I would be lying if I said I am not somewhat disheartened by the passage of Proposition 2 on Tuesday. Disheartened but not surprised – well, maybe a little surprised.
As a gay man who came out in 1979, I have experienced much discrimination. I’ve been called everything you can think of: “fag,” “queer,” “homo” and things not fit for publication.
I have been physically threatened and beaten. I was even estranged from my brother for 20 years because my sexuality didn’t mesh with his Southern Baptist beliefs.
Apparently, his son’s getting his girlfriend pregnant before they were married was more Christ-like than my being gay. You live and learn – and you develop a callus.
Still, 26 years after I had the courage to admit I was gay and that was how God made me, and almost 40 years since the civil rights era, some Americans are still fighting for basic human rights.
Here are some predictions – and I welcome anyone to email me or call me 10 years from now and say I told you so if I am wrong:
In 10 years, gay marriage will be legal in all 50 states. In 11 years, doomsayers and apocalypse-seekers will be hunkering down waiting for the end of the world. In 15 years, bigots will still be bewailing the irreparable harm that gay marriage will have wrought on “traditional” marriage.
The funny thing about that argument is no one – not Jerry Falwell, not James Dobson, not Pat Robertson, not even Brian Wellman – can tell me or you how gay marriage jeopardizes straight marriage, much less what catastrophic impact it will have on our culture.
The reason no one will tell you or me how gay marriage will cause the unraveling of our civilization is because they can’t. Religious bigots have been making one version or another of that same prophesy for millennia. Fear, for many Christians, is the only currency.
In 20 years, the newly enlightened will be lamenting that they hadn’t seem the light before. In 25 years, everyone will wonder what all the fuss was about.
On the other hand, in the short term, Texas’ international reputation will be tarnished. (The irony, of course, is that Texans wonder why the rest of the world continues to make fun of them.) In the short term, gays and lesbians will leave the state. (Some of you are probably thinking, “So what?” I know Rick Perry is. Too bad Rick Perry doesn’t know what I’m thinking about him.)
In the short term, tourism and convention business may be hurt. Some companies may even reconsider not locating to Texas. Good riddance, right?
Don’t worry, God will provide! After all, he destroys the wicked and lifts up the righteous. Isn’t that what he did in New Orleans?
Did it every occur to anyone that God is wreaking havoc on the United States to tell the White House to change its ways? How else can George Bush explain his string of bad luck – not to mention his crashing poll numbers?
Or maybe, just maybe, God doesn’t micromanage. Maybe the Bush administration is in a freefall because Bush is incompetent – and the American people are finally realizing it.
Consider Tuesday’s elections:
Two Democrats won gubernatorial elections on Tuesday. Admittedly, one was in a blue state, New Jersey. The other, however, from a very red state in the president’s own backyard, Virginia, lost to an anti-death-penalty Democrat – in spite of the fact that Bush flew from Panama to Virginia on Monday to stump for the Republican candidate.
So much for Bush’s much-ballyhooed political capital.
Prediction: Bush will appear on fewer than five campaign stages with Republican candidates in 2006.
In California, the Terminator’s four statewide propositions were terminated. Like Bush, Ahnuld spent his political capital early in his term.
As it turns out, Californians wanted more than Saturday Night Live cliches. Calling your rivals “girly men” may get you a laugh, but it doen’t resonate with voters. Nor do meaningless Bushian platitudes like, “We’re fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them over there.”
In Maine, home of the Bush-family summer estate, voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment outlawing discrimination against gays and lesbian.
Speaking of Maine, I’m reminded of that old American political aphorism, “So goes Maine, so goes the nation.” In Kansas, six slack-jawed yokels, who also happen to serve on the Kansas State Board of Education, voted in favor of teaching religion unimaginatively disguised as intelligent design alongside evolution.
In Dover, Pa. – whose school board last year voted to require science teachers to read a statement about intelligent design to their classes – all eight board members who supported the policy were voted out. Hang in there, Kansan schoolchildren.
In New York City, billionaire Republican-light Bloomberg easily won reelection, after spending a reported $75 million in his reelection campaign, which included commercials in Mandarin and Russian. I know, he’s a Republican. But he’s not “that” kind of Republican. Remember, he’s Republican “light” – light because he is pro-choice and pro-gay marriage. He is mayor of New York City, after all.
Speaking of New York City, former mayor Rudolph Giuliani is probably the only viable candidate the Republicans have in 2008.
Whether or not the religious Wrong, uh Right, will overlook that he’s pro-choice and has been married three times (his first wife, by the way, was his second cousin) is another matter.
Right about now, the sting from Tuesday’s slap in the face is starting to feel a little better.
George Henson is a lecturer of Spanish. He may be contacted at [email protected].
