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Menstuff® has compiled information and books on Gay, Bi, and Transgender issues. This section is Robert N. Minor's weekly column featured daily on our homepage. Robert is the author of Scared Straight: Why It's So Hard to Accept Gay People and Why It's So Hard to Be Human and Gay & Healthy in a Sick Society and Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. He may be reached through www.fairnessproject.org or at E-Mail. 2006, 2005, 2004
Asking for gifts we really need from
those we really love I remember hearing popular psychological speaker and writer John Bradshaw say that the “high” one gets from being righteous was similar to the high of cocaine. As both a former monk and addict, he knew the feelings personally. As the religious right pushes its anti-gay, anti-women’s reproductive rights, anti-science, pro-profit agenda nationally and in state capitals across the nation and wins, that high is a sweet fix for the addicted. It gives them a comforting feeling of relief that they’re really right, okay, worthwhile, and acceptable. Like all fixes, though, it doesn’t last. So, the addict is driven to seek another and another another issue, another evil, another paranoiac threat to defeat. It can’t ever end. Like the need for heavier doses, the causes have to become bigger and more evil in the addict’s mind to provide the fix. This mind-altering fix of righteousness covers their paranoid shame-based feelings about the internal and external dangerous stalking them. The victim-role language of their dealers, right-wing religious leaders, feeds it. Like alcoholism and drug addiction, the fix numbs the religious addict against any feelings about how their addiction affects others. Religion doesn’t have to be this way; it can be healing. But what we see in the dominant religious/political right-wing fundamentalism that’s driving the debate on most conservative issues (political, social, economic, international) is anything but healthy. It’s what addiction specialists call a process addiction, like sex or romance addiction, or workaholism. In an addictive society, such addictions are encouraged. Like substance addictions, it takes over, dominates life, pushes other issues to the background, tells them how and what to feel to prevent them from facing their real feelings about themselves and life, creates a mythology about the world, protects its “stash,” and supports their denial that they have a problem. Addiction specialist Anne Wilson Schaef would say, like all addictions, religious addiction is progressive and fatal. If you’re outside the addiction, you’ve probably wondered about what’s going on, what’s the dynamic that’s driving the right-wing religious agenda that looks so hateful and destructive. Why is it so hard to crack? Why won’t evidence or logic work? If you’re an enabler or the addict yourself, the above must sound over the top. You’d prefer to deny or soften the reality of the addiction. Yet, if we’re going to think clearly about the right-wing juggernaut’s use of religion, and not function as its enablers, we must realize that we’re dealing with an addict. Right-wing political-religious fundamentalism can destroy us too if we’re like the dependent spouse who protects, defends, and covers-up for the family drunk. So, what can we do to protect ourselves, maintain our sanity, promote a healthy alternative, and confront religious addiction? What’s the closest thing to an intervention when we’re dealing with the advanced, destructive form of religious addiction that’s become culturally dominant? It takes massive inner strength and a good self-concept. There’s no place for codependency and the need to be liked or affirmed by the person with the addiction. ALANON knows that. It requires clarity of purpose, freedom from the need to fix the addict, and doing what maintains one’s own health and safety. Addicts reinforce each other. Fundamentalist religious organizations and media are their supportive co-users. So the person who deals with someone’s addiction cannot do it alone. They must have support from others outside the addiction. You can’t argue with an addict. Arguing religion to one so addicted plays into the addictive game. Arguing about the Bible or tradition is like arguing with the alcoholic about whether whiskey or tequila is better for them. It’s useless and affirms the addiction. You can’t buy into the addict’s view of reality. Addicts cover their addiction with a mythology about the world and with language that mystifies. This means we must never use their language. Never say, even to reject it or with “so-called” before it: “partial-birth abortion,” “gay rights,” “intelligent design,” “gay marriage,” etc. Speak clearly in terms of what you believe it really is. Say “a seldom used late-term procedure,” “equal rights for all,” “creationist ideology,” “marriage equality.” Don’t let the addict get you off topic. Addicts love to confuse the issues, get you talking about things that don’t challenge their problem. When you do, you further the addiction. Never argue about whether sexual orientation is a choice. It doesn’t matter. Never argue about sex. Our country is too sick to deal with its sexual problems. It’s okay to affirm that you don’t care or these aren’t the issues. You don’t need to justify your beliefs to a drunk or druggie. Get your message on target and repeat it. Get support for your message from others so that they’re on the same page. Make it short, simple, to the point, and consistent. Don’t nag addicts. Don’t speak belligerently or as if you have to defend yourself. Just say: The government and other people have no right to tell someone whom to love. Don’t accept that the addiction needs equal time. Stop debating as if there are two sides. Get over any guilt about a free country requiring you to make space for addictive arguments. You don’t have to act as if here are “two sides” to the debate. Addicts and their dealers already have the power of the addiction and addictive communities behind their messages. Model what it is to be a healthy human being without the addiction. Addicts must see people living outside the addiction, happy, confident, proud, and free from the effects of the disease. In spite of the fact that we’re a nation that supports both substance and process addictions so people don’t threaten the institutions and values that pursue profits over humanity, live as if that has no ultimate control over you. Don’t believe that you, your friends, children, relationships, hopes, and dreams, are any less valuable or legitimate because they aren’t sanctioned by a government, politicians, or religious leaders that are in a coping, rather than healing, mode of life. Dealing with addictions takes an emotional toll on
everyone. Yet, recognizing religious addiction as an
addiction demystifies its dynamics and maintains our
sanity. A Meditation on Addictive
Religion (If you missed last month’s column “When Religion is an Addiction,” click here.) Take right-wing religion’s teaching that people are basically so evil and lost that they deserve eternal, abusive punishment. Add its effectiveness at convincing people of their innate evil because they’re prepared for it through childrearing methods that punish inherently bad children. Enforce such messages with political leaders whose solution to problems is more punishment. The result: adults’ desperate need for a fix to provide relief from self-denigrating, self-abusive feelings. That’s what made the high of being righteous so addictive. Now, with the political success of the right-wing, addictive religion found a new fix, the high of winning politically. Prior to the rise of their political aspirations, huddling together in congregations seemed enough for the addicted. In their meetings and services they could be with those who felt the same misery and heard that there was nothing they could do to be “saved.” These were not recovery groups, providing support to overcome the addiction. They were more like opium dens. Their preachers dealt the high. They did nothing to make people feel as if they were, or could in themselves become, worthwhile. In fact, they convinced them they were so evil that they shouldn’t trust their own intuitions, thoughts, and positive feelings about themselves. Trusting yourself was put down as “New Age. Their preachers and theologians told them they could only be acceptable because another Being really, really, really would accept them in spite of who their evil. If people accepted that notion, it was then okay to feel joy. They could also feel as if the “lost,” people out there, were the ones with problems, not them. They’d lap up “prophecy,” which would assure them that they’d come out winners in the end and that those who didn’t participate in their addiction would be proven wrong by being “Left Behind.” As they became more addicted, the fix became more desperate. Services were the gathering together of addicts for another drink, another line. But addictions are progressive, so where would they get even heavier doses? The movement of the religious right-wing into politics, which most previously rejected as too involved with “the world,” was a new drug, a stronger drink. Righteous political wins for their religious position became the new blessed relief from facing the painful notion that they are, as their hymns reminded them, “wretches,” “worms,” “without [even] one plea,” and “deeply stained within.” Logically, one would think that believing they’re so evil would cause them to be less judgmental, more sympathetic with others. After all, one can actually find that notion in their Bible. So, in the midst of their righteous wins, they do sometimes talk sympathetically, saying to LGBT people: “We’re all sinners.” But addictions are not logical, and looking for the logic in them, ALANON members know, is a waste of time. What drives this need for winning is the high. They can’t face what they believe about their rotten selves too long or they just couldn’t handle it it’s bad enough to probably require anti-depressants and hospitalization. When they win government and electoral approval for their doctrines, those aren’t acts of faith at all. Their trust is not in their Higher Power. It’s in government and the electorate. It’s in the feeling that they have approval of a majority of voters. None of that has to do with “What Would Jesus Do.” The fix of these wins has become an obsession. It’s meant to convince them they’re right and okay. As a “high” it can never last. They’ll fall back into their feelings of fear and loathing. So they desperately need more approval, more wins. They’ve gotten themselves dependent upon these wins. The need for a cause to win is the seeking of approval by projecting their evil onto others. Addictions remove the sense of responsibility. It’s never the addict’s fault. Addicts must be convinced they’re right. Feminists, “activist judges,” LGBT people, liberals, atheists, wiccans, whomever, must be understood as the real causes of the addict’s problems. Sadly, many addicts never come to until they’ve hit bottom and destroyed their lives and the lives of their families and acquaintances. Some go into recovery. There is, after all, a Fundamentalists Anonymous. So, dealing with the addiction requires saving oneself first, not the addict. It often involves the sadness of watching the addict crash and burn. Now, it’s going to take awhile for addictive religion to hit bottom. It’s on a new drug and it has mainstream approval. But does it have our support? Are we the enablers? Are we making excuses for the addict? Are we still trying to find the logic in what they do? Are we wasting time trying to understand their “real” motives and intentions? Are we covering up for the addict? Are we emotionally unable or unwilling to speak truth to the addict, saying the addiction is wrong, sick, and destructive? Are we unable to separate from the addiction? Are we unwilling to join the equivalent of support groups like ALANON or form Mothers Against Abusive Religion? Do we have a positive enough self-image to refuse to be abused by others who won’t face the addiction -- such as politicians who treat us like crazy but rich relatives whom they come to for support but hide in the closet when peeople want to know who those relatives are? Are we willing to face the fact that we’ll still be affected by the addiction and, therefore, have to live our lives in the light of that fact, that we have to protect ourselves and our safety? Are we able to say that they, not we, are the problem? Once we’ve named an addiction, it’s our choice
how we live with an addict. It’s our choice about
whether we seek an addict’s love and support. And
it’s our choice, knowing that addictions are hard to
overcome, whether we’re in it for the long haul
because, in the end, we want to stop addictions from hurting
everyone. How to Wreck a Relationship: Part
Three of An Ocassional Series: "The Dangers of Masculinity
in a Relationship" It’s not that men are somehow inherently incapable of loving, emotional, committed relationships. Men are human beings born complete with a full range of human emotions, needs, nurturing abilities, and characteristics. (I know this seems to be a radical statement for many people in our culture.) It just takes a lot of emotional and societal conditioning to turn little boys into those “real men” who can’t talk about their feelings, fear the loss of those they commit to, over-react in anger, and suffer alone in desperate silences. Cultural patterns of male conditioning teach men at all costs to assume ultimate responsibility for others, armor themselves against other men, and expect others to depend on their stoic, unwavering strength. Early in life and often, boys are taught that there are crybabies, sissies, sallies, wusses, pussies, and fags who’ll be hurt by other men because they act more like girls than the true men Thoreau described as living “lives of quiet desperation.” It’s just the beat-or-be-beaten boy code that says unless you quickly join the masculine world that puts down non-masculine males and females, you’ll fall victim to other men. The goal of the training of boys in the US is not to create men who are capable of loving, close, emotionally intimate relationships at all. Its purpose is to turn them into competent warriors. They’re needed as leaders and fodder for a military-industrial-prison-media-complex that demands arms races, wars, insecurity, and bloated Pentagon spending to propel corporate profits and stock values higher and higher. “The strong silent type” idealized by many is the result. He’s the one who looks steeled enough to protect us all. Even his physical presence should look strong, armored, and successful at mastering or beating the system. He’s the one we’re supposed to value as a nation’s president, a corporate leader, a woman’s husband, and a strict, never wrong, morally unflinching father for otherwise helpless children. If women in our culture aren’t breaking out of their conditioning, which prepares them to function as warrior support personnel, they’ll need men to be this way. If they aren’t learning to take care of their own space, value their own ideas, and secure their own lives, they’ll freak out when a man they’ve bet their lives on to “love and protect” them begins to reject the internalized masculine patterns he’s bet his life on over the years. Patterned masculinity devalues emotions, even removes men from consciously feeling the emotional spectrum. While men walk around feeling deeply hurt, often afraid, and unsure of the answers to life, they can’t know it or show it. It’s hard for such a masculinized partner who can’t feel when he’s hurting to understand that something hurts someone else. It’s hard for him to know when something he himself is doing hurts someone else, too. “Really? That hurts you?” is a fully conditioned masculine response. He’s also supposed to have all the answers, fix all the problems, and be an unwavering pillar of strength against a threatening world. So his very masculine image is on the line when he’s expected to show vulnerability, share his true feelings, describe the demeaning or devaluing day he experienced at work, or even admit that something he’s supposed to do is slowly killing him inside. Relating to such masculinity is difficult, frustrating, and unhealthy for both the man living it and the partner who seeks an intimate relationship with him. Real intimacy, the kind that shares heart to heart, is an impossible dream. Fully conditioned men only function emotionally from the neck up and the waist down. Sex becomes the only place to feel anything other than the expected manly anger. Sex again becomes a desperate need for conditioned males. But it doesn’t work. It can’t. Sex is not a replacement for intimacy. In same-sex male relationships the problem is doubled. Vulnerability is just as difficult. What will he think of me? Doesn’t he want me to be strong too? Since patterned masculinity, and that includes gay men, is afraid of emotional intimacy, both partners in gay male relationships enforce the fear. Neither man wants to hear about those feelings from his partner because that would trigger his own masculinity issues. And he himself doesn’t want to face, express, or even admit his deepest emotions. It’s better to keep them buried. It’s not that many gay men don’t express emotions more freely than their straight-acting brothers. Because they’re stereotyped as doing so, the straight world questions the possible masculinity of homosexuality. At its extreme, there are drama queens who always seem to be indulging their emotions, wearing them on their sleeves if not on their whole outfits. But dramatizing emotions is not being in touch with them either. It’s merely drama. It’s acting, not being. The drama itself is a coping mechanism, a way not to get to the hurts and feelings. The drama may get attention. It may feel better than therapy, support group confessions, or vulnerable sharing with affirming close friends. But it’s not healing. It’s just a way of expression that the stereotype of gay men permits. It’s another pattern that most straight-acting men just haven’t embraced. But it’s still a pattern to avoid feeling male hurts. Add to this the childhood beat or be beaten attitude of patterned masculinity, and the fear of one male partner becoming emotionally vulnerable with another male – or any other type of vulnerability for that matter. What results is an unspeakable fear of abandonment, rejection, ridicule, or humiliation. Masculinity as defined by our culture, then, is a major hindrance for the kind of close, intimate relationships human beings long for. Rejecting masculinity, however, is a scary notion. Few men do it. It takes internal work, which is hardly masculine at all. If I do it, the fear says, I’ll never find anyone in the entire galaxy who’ll love me. I’ll be alone forever and ever. So, the desperation for partnership keeps masculinity grinding on. Keeping it going maintains frustration in relationships. They’re never what they could be and what we so deeply desire: intimate, whole, unconditionally loving, and healing. What we need, then, is men of courage who are brave
enough to face these issues, who decide to reject
masculinity, and to explore and feel all the fear, hurt, and
confusion that this raises. Those heroes will lead us all
out of a wilderness in which we’ve become comfortable,
even though we’ve become comfortable far from the
promise land we dream of. On August 3, the voters of Missouri approved by over 70% a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. More Democrats than Republicans voted. There’s no way to soften this. This is no time to go into denial. The message was painfully clear: US voters will, without a doubt, enshrine discrimination against gay people in their foundational documents. They’ll do it by an overwhelming margin and feel proud and downright god-like for doing so. Some may think this is a Missouri or middle-of-America thing. It’s not. People who believe that aren’t paying attention to the American majority. Put to a vote in any state, same-sex marriage will probably be rejected, even overwhelmingly. Nationally, it would be the same. The Missouri win has emboldened anti-gay forces around the country. There were some LGBT politicos who thought it would be close. They were hopeful, but out-of-touch. Now, they find it hard to face the fact that people would do this to anyone in this century. Our nation isn’t ready for this issue. Both major Presidential candidates reject gay marriage, supporting similar amendments, Bush at the federal level and Kerry at the state. No senator in the debate over the Federal Marriage Amendment spoke publicly of their support for same-sex marriage. Those against the amendment argued instead of not enshrining the ban in the Constitution. Courts and politicians might save some states and the nation from such referenda. After the recent California Supreme Court decision nullifying the over 4,000 same-sex marriages in San Francisco, even there we’re not sure. There are, however, a number of certainties. The right-wing will be back no matter how often it loses a battle. At this time in history, likely voters aren’t on our side. This is the wrong issue and the wrong time to expect better. Neither the voters nor LGBT people are ready to tackle this. A major flaw of popular democracy is that “tyranny of the majority.” If the majority supports any issue, no matter how awful, it can pass. Adolph Hitler, remember, was popularly elected Chancellor of Germany. So, what can we learn from Missouri? First, LGBT organizations fought hard, probably the best fight they knew on this last-minute issue. It’s not that enough effort wasn’t put into it. We could argue for more, but at this time, effort’s not going to do the trick. Yard signs, phone calls, media ads, outside money, intelligent slogans, and the historically poor turn-out of progressives and gays at elections are no match for the grassroots, get-out-the-vote, scare tactics of fundamentalist churches and others who believe their talk of the fall of civilization, the silly idea that there are millennia of tradition of blissful, one man-one woman marriages, and their Bible-thumping. Second, money from national organizations didn’t put LGBT issues over the top. The reports that more than $300,000 of outside money was spent against the amendment and less than $10,000 by its supporters, are being spun as the victory of Missouri’s own little, home-grown David against the Goliath of outside, drooling-with-money, gay advocacy organizations. Giving to local and state-based organizations for the on-going, grassroots advocacy by those who know local causes is more effective when fighting in our own backyards, but less up-scale. National organizations have more glitz and larger budgets to appeal to big givers. Third this is a steep, uphill fight that’s more intense and long-term than flash-in-the-pan electoral politics that focus on one issue or ballot measure. The right-wing understands that. It began its push toward dominance in 1964 with the mailing list of losing presidential candidate Barry Goldwater. Fourth, to prepare us for this issue we need more than the tactics of responding defensively to the initiatives of the right-wing and more than expecting people to be convinced by rational argument, pleas for common sense equality, or guilt over the US being out of touch with the rest of the world. It’s a long-term, much slower, less glitzy strategy of broader education that has really just begun. It’s supporting programs that educate about homophobia, LGBT people, and discrimination everywhere, not just in progressive areas. People out there are waiting to learn from someone who cares to come to them. It’s, fifth, a return to our gay agenda so the right must respond. That means a refocus on, and additional support for, the tough, on-going work of state and local lobbying organizations. It means backing issues that are more important than, and will prepare for, same-sex marriage acceptance. First, every government body should add sexual orientation and gender identity to its list of non-discrimination categories. In the long run and after one loss after another, our persistence and the right-wing’s need to repeatedly respond to the fact that we keep coming back, will change voters and move us closer to the end of this anti-gay-marriage momentum. Focusing further on gay marriage won’t. It’s, sixth, demanding more of candidates we support, not begging for the crumbs of minimal recognition. Candidates must embrace our issues and not expect to receive support if they don’t vote for them. This means rejecting endorsement of a candidate who is our least awful alternative. We can vote for the lesser of two evils, but that doesn’t mean they should get our public endorsement. It’s, seventh, recognizing the connection of LGBT issues to the issues of others who remain unconvinced that we care about anything beyond our group or that we see the connections of LGBT issues to their experiences. We must champion the fight against sexism, white racism, and economic disparity. It’s, eighth, agreeing to never again critique our leaders without first offering them a hand and speaking with them about our concerns. It’s starting with a belief in them, assuming the best, to counteract our personal insecurities. It’s being thankful that something’s being tried, especially if we haven’t been a part of the attempt. Long-term change will make the world safe for all LGBT people, and eventually gay marriage. Will we get there soon? I don’t know. But as the old
Rabbi put it: “If you have a dream that can be
fulfilled in one lifetime, it’s too small.” The summer of... is about to become history. It's seen a whirlwind of pronouncements effecting LGBT people. When on June 26th the Supreme Court struck down laws banning private gay sex, the justices removed a major legal obstacle cited by anti-gay extremists to deny LGBT people equal rights. The celebration was overdue but short-lived. The angry losers in the high court judgment ratcheted up the rhetoric, defining the next battles in their culture wars. On May 15, Republican Representative Marilyn Musgrave of Colorado sponsored a Federal Marriage Amendment defining marriage for all federal, state and local government entities as Only of the union of a man and a woman. Right-wing politicians climbed all over themselves this summer to sign on. On June 17, the Southern Baptist Convention had announced that its new initiative would be to convince gay people to reject their Sinful, destructive lifestyle and become heterosexuals just like them. Saying their public face message should be Love the sinner but hate the sin. The largest protestant denomination, founded in 1845 to maintain slavery, continued to preach morality to the rest of us. It took the SBC 150 years from their founding, safely after it could have made a difference during the civil rights era in the south, to finally come to the conclusion that slavery is wrong. At their 1995 Atlanta meeting, they appeared to apologize, pledging to devote the first ten years of the new millennium to eradicating racism and ethnic conflict. Only 7 more years left and then they're done, I suppose. Yet, on July 2, conservative retailer Walmart joined more than 300 of the top 500 US companies by adding sexual orientation to its anti-discrimination policy for its 1.1 million employees. But the ?residentreed with the SBC anti-gay stance during a post-Supreme Court-decision press conference on July 30. Saying marriage was only for heterosexuals, he assured us that White House lawyers were already working on laws guaranteeing marriage? heterosexuality. He then followed with the apparently humble ?e?e all sinners.eryone knew he too was preaching that gay people are sinners because of their love of the same sex. The next day, Barney Frank accused Bush of using the gay marriage issue to divert attention from Bush? failures regarding Iraq, North Korea, Liberia, the deficit, unemployment, and congressional deadlock on prescription drugs. ?ith President Bush? popularity dropping and the serious problems confronting America worsening, the Administration seeks to divert attention by demagoguing on the issue of same-sex unions,e Massachusetts Congressman said. Simultaneously on July 31, the Republican Policy Committee released a policy paper prepared by Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona entitled "The Threat to Marriage from the Courts." It presents the official Republican strategy for preventing marriage equality, warning that nothing "will stop determined activists and their judicial allies [but] a constitutional amendment." Meanwhile, July polls reflected the barrage of negative attention the issue was getting following the Supreme Court decision. A CNN/USA Today poll reported that 48 percent of the respondents agreed that homosexual acts should be legal and 46 percent did not. The news headline was that public approval of homosexual activity was down from a May poll (60% approved, 35% disapproved.) Two separate July Gallup polls detected the shift against gay rights in those who tended to be conservatives, moderates, and people who attend church. Such blips in polling aren? unusual when an issue attracts attention, and probably less significant in the long run. The long-range picture is reflected in the fact that the polls also showed that people under age 50 are significantly more accepting of gays than their elders. Up north, on June 18 Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretian, after provincial courts rejected discrimination against same-sex unions, announced his party would draft a law legalizing same-sex marriage. Canadian right-wingers vowed to fight. On the religious front, on July 4 a leading Thai Buddhist monk, Phra Payom Kalayano, called for more rigorous testing of monastic candidates to screen out homosexual men. Thai leaders, official spokesmen said, are looking into Buddhists laws to eliminate monks with ?exual deviation,claring they ?ause trouble in the temples. On July 31, the Vatican? Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, took time off from dealing with the Church? own on-going, multi-million-dollar-settlements, sexual abuse mess to release a twelve-page edict condemning ?omosexual unionsd anyone who supports them. ?egal recognition of homosexual unions would obscure certain basic moral values and cause a devaluation of the institution of marriage.?o vote in favor of a law so harmful to the common good is gravely immoral," the document pontificated. A week later, the President of Dignity/USA, a national organization of people who are gay and still Catholic, labeled the Vatican? actions ?piritual terrorism, action by ?he elite old-boys-club. Not to be outdone, on August 7, right-wing televangelist Jerry Falwell announced that he was drawing a ?ine in the signd would put aside everything to devote time to passage of the constitutional ban on gay marriage. Still, on August 4, the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church, following a vote of approval at its General Convention in Minneapolis, voted to consecrate its first openly gay bishop, Gene Robinson. It did so in spite of a last minute smear campaign by conservatives that fizzled upon investigation of the phony allegations, and amidst threats of fracturing the 77-million member worldwide Anglican Communion. Given the anger and obsession of right-wing anti-gay people with this issue, division will no doubt occur. Not to be outdone by other news, the anti-gay American Family Association in August acknowledged that Michael Johnston, the chair of National Coming Out of Homosexuality Day and founder of Kerusso Ministries, had undergone ?oral fall. the tradition of a slew of ex-gay leaders Johnston, who had appeared in a national advertising campaign with his mother saying he? ?alked away form homosexuality through the power of Jesus Christ, accused of having unprotected sex with men while failing to disclose his HIV-positive status. So, it? already been quite a summer. And there? more to come. The movement for full acceptance and affirmation of LGBT people will continue to be successful if it sets the agenda. It can't merely find itself responding to the right wing. There must be a gay agenda. And it will be successful if those of us who think all is
well, the fight is over, and we just need to get along, pay
attention to what's been happening. Denial didn't get LGBT
people this far. The events of the summer of ... tell us
we've come a long way. But, they also tell us we can't
settle down now. Though we're getting closer, there's still
a long way to go. Whatever Happened to
Capitalism? “The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.” That assessment is from the late Alex Carey, Professor of Psychology and Industrial Relations at the University of New South Wales in Australia. He chronicled the practices of US businesses and their adoption in the United Kingdom and Australia in Taking the Risk Out of Democracy: Corporate Propaganda Versus Freedom and Liberty, a 1997 book with a forward by none other than Noam Chomsky. Where, however, should that quotation appear recently, but in a new book entitled Exporting America: Why Corporate Creed Is Shipping American Jobs Overseas. Published in August by no leftist thinker, it’s the most recent work of life-long Republican and CNN business commentator and host Lou Dobbs. That’s the same Lou Dobbs who advises investment in some of the same companies he’s now criticizing. Not surprisingly, Dobbs’ book hasn’t received much press in a media dominated by the corporations Dobbs critiques. Corporate America, as he points out, controls virtually every avenue of access to information for the US citizen by virtue of its media ownership and the dollars it spends in Washington. In an interview that same month with Bill Moyers, Dobbs admitted that he might be embracing a contradiction in such a scathing analysis of the corporate America he invests in, though he distinguished good companies to invest in from companies who were good corporate citizens. But his diagnosis was, and is, clear -- because the ordinary citizen has so little political influence, corporate America runs our government and our culture. Dobbs’ own words open with: “The power of big business over our national life has never been greater. Never have there been fewer business leaders willing to commit to the national interest over selfish interest, to the good of the country over that of the companies they head.” Those who are paying the price for what Dobbs calls corporate America’s “absolute indifference to the national interest” are the middle class. They are the only ones forced to compete unfairly in the global marketplace – multinational corporations can merely move their workforce overseas. “Do we want to destroy the middle class?” Dobbs told Moyers. “Because if we do let’s continue outsourcing jobs.” Dobbs’ own list of US companies confirmed to be outsourcing runs almost 30 pages. Other conservatives blame high taxation, government regulations, health care costs, and legal representation cost for these problems. Dobbs admits that these add about 22 percent to the cost of goods. But then he says: “So what.” That’s all a part of the cost of a better life and a better society. “Are we to absolutely turn back the clock on every achievement that we’ve made to improve the lives of our citizens in order for a U.S. multinational to get cheaper labor in Romania or the Philippines or India or China?” he told Moyers. “I don’t think so.” Dobbs focuses on corporate outsourcing, though the daily headlines tell us there’s more to the widespread failure of corporations to act as patriotic citizens. In the midst of a multi-year corporate crime wave with one corporate executive after another facing investigation, security and justice charges, and even jail time for the few who’ve failed to successfully manipulate our business-biased legal system, what we’re seeing is the underbelly of uncontrolled capitalism. Ethicists know that no one has been able to argue successfully that the free market, freewheeling corporate activities, or even capitalism per se, are moral. There must always be some other value to control profit-oriented institutions. In fact, if the major purpose a business has to justify its existence is to make money (“increase capital,” “pay a decent rate of return to investors,” “make a profit”), that’s a pretty weak moral argument for its existence. After all a conservative’s own hero, Jesus of Nazareth, pointed out: “You can’t serve God and money.” But who takes that literally, right? Dobbs and other critics from right to left label these moves by large business against democracy greed. I’m inclined instead to see greed as a symptom of fear. Multimillionaires who don’t feel secure with the millions they already pocket want more, as if more millions will protect them. But protect them from what? Protect them from their fears that our economic system is really quite fragile, and may quickly implode upon itself. These men at the top feel something none of us wants to face. They’re afraid that a bust is always on the horizon, always imminent, always threatening. And they fear that what capitalism has become in the form the US trumpets and spreads to others may fall like a house of cards. Of course, real men -- and these “captains of industry” are supposed to be role models of real manhood for us – can’t talk about their fears, particularly fears that reflect upon their careers and moneymaking competence. They’d not only scare the rest of us (if we could face the fact that we’re scared), but they’d prove that they’re incompetent at manhood. So that’s not the kind of language that will frame the problem that keeps us stuck in all that Dobbs and other critics decry. The language of criminality and sin is as deep as we can get – they must be criminals motivated by greed. Preaching to people to “stop being greedy” has never worked. The long-term solution is to uncover and face fears, not deny them. To respond to what we’re really afraid of but don’t otherwise want to face. To see how fear has dominated our society. To see that those fears have targeted others based on skin color, religion, class, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. To see that our fears are not only personal, but have been institutionalized in our system. To seek out other ways to live economically, value the work we do, and relate to fellow human beings. Fear work is the toughest work we can engage in.
It’s scary. It’s more easily diverted into other
issues. It’s counter a culture that is fear-based.
It’s digging down to the roots of things. It’s
life-renewing, and it will save us. Doesn’t Kerry Make a Good Loser? John Kerry was a nice, polite, above-the-dirty-fray-of-the-people (like good upper-class Eastern elites) loser. He conceded that George Bush had won even before all our votes were counted and certified. Now that’s civility and good breeding! The Democrats can’t blame Nader, poor fundraising, or a lack of grassroots get-out-the-vote efforts this time. But how many of them will blame gay people because they want equal marriage rights? In 2000 Democrats didn’t take responsibility for Gore’s loss. Democratic operatives talked among themselves about moving further to the right, as if doing that weren’t already part of their problem. They alienated, even shamed, their progressive base. The 2004 primaries began with the excitement of representatives of “the democratic wing of the Democratic Party.” But Democratic operatives did what they apparently do best. They lost their nerve and commitment to progressive values. They shifted emphases, positions, and strategies to do almost anything it took to win. They moved away from those inspired by the fiery truth-telling of Howard Dean. They settled for holding on to the anti-Bush vote. They defined an uninspiring alternative. Again they lost. And again they talk about moving more to “the center” to win. The Republicans continued on, becoming more devious in the steady promotion of their agenda. They moved further to the right, and followed the advice of “the President’s Brain,” Karl Rove: Mobilize your base. Don’t worry about swing voters. The political climate has changed and it’s clear Democratic operatives were left behind. Even their hero, Bill Clinton couldn’t win today. He’s no paragon of clear, un-wavering values. Kerry’s concession speech was also very civil and out of touch. He conceded, he said, to unite the country -- as if Bush’s supporters were going to waste a microsecond considering more moderate, even liberal, ideas. How naïve can Kerry be? He’d learned nothing from this campaign. He never got it. What’s the Matter with Kansas author Thomas Frank predicts that in typical form Democratic leadership will move further to the right and be surprised in two or four more years when, “poorer and angrier,” the voters will “deal the ‘party of the people’ yet another stunning blow.” Frank might be right. Conservative Nevada Democratic Senator Harry Reid, as Democratic Senate Whip, is poised to replace Tom Dashchle as minority leader. This proposed new head of Democratic Senate leadership opposes abortion. He backed the current Iraq invasion as well as the Persian Gulf War. He supported President Bush's tax cuts and clashed with environmental groups over Western mining issues. The Republicans understand, and the exit polls shout loudly and clearly, that the issue that motivated voters more than ever was “moral values.” More than the Iraq invasion, the economy, or their own economic self-interest, people want candidates who look as if they stand for something deeper than just getting elected. The Republicans have convinced the majority that they’re the party of consistent values. They’ve also convinced them that Democrats are relativistic, change-your-values-if-it-takes-that-to-win, opportunists who don’t stand up for their historical constituencies, but still expect their votes. If the Democrats don’t decide to speak clearly and consistently about progressive values, if they continue to shift their message to the right to attract so-called swing voters, if they’re not principled enough to lose for something they value, then the Republicans are right. The Democrats will spend more money, poll more people, nominate wishy-washy, milk-toast candidates, and never control the debate. In its search for candidates with values, the country will continue to prefer the values of the right-wing because that’s all they’ll see. If the Democrats really believe in progressive values and refuse to compromise them, they have a chance to inspire others to believe. They can be a convincing party of values. Progressives’ values really do speak to people. In the most important book of the political season, Berkeley linguist George Lakoff lists them: caring and responsibility carried out with strength; protection, fulfillment in life and fairness; freedom, opportunity and shared prosperity; community, service and cooperation; trust, honesty and open communication. (Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate. Chelsea Green Publishing, 2004) Conservatives learned with Barry Goldwater’s seemingly disastrous trouncing in the 1964 presidential election, that you must have an agenda of values, you must speak of your values, you must lose for your values, and you must continue to push your values without compromise and with message discipline. Then you’ll change the political climate in the long run. They’ve also learned that holding to their values is more important than polite campaigning and civility. So when George Bush “reaches out” as uniter, it’s to bring Kerry supporters in to promote Bush’s unchanging agenda. His victory speech spoke of uniting the country. That’s right, uniting it around the “capital” he had “earned” and was anxious to spend. It won’t take liberals and progressives as long to take back the debate if we take advantage of what Republicans have learned over the last forty years. But it will require us to have, trust in, and lose for our values. It will test the Democratic Party to see if its leaders really can stand uncompromisingly for its principles. Personally for us, it will test whether we have a strong self-image and integrity of belief, not mere strategies as if winning is our ultimate concern. Gay people are a parable for the Democrats. They’ve died because they value the right to love those they love. They’ve been thrown out of their families, jobs, communities, and religious institutions. They’ve faced ridicule, the shunting aside of their issues, and demands for understanding from so-called political friends. The least the Democratic Party can do is lose an election
or two because they’ve stood for values such as
equality, compassion, and justice for all. How Democrats
treat gay issues is a clear barometer of whether they really
believe in something other than just maintaining an
institution called the Democratic Party at all costs. Liberal Religion Peers Out
of the Closet The signs are there. The Unitarian Universalist Church experimented successfully with advertising. This “Uncommon Denomination,” whose liberal faith has saved many a desperate ex-fundamentalist soul, is asserting its presence. The United Church of Christ has gotten more publicity than ever with its commercials proclaiming that it turns no one away. When NBC and CBS refused to air the UCC’s boldest commercial, they proved that the ads are what our sick nation needs. It took decades for liberal religion to think of itself highly enough to open its closet door and begin to challenge the monopoly on Christianity trumpeted by right-wing churches. Maybe the triumph of right-wingers in these last presidential and congressional races finally made it sink in. Liberal religion realized that it had better speak up or forever be shut out of national debate. Liberal religion has always been there. Even before the beginnings of “Fundamentalism” in the early twentieth century, religious liberalism promoted progressive social change – fighting for abolition, women’s suffrage, and worker’s welfare. Until the fundamentalist backlash it was even on the ascendancy. The Christian right dominated radio and television from their infancy with radio evangelists, and TV preachers. Somehow religious liberalism was left behind politically as formerly other-worldly conservatives decided to form a Christian Coalition that could turn the US into a theocracy with religious conservatives in charge. There was hesitancy on the liberal side of the Christian Church. Maybe it was liberal guilt. Maybe it was the belief that modern life would automatically leave traditional beliefs behind so little needed to be done. Maybe it was the impression that spreading the word was somehow low-class. Whatever it was, the rise of the religious right politically enforced the broad-based impression that fundamentalism is Christianity. The popularity of fundamentalist beliefs in the US tells us much about the society we live in. The idea that most people would believe that they were born totally depraved, in original sin, or flawed beyond the capacity to change things by themselves, is a glaring example. What’s amazing is that such a doctrine would even appeal to people. It must strike a familiar cord, or they’d reject it as perverse, insulting, and grotesque. It must fit with the way the majority of children are brought up in our culture that so many would come to believe that in themselves they’re hopelessly doomed and fully deserving of unending and unspeakably horrible punishment. Then such religion takes over our lives by providing the salvation from our evil selves. Someone else, it says, must prove we’re good, since we can’t. And, that someone else has no idea what it’s like to be as rotten as we are. Fortunately, that someone is inclined to like us in spite of our worthlessness. That’s the core of right-wing Christian theology. It’s built not on the idea that its god loves us because we are valuable but that we would have no value if its god did not love us. We’d deserve unbearable suffering. What kind of country must ours be when the majority of us feel so negative about ourselves that such claims are popularly welcomed? How hurt we must be deep within our psyches that even the so-called “saved” among us still devalue themselves as essentially worthy only of the endless torture they call hell. The doctrine of hell strikes an emotional cord. It’s a familiar idea because we’ve experienced our hells on earth. The doctrine of a god as a punishing father who also believes we all deserve unending physical, emotional, and psychological abuse, sounds like the nightmare of an abused child who’s been told they deserve the violent punishment an abusive parent dishes out. Such religious and spiritual abuse appeals because it’s familiar. Most parenting in our culture fits the definition of “poisonous pedagogy” about which Alice Miller writes in books such as For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence (1990). It’s not that every child was physically abused. Yet most grown adults would rather not face the fact that their parents, who were taught to do so by their parents, used parenting methods that internalized in our citizens their limited value, their worthlessness outside of adult acceptance, the fact that they should “Honor their father and mother” no matter what, or that they’re unworthy of respect or being taken seriously. Note how the right wing fears changing these patterns. That’s why it criticizes “over-indulgence” of children, so-called “New Age” affirmations of humanity’s innate goodness, or anyone who suggests children have something to teach an adult world that’s run by leaders who sound like punishing parents. Even the most liberal among us get caught sounding like our punishing parents, particularly when children won’t be seen and not heard. Miller is blunt: “For some years now, there has been proof that the devastating effects of the traumatization of children take their inevitable toll on society – a fact that we are still forbidden to recognize.” Too much would have to be admitted should we consider this too seriously. Too much personal pain would need to be felt. It’s easier to just believe we all deserve hell. But liberal religion says none of this has to be, there is another way. It sees the problem as systemic, rooted in the teachings of the cultural institutions that we worship. It doesn’t see it rooted in the Divine or the Universe. Liberal religion sees that things can change and that we’re capable of changing things. We don’t have to wait for some inhuman cataclysm. We don’t have to believe that war, poverty, and crime are inevitable and will always be with us. It’s a radically different way of looking at things.
It’s just that liberal religion hasn’t acted as if
it really believed. It’s been hesitant to stand firmly,
publicly, and boldly on the alterative vision it offers.
It’s been too hesitant to speak up and proudly claim
that right-wing theology is plain wrong. Maybe liberal
religion too hasn’t felt worthy enough to do so --
until now. If We Could Just Get Over the
Liberal Guilt I watched the TV panel uneasily, cringing. The right-wing minister of a suburban mega-church had already received a lot of media attention for pushing an amendment to a state constitution to ban gay marriage. Now he was debating an intelligent, kind liberal minister. The liberal was losing. He was no TV match for the right-winger. That’s not because the liberal didn’t have his facts straight, or his arguments weren’t more cogent. He was, it seemed, arguing on solid grounds to keep US society open for the multiplicity of voices on moral values. He was even prepared for arguments using the Bible. And he was an experienced writer – writing a column for a mainstream daily on the diversity of religious understandings of human issues. The problem was, he was arguing as a nice liberal. Unlike the right wing preacher, he didn’t interrupt, put down his opponent’s arguments as mere “parroting” of some hackneyed position, or respond by saying that that’s just how you people argue. He was polite, reasoned, and inoffensive to everyone. And, as a progressive friend of mine commented, he was eaten alive by the right-winger. Though the right-wing minister continued to put down both liberal panelists with arrogance and provocative remarks, no one was ready to point that out, confront him, or, frankly, offend him. No one would say, “Wow, to make those statements, sounds arrogant and condescending,” even though he was arrogant and condescending. The liberals were awfully, awfully nice. Certainly, I’d rather have nice. I’d pick nice people as friends any day. But media expectations have changed. The right wing itself has seen to that. Nice has to be redefined. It’s not the same as being fair, after all. Right wing people speak as the convinced. They argue as if they have no doubt at all. They don’t hem and haw. They don’t deal in subtleties. They get their key talking points from the gangs at Virginia Beach and Lynchburg. They’re trained in soundbites – much of right wing religious talk really is jargon and soundbites. Notice how they always come back to the same, often coded, wording that the spin-doctors of their think tanks have carefully worked out for them. Liberals, on the other hand, try to speak in nuance. They weigh the alternatives, knowing correctly that there often are more than two sides to any issue. Yet in this day of seven-second soundbites, which do you think people remember most? The very valid points made by a liberal who weighs the subtleties: “Well, there’s this to consider and then this, if not this? Or the simplistic right-wing soundbite: “It’s Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.” What’s your favorite liberal soundbite that you hear repeated throughout the country by most liberals? Liberals often seem to be ineffective because they’re plagued by a liberal guilt. They don’t want to repeat offenses from the past. They know offences existed and don’t want to deny them. They know there’s been discrimination and know that often their own group has historically been the culprits in white racism, sexism, heterosexism, even classism – though classism is tough for many otherwise liberal folk. Liberals don’t want to repeat the sins of their ancestors, nor do they want to be dogmatic and absolutist the way right-wingers are. They recognize that we’re all human beings struggling together. Yet, there’s something else. It’s as if they need to atone for the oppressions of the past by avoiding anything that would be offensive to someone in the present, even if the offended is continuing the oppression. Guilt-feeling liberals believe that the right wing should be given equal time for their arguments – they’ll even provide it, as if the right wing doesn’t already dominate most of the time in most of the media. They believe that the views of the right wing should actually be respected. They want to appear understanding about the personal circumstances that produce such bigotry in people. They’re afraid that they might come across as too dogmatic, or that they believe too much in absolute values, or that they’ll appear just as arrogant as the right-wing. And they don’t want to offend the people who are still offending them. Guilt-feeling liberals cringe when another does state the truth. Presidential hopeful John Kerry was probably accurate when he was caught off the record March 11, saying the Republican attack machine is: “The most crooked, you know, lying group I’ve ever seen.” Republican responses were predictably critical because, you know, they’ve never ever say such things themselves. Yet liberals themselves cringe when anyone says: “The Emperor has no clothes.” They’re some of the quickest critics of more radical left-wing activists. So when ACT-UP staged its outrageous protests because people were dying and the Reagan government wasn’t paying any attention, many nice liberals stepped back in criticism of such tactics. These critics would have done the same, I suppose, during the Stonewall rebellion. Who needs right-wing critics when we do it ourselves? Let’s face it. Radical activists get attention. Just as Topeka Rev. Fred Phelps’ “God Hates Fags” tactics make Jerry Falwell more appealing to conservatives, so left-wing activists often prepare the way for more moderate liberals to be heard because “we’d better do something before they burn down our cities.” The result of liberal guilt and its accompanying hesitancy is that liberals appear to believe in nothing sincerely. They act as if values such as equal opportunity and treatment for all human beings, ending the abuse of everyone, and trying to do no harm are negotiable. They act as if all values and ideas should be respected no matter how destructive and hurtful they are. Liberals can be effective again. It will be when
we’re guilt-free enough to act as if we really believe
in our values and to our death won’t compromise them,
when we talk and live as if equality, fairness and full
acceptance of all human beings are values we will not
negotiate -- even if our forcefully saying so offends those
who disagree. Stop whatever you’re doing. Drop whatever you’re reading – even if it’s one of my books. The most important political book of the year is out and it’s a $10 paperback of only 124 pages. (So, you know Bill Clinton didn’t write it.) I thought Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America (Metropolitan Books) was the most insightful book of 2004. It’s still number two, but the new book by well-known Berkeley Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics, George Lakoff, has trumped it. Entitled Don’t Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate (Chelsea Green), this popularly written manual with a forward by Howard Dean, is, as the cover says, “The Essential Guide for Progressives.” Do I sound excited? You bet. Not just because I agree with Lakoff’s approach and have been arguing for it wherever I go. Lakoff has well-established credentials academically with his first four books on language and politics from the University of Chicago. Don’t Think of an Elephant is a practical collection of recent essays that, if liberals and progressives follow its advice, will not only re-empower them but enable them to take over public discourse the way right-wing conservatives have done over the last 30 years. Lakoff has advised Democrats and progressives. At times they’ve taken his advice. If John Kerry had done so more fully, his frame of reference would have dominated the last days of the 2004 presidential campaign. For example, when the Bushites revived the term “liberal” and accused Kerry of being more liberal than the right-wing’s stereotype, Ted Kennedy, this was no time to discuss liberalism, no matter how accurately, or to merely say labels aren’t useful. It was time to frame the debate in terms of liberal values, not conservative ones. What if Kerry had responded: “It’s embarrassing to many people that the President of the United States of America can’t defend his record and stoops to name-calling.” For the rest of the season the Bushites would have had to respond to this re-framing of their action as childish name-calling. Kerry would have re-framed the use of the term and done so in terms of understandable values – it is name-calling and it is childish. That’s not Lakoff’s example, but it reflects his argument, an argument that liberals and progressives fail to get. How you frame the debate is more important than the facts, the statistics, or the information. Conservatives know this – he shows how they’ve worked at it for the last 30 years. For example, in response to John Kerry’s discussion of the need for a “global test” in order to determine if we’re going to war, the Bushites didn’t say: “We don’t need anyone else’s permission.” They used a value-laden image: “We don’t need a permission slip from anyone.” What image does this raise? The need of young children to get a permission slip from a school authority to go to the bathroom. They placed the issue in their own frame. Lakoff finds the key to understanding what’s going on in the two different models of the family applied to the nation and the world. Right-wingers speak from a “strict father model” of doing things where a strong, strict father is needed to protect the family in a dangerous world, teach his children right from wrong through punishment, and instill discipline in his charges who will be rewarded in prosperity. Lakoff shows how this is applied to every issue – foreign policy, war, the economy. One of the mistakes liberals make is failure to recognize that this frames the basic agenda of conservatives. All issues for them come back to it. Liberals and progressives, he argues, frame the world in terms of a “nurturant parent” model which is not masculinity-centered and emphasizes opportunity, fairness, open, two-way conversation, community building, and trust. These two models are in conflict. If liberals get caught up in individual issues without thinking, speaking, and acting in terms of the models they value, they lose the broader cultural momentum. In a chapter entitled “What’s in a Word? Plenty, if It’s Marriage,” Lakoff applies this thinking to the debate over same-sex marriage. From the perspective of framing, he points out why right-wingers say “gay marriage” over “same-sex marriage.” He points out how side-stepping the issue by John Kerry and Howard Dean make little sense. Most crucial is that what is at stake in this battle of the cultural wars is which of these sets of values will dominate our society, and the right-wing knows that. Liberals may be baffled when the right speaks of defending marriage. No individual’s marriage will be affected when gay men and lesbians are included. What conservatives see threatened is their strict, punishing father model. That’s what they’re talking about, not just marriage, its material benefits, or the use of the word. And they’re right. Even same-sex civil unions create families that cannot be traditional, strict father families. That’s the issue, and it can only be addressed by asserting liberal values that arise out of its own frame. We need, Lakoff says, to redefine what it means to speak of the sanctity of marriage. “Talk sanctity first,” he recommends. As an ideal, marriage is “the sanctity of love and commitment.” Then we need to reframe the debate in terms of government interference in human freedom, and keep repeating that argument. “I believe in equal rights, period. I don’t think the state should be in the business of telling people who they can or can’t marry. Marriage is about love and commitment, and denying lovers the right to marry is a violation of human dignity.”(p. 50) There’s practical advice throughout. The chapter on “How to Take Back the Public Discourse” gives eleven things progressives can do. The final chapter on “How to Respond to Conservatives” lists 28 guidelines. I’d even settle for our political heroes just
getting one of them down: “Don’t move to the
right…. It alienates the progressive base and it helps
conservatives by activating their model in swing
voters.” How to Wreck a Relationship. Part
One of an Occasional Series. The Desperation to Be a
Couple Have you noticed that in our society, relationships fall apart right and left? It doesn’t matter whether they’re gay or straight. The marriage that LGBT people seek legal sanction for is an institution with a 50% failure rate. That poor record in itself would earn failing marks for any institution. But that doesn’t mean that all of the still married 50% are extremely happy. Take a look around you at straight relationships. How many of those that have made it so far are truly fulfilling for the human beings rattling around in them? One of the seldom-examined reasons why relationships fail is that our culture doesn’t prepare us to develop the kind of deep, intimate, unconditionally loving partnerships we really want. Our culture keeps relationships dysfunctional because dysfunctional relationships sell its products. Contentment and unconditional love don’t. They’re counter consumption. So, we’ve been bombarded with dysfunctional messages from every angle about how to get, have, keep, and define relationships. Many psychologists do point out that these messages are unhealthy. But the messages linger because they teach values that sell us a lot of stuff. They convince us that what we really need are purchasable preparations for our relationships, purchasable coping mechanisms to use while in relationships, and purchasable soothing distractions to use when ending them. Our culture talks endlessly about something it calls love, but it just isn’t love- or human-oriented. It’s oriented to coping. Its values sell us what we need just to get by, to put up with, and to settle for something far less than a relationship that will feed our souls. Here every so often, then, we’ll examine each of the cultural messages that ultimately hurt our relationships, cause us to get into bad ones, keep us in relationships that aren’t working, and teach us to seek in committed partnerships what partnerships really can’t give us after all. The primary and most devastating of these messages is also the one most mainstreamed. It’s everywhere. And it’s the most difficult to let go. Our fears of loneliness and our abandonment issues won’t let us give it up. We are told, and we deeply believe, that we must be in a committed relationship with another person in order to have a fulfilling life. On the one hand, we’d probably all say that a single person’s life can be fulfilling. One is a whole number, and all that. On the other hand, we’re so conditioned to put all our eggs in the coupling basket, that much, maybe most, of what we do in life has as its goal to find someone. We’re always looking for that chance to attract our next hope. “Where can I meet someone?” “How can I meet someone?” “Who’ll be coming to the get-together that’s worth pursuing?” “It’s always the same old people at that place.” “Is there anyone out there for me?” It’s a desperate search. For some people that’s more obvious – we talk about them being so desperate. But for most of us, the destructive message still says that our greatest joy, our greatest fulfillment, our greatest chance for happiness and contentment is found in finding Mr. or Ms. Right. That one person and the experience of coupling with that one person, we believe, hope, and pray, will once and for all save us from our loneliness. We won’t have to fear being alone this weekend, or in our old age -- when we’re sure that we’ll be so pitifully decrepit that we won’t be able to attract anyone from any species in the whole universe. That one person, we believe, will provide the only true and deep meaning anyone can ever have. After all, what else is life, especially the good times, for, then to share it with one other person? Of course, a relationship with that one person will also prove that we’re really worthwhile after all. We must be, because, look, we can get and keep someone. We’re not like those other losers who can’t find a partner. These feelings put far too much pressure on any relationship. They set us up for failure. They guarantee our disappointment and mis-directed frustration and anger. They result in a growing sense that we’re settling for much less than we want from our partners. They prepare us for the grass-is-always-greener feelings that move us from one temporarily fulfilling relationship and its slow collapse to another, and then another. If we’ve been absorbing the anti-gay cultural messages, we’re also supposed to blame these problems on our sexual orientation. But this isn’t a gay thing. Our critically ill culture just doesn’t want to change, to learn how to sell products without it, or to fully admit that buying things not only won’t fulfill us, but will drive us deeper into hopelessness, if not debt. So, it tries, instead, to convince us that these partnering problems are just a part of the unfulfilling nature of homosexuality. And, surprisingly, many LGBT people believe that. So, when we’re ready to change things, we go into therapy, seek supportive groups of people, or decide on our own to reject this message, not because we’re changing something gay about us. We do it because we want to savor something different than society’s junk food recipe for human relationships. We do it because we know better than to settle for the straight-acting relationships that frustrate straight people. We do it, in other words, for the same reason that some heterosexual people reject societally-conditioned straight relationships for healthy heterosexual ones. To be best prepared for a committed partnership, marriage, or whatever we want to call coupling, we need to be deeply happy with singleness. This can’t just be talk. It must be a contentment with not having a partner and a desire to do things for other reasons than to find someone. We must get to the place where we just aren’t invested in the question. Life must become a chance to live our own passions because we enjoy them, to be interested in people because all people are fascinating beings, to be a friend to others, to develop a circle of close friends based on being supportive, caring, persistent, and loving friends of each other not on any partnering potential, and to find a community we can nurture. Then, as we live our lives with the interesting people around us, we might meet someone who we can join together with us in one of those committed partnerships. We’d be ready for it. But, we might not ever become a couple. And we’re
healthy if all else in our life tells us that that’s
more than okay. How to Wreck a Relationship: An
Occasional Series Part 2, The Fear of Getting Close to One’s Own Sex Of all the ways that our culture sets up our relationships to be less than they could be -- particularly close, partnered relationships -- the fact that it installs homophobia in every one of us is one of the most critical. Because the core definition of homophobia is seldom examined personally, we don’t recognize its effects. We rarely notice how it hurts both heterosexual and homosexual relationships. Be aware, then, that what we’re really supposed to learn from birth from the people and institutions around us, what we’re expected to internalize beyond question, is the core of homophobia. And the core meaning of homophobia is the fear of getting close to one’s own sex. This fear is a deep, internal, culturally conditioned approach to life, oneself, and others that pervades our society. More often, though, we use the word homophobia to refer to what are actually its symptoms and effects -- discrimination, oppression, hatred, fear, and prejudice toward people who don’t appear to be straight or who identify as something other than heterosexual. At times we use it for the fear that I myself might be gay, or even the fear that homosexuals or homosexuality will destroy me, or the whole world as we believe it is. But the basic fear our culture really wants us to internalize -- the fear that lies behind and within all these others -- is the fear of intimacy between women and between men. Many of our culture’s institutions and approaches to life are built upon this fear, from advertising to investing to producing and consuming. Anything that can obscure the natural closeness people have with each other because we’re fellow humans, will allow advertisers to sell us things to make us feel we can purchase the closeness we naturally expected in early childhood -- before we were scared out of it. In heterosexual relationships, this fear makes the pressure to couple with the other sex an even more desperate matter. All of the closeness needs that would otherwise be met by the entire human race cannot, or should not, be met by one-half of it, according to this message. So, for people who identify as heterosexual, closeness must be fulfilled only by the half that doesn’t include them. But it’s not even that easy for the heterosexual. An accompanying message says that all closeness needs can only be met in a limited, culturally approved way -- by only one other person of that other half of all humanity. All closeness needs, then, must be met by him or her, and no one else. You cannot be close to the rest of the human race. Further still, the culture defines closeness based on its limited definition of masculinity. It’s therefore something ultimately fulfilled only in one activity -- the sexual act. Fear of closeness, then, is fear of being sexual with the wrong people. Fear of closeness with one’s own sex is fear that I’d have to be sexual with another person who has a similar set of genitals as I have. Since no single person can meet all of a human being’s needs for closeness, this stifling collection of messages piles up in any intimate partnering relationship we are trying to have. It guarantees that there will be an underlying resentment that that other person hasn’t fulfilled my needs, a gnawing sense of being unfulfilled, a settling for less than I was supposed to hope for in a relationship, and, finally, the need to move on to look for that someone else whom our culture says will finally be the one who can fulfill this impossible task. This is a setup for disillusionment and failure. Our dominant conservative culture never responds to these relationship failures by analyzing any of its core messages that keep it sick. It responds by looking for scapegoats to blame for its miserable inability to create fulfilling relationships. That way it isn’t forced to examine its homophobia. What gay people are here for culturally is to take the fall for straight culture’s miserable relationships. Ah yes, it’s their fault. It’s not something down deep that we’ve got to change. Since lesbians and gay men have been raised in this same culture, they too have been taught to be homophobic. They’ve internalized a set of homophobic messages that hurt same-sex relationships. They seldom seriously examine these messages as well, even though writers have pointed out examples of internalized homophobia in the gay community for decades. Imagine the problem for gay people. Fear of getting close to one’s own sex is a setup for difficulty when one finds oneself attracted to one’s own sex for companionship, love, partnering, sex, and commitment. It gnaws at relationships, lurking deeply behind an inability to trust one’s partner in matters as diverse as sharing finances, space, sex, romance, and friendships. Coupled with the idea that only one person in an intimate partnership can fulfill a person’s needs, we respond by assuming that few if any can be met by the other sex. In fact, in reaction to the oppression of heterosexism, we might over-react with an inability to relate closely to the other sex. Though many gay men have relationships with women, and lesbians with men, many others write the other sex off as if they are from other planets, or as if they just must have a problem with the other sex. After all, we’ve been brought up to believe we’re not just different but “opposite” sexes who come from as far away as Mars and Venus. When we add our culture’s teachings around sexism, there are often difficulties with gay men and lesbians working together that can break out in open opposition. This helps ensure difficulties with working together to change a culture that hurts us all. Fear of same-sex closeness makes us suspicious that the partner with whom we’ve become somewhat vulnerable will take advantage of that vulnerability, think less of us, cheat on us sexually, hurt us emotionally, or leave us. It may make us cling desperately to a partner to try to counteract this. These fears really, however, reflect the fear of abandonment, ridicule, humiliation, or even violence that helped install homophobia in us in the first place. Homophobia, then, is more than a condition that’s
acted out in the oppression of LGBT people. It’s a
condition that needs examining and healing by everyone no
matter what their sexual orientation in order to create
relationships that can be open, vulnerable, and close.
It’s another case of fighting back by choosing to act
on the fact that what we’ve learned can be unlearned if
we want to do the sometimes difficult work that will improve
and strengthen our relationships. For many grown kids, standing in front of the Mother’s Day cards at the store is an exercise of mixed feelings – hope, sadness, love, guilt, fear, denial, and confusion. Finding the one card that says exactly how you feel without giving in to Hallmark-induced fantasies about the perfect mother is a challenge as difficult as any we may face. A friend of mine who’s an English professor claims that there are no good poems about mothers in all of English literature. They all end up like those sentimental greeting card rhymes. Our mothers have generally done the best they could with what they were given about motherhood from a culture that’s filled with messages that extol motherhood while taking away as much from mothers as possible. And all the conservatives’ high-minded blather about valuing motherhood is suspiciously empty to mothers who suspect that something else is really going on around them. We certainly talk a good line about the value of motherhood, but our real values are betrayed by the fact that we never use mothering as a model for dealing with real problems. In a culture that still doesn’t really value women as men’s equals, we rather brag about putting women and mothers on pedestals. Balancing up there precariously, they’re supposed to appreciate the fact that they’re shelved up on those narrow pillars. Why, then, would they ever want powerful equality, pay, or monetary benefits? Instead of “mothering” problems, we use political, economic and social models that replicate punishing fathers and masculine ideals fundamental to a war-based economy. We don’t “mother” our issues. We have wars on everything – drugs, violence, terrorism, illiteracy, poverty, AIDS, delinquency, crime. And like well-conditioned males, we keep on warring whether we win any of the “wars” or not. Like our other poorly paid professionals who also deal with children and the needy, mothers are expected to settle for “fulfillment.” In fact, women are taught that it’s motherhood that will ultimately fulfill them as women. And that should be enough. Instead of mainstream culture embracing the fact that healthy psychological fulfilment is not found in others but in oneself, women are told that their fulfillment needs will be met in bearing and raising children. Society pictures the ideal woman as the mother who has sacrificed her own life goals, dreams, personal career, emotional and romantic life, and aspirations for a husband’s fulfillment and for children. To the extent that this doesn’t work, instead of therapy or group support, the common response is for mothers to apply more pressure on children to fulfill women’s needs. Without another life beyond their children, without the financial and retirement security of a pension, without investments except those of a husband who could leave them for someone else, all their hope relies on the loyalty and emotional dependence of their kids. Then women are told that the ideal mother stays at home with the children, and preferably home schools them. There’s little praise for the stay-at-home father and significantly less blame for failing fathers, but much concern about mothers ‘balancing” work and children so as to be Super Moms. And the implication is always that the mother’s (not the father’s) career should suffer. The more pressure we put on mothers instead of fathers, the more mothers end up being the communicators of unhealthy fulfillment messages from family and society. And, as the closer parent, the more they’ll get most of the derision for what are really society’s, and then children’s, issues. Instead of realizing that our system’s ongoing sexism is pressuring women into this role, we blame women who do attempt to find healthy alternatives that could actually help them be whole and complete women and, most likely, healthier mothers. So, children often grow up with a mix of resentment and attachment toward their mothers and other women – particularly if they’re authority figures. Children want to believe the best about mom. They want their relationship with their mothers to be better. But they know how easily the one who installed the emotional buttons in them can push them. They too are really feeling the fact that mom was taught that you and I had to fulfill her. Blaming mothers, rather than the system, for this element of sexism, is reflected in jokes about mothers, mother-in-laws, and women. It’s codified in the stereotypes about Jewish mothers, Italian mothers, or you-fill-in-the-blank mothers. But it’s based in the unexamined realization by children that, instead of being here to live their own lives, a child’s life goals must include fulfilling their mothers’ otherwise unfulfilled lives. On top of the usual motherhood confusion, there are the lingering messages of white racism that picture “traditional family values” as very white. Mothers of people of color are assumed to be victims of incomplete families, over-functioning, or limited by their need to be stopgaps in supposedly dysfunctional non-white cultures. Even though statistics show that African American parents spend more time than white parents doing homework with their children, that reality never seems to make it into the white-affirming stereotypes of the African American family. So mothers are blamed for the problems with our children. Fathers are faulted for not being leaders of their families – affirming that masculinity-style leadership preference. Fathers are faulted for not being good disciplinarians, that is good punishers, maybe even because they didn’t hit their children enough. But Mothers are blamed more broadly for not passing on traditional values, not staying home or not staying home “enough,” not making their home a comfortable place, putting their child into day care, being “selfish” about their own lives, acting in their own interests, being too strong or domineering, being too close to their sons, being jealous of their daughters, and on and on and on. All of these arise out of stereotypes about women and the way we condition women out of their full humanity. And if a child turns out to be LGBT, who is at fault? Conservative theories that are still pushed by so-called ex-gay ministries and the “therapies” of anti-gay counselors who are out of touch with all mainstream psychology, blame bad parenting in a way that often sounds like the blaming of mothers. So, given the pressures placed on women, the hypocritical
lip service for motherhood, the inhuman expectations placed
on mothers, and the blaming of mothers who step out of the
role for their own health, it’s no wonder Mother’s
Day is often a mix of feelings that really point to the deep
changes our society needs in its value structure and
it’s on-going conditioning of women. It’s What Bush and John Paul
Agree on That’s Abusive On June 4, “President” Bush met with Pope John Paul II. There was much on which they couldn’t agree – the war on Iraq for one thing. But they agreed without any hesitation that same-sex marriage, and a woman’s right to abortion, lumped together with prostitution and pornography, must be opposed. The Pope announced that these evils, including gay marriage, don’t represent love, caring, commitment, or attempts at human closeness. They express nothing more than “self-centered demands.” You have to admit, the leader of Roman Catholicism has always been clear about this. At best LGBT humans should be pitied, but frankly to him gay folks are only one-dimensional – they’re greedy, uncontrolled, self-centered miscreants who don’t care if they destroy humanity to fulfill their sick desires. In a later audience with US bishops, he declared that “erroneous yet pervasive thinking” that supports same-sex marriage must be fought courageously by “evangelizing culture and promoting Christian values in society and public life.” Speaking of others, but never his own supporters, John Paul said: “Ambiguous moral positions, the distortion of reason by particular interest groups . . . are just some examples of a perspective of life which fails to seek truth itself and then abandons the search for the ultimate goal and meaning of human existence.” Publicly “The Leader of the Free World” couldn’t disagree. On this issue they could sit together, smiling and supportive. Though some want to believe that Bush doesn’t really, really agree, at least for political reasons Bush couldn’t be happier. At best LGBT people make great pawns for him and his political friends. At worst they’re everything the Pope says, deserving this-worldly and afterlife “punishment.” Yet, there’s so much that’s unspoken that makes these two men two-faced enemies. They just don’t want their deep antagonism brought to the other’s, or anyone’s, attention when they’re supposed to look as if they play nicely together. Even their gay followers don’t want to face this squarely. Right-wing Protestants like George Bush don’t believe the Pope is any more than a political ally in their culture wars. They write off the Roman Catholic Church as a cult of people mostly going to hell who sinfully obey a decrepit old man who erroneously thinks he’s a descendent of the Apostle Peter. In their Sunday Schools, they use the Catholic Church as a prime example of people who are eternally lost because they’re trying “to be saved by works.” The political influence of the Roman Church is useful to them when they need it. Being seen with the head of all those Catholic voters is a great photo opportunity. And the National Catholic Reporter reports Bush actually asked the Pope for political help. Turning back the advances of the Second Vatican Council in many ways, this Pope is nervous about his Protestant bedfellows. They don’t do mass correctly. They ignore the Virgin Mary. Some of them believe in women pastors. Politically the Pope may often have to bite his tongue when referring to political allies who refuse to recognize the true Church, but they are, in his mind, ultimately outside the fold. Both men pose a similar dilemma for LGBT people who want to stay with either the Roman Church or the Republican Party. Their leaders, John Paul and George Bush, don’t want gay people fully accepted as other human beings. They see them as problems for their institutions and wish they'd just go back into their closets. They certainly don’t want them to be happily married. And they both believe gay people should just stop having sex with each other. For both, “it’s an abomination.” Outsiders ask why LGBT people would identify with a Church or Party whose dominant rhetoric tells them they’re less than fully human, lost eternally, and worthless, and that the best they can be is pawns in hierarchical and election-year politics? That’s complicated to answer. Some people stay in organizations that berate and abuse them for the same reason abused spouses stay with their abusers. They say things like: “They really do love me. They’re not all bad. I should just be better. They really are doing better. I shouldn’t provoke them. I have to give them time. They don’t really understand. You have to understand how difficult their life is or how difficult this is for them. Where else would I go to fulfill my needs? This is the best I can do.” Some people deny that this really is abuse; it’s normal and acceptable. No matter how bad it gets, it should be ignored or understood. And when it gets worse – or merely shows publicly what’s always been there – they act surprised. What was the surprise when Bush endorsed a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage? Was it only the Log Cabin folks who didn’t see that coming? Is it a surprise that gay delegates are not certified for the Republican National Convention? When last month the Party Chair refused to certify DC Council member David Catania as a delegate to the Convention because he publicly criticized Bush’s stand on the gay marriage amendment, he complained that she has a “different standard” for him then others. Duh. What did he expect? Some are now turning to the Democrats, who have a mixed record, at best. Some stay because other needs, ideals, or affirmations are more important to them than affirming the value of their love or their ability to love someone. Keeping a tight hold on their money, protecting them from those “others” who threaten them, affirming them as good because they’re not as poor, unfortunate, misguided, or lazy as others, may be reasons to stay with the Republicans even if they preach against the ability of LGBT Republicans to love. Getting family approval, participating in familiar ritual, fear about Protestantism, and even fear of damnation could keep one a Roman Catholic even though they’re officially doomed. I don’t really know. Each person has to decide why
they stay with their abusers. Clearly, LGBT people have a
history – centuries – of doing so and, if they
choose, may have a long future of it as well. But it’s
still abuse. It’s What Straight
Men Do to Each Other When the Clinton administration oversaw the official codification of the US military policy of “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” it was really making explicit what’s been in sync with the real intentions of military policy toward gay men and lesbians. Everyone knew that there had always been gay men doing their duty competently, and even heroically, but the Pentagon and its supporters didn’t want to show publicly that there were any soldiers who didn’t fit their picture of masculinized, fully-male-gender-conditioned men. In a militaristic, war based society such as ours, the military is the measure of what it is to be a real man. So what the Marines want is just “a few good men.” That masculine role begins with boyhood’s message of “beat or be beaten,” and continues with the training that a true win in life can only come at another man’s expense. There’s no hope for the boy or man who would ever show his vulnerability to another man. Competition for competence, strength, prowess, and the other marks of grown manhood gets desperate, if not ruthless. Men bond together in teams to beat, defeat, or kill another group of men. There’s no “win-win” solution in manhood. Beating a “girl” doesn’t count as manly. Men want admiration from others. And there’s no better way to “get” another man than to shame his manhood. What starts with “cry baby” and “girly boy” continues as “fag” and “queer.” The only counterpunch in conditioned masculinity for having one’s manhood shamed is to shame back, to restore one’s manly honor by escalating the payback. An eye for an eye is just not enough in the struggle for manhood’s respect. And apologies and asking for forgiveness are signs of weakness (read that effeminacy). The long history of conditioned masculinity in patriarchal societies is filled with military examples where it wasn’t enough to wipe out a people or defeat another army. The real men had to humiliate the other men in order to maintain a manly status. They had to pay back a threat of shame these enemies represented. So, they paraded them naked, urinated or defecated on them, raped them, and mutilated them – often targeting body parts which most represented their virility. Since real men can protect “their women,” those masculine winners shamed the losers by raping their wives, mothers, and daughters. It was all about power, and manhood, and who’s the true king of the mountain, not sex So it continues today with the good ole USA as the photos and videos come out of Iraq. Manhood and its military solution still include the shaming of the enemy’s manhood to shore up one’s own. The official response is that these acts represent the actions of a few bad apples, while the evidence widens – pictures of men naked, in poses considered unmanly (read gay), on leashes, masturbating, even exposed in front of a woman. One after another, the actions and souvenir pictures to remember the acts are meant to humiliate the prisoners’ manhood. The International Committee of the Red Cross reports that the abuse is widespread and has continued for months, maybe a year. Defenders of the prisoner abuse say too much is made of this when “our soldiers” are being killed and tortured (read, their, and our country’s, manhood have been shamed worse). So, in order to pay back the shaming, Iraqi dissidents, caught also in the manhood code, must restore their honor. What could be worse than such humiliations? Maybe public executions. Or who knows? The escalation continues as “We can’t let them get away with that” seeks to restore manhood’s honor on both sides. And it can’t end until all are dead, unable to revenge manhood’s honor. “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” Gandhi said, “and the whole world’s blind and toothless.” But were it only “an eye for an eye” equality. This isn’t about equal pay back. This is about restoring manly honor. The manly military can no longer ignore what’s been going on. It’s public now, and the public is asking where this has come from. So the military moves into damage control, denying that this represents a “written policy.” At first, don’t ask or don’t tell about the abuse worked. But no longer. This is manhood trying to cure a problem that’s deeper than any written policy. But conditioned manhood itself is guilty. It’s about how we raise young human babies to turn them into cultural warriors, how we force them to value this manhood code. This is about the nature of our inhuman core values, which once again have come home to roost. This is about an institution that represents everything we mean by a manhood that is desperately straight-acting, straight-looking, straight-feeling, straight-thinking. It’s not about who male humans are, or how they would be if they weren’t trained from pre-school to beat or be beaten. And it’s so much about conditioned manhood that even women who want t |