Dear President-Elect Obama,
My name is Adam Schmidt and in the last couple months I've followed the Democratic convention, watched the Republican convention, and have read your book "The Audacity of Hope". I was unable to volunteer in your campaign but made donations several times, the first I've ever made to a political campaign. I not only encouraged friends and co-workers to vote for you but voted for you myself both in the primary and in the general election.
Aside from being a follower of the election and a supporter of yours, I'm also a 39 year old white gay man living in Georgia just outside of Atlanta and yet of all that I have read in your book, it is the chapter on race that has most greatly resonated with my life and my experiences. It is because of reading your perspective on race that I would like to share my own perspective on being a gay man in America.
I know that the gay civil rights movement has been compared to the civil rights movement of the 60's but they're not entirely the same. Unless I choose to announce my homosexuality to the world by wearing an appropriately sloganed t-shirt, no one would know. Unlike the black teenage boy you mention in your book walking down the street, no one is likely to have a second thought about me let alone a first one. But then that black teenage boy will never have to "come out" to his family, friends, co-worker, or employer and tell them that he's black. He'll never have to fear rejection or even revulsion when someone discovers that he's black... it's there all the time. He'll never have to make the choice whether to hide being black and never mention his partner of thirteen years and the movie they saw last night while his co-workers tell stories of their spouses and children because he lives in a "Right to Work" state and can be fired for being black... whereas I can be fired for being gay. He has legal protection against job discrimination, I don't.
Like many gay men and women, I get by without the emotional and social support of family. They have made clear that they disapprove, sufficiently so that for them to be willing to spend time with me, I have to promise not to mention my partner, my partner of almost 13 years mind you, at any time in their presence. And without any legal recognition of our relationship, I'm reasonably confident my family will contest my will in an effort to deny my decision to make my partner my beneficiary.
Unlike the civil rights movement of the 60's we don't have the history of slavery to contend with, but there are a great number of other things that are similar. You mention being the only black senator and well, we have Congressman Barney Frank. You mention Rosa Parks, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and other heroes of the civil rights movements and we have Harvey Milk and the somewhat iconic drag queens of the Stonewall Inn. Each of our communities have had our marches on Washington with mixed results. Black Americans have had to contend with the Klu Klux Klan among others while we fight our battles against the likes of Fred Phelps, Focus on the Family, and lately the Mormon Church. Black Americans had to live in fear of lynchings and cross burnings while gay Americans still live in fear of becoming another Matthew Shepherd, Jason Gage, or Richie Phillips. The same horror of black churches being burned and that destruction of community is and was felt by the often forgotten bombing of the Otherside Lounge (a lesbian nightclub) here in my own state of Georgia. We have our own history of ghettoes and the parts of town that are safe and the parts of town where it is not safe to be gay. We face the choice of living in one of the more tolerant cities or being ostracized in our own home towns. It's that same sense of finding community where it's safe because you know it isn't safe elsewhere.
But that's only part of why that chapter in particular resonated with me personally. I can remember a few years back being accosted by a group of three white teenage boys yelling "Faggot" at me on the street and threatening me. I can remember being afraid to go out to a gay nightclub one summer in the late 90's because word had gotten out through the community that gay men were being targeted and beaten. I can remember the bombing of the Otherside Lounge less than 10 miles from my own home and wondering if there would be other bombings like it. I can remember my partner's emergency appendectomy and the tears I shed when one of the nurses on staff said it was okay that I stay the night with him after his surgery. Similarly I can remember the next night when another nurse said I had to leave because visiting hours were over and I wasn't a family member. My partner would or wouldn't have the comfort of a loved one based on the whims and biases of a nurse. Reading this, does any of it sound familiar to you as a black man? Does it resonate with your cultural history?
For all that I am one of the lucky ones as I work for one of the few companies that not only has an excellent benefits package but also covers unmarried partners, but otherwise my experiences are not unusual amongst gay men and women. We all watched the various states vote in amendments banning gay marriage two and four years ago and again this year so while there may not be a black America or white America there definitely is a straight America and it's been made clear that we're not welcome. State after state voting in amendments to their state constitutions making it abundantly clear that not only do our relationships not count for anything, but that the rest of America feels that they are directly harmful to the community. Can you understand the pain my partner and I felt as we watched 76% of our state not only ban gay marriages but civil unions as well? Do you understand how shameful it is that over three quarters of our state feels that we're a direct and dangerous threat to their families? Do you see the isolation from and rejection by our community that not only do we not deserve any kind of recognition as a permanent relationship but that the idea of it is so horrific that it would do every other marriage irreparable harm by our mere existence as a couple? Can you understand the bitter irony that at the same time as we are being castigated with the old stereotype of gay men having promiscuous sex that we're prevented from forming stable, permanent, and recognized relationships?
Honestly, I don't expect you to do a thing about it. I have no reason to believe that Congress will even give you the chance to sign legislation allowing civil unions or preventing discrimination. All I ask is that you remember us... we're Americans too even if sometimes America seems to forget that.
Update: Added a tip jar... as I mentioned, I'm somewhat new at this and still figuring things out. Thank you for being patient with me.