The 2004 election season was quite bad for those of us unlucky enough to not be born heterosexual or cisgender. On my 20th birthday, President George W. Bush endorsed a constitutional amendment to keep loving gay couples from getting married. He claimed that if gays could marry, it would "weaken" society:
"Marriage cannot be severed from its cultural, religious and natural roots without weakening the good influence of society."
And the anti-gay campaign began in earnest at that point. One of the main architects was Ken Mehlman,
a man who would later come out as gay himself. As I noted when he came out:
In spite of the terror his philosophies inflicted on LGBT citizens and in spite of the decades long scare-fest of anti-gay hatred, gay-baiting and discriminatory laws foisted on us, Ken Mehlman wants us to know that his coming out experience has been just peachy. No apology for all the suicides his party’s stances inevitably brought on. No apology for hate crimes. No apology for the election campaign involving some of the worst anti-gay hatred anyone has ever witnessed. No apology for the terror LGB military people have had to endure. No apology for the forced rapes female soldiers went through to “prove” they are straight.
Their terrorism especially affected regions like mine: rural, southern regions where everyone is already inclined to feel hatred toward minorities. It is one thing to spread fear and hatred in areas that are liberal, in areas where people think about things. It's another to hurt the most vulnerable members of society in an isolated place where they can't do anything and they don't have anyone and nothing will ever change for the better. We're always written off: no need to fight there because this is just how things are in the south, and that's really too bad, but bigotry happens. So we allow these things to flourish and it hurts people. It kills people.
And it kills people near where I am. Right in my backyard. Can you imagine how that might feel to someone like me? I'm always scared here. When someone who is gay (or black, for that matter) and is killed for that reason, it is never just about them. It isn't an isolated case. They are not killed as individuals. They're tortured and killed because it sends a message to others in our community: you're not safe. Don't come out. Be afraid. Always. And, you know, it works. People are terrified.
Lives are lost and families are ruined and this is deliberate. The people organizing these campaigns to silence LGBT voices aren't getting these results accidentally. This is their purpose. When a politician gets a platform to spread hatred and that politician believes what he's saying, that person is actively trying to hurt, to silence. to terrorize LGBT people. We can't pretend that this is just politics. That it's an unfortunate byproduct. It sure works out for those politicians. They get more votes and more support because more LGBT people are terrified to come out. Why would we tell our stories to people who might kill us? Why would we tell our stories to families who might disown us? I can't even express the depths of depression I felt every time someone who was anti-gay came on TV and spouted these things openly and my mom or someone else in my family said "yes! I agree! Those fags are sick..." And yet, this is who has always received the biggest platform. We can't even seem to get news organizations to let their viewers know that the commentators they often choose as "the other side" of a political debate are members of actual designated hate groups. They have the loudest voices and the biggest platforms and they hurt us and ruin our lives.
It's nothing I haven't said before:
Later, when I realized I'm gay, things got really bad. (Being white, I was not personally hurt by racism, it was just something I hated, but the constant homophobia was different.)
It was really bad. Fags should die, or get AIDS, suffer, then die. My family apparently thought we're responsible for so many insane things. Pretty much whatever the conservative media said that week. My mother, whom I love, was one of the worst about it and she had no idea about the effect the constant berating and humiliation had on me.
I should mention, I grew up very sheltered. My family was of the authoritarian mold, though they weren't violent (at least not with their fists.) I wasn't told a lot of things, I went to a conservative Catholic school and I only got to hear about the virtues of conservatism every day. I knew I disagreed but I couldn't articulate why at the time, because I had no basis for any other opinion. So, they'd talk about these things and especially about gays and I bought into it. I'm wrong. I'm immoral. It's a choice. I can stop if I really want to, and I should want to, because my family and society will love me then - and only then. Please contemplate for a few minutes being twelve years old and facing that "reality". At least try to understand.
Then, of course, I was not only alienated by my family, but my attempts to make friends were... rough. You get close to people and you want so badly to just be honest, you want to know that they'll still love you, that you're still you, but you're so scared to say anything - and then you feel like such a fucking miserable liar, when your friends have done nothing but respect you and care about you. It's a sick feeling, and I swear, you struggle with it every day. You make friends you grow close to, and then suddenly after a year they start making virulently homophobic remarks and it just tears your fucking soul away and you want to crawl in a hole and just die.
[...]
I've seen so much - gay kids killed, beaten, their houses and cars trashed. I've seen the faces of my friends when someone utters a homophobic remark, turn to hurt. Thankfully, for myself I haven't met any gay people with AIDS but I recognize that's a major issue as well.
And I've seen all these things and I've had all these experiences in the name of conservative ideology.
It is not a fun place to live and it is not the best life to lead and we don't need to make it worse. I'm not the only one. People are scared. And people are dead. One such person was taken from us during the height of the campaign of anti-LGBT bigotry in 2004, and though I did not know him (my sister knows one of his killers, though) I live a few minutes from where he lived.
When he was alive:
Scotty Joe Weaver (March 26, 1986 - July 22, 2004) was an 18-year-old murder victim from Bay Minette, Alabama, whose burned and partially decomposed body was discovered on July 22, 2004, a few miles from the mobile home in which he lived. He had been beaten, strangled and stabbed numerous times, partially decapitated, and his body doused in gasoline and set on fire.
And like I said, it sends a message. Loud and clear. Not a day goes by when I don't think about this. And I didn't even know him. Anyone who decides that it's okay to "seem" the least bit queer has to think about the possibility of dying for it.
And when this campaign rhetoric is spread into our communities, this is what happens:
There were 150 hate crimes incidents based on sexual orientation for these thirteen states in 2003, before ballot measures to ban same-sex marriage were on the radar. But in 2004 when voters were asked to approve these bans, this figure rose to 220 – a 47% increase. This rise far outstrips the increase in the covered population for these thirteen states (38.2 million for 2003 to 43.4 million for 2004, an increase of only 14%). Even if you account for the increase in the population covered by these statistics, it still amounts to an alarming 31% increase in reported hate crimes based on sexual orientation in these states.
[These Numbers Don’t Tell The Full Story
Even though Ohio reported a 66% increase in hate crimes against gays and lesbians, it’s clear that some hate crimes went unreported to the FBI. This leaves room to suspect that the actual rise in hate crimes may be even worse, especially when Daniel Fetty’s Murder Doesn’t Count.]
For some of these states, this increase is especially worrisome. Ohio went from 32 hate crime incidents based on sexual orientation in 2003 to 57 incidents in 2004. That’s equivalent to a 66% increase after adjusting for differences in population coverage. Michigan went from 41 incidents in 2003 to 73 in 2004 (for an adjusted 72% increase). Missouri went from 5 to 11 (an adjusted 82% increase). And Georgia – where only seven law enforcement agencies participated covering a scant 18% of that state’s population – saw the number of hate crime incidents based on sexual orientation increase from 3 incidents in 2003 to 12 in 2004 – despite a very slight decrease in the population covered by Georgia’s participating law enforcement agencies.7 One can only guess how many incidents went unnoticed among Georgia’s remaining 82% of the population.
And this
is what happens:
Ballot measures opposing same-sex marriage have negative effects mental health not only for lesbian, gay and bisexual people but for their families of origin (i.e., parents, siblings and so forth), according to research presented at the convention Saturday.
Research conducted since 2000 by Glenda Russell, PhD, of the University of Colorado at Boulder has shown LGB people experience measurable shock, depression, anxiety, PTSD, anger and fear, and that that these people engage in cognitive and behavioral strategies to cope. More recently, Nathan G. Smith, PhD, of McGill University, studied LGB individuals living in Maine and Washington state, both of which had anti-gay constitutional amendments on the 2009 ballot. Although the Washington measure failed, Smith found that there were few differences in the stress felt by residents in both states. “People in Maine were engaging in more coping strategies than people in Washington,” he said.
And these campaigns never stop in areas like mine. This isn't election season fun. Elected officials terrorize our communities daily. In my friends' home state of Tennessee, the anti-LGBT bills never stop. There's a bill to promote bullying by religious people, a bill to restrict teaching anything about gays, and others. A law was passed to strip Tennessee localities of antidiscrimination protections for LGBT people. A law was proposed to target people who are transgender who want to use public restrooms (that bill is now dead.) As
I wrote:
A new anti-transgender "bathroom bill" was filed in Tennessee's General Assembly today by a Republican state Senator. The bill "restricts access to public restrooms and public dressing rooms designated by sex to members of that particular sex." There is a monetary fine for people who violate the law. And since in Tennessee it's legally impossible to get your sex changed on your birth certificate (and only a little less impossible to get it changed on your drivers' license), this affects all transgender and gender non-conforming people.
[...]
It's not dissimilar to the state-sponsored terrorism wherein sodomy laws are left on the books in order to arrest and humiliate gay people, even when the law 'only' fines you for "committing" sodomy. And there's also laws like another piece of the statutory scheme in the state of Georgia at issue in Bowers v. Hardwick that imposes for "soliciting" sodomy. And these laws still exist and are still being enforced today, even in Texas, despite Lawrence v. Texas overturning sodomy laws in most other instances.
Both are cases of systematic destruction of a minority using structural means, usually a framework of laws that already exists and perhaps building on it. Whether it's terrorizing people who are queer or erasing people who are transgender, it is no less a structural and longstanding problem.
This is an ongoing problem and it's exacerbated when people who believe these things and promote these things and have lived their entire political lives in opposition to human rights for human beings who are LGBT. And they really believe it.
That is unquestionable:
Rep. Richard Floyd isn't exactly making any apologies for his bill to crack down on transgender people using public bathrooms. The Chattanooga Republican defiantly tells Andy Sher he'd "stomp a mudhole" in any transgender man who troubled his wife or daughters.
[...]
“Don’t ask me to adjust to their perverted way of thinking and put my family at risk. I’m just sick and tired the way this thing’s been going.”
And here's
another one:
Martha Boggs, owner of The Bistro at the Bijou, refused to serve Campfield, who has compared homosexuality to bestiality and claimed that one cannot contract AIDS through heterosexual sex.
This already exists and stoking this hatred is dangerous. Kids are so scared. We're trying to just come out and be ourselves, here. Some people can't even do that. Our families disown us. Our friends disown us. Every time we come out we have to worry about being abandoned or worse, violently attacked. Homophobes don't need any help to make things worse for us. For many people it can't get much worse.
These people should face vehement opposition from anyone who cares about humanity. They should not be given a bigger platform. They shouldn't be allowed to say these things over a longer period of time when what they've already said has destroyed so many lives.