The Real Reasons Why There Will Be Marriage Equality Throughout The US

In the latest Rolling Stone, Nico Lang gives us "Five Reasons Why Gay Marriage Is Sweeping The Nation": 

1. The US Supreme Court's United States v. Windsor decision was a watershed moment for marriage equality. 

2. Marriage equality isn't an issue for the coasts anymore. It's sweeping the heartland. 

3. States are realizing that being gay-friendly is good for business. 

4. Anti-gay policies in Russia and Uganda are reminding Americans of the costs of discrimination. 

5. LGBT couples are making a difference by standing up and being counted. 

While all of Mr. Lang's reasons are valid, and he explains them well, I think he misses two phenomena that make them all possible. The first has been taking place for about the past three decades or so. As more people "come out", still more people realize that they have family members, friends and co-workers who are not heterosexual or cisgender. Now, of course, some people reject or even commit physical violence upon important people in their lives who "come out". But we are seeing increasing numbers of people who realize that all of those LGBT people, after "coming out", will remain be the same people they loved or raised, or worked or hung out with. Very often, those people become supporters of marriage equality. I know: I have seen such transformations in my own life. 

I don't know when the second phenomenon started, but I can say, with near-certainty, that it's more recent in origin than the first. More and more same-sex couples are raising children in places cities like Salt Lake City, Detroit and Memphis, and in states like Missisippi (which has the highest percentage of same-sex couples raising children). In such socially conservative places, people tend to delay "coming out"; many spend decades married to members of the opposite sex with whom they have children. In such places, people often couch their conservative religious and political beliefs in concern about "families" or the "welfare of children". To be fair, more than a few actually mean what they say. They may not appprove of same-sex parenting, or of same-sex love relationships in general, but they realize that a home with two moms or two dads who actually want (and, often, have the means) to raise a kid is better--and much less expensive for taxpayers--than foster care or any number of other alternatives.

 As I have said in earlier posts, I would rather see the government's role in marriage end altogether, save for setting an age of consent. And, even though I am not against religion per se, I do not think that governments should vest churches or other religious institutions with the power to decide who's married and who isn't. But I don't expect what I've just described to come to pass, so I hope--and believe--that marriage equality will come to most, if not all, of the United States even sooner than I or many other people anticipated. Given the system we have, there is no saner alternative.

Worse Than Transphobes

Dealing with ignorant, hateful, violent transphobes is bad enough.  But there are people among us who are even worse, I think.

When I say "among us," I mean our own community:  trans people and, by extension, LGBT people.  I don't mean to sound paranoid or sanctimonious, but we really can afford thoughtless behavior less than heterosexual and cisgender people can.

That point became all the more apparent when I read about the Hercules (CA) High School student who recanted his story about being attacked in a school bathroom.  

The student, whose name has not been released, is chromosomally female but identifies as male.  He claims that three other teenagers cornered him in the bathroom, where they beat and taunted him.

One reason why stories like his are so damaging to us is that people believe them, and feel sympathy for the victim (and, by extension, the rest of the community) upon hearing them.  Such stories seem convincing because they--like the Duke lacrosse case of 2006-- fit into the patterns of similar narratives. There have been similar attacks at Hercules and other schools and Hercules has had a reputation for violence that sparked a no-confidence vote against the principal.

Upon finding out that stories like the ones from Duke and Hercules High are fabrications, people feel even more rage than they do in other cases because their sympathies have been played upon.  Nothing can be more damaging to any group of people who are disproportionately victimized than for potential allies to feel that they have been duped.

If the young man who just recanted his story did indeed make it up, I hope that he will mature enough to understand how much damage he has done to the rest of us.

Bathroom Flow Chart

Here's something to help us in the Great Bathroom Debate:

From Transgender Student Equality Resources

Where They Can't Fire You For Being Who You Are

From Indiana Equality Action

The Mayor Boycotts, But Do We Need To Be Included?

Today New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio marched in the St. Patrick’s Day Parade.

How can that be?, you ask.  St. Paddy’s Day is two weeks away and, didn’t he say he wasn’t going to march?  

He did indeed say he wouldn’t participate in the one that will proceed down Fifth Avenue in Manhattan on the 17^th.  Also, the City Council won’t send its traditional contagion, although the Council speaker said individual members are free to participate as individual citizens, not as representatives of the Council.

But today there was an “inclusive” St. Patrick’s Day Parade that proceeds through such Queens neighborhoods as  Sunnyside and Woodside (traditional Irish enclaves) and neighboring Jackson Heights, which is said to contain the largest LGBT community outside of Chelsea.

There was also another parade in Staten Island today.  But the Mayor skipped that one because, unlike the one in Queens, it excludes openly LGBT marchers and groups.

While I applaud the Mayor’s and Council’s actions, I still have to wonder why, exactly, LGBT groups are so concerned with being part of a parade that, frankly, doesn’t show Irish culture and heritage, or this city, at its best.  I have gone to the parade several times, the last time eleven years ago.  I had just begun to take hormones then, so their effects weren’t visible to anyone who hadn’t seen me before I started to take them. In other words, I viewed the parade as someone who was, to all appearances (as if anyone noticed) a guy in his 40’s or thereabouts.  

To tell you the truth, the only person with whom I interacted in that sea of shelaleighs was a friend who knew about my transition.  I didn’t make any effort to start or maintain a conversation with anyone else; I don’t particularly enjoy parades or vast seas of humanity, so I wasn’t in a particularly festive mood.  

Someone might say I don’t appreciate the parade because I’m not Irish.  Perhaps that’s true.  But to me, the mass gathering seemed to be little more than an occasion for a lot of drinking and more than a little loutishness.  About the only time I responded to the parade itself was when the Fire Department’s contagion passed by:  It was only a year and half after 11 September 2001, so I shared reverence almost everyone else in the crowd expressed for the firefighters, who lost so many of their colleagues that day.

I think that LGBT groups—and we, as individuals—can direct our energies to much more important issues than whether a few groups with greatly exaggerated ideas (that, at times, border on unintentional parody) about their heritage will allow us to march in their parade.   

On My Way To Coming Out

The following is a journal entry I wrote during a flight I took to see my parents.  That weekend, I would "come out" to them.

                                                                   Prodigal

Just boarded Flight 2640, from Newark to Daytona Beach.  I’ve never been in one of these new planes before.  I’m in a solo seat: window to the left, aisle to the right.  Across the aisle, two seats next to a window.  (Funny, they call these windows.  They’re more like holes.)  A woman in one seat, probably a bit older than me, with the sturdy, earthy look of a peasant.  But also very intelligent eyes, and in our brief exchange—“I think we got the last seats.”  “Yes, it does appear that way”—revealed the clarity and precision of her speech.  I compliment her on her nails; “It’s something stupid, like olive gloss,” she says.  Another comment or two about the plane: anything to distract myself.

Nothing outside the window could do that.  Although this is my first flight in a long time, it’s all familiar: those open flat beds on wheels with a steering wheel and a dashboard but no windshield pulling trains of baggage cars with saggy curtains on the sides that make them look like toys left out in the rain; the beige and black aluminum panels that surround and shade windows kids love because on this side, planes come from and go to places they’d never heard of: planes full of people, some of whom look like no one they’ve ever seen.

Maybe I’m one of them; after all, hadn’t Melanie (Mark’s four-year-old daughter) pointed to me and declared, “He’s a woman!”?  I know I confused a lot of people today—including myself.  Tried to “butch up” so my parents will recognize me—or at least not start to ask a lot of questions—the moment they meet me at the airport.  But I also had to be femme enough to resemble at least somewhat, the person whose photo adorns the state ID card issued to Justine.

Taxiing the runway.  Even though I’ve flown a number of times before, I’ve never been so nervous.  The last time I flew, in August 2001, I was coming back from a bicycling trip in the French and Italian Alps.  It was only two years ago, but it was five or six weeks before 9/11.  But that’s not the only reason why that trip, and all the others I took before it, seem so long ago.  Now they seem like events that happened to someone else, in another lifetime.

That last trip, and all the others, I took as Nick.  And my parents think they’re going to meet him in Terminal #3 of DAB.  The plane paused.  Now it’s accelerating, darting past a control tower, and finally beginning its liftoff.  Less than a minute, and already we’re hundreds of feet off the ground, teetering in the high wind.  No way back now.  No previous liftoff ever gave me such butterflies in my stomach.  Yes, this one is rougher than others I remember.  But I still see all the same tract houses, parking lots and tank plantations one sees on any takeoff from Newark.  Yet they seem so alien—new without novelty or the freshness of a discovery—and vertiginous, at least to my eyes.

Now we’re bumping through he clouds, and the buildings and the New Jersey swamp are fading away.  I’ve never felt so cold in my life.  Cold, yet the beads of sweat cling to my forehead.  The bumps stretch into blips, and the clouds grow thick yet wispy in the intense sunlight.  I’m still cold and nauseous; my breaths shorten.  I close my eyes.  The sweat dries but I feel tears welling.  I take another swallow to unclog my ears.

One of my first discoveries in my transition was that I could cry in public.  When you’re a woman, some people seem to expect it from you.  But nobody looks at you askance.  Today, on the other hand, it seems that everyone has been doing just that, ever since I, butched up, walked out of my door.  What’ll I do now?

I cry.  I close my eyes.  Tears stop momentarily.  The drone of the plane mutters through my head.  Wake again: tears.  The woman in the opposite seat catches my eye for a moment and returns to her book.  The attendant—a pretty, round-faced ash-blonde with a slight drawl—rolls a cart up aisle to my seat.  “Cranberry juice, please.”  She starts to pour; the plane thumps again.  She apologizes.  “I don’t know how you do that,” I say, more as a distraction for me than a kudos for her.

Distractions are all I want now.  Like anything outside the window.  Like the bridge threading through eyelets of land wound by a series of streams or inlets—maybe it’s swampland, like the ground near Newark.  There are people who drive or walk or pedal across that bridge every day; this is probably the only time I will ever see it.  Nothing exceptional; it’s like a lot of other highway bridges: an asphalt platform propped on steel girders.  It’s probably no more unusual to the people who cross it than it is to me, and if there’s ever a last time for them to cross it, they probably won’t know it and they probably won’t realize that the bridge has become a part of their past.

As that land is.  And this plane, and the people on it, will soon be.  We’re over the ocean now, or some very large bay.  It’s odd, how much, from here, it looks the way the sky looks from the ground: white wisps and streaks in a field of blue.  Slender dartlike objects-- one red and white, the other silver—leave a thin white trail that dissipates in the currents.  I feel the plane beginning its descent; any moment I expect the captain to announce it and our approach to Daytona Beach International Airport.  Knowing my parents, they’re already there; if not, they’re on their way.

The final approach.  That phrase always seemed strange to me.  As if you’ll never go that way again.  As if neither he nor the attendant would go there again.  They’ll probably do this again tomorrow, or some time before the week is over.  They may’ve gone this way yesterday and the day before.  But it’s always the final approach.  Maybe this will really be the last one.

What a way to think when I’m about to see my parents!  Then again, it may very well be the last time I see them.  The rows of houses, the streets and the industrial-looking buildings are coming into view.  A sand-colored ribbon slices through a patch of swampland.  Clouds thin and swirl into mist around the wings just beyond my window.  Clumps of trees have the petrified green hues of the ones in dioramas.  We descend closer to the ground; now it’s possible to tell old from young, mature from dying, and sick trees.  A road rounds the field where we’re about to touch down; a red SUV and a white coupe make the turn.  The sun, low in the horizon, glares through my window.  The Daytona Speedway looms just ahead: rows of bleachers perched on seats I can’t see from here, not unlike the football stadium of a large college.  An African-American man in an airline-issue shirt and tie waves an orange cone in each hand, and the seatbelt signal is turned off.  All click, except mine.

                                                       --13 November 2003

Brewer Vetoes Discrimination

By now, I'm sure you've heard the good news:  Arizona Governor Jan Brewer has vetoed legislation that would have allowed business owners, based on their religious beliefs, to refuse service to LGBT people.

Although she has made some terrible moves, such as passing a law that denies drivers' licenses and other public benefits to undocumented immigrants, she at least showed that she has, somewhere deep in her, a sense of justice.  In essence, she realized that signing SB 1062 would have given a lot of people lots of power to discriminate in all sorts of ways.  For example, a Muslim taxi driver in Tucson could refuse to pick up a woman who's traveling alone.

Plus, I think she's a sensible enough person to realize that, well, someone whom you think is gay or Muslim or whatever may, in fact, not be.  I know personally people about whom you would "never guess" their sexual orientation or religion, or even race or nationality.  (Not many people think, in looking at me, that most of my heritage is Italian---Sicilian at that!  And I know a black man who looks just about as white as I do.) Any business owner who discriminates on the basis of mistaken identity is practically setting him or her self up for a lawsuit.

Furthermore, she surely realized that signing SB 1062 would be bad for business in The Grand Canyon State.  The Hispanic National Bar Association had already announced that it cancelled plans to hold its annual convention--which around 2000 would have attended--in the state next year, in part as a response to the bill.  And the National Football League--not exactly known as a bastion of gay-rights advocacy--said it was exploring plans to move the Super Bowl, which is to be held in the state next year, to a different venue had Brewer signed the bill into law.

Finally, I think she may have had a personal motivation (i.e., guilt) for signing SB 1062.  In 2007, one of her sons died of cancer and HIV-related illnesses.  Various accounts say that she disowned him when he "came out" and, at the time of his death, hadn't spoken to him in years.  Perhaps she is doing in his memory what she didn't do for him during his life.  

What Do You Call Us?

From Rebloggy

Mayor And City Council Boycotting St. Patrick's Day Parade

Yesterday, New York City Council speaker Melissa Mark-Viverto announced that the Council will not officially participate in this year's St. Patrick's Day Parade.  Individual council members are free to march on their own, or with other groups, but they cannot do so as Council representatives.

The reason? I'll let Ms. Mark-Viverto tell it in her own words:   "The St. Patrick’s Parade should be a time when all New Yorkers can come together and march openly as who they are—but right now that is not the case for the LGBT community."

In other words, she is protesting the fact that LGBT people and organizations are not allowed to participate.  This is a move even her openly-lesbian predecessor, Christine Quinn, did not make.  One reason for that, I believe, is that Quinn was first and foremost an ally of then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who never would have boycotted the parade or encouraged anyone else to do so.  On the other hand, Mark-Viverto not only has her own convictions but the support of current Mayor Bill De Blasio, who is also boycotting the parade in sympathy.

Of course, those who oppose the boycott are using the reactionary tactic du jour:  Accusing those they are trying to exclude of being, well, exclusivist and bigoted.  It's best summed up in a statement from the Catholic League's Bill Donohue:  

"There is a growing contempt for tolerance and diversity in the homosexual community, and among their supporters, especially in New York... The protesters obviously loathe diversity: diversity means pluralism, a wholesale rejection of mandated, one-size-fits-all policies. What these activists want is the right to impose their agenda on Irish Catholics, neutering a day set aside to honor St. Patrick."

Excuse me...Who is trying to impose an "agenda" on whom? Who is trying to "neuter" what?  I know of no LGBT person who is trying to impose his or her "agenda", whatever it may be, on anyone else.  And, as someone who's marched in a few parades,  I don't see how a desire to participate in the St. Patrick's Day procession is an attempt to "neuter" a celebration.  

Say whatever else you will about De Blasio or Mark-Viverto, they actually seem to understand what diversity and inclusion are. Good for them! 
  

Women, Bikes And Equality

Yesterday I wrote about a rather curious phenomenon:  the cities and countries with the strongest cycling cultures aren't necessarily the ones with weather and terrain most people believe are best for cycling.  As examples, I cited Boston, New York, San Francisco and Portland in the US and such European locales as Amsterdam and Copenhagen.

Last week, I wrote about the relationship between the two major bike booms (1890s-early 1900s and 1970s) and the women's rights movements of those periods.

From Brain Pickings

Perhaps it's serendipitous that I came across a United Nations Development Programme Report which ranked countries, among other things, in gender equality. Tell me whether you are surprised to see these countries in the Top 10 (as of 2012): 

1. Netherlands 
2. Sweden 
3. (tie) Denmark 
3. (tie) Switzerland 
5. Norway 
6. Finland 
7. Germany 
8. Slovenia 
9. France 
10.Iceland.

After seeing that, I did a bit of research. (OK, I spent a few minutes on Google.) I found a number of reports that rank Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Boston, New York, Washington DC and Madison, Wisconsin among the best US cities for gender equality.

Is it a coincidence that the countries and cities in which cycling and cyclists are most mainstream are also the ones where a woman has the best chance to get a good education, paid what she's worth and the health care she needs?

Just askin'.

Jason Collins, The First Openly Gay NBA Player

Last night, Jason Collins played eleven minutes for the Brooklyn Nets of the National Basketball Association in their game in Los Angeles, against the hometown Lakers. 

On the surface, this story is typical.   The NBA season is entering its late stages, and the Nets are trying to get into the playoffs. Teams in such a situation often sign veteran players like Collins, whom they value for their experience as well as their skills.

Most people who are not Nets’ fans would not have paid attention were it not for this:  In stepping onto the hardwood in Staples Center, Collins became the first openly gay player in any of the four most-watched men’s major sports leagues (the NBA, National Hockey League, Major League Baseball and the National Football League) in North America.  While I am happy to see him play again, and the way other players have expressed their support for him, his signing got me to thinking.

For one thing, he is a respected veteran player who didn’t “come out” until last year, after more than a decade in the NBA.  What if he were a college player who’d just become eligible for the league’s draft?  Would any team take him if its coach and general manager—not to mention players—knew about his sexual orientation?

For that matter, would he have played in college?  Would any college from which he would have a realistic chance of playing in the NBA have offered him a scholarship to play?

Also, he played for the Nets just after the turn of the century, when they were still based in New Jersey.  They made it to the NBA Championship twice (losing both times) with Collins establishing himself as a disciplined, hard-nosed player.   One of his teammates—and the team’s star—was Jason Kidd, the Nets’ current coach. 

What if he hadn’t had those prior connections to the Nets’ organization?  Would they have brought him back, his skills notwithstanding?  Would another team that could be enhanced by his skills and experience, but doesn’t have a history with him, consider signing him?

In other words, I have to wonder whether a player can “come out” before embarking on a career and still, well, hope to have a career in his sport.  I also have to wonder whether I’ll live to see a professional transgender athlete.

One thing that gives me some hope is that there are many “out” female athletes.  Some, such as Billie Jean King, came out after their playing careers ended, while Martina Navratilova’s sexuality was public knowledge during her career, which began near the end of King’s.  And the Women’s National Basketball Association has had a reputation, among homophobes as well as the enlightened, as a haven for lesbians.

I’ve noticed that straight women tend not to be as troubled by other women who are lesbians as some men are by their gay bretheren.  And, on more than one issue, I’ve noticed that where women go, men follow.  Perhaps the Nets’ brass are at the front of that procession.