A Gathering Storm

Part 1: That Dreadful Storm

Now I am no fan of gay marriage, but I am well aware that the self-appointed defenders of marriage hate the shit out of queers. The legalization of gay marriage in five out of fifty states motivated homophobes to create A Gathering Storm, a TV commercial that literally voices the fear of homosexuals.  Miss California, please. “No offense,” they claim, in an attempt to inoculate themselves against charges of being offensively hateful.  Opposition to gay marriage provides a convenient way for homophobes to oppose homosexuality without appearing to openly hate us; it allows them to shamelessly display, discuss and demonstrate their homophobia without literally stating it.  Through their opposition to gay marriage they can voice their opposition to gay lives but tell themselves and others that they are not bigots. They merely want to protect marriage. 

The National Organization for Marriage website further provides so-called facts to back up the dramatic statements in their commercial.  The explanations reveal a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of rights.  In each fact presented, the group articulates an instance in which a religious organization or individual was attempting to discriminate against a homosexual, and ran up against some form of legal trouble.  Examples include a fertility clinic doctor who refused to treat a lesbian patient and a church that refused to host a gay marriage ceremony.  The so-called rights they are afraid of losing boil down to the “right” to engage in discrimination without any consequences.  Every example consists of people feeling entitled to treat us as less than human because of their flimsy morality, and by invoking parenthood and church they speak to institutions that conservatives want desperately to own.

The ad has some inherently hilarious elements, like the earnest delivery of the line “I am afraid,” and the reference at the end to forming “a rainbow coalition.” The seemingly earnest approach and bizarre special effects might seem dated or inept in the context of high production-quality media. But the heavy-handed approach speaks effectively to an existing audience with a message that resonates for those who feel threatened by queers and who do not give a damn about slick media.  A Gathering Storm was not intended for anyone who thinks the presentation of the message is lame. It was intended for people who already believe in the message and need just a nudge to be stirred into action.  Actually, the seemingly naive, hokey quality fits into that old family-values-versus-liberal-elite trope most recently voiced by Sarah Palin with her joe-sixpack and her you-betcha. 

By emphasizing fear instead of hate, they seek to cultivate the belief that straight people are the victims of homosexuals, that homosexuals are more privileged than straight people, and that homosexuals are invading their world.  Homos get put into the role of the liberal elite, versus the decent and moral god-fearing folks who made that commercial.  This mentality of fear is a fertile ground for hatred, in fact it creates the feelings of disempowerment and instability that help hatred to grow.  It is a mindset that lends itself to hatred.  The hate is real and its impact is real.  Imagined victimization at the hands of a supposedly powerful minority exceeding their social status helps motivate white supremacists, anti-Semites, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, and homophobes alike. 

Part 2: The Witty Response

What a huge response A Gathering Storm has generated!  There are too many parodies to watch in just one sitting.  Who is making ALL these parodies?  From amateurs on You Tube to Steven Colbert, to a bunch of TV actors and Lance Bass, the parodies proliferate far beyond the gay community.  Everyone wants to get in on the fun and show support for gay marriage... maybe the parodies are even winning over more straight allies for gay marriage. Straight liberals enjoy being in on the joke when it comes to queerness, in the know, with it, etc.  Add to that the fact that no one wants to be the butt of the joke.  The studio audience was in a laughing fit over Steven Colbert’s parody of A Gathering Storm and his commentary.  We have managed to make homophobia un-cool in certain privileged social circles.  While that is a little something, it is not much and it is not unproblematic.

The ad and its response illuminate one of the major reasons that affluent straight liberals can really get into supporting gay marriage: They risk NOTHING in supporting it. In fact, supporting gay marriage helps them feel good about themselves.  With every plea for marriage, gays serve to reaffirm the consumer/hetero lifestyle of marriage, ownership and offspring.  Straight people can look to us and feel content that their life choices are Good and Correct, so much so that gay people are just begging to attain this same exact life.  Now, I love my straight friends and that is why I know we can do better than this.  We can and do have friendships and alliances based on mutuality, respect and empathy.  But for a lot of straight married folks it must feel somewhat affirming to know that all us homos want is to be more like them.  We’re not the promiscuous free-loving seducers, exuberantly skipping down Fifth Avenue in our underwear... we are the committed monogamous neighbors.  Gays become much safer for previously uninterested straight people to accept as long as we aspire to nothing more than a life just like theirs.  Straight liberals love the marriage movement message because it poses no threat to how they live or what they believe.  They can be good liberals and support gay marriage and enjoy the moral high ground without having to give up anything, rethink anything, or do anything differently. The gay right is going out of their way to assure straight people the way things are is good and everything is just fine (except for gays not being allowed to get married.)  Every time there is a media story about gay marriage, it comes without the voices of progressive queers, without feminist queers, and without all of us proud queers who do not believe we need to get married in order to be fully human. 

Our voices are left out because it serves the advancement of the gay marriage movement to affirm the status quo as something universally appealing.  Our voices are left out because they threaten the social order far more than gay marriage ever could.  The affirmation of marriage may even assuage some of married people’s internal discontent, the doubts and fears they have about their own choices.  The gay marriage movement reassures straights that the patriarchal nuclear family structure is the best and only desirable way to live.  These structures exist at the expense of people in open or unconventional relationships, single people, transgender people, single parents, extended families, tribes and communities.   Marriages attain their status and legitimacy in part from our exclusion.  The continued replacement of “gay rights” with “gay marriage” reduces both our movement and our humanity.  In fact, it reduces everyone’s humanity, because it makes it seem as though you need to be in a relationship to have any sexuality at all.

And at risk of taking ALL the fun out of watching the parodies: What exactly is so funny about people placing an ad advocating against the legal rights of a minority, against rights that do not even exist except in five out of fifty states?  Would this be funny if it were about any other minority?  Of course, we’re special, and I’m not being sarcastic, our identity and culture have lots to do with sex and sex is a source of fun and obsession for pretty much every living thing on earth.  And of course humor itself is a legitimate and often effective form of resistance, one of my personal favorites.  But I do not think that is all of what is happening here.  Homophobia is not being addressed in a way that would change any homophobe’s mind, it is being addressed in a way that mostly just affirms the self righteous self-image of gay marriage advocates.

Part 3: Being Proud is Not the Same as Being Self-Righteous

The best part of these parodies for gay marriage advocates, what ever their sexual orientation, is that they get to feel really good about themselves while laughing at homophobes. Consequently there is a very real self-righteous sense of superiority being affirmed in these parodies.  The parodies are funny, but not that funny.  The mirth is in sharing a laugh at the expense of homophobes who are voicing something seemingly ridiculous.  The mirth shares the same variety of ugly self righteousness that came up in public conversations after the passage of Proposition 8 that blamed black people, absolved straight white people, and erased black queers all together.  Those who are laughing at the parodies get to feel like they are better than the ignorant fools who made that commercial.

For queers, there is definitely some appeal to the idea of feeling superior to homophobes. Of course we want to feel good, better than the people who are constantly sending us the message we are crazy, diseased, perverted villains.  Part of our cultural legacy is a fierce desire to say we are not villains, not inferior, not to be looked down upon.  For straights, I imagine they must enjoy thinking of themselves as morally better and more cosmopolitan and progressive than those ignorant, prejudiced, hatemongering homophobes.  There is also power in the act of dis-identifying with homophobes, and sometimes we all like to affirm our identity by point out what we are not.  Of course the desire to be better-than is very human and makes a lot of sense!  Liberals of every sexual orientation want to be good people, want to be on the right side of things.  But what does this orgy of superiority really accomplish? Straight liberals get to go back to their state-sanctioned relationships with the knowledge that they are better than those ignorant homophobes, with no changes to their thinking, values or behaviors.  Queers get to be funny and charming and get acknowledged by straights. 

What is missing here are the actual challenges that queers face on a daily basis that have to do with accessing adequate safety and humanity, not with accessing privilege and conformity.  So we enjoy a bunch of parodies, feel confident that we are on the right side of things, and go back to what ever we were doing before. Conveniently, we all feel better without actually doing anything differently. 

Part 4: Alliances

With friends and foes like these, I am not sure where that leaves queer rights, let alone queer liberation.  Consider Sean Penn, speaking up at the academy awards on behalf of gay marriage. 

For those who saw the signs of hatred as our cars drove in tonight, I think that it is a good time for those who voted for the ban against gay marriage to sit and reflect and anticipate their great shame and the shame in their grandchildren's eyes if they continue that way of support. We've got to have equal rights for everyone.

On one hand, he made an excellent move by casting shame on homophobes.  Shame has long been used against queers, so it was thoughtful of him to invert that usual theme and use their very own weapon against them.  On the other hand, “equal rights for everyone?”  Not much to aspire to here.  “Equal rights” is an empty concept in an unjust society.  “Equal rights” are not going to end homophobia, nor are they going to teach kids to stop harassing other kids who are different.  So-called equality in a racist, classist, sexist society is not going to stop guys with baseball bats from beating Jose Sucuzhanay to death for walking arm-in-arm with his brother. 

The very next day after Sean Penn’s speech at the Oscars, the following quote appeared in the NY Times:

If we give the money to the widows, they will spend it unwisely because they are uneducated and they don't know about budgeting. But if we find her a husband, there will be a person in charge of her and her children for the rest of their lives.

MAZIN al-SHIHAN, director of a city agency in Baghdad, on his plan to pay men to marry Iraqi war widows.

Make no mistake about it, THIS is the very same institution we aspire to join.  We are kidding ourselves if we think a few homos getting married can alter or romanticize the fact of what marriage is: a legal institution that exists for the purpose of perpetuating male ownership and authority over women and children. 

And speaking of children, where exactly were all these advocates of gay marriage when Sakia Gunn and Lawrence King were killed? How about when Jaheem Harrera or Carl Joseph Walker-Hoover committed suicide? The comedic affect of all these parodies is pretty unimpressive when we consider how deeply homophobic our culture is, right now, today.  Queer children get killed or commit suicide while we take cheap shots at poorly produced advertisements. 

We have made it easier for straight people to like us, because instead of challenging the system that rejected us, we are asking to be let back in and promising to leave it relatively unchanged.  Instead of speaking up on behalf of our people who are harassed, bullied and killed, we are asking to be part of the family again.  Instead of asking for justice, we are asking for equality. Some of us have been seduced by the temptations of straight liberal approval and feeling superior to homophobes.  It all works out to support the status quo, and the hollow, oppressive nuclear family continues to dominate as the only legitimate social grouping by being propped up on the backs of all those who are excluded from it.  Gay marriage legislation addresses homophobia in an extremely superficial, marginal way.  So after everyone has a good laugh at the Gathering Storm parodies, maybe we can get on to the actual work of rethinking the way status quo gender and sexuality function in service of patriarchy, and start doing a better job looking out for those who are getting left out, crushed and even killed in the process.