A Different Musing

Gay rights isn't a subject I have ever before written about in this blog - when Marcia Ellen was well enough to write for TBV, she usually handled it, and from time to time Tankwoman also touches on it (most recently here). But I've spent the past hour listening to Amy Goodman interviewing Larry Kramer on Democracy Now, on the twentieth anniversary of the founding of ACT UP- Aids Coalition to Unleash Power. Kramer has been an extremely visible gay activist for many years, and is himself now in his early seventies.

Listening to him talking to Amy reminded me of a couple of articles I've been holding in my notes for the past week or so. The first one is actually an opinion piece by Larry Kramer himself, called Why Do Straights Hate Gays?, published in the LA Times on March 20. My first instinct upon seeing the title, and even after I had read it, was to consider it a self-indulgent piece of whining. Yep, that's what I thought. From my privileged position as a lesbian who has been out, yet never felt particularly hated or beset by the anger of the straight community, my entire adult life. Straights, I said to myself, don't hate ME! Then on today's show, Amy played an audio file of General Peter Pace making his remarks about the immorality of gay people and his stance on not allowing them to serve in the armed forces openly. I'd read his remarks, and was offended by them - but hearing the pompous self-righteousness with which he declaimed his opinions was quite another story, not at all like reading the words on a page. I listened to Kramer some more, then went back and reread his article.

Then I pulled up the other article I'd had in my notes from a couple of days after I read Kramer's piece. Detroit Attack Could Spur Gay Rights Law. This is another 72 year old man's story, and one which I am afraid entirely proves Kramer to be anything but a whiner, to be, in fact, right on the money in what he says. It's the story of Andrew Anthos, an elderly gay man riding a Detroit city bus, leaving the bus, helping a wheelchair bound friend out of a snowbank, and being beaten into a coma with a pipe, then dying from his injuries. It's the story of a crime committed out of nothing except mindless hatred of an elderly queen who refused to hide who he really was, he wasn't robbed, nothing was taken from him - except his right to continue living. In his article, Larry Kramer says:

You must know that gays get beaten up all the time, all over the world. If someone beats you up because of who you are — your race or ethnic origin — that is considered a hate crime. But in most states, gays are not included in hate crime measures, and Congress has refused to include us in a federal act.

Where indeed are the candidates jostling for head-of-the-pack in the 2008 primaries on this subject? So far they are cowering quietly, or in Kramer's words on the Democratic frontrunners:

Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama tried to duck the questions thatPace's bigotry raised, confirming what gay people know: that there is not one candidate running for public office anywhere who dares to come right out, unequivocally, and say decent, supportive things about us.

No, Kramer isn't whining, he's merely telling a difficult truth. It is one difficult truth among so many, and how is it possible to pay attention to them all? If Andrew Anthos had been your cousin or friend or brother, it would have opened your eyes to the truth of the inequality with which in one way or another most gays and lesbians live. Yes, even me, if I step outside the careful confines of my uptight middle-class life - act too butch on a city bus, am too demonstrative to my partner in the wrong place, speak up too loudly in demanding equal rights. I certainly don't think all straights hate gays, most of them just aren't paying any attention.

| +Save/Share | |