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Menstuff® has compiled information and books on Gay, Bi, and Transgender issues. This section is Robert N. Minor's weekly column featured daily on our homepage. Robert is the author of Scared Straight: Why It's So Hard to Accept Gay People and Why It's So Hard to Be Human and Gay & Healthy in a Sick Society and Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. He may be reached through www.fairnessproject.org or at E-Mail. 2012 2011 2010 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 I Will Say It Again: Every
Right-Wing Bigot Is Responsible for Those LGBTQ Nightclub
Murders But, the responsibility for this and all the other violence against LGBTQ people falls at the feet of every right-wing religious and political leader who has publicly spoken out in their nationally orchestrated campaign to demonize, dehumanize, and threaten LGBTQ people with punishment in this life and the next. Words matter, and words spoken publicly echo and reecho in the hearts and minds of those who will act on them. They often even produce the kind of self-hate LGBTQ people internalize so they come to despise who they are and those who remind them of it. And of all people, right-wing preachers and televangelists who spend their time minutely parsing every word in their Bibles because what they want it to say is so important in justifying their prejudices, know what the impact of their words is. They’re responsible for their speech and for those who act upon them. I’m not just talking about those who get media attention by literally calling for the return of executions of LGBTQ people. That’s just the most obviously extreme rhetoric of a last prejudice our society allows to be spoken out loud without consequences. I’m talking about every one of those religion-pushers who has used LGBTQ people to further their agendas, their power, their leadership, and their attention-getting needs. I’m talking about every pusher of addictive religion who has closed their minds and hearts to alternative understandings of their scriptures and traditions, in order to cover up their personal issues around sexuality and their sexual addictions. I’m talking about every religion leader who finds that LGBTQ people are great scapegoats to hold the attention and pocketbooks of congregants, TV viewers, radio listeners, and the gaggle of gullible enablers who host them in the mainstream media. And that includes everyone who joined, the party of demonizing the entertainment called “drag” as if it’s a problem for our children I’m talking about every right-wing politician, and even others who consider themselves more liberal, who must not speak out against anti-LGBTQ violence because of their absolute terror of losing their funding, power, and positions, who refuse to be leaders in equality because that will come at a personal cost. I’m talking about those who counsel that now is not the time to enact further LGBTQ protections, or any gun control, while more people die. I’m talking about other religious leaders who won’t lead their institutions to take a public stand for the affirmation of LGBTQ people with all kinds of fear-based excuses: “We don’t want to be known as a gay church.” “We accept everyone, but do we need to mention it?” “We don’t want to divide the Church (because church unity is more important than the lives of LGBTQ people).” “We need to study this subject more because there are many in our congregation who have other views (and still can’t stand LGBTQ people).” I’m talking about religious and political leaders who won’t take a public stand against the violence LGBTQ people still experience regularly in our culture often while the perpetrators are shouting things they’ve heard from American pulpits. They’re the one’s who’ll usually deny in some back-handed, non-public way that they condone the violence, but are too afraid to preach, march in a parade, or attend a rally to openly say so. I’m talking about every right-wing pundit, blogger, and politician who wants to turn what was intentionally an attack on an LGBTQ club into something that merely blames mental illness as if mentally ill people are expected to do these kinds of things, to prematurely bury the LGBTQ human victims of the attack under their need to scapegoat mental illness instead of the homophobic bigotry they condone daily. I’m talking about all those right-wing leaders who suddenly are acting as if they care about LGBTQ victims in spite of the fact that for generations right-wing Christians have been brutalizing LGBTQ people without a peep from these same religio-political leaders. I’m talking about those all over the internet who are looking for every loophole, every subtle nuance, every syllable, and every questionable moral argument to condone or even applaud what happened as if it’s God’s will. All of you are personally responsible even though many people will claim outrage and refuse to say so. My liberal friends might shy away from me on this because they don’t want to believe that the above is true or because their hope is still that those I’m holding responsible are going to change if, like abused spouses, we’re just nicer to them, more understanding, and more forgiving. Forgiveness is something, however, to be given only to those who believe they need it and ask for it. Forgiveness of those who don’t want it is hubris. And if I’m wrong, then there are things that those whom I’m holding responsible can do to prove it. These are actions, not just pretty words, that will show the rest of us that you don’t condone violence against LGBTQ people. Otherwise you’re just a self-justifier. (1) Make sure that your local, state, and federal laws include LGBTQ people in hate crime protections. Hate crimes are not just individual crimes; they’re directed at someone because that someone is a member of a whole group the perpetrator wants to terrorize. (2) Take a public stand against violence toward LGBTQ people as human beings and citizens in this country. Even if you can’t stand LGBTQ people, let everyone you interact with know that you are against the brutalization and dehumanization of them. (3) Face your own issues about sex and sexual orientation. Get therapy. Attend a support group. Ask yourself why this is the issue you want to be known for, and not poverty, homelessness, or hunger. (4) Stop condemning as heretical other ways of understanding your religious texts and traditions than the anti-LGBTQ one’s you cling to for some personal reason. These alternatives proposed by also very sincere believers are all out there in the public discussion and have been for over half a century. (5) Face your and your religious organization’s fears about public support for ending crimes against LGBTQ people and of what other people will think of you. Fear is spiritually debilitating, and facing those fears is a matter of your own spiritual growth not just an action that will benefit others. (6) And repent for all you’ve said or done
that’s regularly cited to kill LGBTQ people. OR seek
for other self-justifications to keep doing so. How to Prepare for the Long Term
Even If Political/Cultural Storms Threaten Just Off the
Coast That's what one of my students said to me after a class lecture on early Chinese thinkers and their views on human nature and government's role in people's lives. "Why doesn't that get you so angry?" I asked. "My generation ia having the party, and yours is getting stuck with our bill." "If I thought that, I'd burn down every radio station that played Oldies," I joked to lighten the mood with hyperbole. I certainly understood why this 20-year-old had given up. Most of the messages around him inspire a hopelessness and helplessness. There's the "all politicians are crooked (or no good, or just out for themselves)." There are the constant media attempts to claim a false equivalency between "both sides." There are the messages that voting doesn't matter in the midst of Republican moves to suppress voting and corporate PACS like ALEC investing millions in their candidates because they know voting really matters. There are the distractions that older generations have created and make profits from to keep young people engrossed in their phones, their apps, their videos, and on and on. After all, their parents are on their smart phones as much as the teens. There has been a decrease in the kind of long-form reading that gives context and depth of understanding. Even our newspapers fail to entice their declining readership to read below the first few paragraphs - if they publish more than a few paragraphs. The long term plan of destruction of the liberal arts in higher education envisioned by those like the Koch brothers and enacted by right-wing state legislatures while cutting state contributions to their colleges and universities - those liberal arts that provide perspective, history, ethics, nuance, and broadly human understanding - is turning these institutions into trade and professional schools fit only to spew out corporate drones. Remember back when AT&T said it preferred liberal arts graduates over MBAs? And now we approach yet another "most important election of our lifetime" with a need to work for the best now yet prepare for a storm that could solidify the undoing of reproductive rights, bring an end to the voting rights of those who want progress, and push LGBTQ people back into dark closets. But all does not have to be lost even if the worst scenario comes to pass. Even then, the path to long-term change - even when we've lost the short term - is one that contradicts the hopelessness of that student. First, it requires that we stop trying to convince the radical right-wing to change their minds. All the evidence is that they won't, that arguing will instead solidify them, and that the few anecdotes about the changed might make us happy in our relationships but will not produce real long term effects. Our money and energies must be spent elsewhere, Political scientist Rachel Bitecofer, who is famous for her uniquely accurate predictions of election outcomes, concurs - the goal in winning elections is not convincing the other side or the few so-called "swing voters" but to turn on and turn out those who agree already. And, she says, this is the way to move forward in today's climate in spite of what old-school pundits who are consistently wrong say: "Bitecofer's theory, when you boil it down, is that modern American elections are rarely shaped by voters changing their minds, but rather by shifts in who decides to vote in the first place." A key to next month's vote and each election hereafter is whether we can we activate those who agree with us, not compromising our values in the false belief that it will change any other side. That's just now how it works anymore, as renown linguist George Lakoff continues to remind us. So, getting that young student and his and future generations to act as politically-involved citizens who get out to vote - the younger generations who are the future and who not only share more progressive values but who are going to reap the effects of our views toward inclusion, climate change, social safety nets, and a kind national culture - means convincing these young voters that voting is important, that voting matters, and that voting is about them, their future, and their values. It involves nurturing through some sort of farm system a young candidate base and supporting them. It means creating or emphasizing organizations that help feed the pipeline. It means pushing candidates who aren't already millionaires, who have a future, and who can begin at a grassroots level in their political life. It means seeking a diversity of candidates who represent the rainbow of human beings in terms of multiple demographics. It means LGBTQ organizations supporting candidates who mirror their own faces and loves. It means seeing gender issues as all related whether that's women's reproductive rights, or the rights of trans children. It means thinking intersectionally that all issues are related. It means following Lakoff's advice to never, ever repeat the framing of those against us even to refute it: "Here's where those on the left make their mistake. Believing in compromise or bipartisanship or some other mediation, they actually affirm the right-wing frame by giving it credence and compromising with it. Even stating it in order to deny it actually invokes and supports the right-wing position in these so-called centrists. Instead, for example, of calling it brainwashing (what it is) we call what anti-gay-profiteers do 'ex-gay therapy' or 'conversion therapy' as if it actually is therapy. And even saying 'so-called' before the terms reenforces the right-wing frame of the matter. When we engage in a debate about whether sexual orientation is a choice or not, we enforce the idea that the view that it is a choice is valuable. When we talk about 'traditional marriage,' we give value to the frame that there is such a thing as one traditional form of marriage even when we recognize that 'tradition' is really just a made-up category where one chooses out of all of history what one likes and leaves out the rest, which is actually more of history. But arguing and repeating their label 'traditional' even to deny it affirms the frame in the minds of the moveable middle instead of invoking our own frame." Should the worst happen in the next election, we cannot lose all hope. But from yesterday on we cannot continue to think that doing the same things over and over will promote progressive change. And we have to think beyond the next election not just to win one more election but to secure the future. Just as all those in Florida at this writing are preparing for the worst that Hurricane Ian might bring them while hoping that somehow the storm will pass with minimal damage, so must we as we face an election that could mean regression do both. Every election from now on could be "the most important
of our lifetime," so, having a long-term strategy in place
won't hurt anything now but will save us from storm damages
ahead. 44 Suicides a Day? What’s the
Straight Role Doing to Our Veterans? A 2021 study by the Cost of War Project concluded that since 9/11, four times as many service members and veterans have died by suicide as have perished in combat. In 2011, reports said, eighteen U.S. veterans, on average, died of suicide every day, while the latest Veterans Administration report with figures from 2020 still puts the number of veterans taking their lives as seventeen a day after a high of 22. Other observers warn that these are undercounts. One report just released argues that the number is more like 44 a day. There is still debate about how many Vietnam veterans have committed suicide on top of the more than 58,000 who died in that war. The number by 1987 might have been as low as the 1987 Centers for Disease Control estimate of 9,000 or as high as 200,000. One retired VA doctor who supports the latter figure wrote then that: “the reason the official suicide statistics were so much lower was that in many cases the suicides were documented as accidents, primarily single-car drunk driving accidents and self-inflicted gunshot wounds that were not accompanied by a suicide note or statement.” There are many messages one can take away from these grim statistics, but few as moving as the one that hit me as I watched a “60 Minutes” interview years ago with a young American soldier in Afghanistan. He had just survived a firefight where he’d lost two close comrades. His interview was punctuated with the welling-up of tears that he continually fought back as he struggled to keep in place the mask of his war-assigned duty to cover up what was tearing him apart inside. How damaging is the emotional toll for our men, and now women, who must suppress the feelings that connect them to their humanity in order to fight wars for a system that parties away on the other side of the world, a system where their mostly well-off leaders tell them they must do this thing, and that they can earn no higher honor? It was difficult enough for many of us to sit through the first thirty minutes of the 1998 box office hit nominated for 11 Academy Awards, Saving Private Ryan without turning our eyes away as bodies were blown apart and men cried out in agony before our eyes. What must the real experience have done to those men who endured the gruesome, relentless destruction of their comrades for days on the Normandy beaches or fought in battles since? One salty old Navy veteran of the actual event, confessed to me that he cried during those scenes in the film, adding: “I don’t know why.” It wasn’t like him to so react, but those feelings were obviously there in some depths he no longer believed he could access. It’s still true that a major measure of manhood in our culture is a man’s willingness to go off somewhere to kill other men and be killed by other men. No man’s manhood is ever question for killing another man. And this kill-or-be-killed agreement for something abstract like the “American way,” “freedom,” or “the country” constitutes proof for many that they did live up to what it is to be real men. If that is the measure of a man, then equality in patriarchal terms means women will also have to take upon themselves the idea that their life is as valuable as men only to the extent that they are willing to give it up. Yet, current impressions persis that women’s lives are more valuable than men’s in these matters. A woman taken in combat is still a much more tragic event in our media and political culture. When women were added to the combat fields in the U.S., one congressman warned: “Wait until you start seeing our girls come back in body bags.” For men, let’s just keep the body count as low as possible. But a woman taken or molested in combat indicates the enemy has fallen to new lows. The justification for this difference was that men are somehow inherently violent. They’re more ruthless, competitive, and cutthroat in an inborn, genetic sense. Internalizing this kill-or-be-killed ideal teaches men that their lives are important only to the extent that they sacrifice them at work, in sports, or in war, for their families, for the team, for the nation. We reward them for killing and dying in the national interest. It’s a big part of the straight (not heterosexual) male role. To get men to internalize this message requires relentless monitoring. “Boys will be boys” supports the early version of this message: beat or be beaten. Boys enforce on each other that toughness and aggressiveness are valued, while nurturing, and being emotionally (other than sexually) moved by others is for girls. Sympathetic emotions must be stuffed down as deeply as possible to get anyone to become fighters in life. The hurt, fear, and confusion all humans feel cannot bubble up or it will destroy the missions assigned to the standard manhood. Stuff them deep. Keep them deep enough that they will never enter into your conscious judgment to infect how you decide to treat another human being, especially another male. Should you feel any bond with the man who is your enemy in business as well as war, you are liable to wimp out. And that is still for sissies. It might even mean you’re gay. That’s how homophobia works after all. Our men, and now our women, are suffering post-traumatic stress disorder not just because of what they witnessed but because they are human beings – men and women as fully human as they were born - who are being asked to do something far out of touch with their humanity. And honor it. The men are still those little boys they once were whose minds had to be worked on relentlessly to get them to believe that war was their manly duty. And fear of what would happen to them if they didn’t conform meant they had to deny all within that could threaten the profitable agenda of the military-industrial-prison-media complex. They did not want to be considered queer for staying in touch with what still lies down deep within and conflicts with what they’ve been told they must do. They did not want, after all, to be treated the way society has treated gay men. Equality in the armed services means military women are being taught that they too must be out of touch with their humanity to be as good as conditioned men, to compete with them, and to suffer and die. And the full acceptance of LGBT people by the Pentagon means they too must show that they’re as “straight” acting and thinking as any of those “real men” who are rewarded for killing and being killed in our warrior society. Our men came to believe that the alternatives to living this version of manhood could be death, humiliation, and rejection. For they knew that this American warrior code still says a man will get rewarded for killing another man, but can be killed for loving another man. But all this rightful military equality comes with the
same price as toxic masculinity – it’s likely now
to tear anyone apart as they struggle to bridge the gap
between their real humanity and a deadly straight role they
must prove they can live – one that could end up
killing them one way or another. What If We Don’t Agree
Politically? These last political seasons, however, have even strained some of those relationships. It has become common particularly for those in the MAGA crowd to seem not to be able to go very long without a remark about liberals, the current president, gender, or any of the pet complaints they have. Again and again we hear how arguments over the presidential candidates in both the primaries and the general election campaigns have actually destroyed friendships and driven couples into silence when it comes to discussing how they’re voting just among themselves. But there are also arguments about vaccines, immigration, LGBTQI people, gender, how the government should help people, and on and on. Whether or not a relationship can survive political disagreements depends upon what isn’t actually the political disagreement, but something deeper. It depends upon both why someone holds the political positions they do and what being right about one’s politics means to their ego. We used to be governed by the old advice that if we want to get along we should never discuss politics or religion. Yet it turns out that we need to discuss these two topics with each other - not to convert our friend, relative, or partner to our position but to get to know them better. Just as relationships can work when members hold different religious positions, so it is with politics. But whether or not religious or political diversity is good for any relationship depends upon the psychology behind why someone holds both. A person’s personal religious and political views (no matter what larger “ism” they identify with) tell us much about what’s beneath an individual’s reasons for accepting and identifying with a religious or political position. And those deeper realities are more likely to make relationships unbearable. One’s politics tells us about what is meaningful to them and how they approach life. It tells us how they analyze problems and what they believe are realistic solutions to those and future problems. This means that when dating one can learn about some deeper values by hearing about how someone votes and why they make their choice. For example: What do they mean by “personal responsibility”? Is it about how someone takes care of themself or do they believe that we are personally responsible for a larger community? And how large is that community? Do they forget about or ignore the privileges they have due to the circumstances of their birth? Do they actually claim that they are “self-made” and that everyone could pull themselves up by their bootstraps? How do they relate to someone they see as an other? Do they show empathy for those who are in other circumstances as if they could just as easily find themselves in their shoes? What are some of their first assumptions about human nature? Are people basically lazy or out to take advantage of others? Or is human nature basically good and when humans don’t act out of their goodness, they’re actually showing us what has happened to them in life? When we listen to someone speak about their politics, then, we hear about how they will relate to us, to the problems relationships encounter, and to themselves. Their view of what human beings are like means we too are going to be interpreted as another of those human beings. We learn, through listening to their views and how they react to our responses, much that will matter in the long term. It’s not the individual political issues themselves but what is behind and beneath their decisions. But there’s also another element to watch. We will learn a lot about a person by how they hold their political (and religious) views. Whatever their views, then, to what extent can they relate to those who disagree? Are they somehow compelled to argue? Must they bring up their positions in almost any company? Can they let some disagreements go or must they defend their own side all of the time? Can they walk away or does the fact that others disagree with them continue to gnaw at them? Why can’t they let it go? Why is it so important to them? Why do they need to be “right?” Is being right more important to them than being compa By watching for how someone is or is not seemingly obsessed with political arguments, we learn about someone’s insecurities. We learn that somehow a person must feel that people need to agree with them in order to feel good about themself. We learn that this person must have people agreeing with them for them to feel that their beliefs are ok These are actually the emotional issues that will exist beyond and beneath political and religious disagreements. They’re more likely to affect our relationships in the longer run. But it’s each person’s own decision about how they want to relate to the other person. We will have to decide if we are willing to be in a close relationship with someone with these issues. And, if we’ve already committed ourselves to a life
“’til death do us part” to this person, what
we’re going to have to relate to is not political
disagreement but the reasons why those disagreements are
bothering each member of the couple, and whether we’re
willing to accept that as just the way this relationship is
going to be. The Pathetic Masculine Heroics of
Today’s Right-Wing It surely represented all those radical right-wing politicians who regularly send others into battles but as so-called “Chicken Hawks” are the first to flee any chance of personal or career harm by claiming, let’s say, “bone spurs.” But it also symbolized the type of heroes that the current radical right-wing listens to in their renewed call to return to a hyper-masculinity, a toxic patriarchal mix that they’ve latched onto again as the crucial cause of everything that’s wrong with our planet. Refusing to admit that their own policies are the root of the problem, they’ve calculated that preaching everywhere they can that masculinity itself is under siege and in crisis will work. They blame the same groups that they’ve picked on for generations, of course – those who want equal rights for women, LGBTQI people, “socialists,” and anyone else who disagrees with them. Hawley, the skedaddler, portrays himself as some sort of expert on the subject - though he’s far from alone in this crowd - and even has a forthcoming book published by a right-wing press entitled Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs. Those who actually study masculinity find his claims to be an unspecific, data-less, polemic that appeals to white Christian nationalism. And his crusade is one element that’s crucial to the right-wing’s fight in “the culture wars,” which include coming after everyone else. There’s a long history of right-wing Christian attempts to solve American problems by returning to patriarchal masculinity, as I’ve written before when discussing the six elements crucial to many Evangelicals’ obsession with the former president: As American culture began to accept equality for women through women’s suffrage and various waves of feminism, these Evangelicals became convinced that they must protect patriarchy and male privilege. It’s always been the case in the U.S. that the male gender role central to its national identity has defined real men as what they aren’t - as not “feminine” and not “gay.” That’s still the essence of calls for any “Straight Pride” event. Putting down women as not having by nature the preferred “masculine” characteristics, oppressing men for not being stuck in every aspect of their masculine straight jacket with gay slurs, and disparaging women who exhibit so-called masculine characteristics, interests, and abilities with lesbian slurs is as traditionally American as apple pie. Today, so much of that same prejudice central to right-wing culture wars is focused on stifling the visibility of transgender people. Because of the gains of lesbians and gay men, they’ve tweaked their playbook on gender politics to scare the country about those who defy rigid gender binaries. But even more curious are the heroes they’ve chosen to embody their new wave masculine ideal in the calls to return to masculinity. They’re not just the tried and true muscle-bound warriors, the he-men that were considered “men’s men,” and men who’d be willing to beat, defeat, or kill other men if needed that they idealized in past unrealistic stereotypes – the Rambos, James Bonds, John Waynes, and steroidal bodybuilders. It’s not those who show courage, self-sacrifice, plain-speaking honesty, and a strong sense of righteousness. This new wave of right-wing masculine role-models embraces the new politics of our era. It’s the right-wing politics of lying, cheating, self-protection, sacrifice of others, never taking responsibility, and stepping on anyone to climb up the ladders of power. The news has been littered with these models even though the mainstream media fears calling them out. That’s why Josh Hawley’s activities parody it all. But think of the others who epitomize this return to masculinity – A former president who exhibited cowardice throughout his life, actually saying for example after claiming bone spurs to duck out of the Viet Nam War that not getting an STD was his equivalent and who cowers from anything or anyone he’s scared of? A political Party full of people whose recorded condemnations of the president for encouraging the attack on the U.S. Capitol later in fear of him and losing publicly lie saying that they never said it? A gaggle of preachers who shout straight masculine tomes from their pulpits but live the totally different sex lives they condemn regularly? A gang of gun-toters hiding behind their openly-displayed weapons in fear of others? Who then are those who actually show these old so-called masculine virtues today? A female Republican Representative on the January 6th committee who speaks plainly and knows she’s thereby sacrificing her political position. A Black female prosecutor in Atlanta who courageously and doggedly fights to bring down those at the top who attempted to subvert citizens’ votes. A female Georgia election official who’s still fighting to ensure election integrity in spite of the former president’s gang threatening her and her family. Every woman who stands up now against the Supreme Court’s decision to make them second class citizens when it comes to reproductive decisions. The LGBTQI people who attend their Pride Fests when the gun-toting haters threaten them. The performance of those so-called masculine virtues
among those who weren’t supposed to have them
contradicts the lie that these are characteristics confined
to a single gender. It also exposes again all the lies about
these matters that the right-wing is regurgitating as if in
today’s world courage, honesty, and strength against
the odds aren’t characteristics found elsewhere rather
than among their bloviating “masculinity”
posers. Not a Straight, White, MAGA Male?
Then They’re Coming for You The forcing of women to give birth, the threats made by Supreme Court justices to end marriage equality and the right to contraception, the numerous red-state laws from “Don’t Say Gay” to transphobic discrimination, the orders by governors to have family services investigate parents of trans youth or parents who take their own children to an event hosted by someone in drag, the attempts to suppress the votes of those who disagree with them, the calls for “Christianizing” the laws and the country itself, the worship of megalomaniacs, and the violence inspired by all this that’s acted out on anyone not them, are all signs that a bigoted minority is willing to do anything it takes to protect their identities. If you’re following the news, the list is depressing. It's all become blatant because the last president modeled hate speech. We are seeing a radical, right-wing, reactionary version of what Lutheran pastor/theologian Martin Niemöller famously authored in 1930s Germany as he witnessed the rise of the Nazis there: First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— And if we don’t see the intersection between racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and the others in the threats of the radical, anti-democratic, so-called “Christian” right-wing, we’re not only not paying attention but enabling our own demise. Even straight-white-males who voted for the loser, and would again, and their children are threatened if they don’t toe the exact line. It’s not just an idle saying at all: “No one is free until everyone is free.” A commitment to diversity and equality that will fully heal our society is commitment to a process of ending discrimination. It’s a commitment to a new way of relating to others, a commitment to an entire way of approaching life. It’s not just commitment to ending discrimination against one group or another. It’s not refocusing discrimination onto a group other than one’s own. That’s because discrimination and prejudice are something that is more like a lifestyle that blames and scapegoats those we define as “other.” It’s an approach to life which sees others as less than fully human, focuses on roadblocks in the path of understanding others, projects negative attention on others so as to take it off of one’s own group, or says: I may be how I am but at least I’m not like them. Ending discrimination is ending a pattern of seeing others in a certain way, a pattern of not dealing with the effects of discrimination on each of us, and a way of misunderstanding our larger society itself. This pattern looks for reasons to discriminate. It clings to personal experiences and universalizes them to stereotype everyone in a group. It hunts through everything in the past to find some evidence that its attitudes are “traditional.” It takes one interpretation of the Bible as “what it really says,” rather than as just one way of understanding that ancient text. It even shuffles through all the data that science provides to find those “facts” that support the prejudice. This way of life gets so ingrained that it’s not recognized. We become like fish in water. We get so acclimated to the water that we don’t even know that we are wet. We may not know there is an alternative to being wet and we may even fear dying without the water. And discrimination is not just a personal issue. It’s not merely ended by deciding I will no longer discriminate. Ending it requires change in the institutions about us. It requires recognition that we have been a part of the discrimination, often unconsciously, and that it is time we became more conscious. It means that we reject denial and seek new information and new ways of understanding each other and the dynamics of discrimination. It means we cannot apply the ideas of capitalism to our relationships. We cannot think in terms of shortages and competition for limited resources when it comes to ending discrimination. We must reject the idea that there is not enough freedom, attention, or love to go around. We must reject the idea that if your group gets attention it will take it away from mine. We must begin with the idea that the more others are free, the more others experience real equality, the better that is for all of us. That’s not always easy. We’ve been raised to believe there isn’t enough of anything to go around. We were often taught to believe that if someone gets love, that that will diminish the love available for me. We were seldom taught that the more love, attention, and kindness that is expressed, the more there will be in the world. As children, our parents’ time and attention were limited. We may have had to compete with brothers and sisters for their attention and may even have “fought” for it. That pattern is often carried over into our adult lives and our anti-discrimination work. But it’s not true. We will not run out of time. We will not use up all the attention. And loving another will not mean there is no love left for me. Seeing discrimination as a lifestyle brings us all together to change things. Seeing it as one victim group pitted against another keeps us fighting and never ends what’s hurting us all. That’s why we honor all diversity every chance we get and through our votes. The more diversity we honor, the more we are able together to change the lifestyle that keeps each one of us in stifling boxes that never break the pattern that finds someone else to diminish or even hate. Plus the more we honor diversity, the
more we prove that we belong on this planet. No Surprise in That Southern
Baptist Sex Scandal Report: Religion Has a History of
Covering Sexual Dysfunction Of course, the anti-Catholic stand of these Baptists and most Evangelicals has kept them condemning the same thing in Roman Catholicism for a century. And widespread sexual abuse is a factor in Evangelicalism beyond this denomination. As I wrote in the chapter "Not So Strange Bedfellows: Sexual Addiction* and Religious Addiction:" "The existence of widespread sexual abuse by the clergy beyond the Catholic Church remains another societal secret. Though, as best we can tell, it occurs in similar proportions, it's widely swept under the rug by denominations and local churches." The real history of religions throughout the world shows how its leaders and institutions have been concerned with controlling human sexuality through almost any means, especially when controlling that sexuality supports the culture's political and economic powers. At the same time, history is replete with sexual harassment and abuse. Obsession with sexual control is due to religions having been useful to political rulers to promote their power - kings, emperors, and politicians who funded the religious institutions and were often treated as exempt from the religious sexual prohibitions that were enforced on the commoners. Religious leaders and institutions relied on economic and political patronage and protection from governments just as the religious right-wing wants it to be today. Sexual control of populations is vastly common to, but doesn't have to be something inherent in, religion itself. There's as much sexual abuse in non-religious corporations as in any denomination. Healthy religion could be used to promote so much else, but that would mean giving up much institutional power. Instead, religious leaders would have to become comfortable with promoting freedom and personal choice. But sexual obsession and control represent a familiar way religion has been used by its leaders, institutions, and allies to control the populace - adding eternal damnation, other condemnations, and threats to sanctify worldly power plays. Sex has been good for stoking religion because it's universal and, in Capitalism, it sells. Thus, at the same time it can be both promoted for profit and useful to raise guilt when it's ever practiced. For millennia, then, religious leaders have been preaching that their divines want all kinds of controls on human sexuality. You've noticed that that kind of preaching has mostly failed, right? If you listen to controlling religious leaders who continue to repeat these failed tactics talk, they're shouting today as much as ever, if not more, that sexual license - being out of (their) control - is worse today than ever. Of course, this is combined with right-wing religious leaders' claims that it's those other religions or denominations that have the problem - proof that they have the Truth and those others don't. The Southern Baptist Convention, like the Roman Catholic Church, has shown that it can act like a major international bureaucracy that has institutionalized sexual addictions and covered them up with religion addiction. And all through this, these institutions continue to act as if LGBTQ people or homosexuality is the societal problem. No, no look over there! That trope was debunked decades ago. The majority of members of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, for example, are women. And reports of sexual abuse to SNAP have regularly come from Evangelicals. The reality of right-wing religion's sexual sickness is that repression leads to obsession. And sexual addiction* and dysfunction and their cover-up with sexual and religious righteousness are widespread cultural phenomena that our sexually sick culture doesn't want to face. "As long as we can pin addiction on dysfunctional families and make them the primary cause of sexual addiction," Anne Wilson Schaef asks in Escape from Intimacy, "can we then hold onto the illusion of 'normal,' refuse to look at the role of our institutions (especially church and school), and avoid completely the role of addictive society?" As I discuss in When Religion Is an Addiction, the relationship between sexual addiction and religious addiction has a long history as cross-addictions in the Church, back at least as far as influential Church Father St. Augustine whose own Confessions show that he's a classic example of a sexual addict covering it up by becoming a religion addict. Augustine's theological cover-up concluded that original sin was actually passed down through the sex act he could never reconcile in his personal life. Hence the Church would become a place for sexual anorexia and bulimia. Even more today, though, it's multiplied by that economic sexualization of our culture through conservative corporate, "free market" consumerism. Sex, the ad industry still believes, sells. It's portrayed as something everyone can "have" better if they buy, buy, and buy more. Sex is sold as proof you're a real man or woman. It proves you're finally close to another human being. Everyone else has the stuff that ensures that they're having the great sex you aren't, you should fear. And if you aren't compulsive about sex, you're told there's something wrong with you. Even some "science" colludes with the idea. This is an ideal environment for religious institutions to recruit followers by convincing them that they're guilty for having, or even thinking about, sex or the wrong kind of sex. This tried and true method for getting people to relieve their guilt would lose much of its power if society weren't selling things this way. No wonder right-wing religion is in cahoots with big business and its consumerism. Correcting the societally encouraged sexually dysfunctional thinking and resulting guilt would require institutional and personal healing and learning how sexuality can be holistic and healthy. It would require recognizing the variety of sexual orientations and expressions. But the popular method is to try to relieve the guilt and shame with a cover-up - the religious addiction to the feeling of being righteous. Enter anti-sex politics and right-wing Christianity with its fear of anything it can't control. Hide in the high of feeling righteous and identifying with each righteous cause, cling to the righteous feelings of right-wing Christianity's exclusivism, and you have crossed into religion addiction. It's easier than coming to terms with what one hates or fears about themself and rejecting the institutions that promote fear and hate. It's easier than learning to find one's healthy sexual self. Instead, this righteousness high works, until the addicts fall off the wagon. -------------------------------- *I know that there are also some therapists who want to
deny the reality of sexual addiction and feel that it is
misused as an excuse - sort of like, "the alcohol made me do
it." To me that is a matter of disagreement among
specialists over therapeutical definitions of
"addiction." Responding to the Current
Right-Wing Grooming of Americans This is a well-funded national, top-down strategy promoting fear-tested methods aiming to destroy not only any gains LGBTQ people have made in the larger public consciousness but also to end the threat of an open, historical and evidenced based public educational system. Florida is just the most widely talked about model because its governor is positioning himself to capture the cult-like allegiance of those who fall for it in order to become the next Republican messiah. But it’s played out all over the country even with Republican women representatives actually following transgender people into men’s bathrooms to gain political points as brazenly and cruelly as possible. Right-wing strategists intentionally followed their quite successful fabrication of a “CRT” panic that was meant to scare White people away from the support of public education by strategies that scare people with the frightening word “grooming,” as if books or teachers are going to willy-nilly convince children that they should all have gender reassignment surgery. The Florida so-called “Don’t Say Gay” bill was thereby dutifully rebranded by the Florida governor’s press secretary as an “Anti-Grooming Bill.” They’ve conspired to make transgender people the convenient lightning rods again while the privatizers who want to make money off of it have made the disenfranchisement of public education a larger goal. Right-wing religionists have long feared public education as a liberalizing enemy and right-wing politicos have eyed it as a money-making opportunity as well as a good way to maintain political power by scaring people with the trope that something nefarious is happening to their children. All of this is an intentional and even predictable continuation of the fear-based rhetoric we’ve seen over the years with the power of much mainstream media behind it even more forcefully. It plays upon long-standing and systematic confusion, misinformation, stereotypes, and insecurities especially about gender while the science of gender has long since moved on from those stereotypes. And the danger is that those of us who oppose this can take little for granted. So many of our institutions are not only unprepared to address these attempts to win the country for permanent regressive power but, like the Supreme Court, are captured by the those who propose to do so. So, we should be prepared to respond. And here are some ideas, none new to me. We cannot focus on changing the minds of those who are caught up in these ideas by using long, complicated and nuanced discussions, or reciting statistical studies no matter how true and logical they are. And we need to recognize that our arguments aren’t working. People remember two things about what we do: (1) that some human being was there in front of them who not only disagrees but is willing to stand up confidently and say so, and (2) a phrase, soundbite, quick response that confronts their assertions, captures their attention, and sticks even if they disagree. Never, ever repeat their phraseology or labels even to say “so-called.” This means never use the word “grooming” or call them “anti-grooming bills,” or “parents’ rights” bills even when talking to the media. Get the media to say “what people call the don’t say trans bill,” the “don’t say gay bill,” “the forced birth bill” or the “ban books that I don’t like bill.” There’s a reason why the right-wing won’t use this framing - because they realize it works for us. Develop and use repeatedly words, phrases, soundbites, and very brief arguments in response – be creative. Remember how “Hate is Not a Family Value” was effective until we let the other side talk us out of it? You’ve heard some of these examples already, I hope, but what’s important is that you use “I” language as if you are sharing something from your values and story.
Here’s one list, by the way, here’s a more recent one, and a still more recent one. You’ll need to pick your favorites as examples if you want, such as former Republican House Speaker Denny Hastert, Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, Donald “Grab ‘em by the Pussy” Trump, or Republican Senate hopeful Roy Moore, but I’m not sure it’s worth listing any.
Do everything you can to get those who agree with you out to vote in every election. This is more important than trying to change the minds of those who don’t agree with you. Remember, the right-wing is a minority in our country, but it’s a loud one and has spent decades capturing the means of power and manipulating them to maintain that power. They try to convince everyone that our values in contrast are radical when polls consistently show them centrist and mainstream. We owe no one apologies for where we stand against these
extremists. Instead we must model for, and appeal to and
empower, the majority who agree with us to respond
believably to these vicious right-wing attacks. Sincerity
and conviction matter now more than ever. How Much Longer Will
“Traditional” Be Used As if It Matters? Historically we know that marriages were seldom based on who someone loved anyway and that many marriages were bigamous or polygamous. At the least a marriage was seldom sexually monogamous for the male partner. One only skim through the Bible for example after example among its heroes. Even in the New Testament, Paul tells Timothy and Titus in the first century that he should choose as church elders those among its membership who are “the husband of one wife.” Scholars debate the actual meaning of this requirement for leaders in the first-century Church and its relationship to Roman laws for those classified as “citizens” – many in the early Church were not from that class. But why is it still a powerful argument to say that something is “traditional?” Just because something is labeled traditional, does that make it good, moral, humane, just, caring, or even valuable enough to preserve? “Tradition” has something to do with being historical, right? But does that even matter? No one is sure about who first claimed: "History is just one damned thing after another." But Henry Ford agreed: "History is bunk." In a time like this, though, we need to know our history to see how much is possible and to be aware of all that’s been accomplished by our predecessors. History tells us how we came to this place, for better or for worse, and whether we're stuck here or not (usually not). And knowing how things have changed inspires hope that other things can too in spite of any current darkness. But in what sense does history somehow provide us with norms, tell us how things should be, or model what must be done? And are we victims of our past? Now, a lot of past things could be considered “traditional” because they made it down through history, sometimes against apparently overwhelming odds. Slavery is traditional. Women idealized as male property is traditional. Living with cockroaches is traditional. So are an assortment of diseases such as small pox, typhoid, and pneumonia. To fight them is to go against the weight of tradition. “It’s traditional” is evoked by its brandishers to claim that certain things shouldn't change, as if we’re expected to assume that because something is traditional it's better than things that aren't. "Love one another" is a traditional recommendation, but its value doesn't rest in the fact that it’s an old idea, and certainly not in whether or not it's traditionally been widely practiced. That something is "traditional" has been used historically to argue against LGBTQ people just as it has against any group that a dominant culture has marginalized. If one thing is surely traditional, it's discrimination. In America "traditional family values," refers to the values of white, patriarchal, discipline-oriented, middle-class families in 1950's nostalgia. In fact, all around the world “traditional” seems to mean the values of upper-class males who socially, economically, and religiously dominated the majority in their culture. Those values are supposed to be better than treating women and children as full human beings who are as good as grown-up males, or recognizing the value of letting people love whomever they choose. "Traditional understandings of the Bible" are assumed to be better than those of modern scholarship, especially if they’re taken to condemn anything that threatens "traditional family values." Words like "revisionism" and "modernism" are used as putdowns. And this is so even if these "traditional" interpretations actually were developed as late as the mid-twentieth century. Religious traditions are defined by authorities who see themselves as somehow more qualified than the rest of us to know what we should all consider true. They include merely a few of the ideas, events, and morals from religious history while ignoring many others. Then these traditions are used to tell people who they are and confine them inside internalized, restrictive psychological, emotional, and social boundaries that promote guilt, condemnation, and self-hate in those, such as LGBTQ people, who don't fit in. It's an emotional attachment to something called a “tradition” that imprisons anyone. For we were not taught that a tradition is valuable and true merely through logical discussions of it with us. Traditions were given to us as members of a community, which may have included our immediate families -- a community that defined us, accepted us, affirmed us, and validated us. We also learned that that community would do so until we stepped outside of its "traditional" beliefs to live on our terms for ourselves. As LGBTQ people have come out to themselves and the world about them, their attachment to these communities and their way of seeing things has been, not surprisingly, emotionally difficult to sever. They often find themselves putting much of their emotional energy in relating to, arguing against, or obsessing over these traditions even if the traditions actually invalidate LGBTQ people. Those outside a tradition can be baffled by why the stuck ones just can't get over it. So, lets always ask who it is that has chosen which of the array of events of the past are to be considered traditions, that is, which events are more than just past happenings? Someone had to decide which of history's events and ideas provide norms for the present and which do not - and their motivations might not always have been the best. All traditions have been defined by someone or some group picking and choosing from the past while ignoring most of it, usually a dominant group. Otherwise everything that's ever happened or been said would be included in every tradition. And all traditions at one time were new. They began as something other than traditional. So who says that you and I cannot define today for ourselves what is a part of our “tradition” and what isn’t? And what loss, abandonment, fear, guilt, and emptiness would we feel if what we then chose was different from that of our parents, our religious communities, or other cultural institutions? Though we may believe the voices that say we can't, shouldn't, or aren't able to do so, the fact is, we are fully capable of choosing for ourselves. It's a decision we can make. Not only is it our choice to make and define our own traditions. It's also our decision whether or not to be a part of any traditions defined by others. We are not victims of anyone else's definitions or traditions. We do not need to live under the belief that we are only worthy human beings when we fit in with others or when others love us. We can be as innovative as we want. We can choose what to value. We can choose what ideas and beliefs will define us. We can choose to be victims of "tradition" no longer. So, Henry Ford, it isn’t history, but many
“traditions” that are bunk. Is "Color Blindness" a
Worthy Goal? From the bright red of the male cardinal to the subtle colorings of his female companion, from the blues of the sky to the greens of our plants and trees, from the deep shiny ebonies of the raven to the glowing yellows of the gold finch - nature revels in dazzling colors, shapes, and sounds. There's diversity in sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, the skin colorings and body types of humanity, the varieties of insects, the shapes of snowflakes or leaves, the colors and sizes of planets, and on and on. It's clear that a dull sameness is not in the natural interest of the world around us. Such diversity doesn't have to be, it seems to me. We could have evolved efficiently without it. But Nature doesn't want to have that - it's into flamboyance. Equality, affirmation, and celebration, then, is not about ignoring differences but about rejoicing in them. The goal of our laws, then, must be to treat all equally not because everything and everyone can be reduced to a boring, unimaginative sameness, but because there is a basic humanity that is shared in the midst of nature's ever-present exuberance and extravagance. When people say they "don't see color" in humanity, what is it they are left to see? It certainly isn't the real universe about us. The universe isn't just fifty shades of gray, after all. It consists of so much variety that we can still be thrilled, even surprised, by the discovery of new birds, the pastels and deep colors of a glowing sunset, or the decorations and appearances of the other human beings we meet. But that isn't always the response, for though Nature loves such diversity, humans can easily fear those who are not like them. And that fear is easily and regularly exploited by economic systems that have come to thrive on such fears by turning Nature's extravagance into the lucrative threat that those not like us are the dangerous "Other." The most common responses have been to act on those fears by huddling with those who in the midst of the diversity we define as like us or by minimizing obvious differences in order to be able to accept others. Neither of these responses fully embraces the Universe about us but puts us out of touch with it. America as a "melting pot" stew where all diversity is reduced to sameness, for example, is a meme that has come to promote a definition of that sameness in terms of one set of cultural assumptions - everyone is to be as "White" as possible. So we were all supposed to learn how to be "White." We can read the histories of this, where different ethnic and religious identities learned to survive by melting into, conforming to Whiteness - the Irish, Jews, for example, a process that meant separating from those who could not pass. How different it would be if, actually celebrating natural diversity, this image were replaced with newer ones: America as a "salad bowl" or "mosaic." Likewise, think of all the calls for LGBTQI people to be more straight-acting. They should fit in by melting into the straight stereotypes of a heterosexual lifestyle. That might be natural for some, but what about those who don't find it so, who express the diversity of possibilities that people in this exuberant world can live in terms of gender or sexual orientation, those who break the straight-acting lifestyle and might even, by living outside the strictures, provide us with some of the great cultural and artistic achievements of humanity? Since one's sexual orientation or gender identity is natural, inborn, fluid, God-given - however one identifies or thinks of it - the problem is that being straight-acting, straight-thinking, straight-feeling is a culturally conditioned role that isn't natural at all. That role is societally defined and installed, and not part of the Universe's extravagance; it stifles the diverse possibilities of everyone living freely, including heterosexual people. And, as I've argued in Scared Straight: Why It's So Hard to Accept Gay People and Why It's So Hard to Be Human, cultures, not Nature have installed that role through the fear of what could happen to a human being who lives any alternative lifestyle. Yet living outside the limited role seems to be how Nature wants it. Calling for people to ignore the diversity of Nature can also take the form of spending time emphasizing only our sameness while ignoring our differences. It's easy, after all, and hardly a virtue, to tolerate those who are like us, who agree, who look like us, who share our culture. Tolerance and full acceptance is harder if it calls us to accept not only the similarities we share as human beings but also the differences among us that unfettered Nature has put before us on display. It's those differences that provide challenges to our way of thinking of the world and ourselves. They remind us that our culture, our sexual orientation, our gender identity, our skin color, our ethnicity, our body-type is only one of many. They challenge any attempts to value ours as superior or worthy of dominating others. They call us to open up any limited views we have of humanity. They challenge us to redefine ourselves and to throw off what limits us from being fully free. They push us to face all the possible ways of being human that a Universe that revels in diversity has set before us. And they question any attempts to pretend we are "color blind' to the vibrancy that surrounds us. The Universe has set before us the challenge to be as we
were born - seeing, not "blind" to, Nature's variety and
living our part in it. These Holidays Exalt Those Who
Must Flee Home and Homeland The previous episode of those foreign Magi and other outsiders honoring the baby Jesus in Bethlehem that’s symbolically depicted in countless nativity scenes wasn’t the conclusion of the series. Matthew 2:12-18 instead goes on further to teach its readers one more thing: that the “Holy Family” are comrades with any who have had to flee their home or homeland for protection. The Magi, the Gospel previously said, had been to the capital city, Jerusalem on the way to Bethlehem. Their inquiries thereby alerted King Herod and his dutiful political and religious advisers that they were searching for what their astrological signs had predicted: a new king of Israel has been born. Now, as they were about to return home to Persia after finding Jesus, the tale adds, they were warned “in a dream” not to report their findings back to Herod and to take an alternate route home (2:12). Herod, feeling that he was tricked by the Magi out of their report of what they had found, concludes that he must squelch any threats to his power. In anger, he orders the deaths of “all the male children who were in Bethlehem and its surroundings aged two years old and under.” (2:16) The Church over the centuries has depicted this in art and story as “the Slaughter of the Innocents.” Joseph is also warned “in a dream” to immediately take his family and flee their home country into Egypt for protection. He is told not to return until Herod is dead. Typically, Matthew portrays all this drama as the fulfilment of various “prophecies” in the Hebrew Bible (the Christian’s “Old Testament). “The Flight into Egypt,” as it’s depicted down through the ages, adds another note to the beginning of this life of Jesus - the fact that he and his family became refugees who would, when the danger had passed, return to Israel, but never to the unsafe area of Judea where Herod’s son was the new ruler. The three ended up farther north, as refuges from the new ruler of Judea, by returning to Joseph’s native home, Galilee and a city called Nazareth. That finally completes all that Matthew wants us to contemplate before it moves immediately on to Jesus’ adult life. Cut and scene. But what’s the point? Why is this also included among the stories of Jesus’ birth, historical or not? The Gospel itself ties the episode to the epic story of the Exodus of Israel from Egypt – Matthew 2:15 quoting Exodus 4:22: “Out of Egypt did I call my son.” Throughout the Hebrew Bible there was a consciousness of the fact that the Hebrew people fled the oppression of the Pharaohs of Egypt to a land where they were refugees. That “Exodus” is held to be a central definer of Hebrew identity. Its law codes included special concern for the protection and welcoming of refugees. Leviticus 19:34, for example, commands: “The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were aliens in the land of Egypt.” Imagine loving the foreigner in your land “as yourself” – there are no “legal” or “illegal” foreigner distinctions here. It seems so far from the anger, fear, and hatred expressed by those religionists whose nationalism has taken over their religions. And if those old law codes in the Hebrew Bible mean anything, it’s a major sin not to love the alien. Even Matthew 25:34-40 depicts Jesus saying it was he they were serving when they “invited the stranger [alien?] in.” That Matthew extended the infancy story to include the teaching that Jesus and family were literally refugees, strangers in a foreign land, should be enough for people to know who they must not disparage but love. Jesus and his family were a paradigm of people fleeing oppression, persecution, danger, and death. Not only does this apply to refugees who seek foreign shores, though they are certainly ones who need that love as Jesus and family did. It applies to anyone who can only save themselves by leaving their home to escape oppression. It applies to anyone who leaves their home and/or homeland to face the unknown, the hope that it will be better in a “Promised Land” than it was back in the familiar, though dangerous, even deadly, environment in which they grew up hoping for acceptance and affirmation, It teaches us to think lovingly of those youth kicked out of their families, or fleeing its abuse, for being LGBTQ. It teaches us to love the LGBTQ adults who had to say goodbye to families who would not accept them or the people they loved. Not only did the Hebrew Bible single out loving care for those who were refugees in the land, but Jesus and family modelled what it was to be refugees, Matthew extends the Christmas story to tell us. This final chapter of these stories around these holidays was written, then, for anyone fleeing for refuge, anyone driven from their home or homeland. It tells its readers that it is not a disgrace to flee and seek refuge, it is not a failure of character, it is not because there is something wrong with those who flee to save themselves, their lives, and their dignity. It is actually something that is to be honored down through history in stories, art, and the good deeds of the religious. This final episode tells all for whom it’s a
teaching moment that no one who seeks refuge from abuse in
their home should be treated less than they would treat the
hero of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus himself. What’s Behind Today’s
Flair-Up in the Right-Wing War on LGBTQ Youth? Progressives were, Signorile wrote then, in danger of a “victory blindness” that would ignore what the right-wing was already preparing to do to LGBTQ rights in that similar manner that it had been using to slowly but surely gut Roe v. Wade. And now we see that all that coming to fruition. Not only have the years since his warning seen regressive sectarian religious groups work at local and state levels to place their kind in office, but they’ve recently seen right wing use of the previous administration and a Party leadership that is now beholden to them and the previous president to pack the Supreme Court with their ideologues. Their agenda is broader, of course, than just LGBTQ issues because it’s blatantly intwined with the kind of White Nationalism that now dominates that Party thanks to the constant use of dog whistles and open bigotry by a former president who remains the dominant Republican leader. Each year since then has seen more and more anti-LGBTQ bills introduced and passed in state legislatures. And already in 2022, the number of bills is staggeringly greater than ever – in the hundreds. Three key elements of this strategy are worth emphasizing. The first is that it’s centered in religious justifications. No matter what the courts might disagree over, the right-wing has filled them all the way up to the Supreme Court with people who would say amen to their “Religious Liberty” argument. Religion (as they define it), then, would do their dirty work. They wouldn’t have to appeal merely to their prejudices and bigotry. They could blame their god for their positions. And they could say that it was for religious reasons that they were asserting their sectarian, straight, White, patriarchal stands against others So, it’s no surprise to hear of a mayor demanding a purge of LGBTQ books from his local library system with religion as his excuse for doing so: “He explained his opposition to what he called ‘homosexual materials’ in the library, that it went against his Christian beliefs, and that he would not release the money as the long as the materials were there,” the library director said. This use of religion applies to more than just LGBTQ issues. They would use “religious freedom” intersectionally against people of color, all women, immigrants, the poor, those of religions other than how they defined their own, and any other group that they are told threatens them - and the pocketbooks of their rich funders. From town councils, to school boards, to state legislatures, “God” is blamed to cover them and justify what they’re doing. This, of course is more of the well-worn use of religion as an addiction that will require different strategies to counter They know their strategy will work with this Supreme Court - as it already has. The second key to the strategy is right-wing use of the old trope that their intention is the “protection of our children.” In this they’ve joined those down through the ages who have hidden behind that excuse, some legitimately and some because they know it tugs at heartstrings – those innocents will be scarred for life! Hence the attack on schools, school boards, and public education. There’s fear that children will start to feel bad because of something called “Critical Race Theory,” which, found in no schools outside graduate law courses, they can’t define but use as a frightening stand-in for any historical reality the parents fear facing. There’s fear that they will feel bad if they learn the truth about the history of the Holocaust as well. Then if happy LGBTQ relationships are mentioned or read about, they’re afraid that that will convert their children away from heterosexuality. LGBTQ people should not be portrayed as healthy, happy, or anything like psychologically normal. For kids who are LGBTQ, the personal threat of these calls for censorship is to remove from any public forum the chances of those who are trying to understand how and why they feel different from so many others of learning that there are others around who are supportive people, that there are others of their own age in the same boat, that there is a scientific and even religious community of people who embrace and affirm the very thing that makes them feel different, and that no matter how things might feel now, there are others who know that feeling and, because of their own life experiences, can affirm that: “it gets better.” The third key to this is that it is applied through bullying. This is, we’ve seen, the method by which the right-wing takes over school board and other public forums with threats, shouting, and claims that their rights as parents are being taken away. They are the same ones who find mask mandates a destruction of their “freedoms” and insist on the right to be armed everywhere. The censorship by government entities (“cancelling”?) they’re calling for of what anyone can read or say has as a major goal the installing of a broader fear in teachers, students, administrators, organizations, and others of what could happen if they in anyway attempt to challenge these real threats to “freedom of speech.” Some of the proposed bills are new versions of old “Don’t Say Gay” bills. To make matters worse, the right-wing has worked hard to embed itself in the legal enforcement community so that law enforcement at many local levels will be on their side if others protest. Any meekness or weakness in a federal Justice Department at this time, will keep this in place at many levels. We are, then, at a crucial time. Back in 2015, Signorile had already told us throughout his book how to counteract this. Others have as well down through these past decades. But it’s certainly not by burying our heads in the sand or expecting that there is something we can do to gain love from those engineering this war. And it will require progressive Christians to take stands for their own freedom to practice and proclaim what they believe about equality as if they really believe in it. © 2022 Robert N. Minor Other Issues, Books, Resources Robert N. Minor, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus at the University of Kansas, is author of When Religion Is an Addiction; Scared Straight: Why It’s So Hard to Accept Gay People and Why It’s So Hard to Be Human; and Gay & Healthy in a Sick Society. Contact him at www.FairnessProject.org
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