Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's monumental speech on gay rights yesterday has gotten a lot of reaction. However, none is as strange, at least to me, than that of Jim Downs, Assistant Professor of History and American Studies, Connecticut College.
He seems to think that Clinton's speech did a disservice to the American gay community. His piece in The Huffington Post, Hillary Clinton Is Not Helping the Gay Civil Rights Movement, leaves little to the imagination.
Basically, Downs is saying that Clinton's speech is emboldening the religious right and conservatives in America, such as Rick Perry in a recent anti-gay ad, to target gays as the means to motivate the Republican base. The gist of his piece can be seen here:
There is a certain degree of abject cowardice in Downs' piece which I find incredibly distasteful.
Regardless of Clinton's speech, the gay community will be a target to motivate Republican voters. As long as we have the temerity to live openly and honestly without fear - you know, like taxpaying citizens - there will always be some demagogue out there exploiting fears about us to the ill-formed, ignorant, and willfully stupid.
That's how it's always been as long as I can remember it.
But we shouldn't allow these things to keep us from speaking out against injustice. Gays should never cower from bullies. And we should never put ourselves in some type of psychological stasis in hopes that we are ignored.
You have to put these things in perspective. In the case of Rick Perry's recent attacks on our community, we shouldn't be all that surprised. Perry was once the leading candidate in the Republican primary. Now he is the leading drip, exposed as a bad politician and an even worse campaigner. His sad attack on us is nothing more than a drowning man clinging to a slowly sinking life raft.
Gays should never fear the desperation of those who choose to be our enemies. But we should fight them head on. And Downs' column reveals a sad fact, not only about the gay community, but many of those we anoint as our leaders. Unlike our brothers and sisters in foreign countries, we have the means to fight back, but we rarely do.
And by fighting back, I don't mean solely street protests or acts of useless spontaneity fueled by rage. I mean a steady and consistent stream of calling out religious right lies.
We either sidestep confronting the religious right as if we want avoid them. Or worse yet, we fight the battle on their grounds. We yield too much to them. We allow the Family Research Council and the National Organization for Marriage to claim ownership of words like "morality" and "family" without raising the proper level of holy hell regarding the lies, distortions, and underhanded tactics they employ to acquire this license.
We let organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center do the hard work in calling out these groups and then will not support them loud enough with our voices, anger, and our media. Then we either scratch our heads or cry foul when these groups gain approval in the mainstream media.
Our problem is not that we are exploited to fuel a base of ignorance. Our problem is that we allow it to happen without a proper response, even though we know it's going to happen time and time again.
So Downs is way off base in his piece and whether he realizes it or not, he is causing more harm than Clinton's speech.
She told us that we are human beings. He is telling us that we should be cowards.
He seems to think that Clinton's speech did a disservice to the American gay community. His piece in The Huffington Post, Hillary Clinton Is Not Helping the Gay Civil Rights Movement, leaves little to the imagination.
Basically, Downs is saying that Clinton's speech is emboldening the religious right and conservatives in America, such as Rick Perry in a recent anti-gay ad, to target gays as the means to motivate the Republican base. The gist of his piece can be seen here:
Clinton's clumsy language enables Perry to get even clumsier. It also allows him to open the door and let the religious right and the Tea Party loose on gay people. Clinton is worried about violence against gays abroad, but how does Perry's language provoke the religious right to launch a crusade against "gay" Americans at home? Perry exclaims, "Investing tax dollars to promote a lifestyle many Americas of faith find so deeply objectionable is wrong." In the stroke of a sentence, Perry calls on Tea Party advocates with his references to "tax dollars" and he summons the religious right with his reference to "faith." All of which ends up with both groups tying gay people to the whipping posts in a symbolic gesture to broaden the Republican base. Put another, gay people once again reenter the election season as a political football in order to rally the right against the left.
There is a certain degree of abject cowardice in Downs' piece which I find incredibly distasteful.
Regardless of Clinton's speech, the gay community will be a target to motivate Republican voters. As long as we have the temerity to live openly and honestly without fear - you know, like taxpaying citizens - there will always be some demagogue out there exploiting fears about us to the ill-formed, ignorant, and willfully stupid.
That's how it's always been as long as I can remember it.
But we shouldn't allow these things to keep us from speaking out against injustice. Gays should never cower from bullies. And we should never put ourselves in some type of psychological stasis in hopes that we are ignored.
You have to put these things in perspective. In the case of Rick Perry's recent attacks on our community, we shouldn't be all that surprised. Perry was once the leading candidate in the Republican primary. Now he is the leading drip, exposed as a bad politician and an even worse campaigner. His sad attack on us is nothing more than a drowning man clinging to a slowly sinking life raft.
Gays should never fear the desperation of those who choose to be our enemies. But we should fight them head on. And Downs' column reveals a sad fact, not only about the gay community, but many of those we anoint as our leaders. Unlike our brothers and sisters in foreign countries, we have the means to fight back, but we rarely do.
And by fighting back, I don't mean solely street protests or acts of useless spontaneity fueled by rage. I mean a steady and consistent stream of calling out religious right lies.
We either sidestep confronting the religious right as if we want avoid them. Or worse yet, we fight the battle on their grounds. We yield too much to them. We allow the Family Research Council and the National Organization for Marriage to claim ownership of words like "morality" and "family" without raising the proper level of holy hell regarding the lies, distortions, and underhanded tactics they employ to acquire this license.
We let organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center do the hard work in calling out these groups and then will not support them loud enough with our voices, anger, and our media. Then we either scratch our heads or cry foul when these groups gain approval in the mainstream media.
Our problem is not that we are exploited to fuel a base of ignorance. Our problem is that we allow it to happen without a proper response, even though we know it's going to happen time and time again.
So Downs is way off base in his piece and whether he realizes it or not, he is causing more harm than Clinton's speech.
She told us that we are human beings. He is telling us that we should be cowards.
5 comments:
I must disagree with Mr. Downs. I think the visions of right wing heads exploding all over the place give the general public a good look at their - shall we say - meanness. As you say, there is a core of hardliners who will hate us no matter what. When a popular figure like HRC has said what she said, reasonable people will pause to think about what is right (as in correct).
It’s been coming on for a while but I’ve finally reached the point where I’m fed up with the religious right (and you may read that as the Christian right) and no longer feel the need to even pretend to be polite. I realize that their lord and savior was a martyr, but is that really the trait that they should be emulating?
It seems like every time a Christian is told “no, you can’t impose your religious views on other people” they claim that they are the ones being persecuted. A few years ago it was pharmacists who thought it was their God given right not to fill prescriptions if it violated their “closely held religious beliefs;” as if that trumped them performing all the duties of their job. Why is this acceptable? Would it be okay for an Orthodox Jew, an observant Muslim, or a practicing Mormon to get a job as a waiter and then tell their employer that they won’t serve shrimp, pork, or liquor? Is that any more ludicrous? I realize that they’re not equivalent situations. A pharmacist trains for years and absolutely must know that filling prescriptions for contraceptives will be part of their job, a waiter should learn what’s on the menu before taking the job.
Their latest oh-woe-is-me-I’m-so-persecuted tirade is about the Christian Macy’s employee who was fired for refusing to allow a transsexual customer to use the women’s dressing room in violation of Macy’s written policy. The now ex-employee was aware of the policy but felt it was her right to bar the customer’s entry into the dressing room because of her religious beliefs (if someone could quote chapter and verse where it says “thou shall not let transvestites into women’s dressing rooms I’d be grateful). Now the crazy Christian community (I’m talking about the community of Christian crazies and NOT saying that all Christians are crazy) is rallying around her because she has been persecuted. One’s right to believe as one wishes and practice one's religion does not extend to imposing those beliefs on other people. An observant Jew can believe that eating shellfish is an abomination; but that does not give him the right to stop other people from entering Red Lobster.
As far as confronting the religious right goes… You’re damn right I’m going to confront them. Oliver Wendell Holmes said "the right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins." And like Holme’s fist their right to the free practice of their religion ends at my right to not practice their religion.
After living in Europe as a young man and then returning to the United States to find such vile, viscious, hateful religious bigots running the country and having to fend off their attacks for the last 25 years, I am convinced that our way to freedom is through emigration to countries where we are already considered equal citizens. America has become a backwater of ignorance, want, and has been bought wholesale by the 1%. Support organizations that will fight for you in the courts because HRC has done absolutely nothing to change our situation. AFER/ACLU/NCLR/SPLC and other law organizations are the way to go. Your legislature doesn't give a shit about you is the reality check in 30 states where there are bans against your getting married, adopting, having a family or living in safety. This is the result of 35 years of gay bashing by the religious reich including the fanatics in the Catholic and Mormon hierarchies. America is a land of the redneck idiot, by the redneck idiot, and for the redneck idiot because he allows the 1% to control him with religious propaganda and false promises of prosperity while picking his paycheck clean.
No, I do not agree with the article, however, apologists and kapos exist among us as they always will because they either are in a good situation as concerns capitalism or they have swallowed the kool aid or both.
Alvin, you are so right, we need to speak out every time this crap happens, but our mouthpieces have been co-opted and corrupted in DC through $2500 a plate dinners and cocktail parties, glamour and glitz, with no real agenda to push our LEGAL rights forward.
It has been 36 years since the first piece of legislation was introduced in Congress to end employment discrimination against the LGBT community and has NEVER PASSED. That tells you how strongly our supposed advocates WITHIN GOVERNMENT really care about us.
We don't have to "make" or "awake" bigots, thy are there already. And it is silly to worry about "answering" the Biblical quotes. Those same "quotes" were used to support slavery for how many years? You say that the quotes are wrong, and no true Christian can use the Bible to support slavery or homophobia.
I've always been somewhat amused and horrified when someone dons the mantle of 'being supportive of gays and/or gay rights' as they do everything in their power to do just the opposite. It's obvious Mr. Downs is not gay. If he was, he would understand and certainly appreciate the import of Sec. of State Clinton's speech to the U.N. I've no doubt that Mr. Down takes for granted the rights provided for him by the U.S. Constitution. If he was gay, or if he was someone that was genuinely concerned about causes that relate to or effect the LGBT community, he would understand that those rights he takes for granted are not afforded, in their entirety, to LGBT citizens of the United States.
It's not enough that we are subjected to the bigoted, hateful and hate-filled rhetoric of the self-professed gay-haters. It shouldn't come as a surprise that we also have to be wary of those who profess to have our best interests at heart. As the saying goes, "With friends like these, who needs enemies."
And finally, if Mr. Down has such a clearly-bigoted opinion of the LGBT community, he, and we, would be better served if he stuck to writing hate speech for those religious right organizations who live on the stuff.
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