Saturday, February 06, 2010

Smoke the Bigots Out of the Closet

The more bigotry pushed out of the closet for all voters to see, the more likely it is that Americans will be moved to grant overdue full citizenship to gay Americans.
Love this Op-ed by Frank Rich. Read it all in tomorrow's New York Times -- here are a few bits to get you started:

As more gay people have come out — a process that accelerated once the modern gay rights movement emerged from the Stonewall riots of 1969 — so more heterosexuals have learned that they have gay relatives, friends, neighbors, teachers and co-workers. It is hard to deny our own fundamental rights to those we know, admire and love.

When Harry Truman ordered the racial integration of the American military in 1948, Congressional opponents (then mainly Southern Democrats) embraced an antediluvian Army prediction from 1940 stating that such a change would threaten national defense by producing “situations destructive to morale.” History will sweep this bogus argument away now as it did then.

The more bigotry pushed out of the closet for all voters to see, the more likely it is that Americans will be moved to grant overdue full citizenship to gay Americans. It won’t happen overnight, any more than full civil rights for African-Americans immediately followed Truman’s desegregation of the armed forces. But there can be no doubt that Mike Mullen’s powerful act of conscience last week, just as we marked the 50th anniversary of the Greensboro, N.C., lunch counter sit-in, pushed history forward. The revealing silence that followed from so many of the usual suspects was pretty golden too.

8 comments:

dr.primrose said...

I've always thought that the anti-gay policy was incredibly insulting to the male troops. They were trained to fight suicide bombers but, if they thought some guy might think about taking a side-way look in the shower, they would immediately fall into a Aunt Pittypat swoon and have to be revived with smelling salts. Good grief!

IT said...

The thing is, with DADT, the straight men ARE serving with gays already. It's just that the gays are closeted. (It's all about men, no one seems particularly troubled by the lesbians).

If you ask the young men in uniform, most of them have no problem with it. Seems to be an obsession of old men.

SUSAN RUSSELL said...

Exactly. My son ... the active duty one, openly heterosexual one ... when asked what he thought about DADT had a three word response: "It's Bull S***."

(He tends toward the monosyllabic, unlike his mother.)

dr.primrose said...

I agree that the discussion of DADT seem concerned mostly with men. But DADT actually has a disproportionate effect on women. See, for example, the article from CNN entitled More women than men dismissed from military for being gay and another article from the New York Times entitled http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/10/09/military.gays.dismissals/.

The effect is even greater on black women, see Black Women Disproportionately Impacted by "don’t ask, don’t tell" and "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" Disproportionately Affecting Black Women.

LGMarshall said...

Gays enjoy full citizenship in the U.S.

'Special' rights are not merited.

Homosexuality invites judgment by God. It is idolatry. Homosexuality is a God substitute.

PROOF: Noah's Ark.... two-ness of creation. A 3rd party is not desireable.

PROOF: Jesus adopted (authored) the Creation model of human sexuality. His entire and therefore final argument against gay 'marriage', lies at his formation of the 2 (two) sexes at Creation. JESUS THE CREATOR. (see JOHN 1).

SUSAN RUSSELL said...

LG ... bless your heart. I'll leave it to others to comment on your biblical exegesis but on the "full citizenship/special rights" thing, let me confuse you with some facts:

A drunk couple of teenagers who say "I do" in a Las Vegas wedding chapel immediately have 1138 federally protected rights that a gay or lesbian couple who have lived, loved and paid taxes for 40 years of commited relationship don't.

There's nothing "full" about that.

And there's nothing "special" about working to make the "all" in liberty and justice for all actually mean "all."

IT said...

Two sexes? I strongly encourage you to go read the book EVOLUTION'S RAINBOW by Joan Roughgarden (biologist at Stanford) who analyzes the far greater complexity to sexuality throughout the natural world than a simple single binary approach of big guy-small girl.

I don't want special rights. I want the same rights. I don't have them. Neither does any other GLBT person who cannot serve honestly in the military, who cannot marry the person he/she loves, who can be fired from his/her job simply for who they are. And, if some right wing CHristianists have their way, be imprisoned or worse....simply for loving.

Don't talk to ME about special rights. The only people with "special rights" in this country are straight white "Christians" who apparently have limitless rights to impose their beliefs on others.

uffda51 said...

Bigotry invites judgment by God.

Worshipping the Bible is idolatry.

The Bible is the lens through which we get a glimpse of God. Some people make the mistake of worshipping the lens.