The Third Law: What Haters Will Do Next

Newton's Third Law of Motion says that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

There is a parallel to that, I believe, in the struggle for LGBT equality.

Now it is legal for same-sex couples to marry in 36 of the 50 US states and the District of Columbia.  People who, not long ago wouldn't be caught dead uttering the word "gay"--let alone "lesbian" or "transsexual" (most didn't know the word "transgender"--are now speaking up in support of gay family members, co-workers and neighbors.  I know, personally, two people who beleived that "the lifestyle" is against their religious beliefs and are now advocating for the rights of LGBT people.  One has even become a counselor to them--and to parents who face the same struggle she had when her daughter "came out".

According to every recent poll, the majority of Americans think that there should be no legal bars against same-sex marriage and that lesbians and gay men should be protected under civil rights laws.  Expressing hate against gays is taboo in many quarters; in others, people simply wonder whether the hater hasn't got better things to do and more important things to think about.


What this means--in keeping with Newton's Law, as it were--is that the remaining homophobes are becoming more virulent in their hatred or simply more ludicrous in their expression of it. For example, there are lawmakers--like one from Texas (who looks like she's having a fantasy or two involving Rick Santorum)--who want the "right" to refuse to do business with or employ, or other wise discriminate against, LGBT people.  Why?  They believe that anti-discrimination laws somehow infringe upon their right to religious freedom.

That argument's absurdity is equaled only by its lack of originality:  It was used as a rationale for racial segregation and slavery itself.  Oh, yeah, and discrimination against women, too, which makes it all the more ironic that it's being used by women.

The good news is that where laws like the one Donna Campbell has proposed in Texas have been put to the vote, they've failed--even in states like Kansas, which is about as conservative and Republican as they come.  That tells me that even those who don't care much about LGBT equality can see how ridiculous and just plain wrong (I doubt that even Antonin Scalia thinks it's constitutional!) it is.

What that means is that Campbell and her ilk will just become even more illogical and delusional until the campaign funds dry up.  Then they'll give up or get voted out of office.  

Even when that happens, though, we'll have another reaction to contend with.  You see, the non-officeholders who've been fighting against same-sex marriage and LGBT equality--I'm talking now about groups like Focus on the Family  and American Family Association (It's always about protecting "family", right?)--are turning their hatred, I mean attention, toward transgender people.  And they will fight us with the same virulence and belligerence they used against lesbians and gays.  

The bad news is that as our lives and struggles become more familiar to more people, those groups will become more truculent and, possibly, violent.  The good news is that it will last only for so long.  But we have to be prepared in the meantime--and to keep our allies close to us.

The Third Law In The Third World

In previous posts, I've said that something like a corollary of Newton's Third Law of Motion seems to operate in the realm of transgender acceptance and equality.

Briefly, Newton's Third Law says that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.  We see a parallel to it whenever some jurisdiction passes a law to protect us from discrimination or every time there's some favorable image of one of us in the media:  The bigots double down their ignorance, hatred  and violence against us.  

Backwater preachers and Neanderthal politicians (and others) come up with ever-more ridiculous ways of rationalizing their bigotry.  And, unfortunately, the level of violence against us is ramped up:  The beatings, stabbings and shootings become more frequent and gruesome. 

It also seems that as acceptance of us grows in secular Western societies--as seems to have happened in the wake of Bruce Jenner becoming Caitlyn--conservative societies become even more repressive and brutal.  Such is the case in Egypt where, according to at least one report, trans people (especially women) have been targeted.  During the past year, 150 trans women have been arrested in Cairo alone.

Now, while Egypt is a predominantly Muslim country, it's not Saudi Arabia or Pakistan. Still, the old ideas about gender and sexuality prevail:  It's very difficult to change one's name, let alone gender, on official documentation, and many Egyptians continue to see trans women as gay men who have rejected their masculinity.

One result of their difficulty in getting IDs that reflect their true identity is that trans people have a hard time getting jobs.  To be fair, it's difficult for anyone to get a job in Egypt right now, but being trans only exacerbates that problem.  So--you guessed it--many trans people turn to sex work in order to survive.  That further stigmatizes them, in both legal and social senses, as Egypt's laws (like the laws in most places) criminalize the sex worker rather than his or her client and sex workers are seen as people "nobody will miss" if they're killed or disappeared.

So, as I've said earlier, it's great that more people are accepting us as we are.  But that also means we must be careful, as those who don't accept us will become more adamant in their hatred.

Anti-Gay Day: Keeping It All In The Family

As I've said in a previous post, there's a corollary to Newton's Third Law in the struggle for LGBT equality.

That law says that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.  When it comes to LGBT equality--or any other social or political issue--we usually call that reaction "backlash".

That is why, after same-sex marriage has become legal in 36 of the 50 US States (and the District of Columbia), some of the holdouts are passing laws that make it legal to discriminate against us and calling it "religious freedom".

Now we've seen another kind of backlash in a McGuffey (Pennsylvania) High School:  an "anti-gay day", which some students held on Thursday.

It would be one thing if the haters wore flannel shirts--as LGBT people and allies do on "gay days"--and left it at that.  But no...They're hanging signs on gay students' lockers, which the teachers have been taking down.  Worse, the bigoted bullies are harassing gay students, sometimes physically, and have drawn up and circulated a "lynch list", which includes the names of gay students.

This awful spectacle also illustrates something else I've said:  Kids, especially teenagers, may not listen to the adults (actual or alleged) in their lives.  But they never, ever fail to imitate them.

And who are the role models for the young thugs in McGuffey?  Why, none other than such bastions of rectitude as Focus on the Family and the Illinois Family Institute, which organized antigay events like Day of Dialogue and walkouts to protest the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network's "homosexuality-affirming dogma".

Such organizations also prove something else I've said:  If an organization has "Family" in its name, there's a good chance it's promoting prejudice and worse against LGBT people.  It seems that you can get away with anything as long as you use that word--or mention your religious beliefs.  Wanna bet those kids in Pennsylvania figured that out?

Who's Against Letting Trans People Serve In The Armed Forces?

A few days ago, I compared the backlash that often follows progress to Newton's Third Law of Motion.

It seems the Armed Forces are manifesting that law again.  After Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter said he's open to the idea of trans people serving in the military and Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James expressed her support of lifting the transgender ban, unnamed officials have expressed "concern" about allowing trans people to serve.

And what might those concerns be?  Apparently, they include some of the "usual suspects", if you will:

"Much of the opposition centers on questions of where transgender troops would be housed, what berthing they would have on ships, which bathrooms they would use and whether their presence would affect the ability of small units to work well together."

Housing?  Morale?  Haven't we heard those questions before--about women, blacks and gays?  And somehow those questions were worked out, I think.

And then there's that old familiar bugaboo--bathrooms.  Ah, yes, bathrooms. They're so powerful that they're keeping the mightiest, most technologically advanced fighting force in the history of the world from doing what Australia, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Israel, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Thailand and the United Kingdom have done.  Yes, all of those countries allow trans people to serve openly in their Armed Forces.

Perhaps Israel's membership in this club is most ironic of all.  After all, some of the most pro-Israel lawmakers are also some of our most homophobic and transphobic. 

Perhaps they can explain how it's OK for this country to help pay the salaries of  transgenders in the Tzahal while keeping trans people out of our own armed forces.

When You Can't March, You Can Still Follow In Their Footsteps

I'd wanted to go to the Pride March today.  But I got sick:  Something I ate last night didn't agree with me, or with something else I ate.  My condition would have been utterly incompatible with marching.


I feel a little sad about that, mainly because I got a bit of a rush from marching in last year's procession.  Then again, that was a special march, for the LGBT community as well as me personally.  Last year, we marched on the fortieth anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion.  And I was "counting down":  Only nine days stood between me and my surgery.


Maybe it was a good thing, in a way, that I couldn't go this year.  Would  following, or trying to follow,  the footprints of a memory have been a good idea?  Perhaps that works collectively, but for me personally, it usually doesn't work very well.  


Here's a definition of frustration:  I am a person who holds on to, and treasures, memories.  But doing something "for old time's sake" usually has disastrous consequences for me.  Or, at least, it has unintended consequences.


This year is the 40th anniversary of the first march.  I guess that's significant, but it doesn't have quite the same resonance as the anniversary of the rebellion.  Maybe it's because last year's march passed in front of the Stonewall.  Of course, nearly all of us stopped, or at least slowed down, there.  Many marchers, of course, had firsthand memories of the event.  All I had was what I've read about it, and my imagination.  All I could think about was the story, perhaps apocryphal, of Sylvia Rivera tossing out her red patent stiletto-heeled shoe at the cops as they were about to storm the tavern.


With that toss, or whatever else she did that night, she helped to launch the gay rights movement as we know it.  And she became one of its first victims.  Perhaps, in a way, that's not surprising, as rebellions and revolutions have a way of cannibalizing themselves.  


Even though she and other transgendered people played important roles in the Rebellion and the early days of the LGBT rights movements, they were left behind or tossed under the bus, depending on who's narrating the history.  It didn't take long for LGBT organizations--indeed, the entire community--to be dominated by white professional gay men.  Marginalized as they were, they still had much more wealth and influence than lesbians, let alone transgendered people.  


I met Sylvia Rivera once, briefly, not long before her death.  Plenty of people were put off by her, and I could see why.  For one thing, she was very loud and often combative, if not belligerent.  Plus, she lived a hard life and didn't age well:  No one was going to do a fashion shoot with her.


But there was something else, which I have not been able to articulate until now:  She not only used the seductive rhetoric which succesful movements generate in their early days (Think of "Power to the People!"); she helped to make the rhetoric--and, in turn, was shaped by it.  Even after the battles are won or lost, or at least changed, it's hard to give up those slogans and chants of one's youth, even if they are no longer the lingua franca of the people for and by whom revolutions are fought.  


There's a prof in my department who, in that sense, reminds me of her.  He still refers to female students and colleagues as "sistas" and their male counterparts as "brothas."  When he introduced me, at a poetry reading, as "Sista Justine," I was, in a way, flattered.  But at the same time I felt sorry for him (even if he has tenure!).  The battle has not been won; rather, it has moved on and re-formed.  Yet he still talks about people--and movements--as if Huey Newton and Stokey Carmichael were running the show.


Likewise, in some way, Sylvia never moved on from those heady early days.  In one sense, I can understand why:  It could be argued, and I would agree, that the direction the movement took benefited a relatively small part of the community.  Sylvia was not one of those who benefited, just as I would not have been.  


I can't help but to wonder what her role--and, more important, what kind of person she would be now.  Although she was born only seven years earlier than I was, there is more than a generation's remove between us.  When she was igniting the Rebellion, I was unaware of it:  I would not learn of it until many years later.  She was fighting battles that I and others are just beginning to learn how to fight, much less win.  


And, I sometimes feel that she's shadowing me, or that I'm following her shadow:  I met her at the end of her life, and attended her funeral just as I was starting toward the life I lead now.  And, she died at the same age at which I had my surgery.


While I wish I could have marched today, I am still following in her footsteps, and those of other Stonewall veterans.  That, I suppose, is the best homage I can pay to them.