LIKE all students caught up in the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s, I was riveted by the violent confrontations between the police and protestors in Selma, 1965, and Chicago, 1968. But I never heard about the several days of riots that rocked Greenwich Village after the police raided a gay bar called the Stonewall Inn in the wee hours of June 28, 1969 — 40 years ago today.
So begins Frank Rich in his column for Sunday's New York Times, titled as is this diary, 40 Years Later, Still Second-Class Americans. It is a powerful piece, exploring Stonewall in the context of the other movements of the time. Rich tells us that Obama will commemorate this start of the Gay Liberation Movement with and East Room reception on Monday. And he explores the disappointment Obama's gay supporters have with the President's performance so far. You should read the column. Otherwise what I have to say may not make any sense. And if you do read Rich, perhaps you will not need to read me.
I am not going to go through the column in detail. It is, as is usually the case with Frank Rich, exceedingly well organized and well written. He offers a number of wonderful lines, such as
If the country needs any Defense of Marriage Act at this point, it would be to defend heterosexual marriage from the right-wing "family values" trinity of Sanford, Ensign and Vitter.
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Rich points out the disappointment that Obama's Justice department has spoken more loudly on the issue of full inclusion of gays than has the President. One gay leader with whom Obama has met, Jennifer Chrisler of the Family Equality Council, an advocacy organization for gay families based in Massachusetts, is quoted in the penultimate paragraph:
Chrisler noted that he has given major speeches on race, on abortion and to the Muslim world. "People are waiting for that passionate speech from him on equal rights," she said, "and the time is now."
Speeches are important - they can set an agenda. But the are insufficient. Rich's final paragraph makes this clear in his final paragraph:
Action would be even better. It’s a press cliché that "gay supporters" are disappointed with Obama, but we should all be. Gay Americans aren’t just another political special interest group. They are Americans who are actively discriminated against by federal laws. If the president is to properly honor the memory of Stonewall, he should get up to speed on what happened there 40 years ago, when courageous kids who had nothing, not even a public acknowledgment of their existence, stood up to make history happen in the least likely of places.
Many have written on this 40th anniversary. Many more will. And perhaps some would quibble with Rich's portrayal of the events of that time. I'm not concerned about that.
Words are important, so is action. But let me put this as simply as I can. This is NOT an issue of "gay rights." It is an issue of basic human rights.
So long as we find reasons to make distinctions that allow us to treat some humans as less than fully human, fully entitled to all rights, to the fullness of life, where we draw that line of acceptable discrimination - or worse - remains a point of needless contention. And to allow the discussion to be directed away from that basic point is in my opinion a mistake.
There are many good things about our history as a nation and a society, but no sensible person can argue that it is without blemish. We have too many historical blemishes. We have had slavery, post-slavery Jim Crow laws and lynching, racially biased uses of the legal and political system. We went 132 years under our Constitution before we guaranteed women the right to vote. Even well after that we had state laws that kept women off of juries, that prevented them from owning and disposing of property in their own names, which denied them the right to say no to men to whom they were married so long as lived under the same roof.
We had signs in Boston that no dogs or Irish need apply. Those of Jewish background were denied employment and admission to institutions of higher education, to say nothing of restricted covenants in real estate and denial of admission to private clubs where the real deals were made. If you spoke with an accent - Irish, Yiddish, Italian, Spanish . . . you were considered stupid, you might be told to go back to your own country. Now if your name or appearance is Muslim you can be at serious risk, as some foment hatred for profit or political power.
To me it is simple, perhaps because I am of Jewish background, or perhaps merely because I have lived long enough, known enough people, seen enough hurt and discrimination and intolerance and worse. No distinctions on the basis of race, gender, religion, national origin, age, appearance, sexual orientation, or any other way we choose to divide humanity into us versus them is acceptable.
Oh, I will grant that a blind person should not have a license to drive a car or fly a plane - not yet, although someday perhaps technology will advance enough that disqualifying someone from such licenses no longer makes sense. And I can accept that the average 15 year old who enters my classroom each September is probably not yet ready to handle alcohol, although many of them are far more capable of intelligently exercising the franchise to vote that are many adults who that power which they lack.
But I am not talking about those things.
So long as we still parse out things as the need for women's rights, or Black rights, or gay rights, we still allow a distinction to be made that can be turned around in a negative fashion.
The Constitution was ratified in September of 1788. The Declaration, whose 233rd anniversary is but a week away, was 12 years earlier. That earlier document said that all men were created equal. We still have not fully included the 50%+ of our population in that full equality.
As for gays, transgendereds, and other "oddities" of our society? Why is difference to be scorned, rather than honored? Why must we still have to fight each battle for each group one right at a time?
Rich speaks of 40 years. It is, to my mind, far more than that. We have not yet fully grasped the promise of America.
Here the words of Langston Hughes, written from the perspective of a Black American in the earlier part of the last century, certainly are still applicable to far too many in 21st Century America. Read the whole poem, because Hughes speaks not only of the Black man in "Let America Be America Again" -
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."
The free?
Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.
O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!
Hughes warned us in a different poem about the dangers of the "Dream Deferred" -
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
But go back to the poem which I first offered, and note these words of hope:
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!
The dream of America must include all, be deferred for none.
Barack Obama is not a president for the Blacks, nor a president for the Democrats, nor a president for the Christians, nor a president for the straights, nor a president for the married, nor a president for the parents - all classes/divisions of which he is a member. He is president of the United States. The man who could electrify the nation in 2004 needs as President to live up to his words. I remind you of that portion of his speech:
That's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family: "E pluribus unum," out of many, one.
Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes.
Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America.
There's not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America.
The pundits, the pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue States: red states for Republicans, blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states.
We coach little league in the blue states and, yes, we've got some gay friends in the red states.
There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq, and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq.
We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.
I understand that we still have much work to do. There are those who will fight tooth and nail, and your teeth and nails and legs and arms, resisting the change that we need, the acceptance of what is required.
Firesign Theater used to tell us that we are all bozos on this bus. Doesn't matter if we are straight or gay, black or white, or any mixture you can imagine. We are more alike than we are different.
Shakespeare reminded us of this several centuries ago, in words he put in the mouth of Shylock:
I am a Jew. Hath
not a Jew eyes? hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? fed with
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject
to the same diseases, healed by the same means,
warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as
a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed?
if you tickle us, do we not laugh? if you poison
us, do we not die? and if you wrong us, shall we not
revenge? If we are like you in the rest, we will
resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian,
what is his humility? Revenge. If a Christian
wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by
Christian example? Why, revenge. The villany you
teach me, I will execute, and it shall go hard but I
will better the instruction.
Others can say this better than can I. Yet that does remove from me the responsibility to offer my words - and as Rich points out, my actions - to advocate for, to demand, what is right.
Hillel told us several Millenia back that we had to value ourselves:
If I am not for myself, then who will be for me?
But he told us that was insufficient, that we had to think beyond ourselves:
And if I am only for myself, then what am I?
Telling people to "wait" until others are ready, would have appalled the good Rabbi, just as it outraged Martin Luther King, Jr., in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, from which I offer two selections:
Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.
We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"--then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair.
Frank Rich writes of 40 years. It is far more. It is the Dream of America still deferred for too many.
It is time that all such delay cease. It is time to speak out, for our President to act as he is suppose, as President of ALL of us, no matter what labels can be affixed.
And I will end differently than I usually do, with the final of the three famous lines from Hillel:
And if not now, when?