"I'm Not A Homophobe, But..."

This week, I've been reading Unfriendly Fire, a book on how "don't ask, don't tell" has hurt the military in a variety of ways. It's a very interesting and somewhat shocking book, especially as it delves into the horribly untrue and blatantly prejudiced things that were said about gay people while the debate over the policy was raging in the early nineties. (Example: one position paper by a prominent military essayist and evangelical Christian lamented the gay community's advocacy for the "decriminalization of private sex acts between consenting 'persons'." Yeah, that's right— he put "persons" in quotation marks. Because apparently gay people aren't really people?)

As I was reading, I was struck by this excerpt, which comes at the beginning of a section that explores why America was so conflicted about the role of gays in mainstream culture in 1993:

"In the abstract Americans favored concepts like tolerance, equality, freedom, fairness, and civil rights. But polls showed sharp limitations on how far they would go in translating such abstractions into support for real rights."

This is one of the most accurate statements I've ever read.

Doesn't everyone know someone like this? There's always someone who prefaces an offensive racial joke with, "I'm not a racist or anything," or someone who says, "Of course, I totally support equal rights for women," before launching into a tirade about why they shouldn't have a woman as their boss.

As I read those few sentences above, I thought first of the page on PNN, set up directly before the 2008 general election, that sought to garner approval for California's Proposition 8. I don't know who set up the page (which had some ridiculous title about saving marriage or defending Jesus or yet another of the many clichéd, inaccurate, offensive phrases that the anti-gay movement has invented to make themselves sound less monstrous), but I do know that every once in awhile, its author would post some hilariously bad article about how having gay people get hitched would harm children and ruin marriages and destroy society as we know it.

After a few of these articles found their way on to the front page of PNN, I posted a comment on one of them, telling the author how disappointing it was to hear people spreading hate in the name of Jesus. People like you, I said, were the reason why my sister had to stay in the closet during high school, for fear people would make fun of her, or, worse, injure her. People like you, I continued, were why my sister refused to come to church anymore.

And the reply I got astounded me. Oh, no, I had it all wrong. Because, you see, this person didn't hate gay people. This person would never have been cruel to my sister. This person would never have made fun of her or physically assaulted her. That wasn't what this was about at all.

Wow! And here I was, thinking that treating people like second-class citizens, that telling them their very being is disgusting and dangerous and offensive to God himself, was an expression of hate and hostility. Clearly, I was wrong. Clearly, as long as you smile at your gay neighbor on your way to get the morning paper, it's okay to prohibit him from marrying the person he loves.

As I thought about this, I realized how easily this "I don't hate gay people because I'm nice to them on the street" attitude translates to other groups, as well. Suddenly, I remembered a girl from high school [we'll call her "T" here], a girl I probably hadn't thought about since then until she friended me on Facebook not too long ago.

The Struthers public school system was, at least in my day, a place where teen girls put up their 24-week ultrasounds on a special bulletin board. Girls got pregnant all the time, and my friends and I were terrified by the very idea of sex, since we saw all the terrible things that happened to the pregnant girls in our class. [A good friend of mine ended up having two children by age 16; she dropped out, ran away, and may actually be dead now.] So naturally, we occasionally talked about what we would do if the "curse" ever fell upon us.

We were in eighth grade. None of us had ever had sex; none of us had ever even been kissed. In fact, I'm pretty sure that only one of us had ever been in physical proximity to a boy, and let me tell you, it wasn't me. We were eating at a lunch table, which, as many of you may remember, meant that we were an awkward grouping of friends, friends-of-friends, and people who were just glad to have somewhere to sit at lunch, somewhere that wasn't at the table where mentally-challenged Katherine or 300-pound Bobby sat.

The topic of the conversation: "What would your parents do if you had to tell them you were pregnant?" One friend said her mom (her dad was out of the picture, I think) would be mad, but that she'd understand and help her out. A second friend said her parents would never find out, because she'd kill herself before she had to tell them, and she was only half joking. I said that my parents would be disappointed, but that they'd help me explore all my options and support me in whatever choice I made. (This lead to a short-lived debate on abortion, which I won, because, let's face it, even in eight grade I was pretty awesome at arguing.)

Then "T" spoke up. "I'm pretty sure my mom and dad would be supportive," she said, twirling her hair around her finger as she spoke. "Unless, of course, if the baby daddy was a black guy."

We all stared at her.

"I mean, you know— it's not like they're racists or anything," she blurted out, clearly rethinking her honesty. "My parents like black people. But my dad said that if I ever dated a black guy, he'd make me live in the car."

We didn't have the language or the knowledge or the confidence, back then, to talk to "T" about what she'd said, and really, I'm willing to bet that a couple of the other girls wouldn't have wanted to admit that their parents felt the same way. But long after we'd packed up and headed to fifth-period science, "T"'s words kept nagging at me.

How could you reconcile "liking" black people with not wanting them anywhere near your family? How could you not experience intense cognitive dissonance over this?

I'm nonplussed as to how we can continue, as a society, to espouse virtues like equality, and simultaneously continue to oppose gay rights. If you asked your average red-blooded American (or even your average town-hall-disrupting, Obama-hating, evangelical conservative) if they believe in "equality" (as a concept, not in any specific case), then I bet you'd get a resounding "Of course!" But ask whether or not gay people should be granted marriage equality, and suddenly your subject's devotion to the abstract principle is called into question.

I know that the anti-gay movement isn't based on rational decision-making, but rather on visceral, gut reactions to something that has been culturally taboo for a very long time. I know this, I really do, and I understand why people are confused or horrified or frightened by the gay movement, even as I am disappointed and saddened by this reaction. But what I don't get are the ones who claim that they like gay people— they just don't think they they're the same as "normal" people. They'd never hurt a gay person— they just want to keep them from marrying the people they actually love.

Perhaps the reason we have all this confusion is because the vocabulary we've inherited to talk about such discrimination is outdated, since it hearkens back to a past where prejudice was more brazen, and less underground. It's hard to call someone a racist without starting a fight over what it even means to be a racist; it's no wonder that people would go to great lengths to avoid being labeled as such, even if it's clear that they harbor some racial resentment. Like I said, everyone knows someone who qualifies their racist or sexist or homophobic remarks with the phrase, "Well, I'm not a [racist/sexist/homophobe], but..."

Maybe we need to jettison the noun in favor of the adjective; maybe, instead of labeling people as "racists", "sexists," or "homophobes," we can just identify their language or their attitude or their beliefs as such. I mean, it might be easier to get people to recognize the irrationality of their hurtful actions if, instead of telling them that they themselves are objectionable, we merely object to their ideas. I don't hate the woman (or man— back then there were still some guys left on PNN) who posted those articles about how homosexuality is the root of all evil in California. I don't want to do anything to her or about her. I only want to change her mind. I only want to help her understand how her ideas are actually hurting real, live people, how she is doing real damage to people's lives through her advocacy of exclusion and inequality. In fact, I'm sure she only wants to do what's right— and she probably doesn't understand that what she thinks is right is helping to keep people apart, to make people unhappy.

I want to make this very clear, though: "being nice" to gay people does not automatically make you a good person. It does not absolve you of anything; it does not make it acceptable for you to advocate against gay rights. And to be honest with you, my sister would probably rather have you yell homophobic slurs in her face and then vote to let her marry a woman than watch you fall over yourself trying to smile at her on your way to vote "yes" on a gay marriage ban. Being nice to gay people is, well, nice, but letting people live their own lives is much nicer.

Treating everyone with respect is important, of course. But viewing everyone with respect is ultimately the challenge.