Time for some gay humility to go along with gay pride
CommentsMy column on the 40th anniversary of Stonewall is appearing in Friday’s Houston Chronicle and Monday’s Philadelphia Daily News:
At the end of this month, the gay community will celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, which began the gay liberation movement. This season, known in gay circles simply as “Pride,” will be particularly emotional because of the gay marriage avalanche. While gays and lesbians have much to be proud of (such as early health organizing around the devastating AIDS epidemic), gay history since Stonewall is unfortunately stained with selfishness and arrogance, traits that ironically were once themselves called pride — back when that wasn’t a compliment.
Having experienced the closet and coming out as a gay man in my late teens, I understand the common gay experience of overcoming shame and the constant need for self-esteem reassurance. But I have also come to realize that sometimes gay esteem has innocent victims, and I believe it’s time to balance out gay pride with some gay humility.
To examine the gay community’s self-absorption, look no further than the event celebrated this month that has been commemorated with parades for four decades: the “Stonewall Rebellion.” Why is it that in all that time no gay leader has acknowledged that there were non-gay victims at that event, which we should regret, if not apologize for? Stonewall was sparked by a legitimate bar raid on an unlicensed, Mafia-run drinking establishment. The gay “heroes” threw glass bottles and bricks at police and at one point tried to light the building on fire while people were still inside. Even if one celebrates Stonewall’s repercussions for sparking feelings of gay pride and leading to nationwide community organizing, shouldn’t we acknowledge that our self-esteem doesn’t have to come at the expense of other people’s safety?
Another example: During the late 1980s and early 1990s, gay activists insisted that a wave of “heterosexual AIDS” was just around the corner in the United States, even though no data existed proving that was going to happen, and even though HIV spread through heterosexual sex has always been and continues to be a small percentage of the American transmissions of the virus. Out of fear that Americans would not devote energy to treating and curing a disease spread mostly through gay sex and drug use, AIDS activists consciously lied about the size of the minuscule threat to Americans who did not use drugs or have gay sex. As a result, huge sums of money were spent to educate about and prevent a “coming health epidemic” that would never materialize. People made major lifestyle changes to protect themselves from what was essentially a phantom menace.
The gay parenting movement is still more evidence of the fundamental selfishness of post-Stonewall gay America. Whereas many gay couples can and do bring parentless children into their homes in an act of loving and giving, thousands of other gay couples who could have adopted use various technologies and arrangements to make babies that from the start have no mother or have no father. This cruel act — to one’s own child — is almost never criticized in the gay community, which is so focused on everyone’s freedom and self-esteem, it doesn’t seem to want to bother to notice that children are being hurt by being denied up front the right to have both a mother and a father.
The gay and lesbian community today is infected with what I like to call Equality Mania. That’s the belief that there is literally nothing more important than total equality between gays and straights, no matter what the costs. They are willing to sacrifice other good, important values in the name of gay equality — such as the religious freedom of same-sex marriage opponents, the welfare of children and (in the case of gays in the military) even national security.
Forty years into this particular social movement, it’s not too late to re-evaluate priorities and find more selfless ways to help gays and lesbians.
Mr. Benkof, I absolutely agree that some gay humility would be a welcome complement to gay pride. Pride should be about our success in overcoming adversity and about having fun, not shoving every little detail of our differences in everyone’s face for a weekend or making accusations and attacks. It should be more about showing them how similar we are and how much all people in this world really have in common( not that we should try to hide the things that make us unique, either, of course).
But I think you have a misunderstanding of human rights and the situation in this country then and now. It’s true that the Stonewall riots started with an authorized and legal raid on an establishment engaged in illegal activity - but ‘gay’ bars in the city at the time were subject to these raids with disproportionate frequency compared to other such enterprises, Mafia or otherwise, simply because they were known as such. In other words, legal is not the same as( morally) legitimate.
And it’s true that the crowd did unsavory things and there were innocent - and less-than-innocent - victims on BOTH sides and among bystanders: that is a typical, perhaps even defining quality of a “riot”, and tends to happen whenever people gather to fight injustice in an impromptu manner.
Two wrongs don’t make a right, but one wrong left to stand is still wrong as well. Something had to give, and it did.
Moving on: Sex has certainly changed since the 80s. Perhaps the reason the hetero AIDS epidemic never occurred is BECAUSE health leaders prepared people for it? Teen pregnancy and STDs are on the rise since the government started pushing abstinence-only programs which kids don’t follow anyway… And women seem to be better than men at following safer sex procedures, so it is hardly surprising that incidence remains higher among people who have sex with no women involved.
As for children, numerous studies have shown that the most important thing is for a child to have parental nurturing and structure regardless of where it comes from, and having two parents of the same sex/gender seems to provide the same boost that having two opposite-gender parents does. Of course, there are well-adjusted children raised by single parents or by steps. But if children have some sort of “right” to the ongoing presence of a mother and a father( something which does not necessarily have a biological basis) at birth, how can you criticize gay couples for conceiving children and not single parents? By the argument that all children deserve one of each, every child born to a single parent should be taken away and given to a couple who wants one. In fact, since there are so many children needing homes and families, isn’t it selfish for ANYONE to conceive right now? Why should the gay community condemn it when most conception takes place among straight couples and no one says boo?
For the record, I am adopted( by a straight couple) and hope to adopt, I believe it is a great thing to do and do not feel a need to conceive a child even though I find the prospect intriguing on some level. But I am not about to criticize people for having their own children( except those who can’t care for them) when we all have a biological drive to procreate.
But then, I don’t expect you to care too much about what I have to say. Given the title and stated purpose of this blog, I suspect we are fundamentally incapable of understanding each other. I want to be married. I want to enjoy the full legal protections of marriage to the person I love most( which you support but only under a different name, if I am reading right), but more than that, I feel that my relationship with him deserves the social connotations of being and having a husband rather than just a “partner”( trust me, it makes a difference - ask anyone who had a civil union or similar for a while and then got married), and possibly even the spiritual aspect of the union( though only blessed by ourselves and perhaps a spiritual leader who wishes to do so, not in any way by coercing someone whose faith opposes my marriage). If straight people won’t give up the right to have “husbands” and “wives” that they love romantically and sexually, and “marriages” that society respects, I don’t see why my friends and I should accept having those things denied to us.
Your Equality Mania argument is fundamentally flawed: very few of us who want equality so badly are trying to hurt others to get it( nothing is absolute, there are some who enjoy bullying others, I am sure, but they are not the majority as conservatives seem to like to believe) or see ourselves as stopping at nothing. The fact is, I don’t believe that asking people to recognize my marriage with regards to secular matters infringes on their religious freedom, any more than asking them to recognize an interracial marriage, or an interfaith marriage in secular respects, does. I don’t believe that being raised by same-sex parents inherently hurts a child - and hardly anyone who DID believe that would want to raise a child with a same-sex partner. I don’t believe that gays and lesbians serving openly in the military will be hugely detrimental - other industries and occupations seem to have survived just fine, and most servicepeople interviewed seem far more concerned about the reactions of their comrades( represented by vague words like “cohesion”) than about actually working with gay and lesbian individuals.
If I believed that those purported detrimental effects were anything more than irrational fear of change and the unknown, I would advocate a more cautious approach - but that belief or the lack of it is the core of the fundamental difference I mentioned.
I find it interesting that you encourage people to be less selfish in helping the GLBT community, while suggesting that people fighting for change focus on issues that are important to you and ignore issues that are important to millions of other gays.
A few more brief notes after exploring some recent posts on your blog:
If politicians were there to always represent the majority, we might as well have a full democracy with referenda on everything. I believe we have reached the point where it is technologically feasible. The thing is, a social democracy like this one survives and is strong because our politicians represent everyone, not just the majority, and use their judgment. And that is a good thing, not a betrayal of constituents. If you want someone to vote exactly the way you would on every issue, why not take office yourself? Most people are not qualified to do those jobs and make all those decisions. While I do have opinions, and often write to the people who represent me in hopes that they will take those opinions into consideration, I would rather have someone in office who has good judgment than someone whom I agree with 100% of the time. Otherwise, with true majority rule, we would never have any progress, tradition would always dominate, and our society would stagnate and die.
As for DADT, well, I think a repeal is necessary. There is no real data to suggest that it would be harmful, and the continued functioning of uncloseted militaries in other countries seems to suggest it would not. But, regarding the earlier post, I would not object to non-combat as a first stage, I am confident that it would simply prove the non-issue. The problem is that NO action is being taken and valuable personnel - especially non-combat specialists - continue to be lost. That loss is a bigger threat to national security than letting soldiers out of the closet.
What a terrible piece. You’re incredibly generalizing, unsupported statements are truly toxic to the gay community.
“Equality Mania”? Do us a favor and stop writing.
This is a rehash of a theme you’ve brought up before, so for the record, here’s a brief rehash of the response:
Yes, trying to set fire to a building with police inside is disproportionate and excessive, even in the context of a protest against an immoral law brutally enforced, and we should freely acknowledge that if asked, but no, I don’t think it comes close to the sort of thing that requires a sackcloth and ashes moment in every remembrance. Nothing in this world is ever 100% black and white, but this is quite black and white enough to be getting on with. It’s deeply dishonest to be suggesting that the fact that the bar was Mafia-run is some sort of shame to the clientele and extenuation for the authorities, when there was a systematic policy of denying liquor licences to gay bars so there would be an pretext to harass gay people.
Nor is there any reason to apologize for emphasizing a possible heterosexual AIDS epidemic. There turned out not to be one, but it was far from obvious that there couldn’t have been. Indeed in Africa there _is_ one.
Nor is there any reason to apologize, as gay people, for surrogacy arrangements. I personally wouldn’t be party to an arrangement that totally deprived a child of knowledge of or contact with a biological parent, but there’s a lot of arrangements that that permits and as far as I can see the idea that a child needs opposite sex custodial parents is a totally made-up problem to have something to beat gay people over the head with.
Just a note to the other commenters: I don’t think Mr. Benkof was even trying( does HTML work here? [i]What aboout BBCode?[/i]) to make many new points, just one very simple one that he is supporting with older points. I expect he mainly posted because it was a piece that was published outside of his regular column - wouldn’t you? and because the simple point in the opening is timely, given that it is now the Stonewall anniversary and Pride.
Oh, and in regards to my earlier comment that gay bars were raided more frequently… I kept thinking that there was more to it than I remembered, and a little research turned up the following historical fact: establishments that explicitly catered to homosexuals were not permitted to have liquor licenses, so it was impossible for gay bars to even exist unless they were run by well-connected criminals. If not for that legalized discrimination, that spot on Christopher street would likely have been occupied by a legitimate business instead of a Mafia enterprise - the police would have had no reason to raid, and the gays no reason to be pissed.
It does! But you have to close the tags too… O_o;
And I need to read other comments, as Mark has beaten me to my point and I probably did not need to make a 2nd comment at all, much less a 3rd and 4th.
And of course, as he says, which I should have thought of, Africa illustrates my earlier suggestion that the panic and preparation itself is probably the reason for the lack of a straight AIDS epidemic in industrialized, high-income nations.
“Equality mania” isn’t limited to gays though. Perhaps because this is a group that you are more familiar with you it stands out but its very noticeable in other areas of society as well. We’re all about egalitarianism these days. The worst of it that I’m familiar with is in education.
The first time justice was equated with “equal outcomes” was with Marx and we’ve been persistently working to construct a society that will work in this way and apply egalitarianism to every detail in life to the point of absurdity. Historically speaking, before Marx, justice was either “utilitarian” or deontological (Kant). The simple folk just applied religious beliefs.
Good opinion piece and it was eye opening to me to see how much anxiety and thus incivility it provoked in other readers of the Chronicle. For me personally the particular expressions of justice (adoption, gays in military, marriage, etc) aren’t as interesting as the underlying concept of justice, the bigger picture, which you apply in order to make moral decisions about ethical issues.
Awesome that you didn’t publish the same ole same ole.
Thank you David, for such a thought provoking piece.
I especually identify with your point about gay parenting — specifically those who would intentionally seek reproductive assistance to ensure that their child had no father of his own. Yes, this is cruel, and very unusual.
Some, such as Ethan above, claim that “any two good people” can make good parents, regardless of gender. And of course he’s right — even going so far as to point out that any ONE good parent can raise a fine child. But the fact of the matter is we DO stigmatize single parenthood, as we should, and we HAVE seen the damage wrought (specifically in the African American community) by subsidizing and rewarding those parents who choose a lifestyle worthy of stigmatization.
As for the gay couple who uses artificial reproductive technology to create a fatherless or motherless child, well sure — they may very well be fine parents. But it begs the question doesn’t it? WHY wouldn’t the biological father ALSO make a fine parent? Every kid knows he is the product of only one man and one woman — so WHY go to such lengths to completely sterilize the naturally heterosexual process of reproduction, if not to make DAMN SURE your kid cannot call any man his “father”? Is “being gay” a valid excuse for such cruel and unusual childrearing?
Fathelessness is always tragic. Being gay or lesbian doesn’t excuse it in the least.
Ethan-
Welcome to the blog. As for Stonewall, my point is that the gay movement has had all these marches and celebrations and no one - except the early 1970s Mattachine and me - has ever said “Hey! Let’s pause for some regret about the people we hurt.”
You claim that teen pregnancy and STDs are on the rise - yet there’s no concomitant hetero AIDS epidemic, despite the fact that the gay community said one was coming.
I’m familiar with the studies about gay parenting, and they do indeed demonstrate that a lesbian can be a good mother. They do not, however, demonstrate that a lesbian can be a good father. I believe children whenever possible should have both a mother and a father.
I do condemn single parents who engineer a baby, but that wasn’t the topic of my essay.
I don’t know where you came up with the silly and cruel idea of taking babies away from their parents; I never said babies should be taken away from same-sex parents. Rather, I said they are selfish for doing what they’re doing. One can criticize someone’s behavior without proposing to regulate it.
Given your comment, “If I believed that those purported detrimental effects…” I don’t believe you have EqualityMania. But I have had gays on the ‘net literally tell me that they would have wanted gays to serve openly in World War II even if that meant we had lost to Hitler! I talk to gays all the time who cannot seem to see that there are other factors besides equality that should be taken into consideration in public policy. That’s what I’m responding to, not people like you who are willing to consider other factors.
Mark- I don’t think we disagree too much on Stonewall. My question is why nobody ever questions the morality of the violence even in an age of nonviolent protest. (Even the nonviolent Soulforce group had a Stonewall commemoration this week.) I mentioned Mafia-run to show how the raid was legitimate.
Marty- You have expressed my very thoughts about same-sex baby-making in a different kind of way, and I appreciate it. Usually, gay parenting is attacked across the board, and I think that’s unfortunate. I’ve seen in my own life and in my reading in the media that gays can be excellent parents. It’s just a matter of do all children deserve both a mother and a father whenever possible.
DB: “My question is why nobody ever questions the morality of the violence even in an age of nonviolent protest. ”
I expect it’s that most of the violence was essentially self-defence, nobody actually ended up getting killed in the over-the-top bit, and that the bad guys were so completely unworthy of sympathy - not just homophobic but corrupt. After all, the proximate cause of the raid and the reason that it was more than usually violent from the beginning was that the police had upped their rate for bribes and the Mafia wouldn’t pay.
Obama hosted an event in the WH to recognize Stonewall and addressed concerns of GLBT folk and their families. WOW!
“Be not afraid of going slowly. Be afraid of standing still.” - Japanese Proverb
The Gay Community is not afraid of standing still . . .
sorry, I meant to say that Gay Community is not going to be standing still but will continue to move forward.
David,
What are your plans for correcting the HIV/AIDS public health misinformation contained in your article?
I like this piece a lot, except I have qualms with one statement:
“Stonewall was sparked by a legitimate bar raid on an unlicensed, Mafia-run drinking establishment.”
I think it would be more accurate to say that Stonewall was the culmination of persecution that peaked with a legitimate bar raid…” I think that your statement tries to put light on the fact that gay persecution was a real problem. Maybe I’m wrong, since when Stonewall happened, I was only two weeks old, but everything I’ve read leads me to believe that gay bashing was a real problem that made people say “enough is enough.”
Now the irony here is that the gay-bashers are almost certainly responsible for the current wave of “gay civil rights” that this world has come to. Had there not been people actively persecuting homosexuals, and just letting them be, they would probably have stayed content with their lives and not felt the need to force the rest of society to accept them as “normal.” But now that they’ve been given an inch, they’ll take as much as they can, as any reasonable group would be expected to.
But now that the genie is out of the bottle, I don’t think there’s really any going back to the way things were. I don’t think we, as a society, can say “We promise to stop beating you up for no good reason if you’ll just quietly get back in the closet.” We can only hope that at some point, voices of reason (from both sides of the issue, really) can find effective ways to cut through the mania and propaganda that sinks these issues to the bottom of a sea of social inertia.
DK: “I think it would be more accurate to say that Stonewall was the culmination of persecution that peaked with a legitimate bar raid…”
I think even that concedes way too much to the legitimacy of the NY authorities and David’s argument, on two counts:
First, the only reason gay people were drinking in a Mafia-run bar in the first place is that the NY authorities had a deliberate and systematic practice of withholding liquor licences from gay bars, precisely to create a pretext to harass them. I’m not sure if there’s a technical term for that, but morally it’s close to entrapment, which we have laws against. Gay people certainly have no reason to apologize for being placed in a Catch 22 for an immoral reason (homophobia).
Second, it’s not as if it was raided _because_ it was a Mafia-run bar. It was raided _despite_ being a Mafia-run bar, because the police had recently increased their demanded rate for bribes and the Mafia had refused to pay. Gay people certainly have no reason to apologize for that either.
MB: “NY authorities had a deliberate and systematic practice of withholding liquor licences from gay bars, precisely to create a pretext to harass them”
I’m guessing that sodomy was illegal at the time, so refusing liquor licenses from “gay bars” would have been a matter of public morality, rather than just a “pretext for harrassment”. In the same way any bar that was notorious for prostitution would be shut down today.
Marty: “I’m guessing that sodomy was illegal at the time, so refusing liquor licenses from “gay bars” would have been a matter of public morality, rather than just a “pretext for harrassment”. In the same way any bar that was notorious for prostitution would be shut down today.”
Oh, sure, the NY sodomy law was in effect till 1980, when it was struck down by a state court. But who cares? The public “morality” it sought to uphold was itself immoral, and, retrospectively at least, the law was unconstitutional. Therefore I don’t see that gay people need to be the least bit apologetic for civil disobedience against it.
Also of course, there are the usual issues that arise when we reflect on past injustice. I’m prepared to cut the NY authorities a bit of personal slack for being people of their time, which just happened to be a rather barbaric time as far as gay rights were concerned. But I have no intention of cutting them any slack on the substance - I think their attitudes were wholly indefensible on the merits and the most charitable thing that can be said for them they were merely _thoughtlessly_ vindictive. That’s not something I’m the least bit interested in honouring with sackcloth and ashes moments in gay pride events. And that’s before considering the fact that they were also corrupt and on the take from the Mafia.
So, David, you’re writing reviews of musicals. . .big attempt to reclaim your homosexuality? must be tough juggling everything. but I think Fannie had a question for you. Also, haven’t seen much of your journalistic/opionion pieces out there.
Do Tell
Fannie-
I think part of the misunderstanding about my references to heterosexual AIDS is that I was emphasizing that heterosexual AIDS in America was not and is not and, it appears, never will be an epidemic, not that some heterosexual people don’t get AIDS from straight sex (although often from having sex with bisexual men and IV drug users).
Mark-
The main point is not sackcloth and ashes at pride events, but choosing other episodes and heroes in gay history to celebrate, rather than this morally questionable event. When Soulforce, an organization devoted to nonviolence, has special events to mark the anniversary of Stonewall, you know there’s some moral confusion going on in the gay and lesbian community.
Rusty-
Yeah, I’m writing a weekly review of the shows at the Muny, our outdoor theater here in St. Louis. You can read them at PlaybackSTL.com.
DB: “The main point is not sackcloth and ashes at pride events, but
choosing other episodes and heroes in gay history to celebrate, rather than this morally questionable event.”
But I don’t agree that it was morally questionable. It threatened to
get out of hand, but at the end of the day, it stayed pretty much
within the realm of self-defence. A bunch of corrupt thugs, who just
happened to be policemen, attacked a group that they’d set up to have a pretext to attack, and the attackees resisted. Now according to some conceptions of non-violence, there might be an argument for total passivity in the face of violence, and for magnanimously getting
steamrollered, but as far as I’m concerned, (i) that’s a PR call, not
a moral one, and (ii) it turned out to be a pretty good PR call in
that it inspired other gay people rather more than it pissed off
potential allies.
DB: “When Soulforce, an organization devoted to nonviolence, has
special events to mark the anniversary of Stonewall, you know there’s
some moral confusion going on in the gay and lesbian community.”
Well sure, if Soulforce advocates non-violence under all
circumstances, then you’re right to be puzzled as to why it would
associate itself with Stonewall. But then if it advocates that, it
doesn’t speak for me, and, I fancy for plenty of other gay people. See
e.g., the comments at http://www.pamshouseblend.com/diary/11770/stonewall-commemoration-at-fort-worth-tx-gay-club-turns-into-police-raid
.
Mind you, that doesn’t mean I wish that Soulforce would shut up. I’m a firm believer in a mix of strategies. According to the principle of
the Overton window, if Soulforce is the only gay voice out there it
will be perceived as extremist no matter how milquetoast it is. It
needs some people taking a more aggressive approach to compete with to be taken seriously. I don’t think the stakes are remotely high enough to warrant literal bombthrowers going out and initiating violence but some scratching, clawing drag queens and general rioting in response to unjust attacks have their place.
David’s main point: “[G]ay history since Stonewall is unfortunately stained with selfishness and arrogance …” As examples, he cites those among us who stand against unjust legal systems, sound the alarm about a health crisis, want the responsibilities of marriage and parenting, and serve in the mititary.
But what have these to do with “selfishness and arrogance”? In what parallel universe are those who strive and sacrifice for justice, responsibility, and peace singled out for criticism rather than praise?
A more convincing argument would have pointed to our circuit party lifestyle, dependence on drugs and alcohol, celebration of sexual violence and domination, and demands for instant sexual gratification in public parks and restrooms. These are all too common in our community and surely are the selfish and arrogant behaviors that tear-away at the fabric of society and our values, much less our personal health and genuine “pride”.
Let’s not confuse heroism for hedonism or virtue for vice. Would that the gay community had more “selfish and arrogant” people like those David lists. America should be so lucky.
Steve, the nonsense at Stonewall was not about promoting justice nor virtue. Nor was lieing about AIDS. Nor is it selfless to create children for the selfish reasons offered by gay and lesbian activists. These things tear away at the social fabric and values. Each was hedonistic. And done in the name of identity politics — that is, not in the name of justice but “just us”.