I have had near-constant house guests this August, including several of my very best friends in the world. They know that I am an activist, and a fierce advocate for LGBTQ rights here in Maine and everywhere else. I'm not a prominent activist, I don't head any group or committee, but I've been out on the streets canvassing for my rights before, and I'm getting ready to do it again. Marriage equality is important to me, as are all other aspects of equal rights for all citizens. I stand up for the rights of atheists, of religious folk; for the rights women, for the rights of ethnic and racial minorities; I'm for everyone.
EqualityMaine is beginning to collect signatures to put marriage equality on our ballot next November (some of you may know that a "people's veto" the other year took away marriage equality that the legislature passed and signed by our previous governor) and I am active in that movement, so conversation naturally gravitated towards that. Well, I was appalled by what I heard from my closest straight friends.
Follow me over the fold, and grab the Pepto...
So I want equality. When do I want it? Yesterday, when the Maine Legislature passed it only to have it overturned by a plebiscite. So, I guess I have a dog in this fight as a gay man.
Here are some of the appalling things I heard from two of my best friends--one, a woman who works for the Federal government and has years in government service and is not a homophobe or bigoted (so I thought) about anything and the other, my very best male friend who is straight but has struggled to find his orientation identity:
--"You're a reverse bigot, you're just a bigot. You don't care about the glass ceiling, you just care about your stupid marriage rights. So what if you can be fired in half the states just for being gay? I'm a second class citizen too! I still make less than the men in my department!" (From a person who has been married at least four times that I know of.)
--"Why is this so important to you, with all that is going on today? I mean, you have plenty of states you can live in where they have marriage equality. Move to one!"
--"You don't want civil rights, you want special rights, you want them at my expense because this distracts from the ongoing struggle for women to have equal pay for equal work and unlike you, some of us have children in college!"
--"You're criticizing me because I haven't done anything substantive to help your 'cause' just by bringing up the subject of 'what am I going to do to help advance your civil rights' ".
That's just a sample. I'm sorry, but to me, that is nauseating. From two of my best friends. It's funny, when you bring up LGBTQ civil rights, lots of people you thought were your allies aren't all of a sudden. (My best ally is my African-American sister in law and her mother, whom I'll quote: "It's like we said in the '60s: until every last person is truly free, none of us are free, and as a black woman, until you gays are free, I am not free", said my SIL's mother to me.).
I wonder how many people on this jury thought like my sister in law's mother while they refused to convict a young man who brutally murdered a young transperson? NONE.
I am learning who my allies are in this fight. I am learning that it is "fun" to have gay friends, as long as they know their place. I just learned all sorts of things.
NOTE: I am not an assimilationist. I am not that gay guy that wants two children and 2.5 dogs in the suburbs and a Republican representative. I believe in gay culture, and I see it eroding all the time with folks who want to really live a "straight" lifestyle but remain queer. I'm not sure I even believe in marriage as an institution. That being said, I do believe in "equal rights for all and special privileges for none" as William Jennings Bryan once said, and for that reason, I fight for my rights: just because I may not avail myself of the right to marry the person I love does not mean it is unimportant to me that my fellow citizen who does want to has it.
End of rant. Comments?