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Self Pride for the New
Millennium
by Norm Kent
My mind keeps wandering back to June of 1994, and the closing ceremonies of the Gay Games in Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, New York. Remember, we have been legally enjoined from calling them the Gay Olympics, because the International Olympic Committee is homosexually paranoid. Amsterdam is going to be an incredible place to be this August, and I am really beating myself up for not having made reservations sooner. The closest I may get to the games is a hotel in Brussels.
Anyway, let's flash back to Yankee
Stadium, the House that Ruth Built, where the New York Yankees and hulks of
heterosexuality have starred summer after summer for three quarters of a century. This is
a place where I grew up watching ballgames as a kid, where Dad took me out to watch the
Mickey Mantles of the world gallantly display their athleticism and talent. To a young kid
who grew up living baseball, it is a ballyard of dreams.
Four years ago, though, on one
stunning summer evening in 1994, Adam and Bruce, and lots of Ellens and Lucys took it
over. It could not have happened twenty five years earlier, that's for sure. On that warm
summer evening however, in a show of unity and love, 11,000 competitors marched on the
field proudly and openly under a Rainbow Flag. In the stands, 55,000 more gay men and
women warmly applauded their efforts .
How could it be? How could the love
that dare not speak its name have come this far? Wasn't it just twenty years ago that
every state had laws declaring homosexual acts to be "crimes against nature,"
felonious deeds punishable by twenty years imprisonment? Sodomites were castigated in
legislatures, churches and the public consciousness. When the director of the FBI, the all
too gay Edgar Hoover wasn't prancing around in a tutu, he was going after people that
were. Anyone caught engaging in 'unnatural carnal copulation' had their lives and careers
destroyed.
Today you wear your pride rings on
your fingers and post your rainbows on your license plates. Today you vacation in Mykonos,
and make summer plans with gay travel agents for Fire Island. What was that cigarette
commercial for Virginia Slims?: 'You have come a long way, baby...'
It wasn't easy back when. The
affection you had for other men could not be openly expressed or publicly acknowledged.
Gay bars were mob-controlled establishments in sleazy places. The meetings and encounters
were in dark and lonely corners. The public image of homosexuals was deadly:
psychologically imbalanced perverts. Homosexuals were limp-wristed faggots; queens and
queers who were abnormal lesions on the flesh of society.
No one dared say otherwise. Now it
is 1998 and after years of never having any rights, you are being told that you are now
seeking special rights. After years of being discriminated against socially and sexually,
you are now being told that you are activists and extremists who have brought upon
yourselves the wrath of good and moral Americans who have nothing against you, if you
would just leave them the hell alone. They want to go back to treating you like the 'good
ol' days', where you knew your place. Go back to the quiet closets where you belong. Get
on the back of the bus. Rosa Parks said no, and so must we.
Pride for the new
millennium
requires your having the moral tenacity and the personal fortitude to say "Hell, no,
we won't go" to those whose voices and venom and invectives would again reduce you to
a second-class citizen. We will raise the consciousness of Americans as we gain self-pride
and win a place at the table. The politics of homosexuality is going to be won, not just
in courtrooms and ballot boxes, but by our continued openness in the field of battle.
It is going to be won when gay men
and women can adopt and raise children, serve openly in the military, and get freely
elected to office; when we can teach openly in our schools without fear of being fired.
It is going to be won when a gay
centerfielder for a pro baseball team can hold a press conference to announce his sexual
orientation and no one shows up because no one cares.
It is going to be won when society sees a disease likes AIDS spreading, and responds
medically and marvelously to the illness, rather than attacking the people who get it.
It is going to be won when people
count us for who we are and what we do, rather than who we do and what we are- and what
they think we do when we are alone in the privacy of our bedrooms.
It is going to be won when the
churches of America start raising money for people with AIDS instead of collecting funds
by trying to suggest they can protect you from people with AIDS.
It is going to be won when a
gay tour of the Bahamas or the Caymans, is planned, and the ones objecting to it are
laughed at, and themselves the subject of derision.
But today, in 1998, there is still
much to cry about. City after city is seeking to repeal gay-rights ordinances. Congress is
seeking to cut back AIDS funding. Senators like Helms are trying to pass laws that protect
those who target homosexuals.
Churches are calling your effort
for equal rights extreme, and, in a recent mailing, the American Family Association
referred to America's children as not being "safe". Another organization called
a gay Congressman a "confessed sodomite" as if he should be doing 2 to 10 in the
state pen. And yet one more group talked about gay rights advocates as "Aids-infected
carriers." You can ignore them, but they won't go away. Their infection is getting
worse. The newest disease we are fighting is Hate with a capital H.
Yes, we are more at liberty to do
things than we have ever been. Witness Gay Disney Day. See Mickey do Pluto. But there are
still battles to be won and causes worth fighting for.
Last year, when the
cartoon strip 'For Better or Worse' tried to introduce a normal gay
relationship, scores of newspapers refused to carry it.
I am still troubled by the decision
of the Episcopalian church to deny a local minister, Reverned Whetsone, senior status as
an elder because he is gay. How nice it would have been for a coalition of clergymen to
have announced their support for him.
Whatever you do, don't remain
neutral. In the middle of the road you will only find yellow lines and dead skunks. And if
an elephant is sitting on a mouse's tail, it doesn't do the mouse much good for you to
announce that you are neutral.
If a guy is drowning 30 feet from
shore and you throw him a 20 foot rope, it doesn't do him much good for you to protest
that you met him more than half way. Sometimes life calls upon you to make a difference.
You are living in one of those eras. Make it count.
It is hot outside these days,
nearly 95 degrees in the shade. The waters are cool and inviting. You are planning your
summer vacation. Somewhere, find the time and energy to make your community a better
place.