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Oh My God! It’s a Gay Woman!
Quick! Run! Hide The Children!
What is it about gay
women that seems terrifying to some people? The same people dislike, sometimes
even hate gay men, but they become nearly rabid when the subject is Lesbianism.
It seems clear that the fact gay women and men are ‘different’ than the
heterosexual majority isn’t enough to explain the fear-masking anger that arises
in some people when faced with homosexuality. The reaction seems all that much
more vitriolic when the gay person is female; why? Is it because women are so
vital to the continuation of humankind?
Some would say that it
isn’t that nuanced, that there is simply an all powerful need to reject the
different. A historic case can be made for that position. Adherents to that
theory suggest that once it was Indians, then black slaves and now it is gays,
especially lesbians, who are rejected by the majority. In this light, it’s
suggested that often those in power see themselves as stewards of the natural
order and protectors of its defenders, those who stand for the status quo.
Should something
unnatural take place, it is up to them to set things in order again. In some
parts of the nation, such officialdom and the public behind them lean on a
silent axiom; that is, ‘This is how God works and we are merely His tools.’ It
is easy therefore for such people to feel they can do no wrong.
Recently two disparate
public situations illustrate the paradoxes inherent in such beliefs, especially
when they relate to the exercise of power.
The first was the
decision by the Itawamba County School District in Fulton, Mississippi, to
cancel its annual prom because student Constance McMillen, l8, told them she was
going to attend with her girlfriend. Attempts were made to dissuade and prevent
her, but when she persisted the district called off the April 2, 2010, dance at
the Itawamba Agricultural High School.
The decision, of
course, did anything but settle the issue. Most of the anger and ill-will
generated was directed at the 18-year-old, leaving the District somewhat
blameless as an example of rural, conservative justice. “Somebody said, ‘Thanks
for ruining my senior year,’” McMillen reported. But she had the guts to go back
to school amid the din, although as the issue began to truly boil over, she
stayed away.
The American Civil
Liberties Union of Mississippi jumped into the fray, filing a suit in United
States District Court in Oxford, and soon a federal judge ruled that the public
school had, in fact, violated McMillen’s constitutional rights. Further court
action is expected later, but the local officials didn’t reverse themselves.
The annual prom at
Itawamba Agricultural High School remained cancelled, but a private prom at
Fulton Country Club was organized, one which McMillen could attend, wearing her
tuxedo, with her 16-year-old girlfriend. It was attended by only a few students
while the rest of the teenagers attended a private ‘party’ elsewhere.
County officials said,
"We feel that it is in the best interest of the Itawamba County School District,
after taking into consideration the education, safety and well being of our
students," that the prom at the school remains cancelled. How delicate is the
reasoning of the county. There is some indication that a feeling of upholding
divine will remains at play, imbuing those who cancelled the prom with a certain
sense of righteousness.
Ms. McMillen herself
noted that Itawamba County is in the Bible Belt. And in that county, like so
many other parts of the nation, religion and a sense of entitlement has a long
history of clearing away those who are different, sometimes because they were in
the way of ‘progress,’ and sometimes because – like Ms. McMillen – they
threatened the status quo. Long before Ms. McMillen declared she wanted to wear
a tux to her prom and bring a girlfriend, settlers in the area overwhelmed and
ultimately drove out the Chickasaw Nation, and even then it was done with the
cloak of officialdom, of legality.
On Oct. 20, 1832, the
U.S. and the Chickasaw signed the Treaty of Pontotoc, which said in its
preamble, “The Chickasaw Nation find themselves oppressed in their present
situation by being made subject to the laws of the staes (sic) in which they
reside. Being ignorant of the language of the laws of the white man, they cannot
understand or obey them. Rather than submit to this great evil, they prefer to
seek a home in the west where they may live and be governed by their own laws.”
Such empathy for the
poor Chickasaw people! It reminds one of the empathy that resulted so many years
later in a dance at the Fulton Country Club. Local officials sacrificed the prom
to save everyone from the greater social danger, homosexuality.
The reality, however,
is that government cannot dictate sexual morality, especially given the
increasing awareness that sexuality is genetically driven, and not a matter of
choice. This is the great divide that currently separates conservatives and
progressives.
A majority of
conservatives believe that homosexuality is a matter of choice, and therefore
willfully against God’s plan. Worse, it might be contagious; somehow those who
‘practice homosexuality’ may influence others to join them. On the other hand,
increasingly progressives are coming to understand that Gays never had a choice,
the luck of the genetic draw separated them from the heterosexual majority.
Progressives know
there is nothing to fear, there is no contagion, but even more upsetting to the
conservatives well ordered universe, most progressives and liberals understand
that if in fact God created everyone, then in fact God created Gays just like
God created heterosexuals.
And this paradox
explains the unusual circumstance involving the second illustration, the current
nomination of Elena Kagan, the U.S. Solicitor General, to the Supreme Court.
Conservatives are
already seeking to make an issue where none should exist; they are trying to
paint her as a closeted Lesbian, with the implication that somehow this should
disqualify her from a position on the nation’s high court.
The phony controversy
began when Ben Domenech used a CBS blog to assert that the 50 year old,
unmarried Kagan would help Pres. Barack Obama satisfy the Gay lobby and the Gay
supporters of his election.
Domenech, ironically a
native Mississippian, is a conservative Republican who worked for the George W.
Bush administration and National Review Online, as well as for Sen. John Cornyn,
R-Texas, and other ultra conservatives and right-wing organizations. He
suggested that Solicitor General Kagan, if elevated to the Supreme Court, would
create a precedent as “the first openly gay justice.”
Of course there was
just a slight problem in the fact that Elena Kagan has never identified herself
as a Gay person, but even though the White House contacted CBS and made that
clear, CBS left the comments in place for some time before reluctantly removing
them. The fact Domenech made such an assertion without proof isn’t very
surprising, since he has been accused of plagiarism in the past, so playing fast
and loose with information in order to create a controversy fits.
What doesn’t fit is
why it should matter in the first place. A 50 year old single woman or a 50 year
old bachelor shouldn’t have to explain why they are unmarried; it’s nobody’s
business but their own. The fact that conservatives want to make it the public’s
business speaks only to the continuing divide between progressives and
conservatives.
There is, obviously,
some terrible irony in that conservatives in the national arena want to use
suggestions of Lesbianism as a public cudgel against Ms. Kagan while the
conservatives in Fulton, Mississippi wanted desperately to sweep the entire
issue of Ms. McMillen’s avowed Lesbianism away from public view.
In the instances
illustrated here, all that should matter is whether Ms. Kagan is qualified by an
understanding of the law to sit on the highest court, and whether the young Ms.
McMillen is able to live her life without fear and prejudice.
May, 2010
MB/WF
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