We've Come to Their Neighborhood

Right—time to eat crow.

I wrote yesterday something to the effect that it’s easier for gay people to come out now than it was in the 60’s and 70’s. But guess what? If the documentary Out in the Silence is correct, it’s actually much worse.

At least it was for CJ, the high school kid who was a jock on the football team until he came out as gay. Then, the bullying started, the phone calls threatening to burn down the house began coming in, the pushing and the shoving started taking place—incredibly—in front of teachers and school monitors.

CJ’s mother yanked him out of school, and did what any mother would do: she goes before the school board and protests. Their response? They didn’t even shrug their shoulders….

‘She’s gotta get a lawyer,’ I thought to myself yesterday, since I had only watched the first half of the documentary. So I was relieved when she turned to the ACLU; after a two-year struggle, anti-harassment seminars began in the high school.

So why is it so rough for gay kids today? Well, first of all, kids are coming out in high school, not in college or beyond. Second, what had been a taboo topic has become one on everyone’s lips. And third, the religious opposition has become much better organized.

It all started when the filmmaker Joe Wilson sent an announcement of his marriage to his male partner to The Derrick, his local newspaper in Oil City, Pennsylvania. The Derrick published the announcement—along with a picture—and then the letters began rolling in. One particularly painful comment—“it would have been better if you had never been born”—is enough to tell you the story.

That’s when CJ’s mother wrote, announcing that her son was being bullied, and wondering if he could help. So Wilson headed to Oil City, which had been the site of the first oil well in the States, and was now moldering away. His purpose, yes, was to look in on CJ, but also to see how the town in which he had grown up was dealing with LGBT issues.

It wasn’t pretty. Oil City was the home of the Pennsylvania chapter of the American Family Association (AFA), which is pretty much as you would imagine. Founded in 1977 as the National Foundation for Decency; headquarters in Tupelo, Mississippi; 180,00 paid subscribers; 3.3 million people receiving “action alerts.” Does that tell you the story? Oh, and here’s Wikipedia:

AFA has been listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as of November 2010 for the "propagation of known falsehoods" and the use of "demonizing propaganda" against LGBT people.

Think that’s extreme? Well, check out the clip below, entitled They’re Coming to Your Town; the “they” is less gay and lesbian than that dreaded “homosexual agenda.”

Who has the agenda? Is it the lesbian couple, who are renovating an old movie house as a neighborhood center? If so, their agenda is less pushing their homosexuality on people than it is about turning around a decaying city center, providing jobs, making money, improving the community. But Diane, the president of the state AFA, called around to local businesses, trying to arrange a boycott. At one point, one of the lesbians loses it, and comes out says, “Diane has done nothing for this city but stir up hate.”

There are victories: a Christian pastor who modifies his views; the father of a gay kid who won’t turn his back on his son, even though the father himself had beaten up gay people in his past.

But for all the victories, it’s the overwhelming negativity of Diane and the AFA that linger. Looking at her, you see not a woman filled with hate, but rather someone terrified.

And with good reason. If she feels that her world is threatened, well, isn’t she right? Yes, we have an agenda. We’re not going back in the closet, we’re not going to stop pressing for rights, we’re not going to accept abuse or hate anymore.

The decline of the traditional family? Is it perhaps time to suggest that there were some aspects of the traditional family that were less than ideal? For every family that mimicked Leave It to Beaver, wasn’t there one with sexual abuse, secrecy, drunkenness, lies, battered limbs?  

We are a threat—we who have been honest with ourselves, honest with others, and have fought against those who disagreed. Mostly, we’ve been a threat when we moved into communities, bought houses, started raising our families.

What’s more threatening than a new idea?