Monday, October 27, 2008

Catch 22

Ever since the battle over gay marriage began in California this year, I've been following the polls and getting updates from my mom and sister about how the campaigns are being run there. I'm sure some of you have seen the ads: in one, a little girl comes home from school and tells her horrified mommy, "today I learned that a prince can marry a prince and I can marry a girl." Another ad features a Pepperdine law professor warning that churches will be forced to perform same-sex marriage ceremonies or be sued for discrimination. Several others feature young urban hipsters in cute San Francisco settings saying that they "love their gay friends" but don't agree with gay marriage. "Why does it have to be about hate?" they ask. "I just have a different opinion."

Then today I read an L.A. Times article about the conspicuous absence of actual gay people from the Prop. 8 ads, even in the ads that oppose the measure. Someone in the No on 8 campaign explained that, "from all the knowledge that we have and research that we have, [those] are not the best images to move people." He also confessed that depicting children in the pro-gay ads is equally unappealing to viewers. The overall message is stomach-turning, and only confirms how deep the roots of homophobia still run today.

For my part, I was raised to hate gay people. My father was every sort of bigot imaginable, but gays earned the lion's share of his disgust, and he made no secret of it whenever they came up in conversation. As a result, I unquestioningly shared his views. I remember the first time I ever saw two men holding hands: I was ten or so, and I remember feeling total revulsion swell up inside of me, almost physically, at the sight of them. It's a knee-jerk reaction that I still sometimes experience when I see two men kiss on TV, or when I hear a particularly flamboyant gay man talk, or when I hear my own voice on an answering machine. I get uncomfortable, and each time it happens I'm only reminded of how deep-seated and unshakable social hatreds can be. (This is related to the fact that most gay men I know will only date "straight-acting" guys, probably due to their own internalized homophobia).

It seems that such feelings, held either openly or subconsciously by many Americans, are what lie at the true heart of the marriage debate, and that "marriage" itself is only secondary. It would explain how conservative groups are able to win over voters with posters that simply show two men kissing: the disgust elicited by such images does more work then their campaign could possibly achieve with words. It would also explain Focus on the Family's attempt to terrify Americans by predicting that an Obama presidency would not only legalize gay marriage everywhere, but would force the Boy Scouts to "hire homosexual scoutmasters and allow them to sleep in tents with young boys." And it now explains the apparent exclusion of gays from the gay rights movement. It seems as if Proposition 8 is no longer about marriage, or even civil rights. It has become a fight for the legitimation of hatred. My question is: How can gays win when their very presence is deemed detrimental to their own cause?

by Corbett at 5:57 PM |