‘Vile’ is a word for homophobics

Flick their hatred back at them: ‘vile’ is a word for homophobics. Iris Robinson, voted by Stonewall as Bigot of the Year, caused a media storm earlier this year over her comments about homosexuals, who make her sick. Retracted though her comments might have been, the appearance in a single sentence of the words ‘gays’ and ‘child abusers’ indicates the kind of sickness from which she believes gays and lesbians suffer. ['Belief' is an apt word here: Robinson is a 'born-again' Christian who is on record as saying something about it being the duty of government to uphold the word of God.]

Hatred is a sickness. I’m sure any psychoanalyst would tell you so. It is pathological, deeply rooted as it is in the bigot’s psyche. Hatred-wracked, their bodies shake in negative awe of the fetishised object of disgust. Public health services should encourage their rehabilitation through psychoanalysis or psychiatry.

Iris Robinson made her comments after a homophobic attack in Belfast. Not only are her comments bigoted, the timing of them was grossly insensitive, irresponsible, and morally wrong. Martin McGuiness, Northern Ireland’s Deputy First Minister, said the following: “Comments that cause harm and distress to any section of our community are inappropriate and she should reflect fully on the impact that her comments will have.”

If a human has suffered, do we knock them further? Do Robinson’s comments demonstrate intelligence, in terms of moral outlook and political decorum? Of course they don’t.

Though over 15,000 people signed a petition on 10 Downing Street’s website, the government took no affirmative action against Robinson. Not even a reprimand.

What the new laws cover…

The new offence will tackle serious acts of hatred directed towards lesbian and gay people. These include homophobic song lyrics, available to buy in Britain, which encourage the torture and murder of gay people and violently homophobic publications and websites, available to the general public. Such materials create great fear and promote inflammatory myths and misconceptions as fact, undermining community cohesion.

Robinson did not advocate the use of violence against gays and lesbians, but surely her comments ‘create great fear and promote inflammatory myths and conceptions as fact, undermining community cohesion’.

It is my view that the relationship between the hand of the attacker and the words of the bigot is an intimate one.

A small shadow (2)

Julius Turman, a chairman of the Alice B. Toklas L.G.B.T. Democratic Club, a gay political group here, said he called his mother in tears when Mr. Obama won the presidency, only to be crying over the same-sex marriage vote in a different way not much later.

“It is the definition of bittersweet,” Mr. Turman said. “As an African-American, I rejoiced in the symbolism of yesterday. As a gay man, I thought, ‘How can this be happening?’ ”

The New York Times reports here on our small shadow.

A small shadow

It might not be anything to do with Obama, but the supposedly liberal state of California in which he was successful voted today against gay marriage. It’s odd that this should happen on the day of Obama’s epochal victory, but there it is. I now wonder what he will do to rectify this, although judging from the problems inherited from Bush with which he is now charged with the task of rectifying, gay marriage will be relatively low on his priorities.

Dale Carpenter over at The Volokh Conspiracy writes the following:

I have always believed the fight for gay marriage would be decades long: a few initial judicial victories to get the ball rolling, accompanied by a fierce backlash, and then a long slog through state legislatures (and sometimes courts). In the next couple of years, I expect we will see full recognition of gay marriage by the state legislatures in New Jersey and New York, where Democrats took the senate last night for the first time in decades. I can foresee in the next decade gay marriage in most if not all of New England and some of the other twenty states that haven’t constitutionally banned it. California was a big prize, and would unquestionably have hastened things politically and legally, but there are others.

You can find more here.

What I fail to understand is why people are given the right to vote against a minority. And in California. Today. I just don’t understand this. I have little knowledge of the systems against which The Volokh Conspiracy is fighting, and perhaps with a little naivety from other corners thrown in, I know little else of other things constitutionally American, but it seems paradoxical that democratic procedure is used in this way to make decisions over (and in this case against) the rights of a minority group. Whatever else it is, it is certainly not democratic. 

It’s a situation in which the following contradictory statement is uttered: ‘I want my rights protected but I want the right to block yours.’ Politics move in mysterious ways, and it’s inexplicable how a state can vote for Obama but vote against gay marriage. Why have they voted for him, then, I wonder?

Welcome to Obama World

He did it! I held my confidence back during the campaign, even the latter stages when the polls were unanimously stacked against McCain - but I knew he’d do it.

It is true that McCain was a gracious man in his concession speech. I realised that I didn’t have a great deal against this unarguably brave man, who has led an extraordinary life (much more so than Bush could ever have claimed), and it’s such a shame that it was Bush and not McCain who was voted in twice. Perhaps the world would have been different had it been McCain in 2000. And perhaps Obama might not have got in if we’d come out of two terms of McCain rather than two terms of Bush. In the end, then, the Bush presidency was effective in that it allowed Obama to win. Well, Obama allowed himself to win, because he is a very strong candidate indeed. The reason? Obama is for everyone.

Obama is for everyone. How can I be so sure? Because he led a campaign that included all sectors of society in his policies; but most of all Obama’s rhetoric stays clear of euphemism. Republican and conservatives are renowned for their euphemistic language. It’s a way of saying what you don’t want to say without appearing to be prejudiced. Think of ‘Nation First’ (as if Obama was against his country). Where Republicans and conservatives avoid the question of the existence of gays, liberals are not afraid to speak out. (We, gays, as – you would hope – mostly liberals, are not afraid to support ourselves. So how does that explain Republican gays, whose party is naturally against them? Denial?)

“Black or white, gay or straight.” Yes, this is what Obama said. Gay or straight. He mentioned us in his speech, which went out to millions, if not billions, of people around the world. Gays are included in his presidency. We were mentioned. That is hugely significant. No euphemistic language. Right on the dollar: gay or straight. I was shocked. Does that say more about me than it does the world of politics, from which I can expect to be excluded, not even mentioned?

Today I am full of hope.

[ps. the WordPress spellcheck doesn't recognise 'Obama'. It's underlined in red. Hilarious. Thousands of WordPress bloggers have been writing about a man whose name is not recognised by its spellcheck! Isn't WordPress American? You can't make it up..]

Obama Pride Is All We Have

Larry Kramer isn’t too confident about Obama. He said he couldn’t trust him 100%, but then qualified this by adding that this was something he thought about almost everyone. For me, this inhibition on the trust front is tied up with being gay and expecting, as the recent Stonewall survey made clear, prejudice and discrimination all along the tawdry way through life. Add Obama’s role as a politician into the mix and Larry certainly has cause to distrust him.

I am almost certainly much more naive than Larry Kramer has ever been. I know I will never be an activist in the direct way he passionately advocates for the fight for LGBT rights. I am therefore the opposite of the case to Larry: I implicitly trust Barack Obama. No politician is ever perfect, much less so once they take up the kind of role Obama is about to; but at least he addresses the need for increased rights for lesbians and gays. At least there’s a page dedicated to these issues on the campaign’s website. Unlike the putrid other offering in the American election, which conveys copious information about their intention to preserve without question the Second Amendment, placing this above and beyond any human rights issue policy. I put our acronym (‘LGBT’) in the search engine of the Republican campaign website, and all I got back was one of those irritating lists that measures the search results by percentage relevance. In other words, lesbians and gays are just not relevant to the Republicans. Nothing new there. Keep your guns, machismo and right to kill another human on the suspicion – not confirmation! - that somebody’s out to getchya, but just don’t give a second thought to the faggots. The proverbial blood boils. Nothing new there.

Despite Larry’s suspicions, then, Obama is our man. Despite the extent to which his focus on the LGBT community might have weakened his campaign, Obama has spoken – strongly, I think - in our name. For this and many other reasons, I am Obama Proud. And I know Larry would agree with the following excerpt from one of Obama’s speeches:

“While we have come a long way since the Stonewall riots in 1969, we still have a lot of work to do. Too often, the issue of LGBT rights is exploited by those seeking to divide us. But at its core, this issue is about who we are as Americans. It’s about whether this nation is going to live up to its founding promise of equality by treating all its citizens with dignity and respect.”

I know Larry Kramer would agree with this because there is nothing more certain in his ferocious The Tragedy of Today’s Gays than the fact that the fight is more urgent now than it has ever been. We cannot rest on Stonewall’s laurels because hatred is out there and out to get us. Larry is not being plain old suspicious here; on the contrary, there is much with which to reasonably agree on his reading of gay life today.

Hatred is alive and well. The fact that gay men and women think twice before kissing and embracing their loved ones out in public is more than ample confirmation. And take the Observer’s public poll on sex, in which 1 in 4 people believe gay sex should be made illegal. Half of those questioned also believed prostitution should be legalised. In other words, the straight community persists as it has always done in protecting their own rights whilst in the main not giving a fuck about anyone else’s. Larry Kramer and Barack Obama are right: there is more work to be done, but whether Obama in particular can overturn the astonishing arrogance of the straight community regarding their sexual and marital rights is another thing.  

Overused words

Inspiration is one of them. But I intend to use it on a number of times on this blog because it’s the neatest word to describe what it is like to feel cradled by an outside agent in my search for self-identity.

But this is a blog about gay life today, not etymology! you might say. Why can’t gays be interested in intellectual matters like the stunning etymological background to the word ‘inspiration’, which articulates the idea of influences being breathed in by the influenced. When I said that Larry Kramer’s talk was an inspiration – although I was at risk of undermining the actual power of the talk itself, because inspiration is such an overused word these days – I probably should have taken time to choose an alternative word. But ‘inspiration’ will do, because my feeling of sitting in front of an icon like Larry Kramer was like breathing in his fireballing rhetoric, his hard-earned wisdom about gay life today, above all his humanity. So Larry Kramer, etymologically speaking, truly was an inspiration.

Last week I was given an old copy of Radclyffe Hall’s 1924 novel Adam’s Breed. As you can see, I found its distinctive, mysterious title quite alluring, despite not knowing what the phrase actually alludes to. I have yet to read Hall’s novel, but I suspect from the following blurb that comparisons between its representation of gay life way back then and my discussions of gay life today might prove irresistible:

Radclyffe Hall was the first author to give us an insight into the Soho Colony of humble exiles who live and die unnoticed in our midst. In this startlingly brilliant novel her central figure is a man – Gian-Luca, whose career is traced from childhood in Old Compton Street, Soho, until he finds at last the peace that passeth understanding. The picture of the lives of these Soho denizens is by turns pitiless and tender, but always the author is a ruthless analyst. The characters – closely and lovingly – will live long in the reader’s memory. 

Impetuous departure

This is the real first post.

OK, so why refractions and not reflections?

Because refractions is a much better metaphor for the state of gay life today, and how, if I am meant to be ‘narcissistic’, I consider the fact that life today throws back a distorted view of myself from society. It’s confusing, which is why there’s problems out there.

Because in a way, both society and today’s gays are the problem to making gay life fully democratic and full of the freedoms enjoyed by non-gays.

I have written on various aspects of the politics of gay life elsewhere, but the inspiration for this blog comes from the need to set aside a separate space to think through what’s going on today in the world for gay people. And the source of inspiration was my attendance this weekend at a talk given by none other than Larry Kramer, one of whose most recent books happens to be entitled The Tragedy of Today’s Gays. I have my copy, and I will report back to you here about my reading of it, but I gather in advance of that reading that there may be some uncomfortable truths about gay life today and gays today that Larry articulates and on which I probably will concur.

Perhaps one of those things is the statement he makes elsewhere (in the 1978 novel, Faggots) and which he might reiterate in the new book: having too much sex makes love impossible. I assume in advance that Larry is making a point about the sheer, wild materialistic joy that gays are meant to enjoy above and beyond non-gays, who (as the stereotype goes) are more likely to ally themselves with ’adult responsibilities’ (like marriage, quickly followed by divorce, and then another marriage and so on).  

Larry’s talk in Liverpool was an inspiration. And though it was well attended, with a lively and relaxed though not frivolous atmosphere (there were many moments when a statement provoked the audience to applaud, both emotively and politically), there should have been many more young gay men and women present.

Perhaps this is my first point, then: others have fought for the rights enjoyed by today’s gays, and so today’s gays are complacent, arrogant, and not nearly vigilant enough about what could meet us around the corner in the future. Because we cannot guarantee that the future will be rosy.