Hint: It's the Gay Part

Once again, the New York Times Magazine provides fertile blog fodder. This week’s controversial cover:




Oh my God, it's . . . lesbians! In a deeply committed relationship! What are they doing? NNNOOOOOOOO . . . . . . .

This is certainly not the first time the Magazine has covered the issue of gay marriage, and frankly, my first thought upon seeing this cover was that it must have been a slow news week. This is a photo from the round of Massachusetts weddings that took place early last year and caused religious conservatives around the country to tremble in fear inside the tiny, fragile shells of ignorance in which they live. Since then, we’ve had numerous debates, referendums, rulings, etc., as well as flocks of blind, bleating-sheep voters turning out in record numbers to protect the perfection that is the straight American family (gack) from the evils of gay marriage. Of course this issue is a key battle in the culture wars, but we haven’t had any pressing new developments lately, have we?

As it turns out, the Magazine article is concerned not with covering recent events in this issue but with probing into the thoughts and motivations of these “you-WILL-live-according-to-MY-beliefs” extremists. Nothing in this article was new to me, but then again, I’ve been morbidly fascinated with the religious right for years and have been reading about them extensively and following their activities closely. I did like the way the article succinctly explained a phenomenon that has been obvious to me all along but may not have occurred to some others, an idea that’s summed up nicely by the article’s title and subtitle:

“What’s Their Real Problem With Gay Marriage? (Hint: It’s Not the Marriage Part)”

The religious righters (RRs) claim they are trying to “save” marriage, an institution they feel is a sacred gift from God to one man and one woman for the purpose of procreation. How concerned are they really, however, about marriage itself? As I’ve pointed out repeatedly, they are not doing anything (and, as far as I know, have never done anything) to try to prevent marriage between atheists, agnostics, heathens, pagans, wiccans, satanists, or any other non-Judeo-Christian pairs of people, as long as the people are the correct gender. If marriage is a gift from God, why should nonbelievers be allowed to partake? Similarly, no one, before they are allowed to marry, is made to sign a form stating they will do their best to try to have or adopt children—intentionally childless heterosexual marriages, while perhaps not yet garnering full societal approval, are certainly legal. [None of this is really covered in the article, by the way—these are my own musings.]

The answer to “What’s Their Real Problem With Gay Marriage?” is . . . the gay part.

The article does a nice job of showing how the whole anti-gay marriage crusade is a convenient way for the RRs* to gay-bash without appearing to gay-bash. (The RRs pretty much admit this in the article.) In the public’s eye, they’re just fighting to save their “sacred institution,” after all. (You know, the one where Britney Spears can get smashed in Vegas and marry some equally smashed idiot for about 20 minutes. God’s fine with that. Two lesbians who have been together for 18 years and have four children? Their marriage would be an abomination.)

Also, some parts of the article fascinated and/or amused me greatly. For example:

· The director of state legislative relations for Concerned Women for America is Michael Bowman; the director of the Culture and Family Institute of Concerned Women for America is Robert Knight. (Is anyone surprised that two prominent leaders of this high-profile conservative women’s group are . . . men?)

· I was introduced to the most quotable anti-gay activist ever—Brian Racer, a very active pastor in Maryland. Some of his gems:

''The Hebrew words for male and female are actually the words for the male and female genital parts. . . . The male is the piercer; the female is the pierced.” (That doesn’t sound very pleasant at all, nor does it sound very hygienic. Are alcohol swabs involved? Actually, for women, the idea of gay sex sounds a lot better than that—no “piercing.”)

‘’In West Baltimore, I saw transvestites for the first time. . . . It creeped me out. I had been taught in Bible school that there is an extended level of depravity, and this was it.’’ (Um, no. Priests molesting young children—that’s an extended level of depravity. A man dressed like Cher is not an extended level of depravity. In fact, it’s not depravity at all, unless s/he insists on lip-synching “Believe” over and over.)

"You’d be amazed how many people in the floral industry are homosexuals.” (Yes, amazed. Don’t you sometimes wonder who’s really living in the closet?)

· I learned that some homophobes are actually very loving, like Pastor Rick Bowers: ''There are those extremists who say that if a gay person were on fire you would burn in hell if you spit on them to put out the fire. . . . But we're not like that. We love the human being. It's the lifestyle we disagree with.'' (So, you would spit on a gay person? Wow—Christian love truly knows no bounds.)

· Speaking of lifestyle, in the words of the article’s author: “'Lifestyle’ is a buzzword in conservative Christian circles. It's a signal of the belief, and the policy position, that homosexuality is not an innate condition but a hedonistic way of living, one devoted to partying, drugs and wanton sex that ends, often, in illness and early death.”
(Pick your own witty response:
1. Hey—what does my college experience have to do with any of this?
2. If gays often party themselves to death, then there should be too few of them around for you to worry about.
3. I agree. I’ve never seen anyone garden so hedonistically as the older, deeply committed gay couple that lives down the street from me.)

· Why was I not surprised to learn the following about one of the most active anti-gay couples featured in the article?: “The Grays have converted their basement -- paneled, wall-to-wall-carpeted, decorated with Jim Gray's Confederate memorabilia (a portrait of Jeb Stuart, framed currency) and the twinkling lights -- into an office.” Ah yes, the old “The South Will Rise Again” crowd. This validates another thought I’ve been trumpeting all along, which is that the language homophobes use to denounce gay marriage is exactly the same as the language racists used, in days past, to denounce interracial marriage. Don’t believe me? Here is the platform used by “activist judges” (those persistent pests!) after Reconstruction to reinstate and expand miscegenation laws. Just substitute “gay” for “interracial”:

1) First, judges claimed that marriage belonged under the control of the states rather than the federal government.
2) Second, they began to define and label all interracial relationships (even longstanding, deeply committed ones) as illicit sex rather than marriage.
3) Third, they insisted that interracial marriage was contrary to God's will, and
4) Fourth, they declared, over and over again, that interracial marriage was somehow "unnatural."

See what I mean? Of course, the RRs take exception these days to the first point above, as everyone knows they are working toward a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage—funny how states’ rights go right out the RRs’ window when they want something badly enough. (If you’re having trouble following along, brush up on who usually bitches and moans endlessly about states’ rights, states’ rights, states’ rights. Then look up hypocrite in the dictionary. There will be a quiz later.)

· And finally, I can’t resist a small dig at the article’s author, who for the most part did a fine job, but unfortunately said the following: “'Polyamory’ is a word I learned from the anti-gay-marriage activists.” Really? A staff writer for the New York Times Magazine didn’t know the meaning of “polyamory” before this article? And apparently couldn’t figure it out, either? Let’s see . . . “poly,” meaning “many,” and “amor,” meaning “love” . . . ah crap, just forget it.

In sum:
· These people are stupid.
· I can’t believe this is as big an issue as it is.
· In 50 years these people are going to be ashamed of themselves, or at the very least they’ll be reticent in public and take their homophobia into the closet, where it belongs.
· God Bless America, and save me from your followers.

*In my opinion, all RRs either:
1. Genuinely hate gay folks;
2. Are so used to blindly following church doctrine that they are unable to see the hatefulness and hypocrisy of their “views”;
2. Are so freakin’ uncomfortable with the idea of gayness that they just can’t stand being in their own skin around anyone who might be gay; and/or
3. Are self-hating, self-denying gays themselves.