Tag Archives: politics

Drumming

news, , , , , ,

I loved those Johnny Weismuller Tarzan movies, when I was a kid. I’m pretty sure it was in one of those silly black and white films that I first saw the jungle drums as communication trope. Supposedly all the tribes of the jungle, no matter their culture or language, participated in this form of long distance communication where the pounding of drums could warn the neighboring villages of some disaster, perhaps, or to call the tribes to war.

So when I later first heard a pundit or read an editorial that referred to people advocating an escalation in our military actions in Vietnam as “the drum-beat of war,” I thought of those jungle drums. And it seemed to fit the context of the editorials.

In the movies the drumming was always a bad portent. The drums always signaled something that would menace our heroes. Something savage, unpredictable, and utterly merciless (there was, of course, more than a little racism in this trope).

Since drums had been used in various European armies centuries before any of those Hollywood depictions of Africa came to exist, I’m certain that particular turn of phrase also predates the jungle drum trope. Still, whenever I hear the phrase “the drum-beat of” my imagination conjures up black and white images of people dressed in khaki and pith helmets, fearfully looking this way and that, but only able to see impenetrable leaves and vines.

So, when the leader of one of the groups trying to hide their homophobia and religious supremacism behind an innocuous sounding pro-marriage name starting referring to the shift public opinion has been undergoing regarding gay rights in general as “the drumbeat of gay entitlement” I started laughing. Many of the other haters have picked up the phrase, and when they say it on one of those news show, they get such a serious, worried look on their face. Often exactly the same expression from those old jungle movies that the one person who knew what the drums meant would have while he explained to the rest of the party.

They describe gay people and gay-friendly straight people as being on a crusade to destroy all that is right and good in this world. When they do, they have that wide-eyed look of someone who knows the menace is near, but can’t figure out from where the menace will strike.

There isn’t an evil, menacing army beating those drums and preparing to ambush them. The forces for tolerance and equality are not savage, unpredictable, nor merciless. There is a battle going on, but not that kind. And the people beating the drums aren’t at all like that.

A great example was a police raid on a gay bar in Atlanta three years ago. A SWAT-type team of cops from multiple agencies stormed into the bar without a warrant, made everyone lay face down on the floor, and proceeded to harass, threaten, search, and occasionally assault the customers for about 90 minutes. When the news first broke, city officials said the officers were following a lead in a perfectly legitimate investigation. Some veiled comments about “those kinds of people” were made, and they expected it to go away, just as tens of thousands of such raids have in cities everywhere for years.

They didn’t expect a protest march made up primarily of church ladies. For years people like those cops could count on at least two things to protect their bigotted actions from a serious investigation: virtually none of the men they harassed or assaulted would press charges (for fear of being outed), and families of the men harassed would be so ashamed of their gay children that they would never pressure any politician to look into the matter.

Neither of those things are universally true, any longer. A bunch of those men had parents who were not ashamed of their sons. Some of those parents stood up in their churches to describe the warrantless, unjustified police action. And a bunch of those church members—surprise, surprise—thought that “love your neighbor as you love yourself” didn’t include handcuffing innocent people, shouting at them, and kicking them in the head.

The church lady march was only the beginning. With the unexpected pressure from the community, the city had to conduct a real investigation. No evidence of any crime was ever found. No explanation of a legitimate case in progress was ever given. The review board ruled that two of the officers and some supervisors were provably guilty of misconduct, though the punishments at the time were minor, and to this day the city claims that other than those few “mistakes” nothing was wrong with the raid. Eventually, six of the officers involved in the raid were fired for lying about events in the raid, but the city tried to do it very quietly. A report was reluctantly released under a freedom of information request detailing how a total of 16 officers had lied or destroyed evidence to try to cover up the misconduct.

The drummers aren’t just bleeding hearts from liberal churches. Last year, while marriage equality was being debated in my state’s legislature, one legislator who was known not to be in favor of the bill hosted a townhall-style meeting in her district to let people from the community give her their thoughts. After a couple hours of person after person passionately speaking in favor of same-sex marriage, the surprised legislator said that she knew their had to be voices in the community who felt differently. She looked at a man in a police uniform who had been sitting in the front row, looking angrier and angrier the entire time. “This gentleman, for example, hasn’t said anything.”

The cop reluctantly rose to his feet. He explained that he hadn’t said anything because he hadn’t had time to change out of uniform before coming to the forum, so he didn’t want people to think he was speaking for his department. But if she insisted, well, he just wanted to say that as a father of four sons, he wanted all of his boys, including his gay son, to be able to marry the person they fell in love with.

She never found anyone at the meeting willing to speak against the bill. She eventually voted in favor of it.

Or the pair of grandparents I saw, speaking at a legislative hearing in another state, who said, “We want to dance at the weddings of all of our grandchildren, including our lesbian granddaughter.”

There is a drumbeat out there. But it isn’t calling us to march to war. It isn’t warning you of a slaughter or some other danger.

It’s inviting you to come dance at some weddings.

It’s not just speech…

life, , ,

When I proposed to Michael, I didn’t ask him to move in with me. He had said “yes” to my proposal, but he lived and worked in a different city, and my late husband had died less than a year before, so we were both a little nervous about rushing into things. Therefore, at the time of the proposal, we agreed we’d wait a year before taking the more drastic step.

But about six months later, one of his housemates started behaving strangely, such as going through Michael’s stuff when he was away (and more creepy things). Suddenly the thought of Michael being there was completely unacceptable. I didn’t care if it seemed like we were rushing, all I could think of was that I needed to get him somewhere safe.

Never mind that he, as one friend recently described him, is “the most capable person I’ve ever known.” Never mind that his job history has included being a bouncer at a bar, or that his past hobbies included bull-riding. No matter how tough, smart, or capable he is, the thought of him being in an unsafe place made me a bit irrational.

Fourteen-and-a-half years later, we’re still together—happily so. I guess we weren’t rushing, eh?

During that time, we’ve registered our domestic partnership—first with the city, because the state didn’t allow it. Then later, once the state did allow it, with the state. Thanks to a voter-approved referendum, in our state that partnership now carries all the legal rights and responsibilities of marriage. So we can jointly own property, we are allowed to make medical decision for each other if one of us in incapacitated (assuming we don’t run into a hospital worker who doesn’t understand what the domestic partnership law means), and if one of us dies, the survivor doesn’t have to produce proof that he paid for half or more of anything or lose it to the other’s blood relatives (because it’s all by default community property).

Unfortunately, even in a state with strong domestic partner laws, there are still a lot of inequalities.

I’m older than Michael, and have some chronic health issues. It is likely he will outlive me. By chance, I also earn more money than he does. If something were to happen to me, he would be put in a financial bind. Yes, I have life insurance, so there will be a bit of a cushion, but because what we have isn’t recognized on the federal level as a marriage, he would not be entitled to survivor benefits from social security. If he remains single after my death, when he decides to retire, his benefits will be calculated solely on his own earnings.

If our relationship was legally recognized, all of that changes. He would be entitled to survivor benefits under some circumstances. When it came time to retire, he would be entitled to benefits based on my years of earning.

Before you make an argument about the sanctity of marriage, consider this: if, on my deathbed, I was to have a quicky marriage with a woman someone selects completely randomly, the ceremony and signing completed literally seconds before my death, she would be entitled to all those benefits. Never mind that we didn’t know each other. Never mind that no defininition of sacred would encompass that random person standing by my hospital bed.

Legal marriage isn’t about sanctity. Legal marriage isn’t about forcing churches to do anything. Right now, two people who have been divorced can legally marry in all fifty states (so long as they are opposite gender). If they ask a Catholic priest to perform the ceremony, he will turn them down, because the church doesn’t believe in divorce. It happens a lot. The fact that the law recognizes re-marriages has not and will not open the church to being sued. Just as a church can choose not to perform a wedding if, for example, one of the members belongs to a completely different faith.

And before you bring up that story about the “church” that got in trouble about a same sex marriage a couple years ago: 1) it wasn’t a church, it was a separate business set up by a ministry as a fundraising activity, 2) when they set up the business, they applied for an exemption from paying property taxes on a small park and pavilion that they intended to rent out for events, 3) the exemption required them to sign an agreement which explicitly said that they would run the business as a public accomodation, and that they would not refuse to rent to any member of the public on the basis of race, religion, political affiliation, creed, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation, 4) this agreement that they signed had to be renewed every year, and they had to, every year, re-affirm that they would not refuse to rent the park and pavilion to anyone on the basis of race, religion, political affiliation, creed, gender, or sexual orientation or the park and pavilion would cease to be tax exempt.

And then they told a lesbian couple that the couple could not rent the pavillion because they were opposed to same sex marriage and anything like it.

That’s when the one selected parcel of land lost its tax exemption. The parent ministry was not fined, it did not lose its tax exempt status. The church that many members belonged to did not lose its tax exempt status and did not face any fines or retribution. The only thing that happened was that the side business had to start paying taxes, just like any other business.

It is true that as marriage equality moves forward at the state level, people who don’t approve of it will see neighbors, co-workers, and strangers enter into legal marriages and in legal ways be treated just like the other kinds of marriage. That will include, sometimes, having to do business with these couples and treat them, in terms of publicly transacted business and such, just like any other married couple. Which will make them uncomfortable.

Being comfortable is not a legal right.

Asking the law to allow you to discriminate is not just speech. Preventing someone from renting a home is not just speech. Barring someone from the hospital bedside of their partner is not just speech. Barring some couples from tax benefits is not just speech. Encouraging parents to literally throw their gay, lesbian, or bisexual teen-agers out on the street—telling them that abandoning their own children and making them homeless is the correct, biblical thing to do—is not just speech.

Come out, come out, where ever you are

life, , , , ,

Today is National Coming Out Day. If Ray were still alive, it would also be the day we’d be celebrating the nineteenth anniversary of our commitment ceremony (he promised to stay with me for the rest of his life, and he did).

Since I am still regularly surprised to learn that someone I’ve known for a while hasn’t ever figured out I’m gay: my husband and I are both men, and we’re very much in love with each other and happy together.

But while I’m (re-)stating what I think ought to be obvious, I would like to announce that I am a card-carrying liberal gay man who thinks:

  • that gun control means hitting what you aim at but people who irresponsibly allow guns to fall into kids’ hands resulting in death or injury should face severe legal consequences;
  • that the death penalty has a place in a well-run justice system but so does jury nullification;
  • that a flag-burning amendment is as un-American as anything could possibly be, but people who fly a flag should learn the flag code and stop leaving their flags out at night and in the rain;
  • that war and violence are terrible things we should always work hard to avoid, but the people who risk their lives in service to their communities and nation deserve our respect and gratitude;
  • that the right to assemble and petition our government absolutely allows people to march, protest, chant, and otherwise demonstrate in public places, but if you’re not willing to pay the price of possibly being arrested for blocking your fellow citizens from going about their business, you deserve a slap up-side-the-head;
  • that people have the right to control their own bodies, but refusing to get your children vaccinated demonstrates a criminal level of ignorance, is the equivalent of child abuse, and puts neighbors, friends, and strangers at risk for preventable and sometimes fatal diseases;
  • that no one who is not going into a battle zone needs a Hummer, but people who blindly protest nuclear power plants can’t do basic math about energy needs and energy sources;
  • that proportional representation would greatly improve our country, but so would at least one of the major parties actually moving left-of-center;
  • that the right to believe as you wish includes the right not to believe at all, but rabid atheists are no less annoying than the other kinds of fundamentalists;
  • that being polite costs nothing while reaping great rewards, but no one should have to put up with disrespectful behavior;
  • that there isn’t enough science education in our schools, but there isn’t enough art, music, or history either;
  • and that you get out of life what you put into it, but you also get a lot of both the good and the bad through no fault or merit of your own.