New York). It guaranteed protection against discrimination based on sexual orientation, in the workplace, public housing, and businesses (it did not include protections for transgender people). Coming ten years after the 1964 Civil Rights Act -- which protected against discrimination based on race, sex, and religion -- the Equality Act seemed a natural extension of those protections, but never made it to the Senate floor.
The 1980s saw the LGBT community mostly in crisis from the AIDS epidemic and so it would be another 20 years until another piece of high-profile legislation was proposed -- the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) was introduced in 1994 by representative Barney Frank (D-MA). ENDA was narrower in focus than the Equality Act, specifically protecting against discrimination in hiring and firing practices, on the basis of sexual orientation. Like the Equality Act, it initally did not address gender identity and the concerns of transgender people.
Year after year, ENDA died in committee, except for 1996 when it received a Floor vote in the Senate but failed by a single vote margin. In 2007, a version of ENDA was introduced which for the first time included protections for transgender people. After this died in committee, Barney Frank made a second attempt to push the legislation through, with the transgender provisions removed. That year, ENDA passed the House 235-184 but was never brought to vote on the Senate floor. (Why the sudden change in 2007? That was the first time in twelve years when there was a Democratic majority in Congress.) General consensus is that while removing the provisions for gender identity made ENDA more successful to the mainstream, it also killed momentum amongst the Act's supporters, who felt it was not inclusive enough. This concern of whether ENDA should support transgender people would prove to be a recurring point of debate, year after year.
Meanwhile, back in the 1970s, when the first Pride parades were going on, Roe v. Wade and the Equal Rights Amendment were in the news, the Republican party was slowly becoming the party of religious conservatism. The Republican platform had never really addressed moral or religious ideology until 1976, when in the wake of the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision, the party platform addressed abortion for the first time (though it allowed for "differing views" on the subject). The Equal Rights Amendment stood a good chance of being added to the Constitution, but failed to gather enough support among the states. These themes -- reproductive rights and women's fair treatment in the workplace -- would continue to be popular targets of attack by conservatives, 40+ years later.
In the early 1980s, the Republican party really started to get religion. High-profile evangelicals latched themselves to the party as an instrument of political action (and Big Church can be an extremely lucrative enterprise, especially given the shocking tax loopholes granted to religious organizations).
In 1980, Jerry Falwell formed the Moral Majority, and James Dobson formed the Family Research Council in 1983. By 1984, the Republican party platform proposed a Human Life Amendment and promised to "eliminate funding for organizations which advocate or support abortion." In 1988, Pat Robertson was a serious contender for the Republican nomination. The 1988 Republican platform espouses that "family's most important function is to raise the next generation of Americans, handing on to them the Judeo-Christian values of Western civilization", and supports "the rigorous enforcement of 'community standards' against pornography."
In 1992, Pat Buchanan's speech at the Republican National Convention heralded a "culture war". The Republican platform that year (which contained four references to God and seven references to "family values"), claimed that "traditional family is under assault." It was also the first time that the Republican party platform had explicitly addressed sexual orientation -- it opposed efforts "to include sexual preference as [protected] under civil rights statutes" and opposed "any legislation which legally recognizes same-sex marriages [or adoption]." That same Platform also details a "national crusade against pornography," and condemns "the use of public funds to subsidize obscenity and blasphemy masquerading as art."
The 1996 Republican platform brought us DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act), which at the time prohibited states from legally recognizing same-sex unions. By 2012, the Republican platform contained ten references to God, 19 references to faith, and a reference to a "war on religion", attacking the Obama administration's "attempt to compel faith-based institutions, as well as believing individuals, to contravene their deeply held religious, moral, or ethical beliefs regarding health services, traditional marriage, or abortion." Which, again, I'll get back to in a bit.
Today, halfway through 2014, the Supreme Court (where 5/9 of the Justices were Reagan/Bush appointees, and most every decision comes down to the same 5-4 split) and (Republican majority) Congress have denied women's interests in the form of equal pay and easy access to contraception. Abortion remains legal, but the Supreme Court has decided that a woman's right to safely visit an abortion clinic without harrassment is less important than the "free speech" of protestors who would (verbally and sometimes physically) abuse her.
WEDDING BELLS
On the surface, gay folks have lately fared a little better than women's interests, and the LGBT movement has enjoyed some surprising recent successes. Indeed I am full of gratitude for the strides which have been made, both legislatively and in social acceptance. The 2011 repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell allows gay, lesbian, and bisexual people to serve in the military, one of the most rigidly conservative parts of society (there is still much murkiness and uncertainty about how much this applies to transgender people). The steady trickle of state after state recognizing same-sex marriage is encouraging progress. Seeing friends, who twenty years ago were fairly homophobic, seeing them now speak out and post online in support of marriage equality, that's really neat and affirming to behold.
So why am I ambivalent about marriage equality?
For one, while I think marriage equality is definitely good and important, it's simple fundamental stuff, frankly marriage isn't very *gay*. The equality movement has become very assimilationist, it's become more about "the right to fit in" rather than "the right to be yourself." Since the 1960s, the umbrella term for the LGBT movement has moved from "gay liberation" to "gay rights" to "equality". Equality to what? To a society which, until a few decades ago, criminalized queer identities, a society which still treats LGBT people as second class citizens? Time was when activist queers marched alongside everyone from labor organizations to the Black Panthers. Queer culture was deeply intertwined with the civil rights movement of the day. Today, that's all but lost to the public face of LGBT interests, who have framed the movement instead in terms of "equality".
There have been good political reasons for the focus on military service and marriage equality. For the LGBT movement to gain traction with the mainstream, it's been necessary to frame it in terms that people can relate to, to get the message out to truck drivers and soccer moms that LGBT people are like everybody else. There's a great positive feedback loop where people see "oh my relative/neighbor/friend is LGBT, this is somebody I already can relate to," and that leads to greater social acceptance, which in turn makes it easier for people to be out.
The intense focus on marriage equality has also been because that's the issue that's important to well-to-do LGBT interests and lobbyists -- not because it's necessarily the most fundamentally important to LGBT people as a whole. In just under half of US states, you can still be denied employment, fired, or denied housing on account of sexual orientation. It's reminiscent of feminist circles in the early 1980s, when all of a sudden there was talk of power feminists and big companies with women CEOs, but the needs of poorer, less privileged women (and especially women of color) got -- and continue to be -- edged aside.
Michel Foucault talked about how most societal homophobia is not about sexual acts themselves, but "the common fear that gays will develop relationships that are intense and satisfying even though they do not at all conform to the ideas of relationship held by others. It is the prospect that gays will create as yet unforeseen kinds of relationships that many people cannot tolerate." To me, it's exactly that supple sense of possibility that makes queer culture so vibrant, it's one of the reasons people talk about queer culture as "family". To be sure, there's not one single monolithic queer lifestyle. There have been countless expressions across history and geography, but all evidence suggests that it's always been about something other than just the desire to experience the hetero status quo with a same sex partner. There's always the potential for different kinds of relationships, different kinds of emotional bonds and deep friendships, different ways to grow strong communities. And that potential to deviate from the status quo into unknown territory, to build solidarity and community in the process, that threatens people.
I am absolutely supportive of people who seek the most decorously conventional of pair-bonding with a same-sex partner. I just don't want that to become the *only* LGBT narrative. I don't want people, when the last states recognize same-sex marriage, to be too quick to throw up a big MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banner that obscures a whole slew of other inequalities which don't have the same feel-good potential. And I don't want those wedding bells to drown out the beautifully strange and righteous poetry of a million other subspecies of queer.
GOIN' TO THE CHAPEL
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 provides protection against discrimination based on sex, race, and religion. Thanks to this legislation, a business owner can't refuse to hire you, fire you, or refuse to do business with you because of your membership in one of those protected categories -- with an exception or two.
Title VII of the Act provides for certain limited religious exemptions. If you are a church or religious organization (university, hospital, etc.) you are allowed to exercise some discretion on hiring
people who are of your own religion, when it's a position related to the core religious function of your organization. If you're hiring a teacher for a Catholic school, you're allowed to hire a Catholic teacher over a similarly qualified Hindu or Atheist teacher -- not unreasonable.
In July 2014, in the wake of the SCOTUS Hobby Lobby decision, ENDA looks to be dead in the water once more. This is in good part because the ENDA legislation is saddled with a religious exemption similar to what's in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act: if you are an organization that's connected to religion, this need not apply to you. The current scope of ENDA also doesn't really go far enough in that it is limited to only *employment* protection. Landlords would still be free to deny housing to LGBT people, business owners would still be free to refuse service based on a customer's sexual orientation or gender identity. And so most advocates of ENDA have withdrawn support, realizing the necessity to hold out for a more comprehensive version of the Act -- something which more closely mirrors the language of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Many states have passed legislation providing these protections at the state level, but as with the Civil Rights Act, until something comprehensive happens at a federal level, protection will be denied to many of those who need it most. Alabama has already ruled it explicitly legal for business owners to discriminate against LGBT customers, and a similar ruling nearly passed in Arizona.
Pastor Rick Warren wrote, referencing the Hobby Lobby case, about how the First Amendment promises, not merely the freedom to worship, but the freedom to practice religion. This is a disturbingly broad idea, when coupled with the idea that "religion is what we say it is." It allows prejudice to masquerade as faith, with no possibility of debate from anyone who is not an established evangelical leader. Warren, with a chilling bit of doublespeak, describes the freedom to discriminate on a religious basis as "the civil rights movement of this decade." In Jan 2014, Warren wrote that "Hobby Lobby's courageous stand...will likely be considered the Birmingham bus boycott, where good citizens finally got fed up with having their rights trampled on, and decided to challenge those who favor conformity over freedom."
Historian John Boswell writes: "careful analysis can almost always differentiate between conscientious application of religious ethics and the use of religious precepts as justification for personal animosity or prejudice. If religious strictures are used to justify oppression by people who regularly disregard precepts of equal gravity from the same moral code...one must suspect something other than religious belief as the motivating cause of the oppression." Even without delving into the laundry list of Old Testament taboos, Boswell observes, a conscientious Christian business owner really ought not traffic with those who practice hypocrisy and greed -- both of which Jesus had rather a lot to say about.
Historically, societies which have been relatively tolerant of homosexual behavior have generally been tolerant of other groups. Conversely those cultures which are most oppressive towards LGBT identities are almost always oppressive towards women and different religions as well. This is admittedly only a general observation, given that the definition of "gay" has varied significantly from era to era and culture to culture, with varying modes of same-sex sexuality (privately and socially), different kinds of romantic friendships and types of pair-bonding. But similarly, "love", "marriage", and such terms are culturally dependant, and anybody who tries to defend their politics on the basis of what's "traditional" will find themselves on shaky ground once they go any further back than, say, the industrial revolution.
Bigotry is rarely if ever a one-off; I don't imagine the evangelical right being like "okay, we don't have to deal with gays, we're cool now" -- there's potential for a growing wedge where women / Muslims / non-native English speakers maybe don't have quite the same rights.
MOVING FORWARD
Earlier this week, in the time while I was writing this article, I was thrilled to learn President Obama signed an Executive Order barring LGBT employment discrimination amongst federal contractors, and did so without including the religious exemption that the Republicans were pressing for. This is a big deal. It's not as symbolic or high-profile as the repeal of DADT, but I suspect it will be beneficial to more folks -- not everybody is interested in joining the military or getting married, but everybody needs a way to put food on the table.
Federal contractors make up an estimated 20% of the workforce, ranging from white collar consultants to food services workers and janitors. But there's still lots of people, especially in rural states, who won't enjoy these protections. And even with employment non-discrimination, LGBT housing discrimination is still legal in many states, and there is at least one state where it's explicitly legal for business owners to deny service to customers who they perceive as gay or transgender. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a terrific, and eminently sensible, piece of legislation, and LGBT people deserve exactly those same rights and protections, the same as anyone in the US.
The current Congress has a Republican majority, and the lowest approval rating of any Congress in US history. They have made it their mission to systematically shut down any legislation proposed by Obama and the Democrats. Almost nothing will get done with this Congress. Fortunately, there is a midterm election coming up this fall, and a chance to improve things in Congress at least a little bit. If you are a US citizen of voting age, ESPECIALLY if you live in a swing state, please take note!
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
The Foucault quotes are from interviews collected in the anthology "Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth", edited by Paul Rabinow.
The John Boswell passage is from the introduction to "Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality"
Lauren Feeney's article "The Religious Right and the Republican Platform" provided a wonderful jumping-off point for the first section of this essay, which I have hopefully expanded upon usefully with my own research.
Alex Park's article "The Legacy of the Hobby Lobby Case: Protecting Anti-Gay Discrimination?" was the original inspiration for this essay, outlining the connections between the various facets of "freedom to discriminate."
