A gay couple, Steve Nichols and his husband John Winn, adopted 5-year-old Fezco after his previous owner dumped him at an animal shelter after deciding the dog was gay.
WHERE THIS ENDS
Forgive me if I don’t look them up right now, but there are at least two significant recent polls that show GLBT issues are increasingly embraced by mainstream Americans of both parties and almost all religions. With white evangelical protestants still lagging, we nonetheless see strong majority support for same-sex marriage, anti-discrimination laws that protect our community, and the critical idea that religion cannot be used as an excuse to circumvent GLBT civil rights laws.
Why then, are we now inundated with some of the most hostile state statutes ever enacted? Why am I reading on NBC News that 11 antigay nonprofits identified as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center have steadily increased their fundraising since 2016, raking in $111 million in 2020, versus $87 million four years earlier. In the ten years ended 2021, the Family Research Council doubled their annual contributions from $12 million to $23 million, while the Alliance Defending Freedom legal group grew from $34.5 million to over $76 million. All this while, as mentioned, public opinion has been turning sharply in our favor.
I have lost count of the anti-trans sports bills (now passed in at least ten, but possibly more states). Then there are the bills to undermine transgender health care by outlawing various medical services like puberty blockers. In Texas, the attorney general and the governor now insist that many gender-based treatments for minors are already illegal under child abuse laws, and have even launched investigations into parents of transgender kids (although these investigations were halted by a state appellate court last month).
Now, we have the “parental rights” bills such as the one just signed in Florida that prohibit school staff from referencing sexual orientation and gender and require parents be informed of any “questioning” by public school students. A number of these “Don’t Say Gay” bills have been introduced in other states.
Let’s not forget the book bans, ordering school libraries to drop all sorts of innocuous books on sexuality and gender, while other conservative school districts are taking aim at classics and novels about race. Throw in attacks on “critical race theory,” aka the history of the United States, and these dark ages get even darker.
White evangelicals represent a shrinking minority of American citizens, yet their influence has exploded during the Trump years as they have gained state and local power and twisted Republican politicians around their little fingers. One would think there would be a limit, a moment, an idea that would trigger a backlash from the silent majority, yet we don’t seem to be hearing from these gay-friendly, non-racist sensible Americans who chat with pollsters. Meanwhile, legislative proposals that used to die in committee, shelved by common-sense Republican leaders, are now cruising through to the governors’ desks. I’m not sure where this ends.
FEAR AND RESENTMENT
The progress we’ve made is being inundated by a flood of fear and resentment that is looking to turn the clock back to a straight, white world of male dominance with clean lines and no grey areas. The unthinkable effort to reverse the rights of women to decide whether or not to bear children is pure patriarchy, a word I thought I had (mostly) put to rest after my Feminism 101 class in college. Patriarchy, of course, isn’t just male dominance, it’s toxic masculinity that rejects anyone who veers beyond the strictest stereotypes. Those stereotypes include people of color, whether straight or gay, who have the temerity to assume that they are equal to white men.
Before you send me off to the herstory institute for lesbian wimmin, please know that even in my younger days political correctness was not my strong suit. Sure I went to all the lesbian feminist meetings in my student days, but that was only to pick up women, not to volunteer for posting flyers around campus. My cousin just reminded me of the cloth protest armbands we were all supposed to wear for graduation. I forget what we were protesting but I grabbed an armband at the last minute only because I started my period during the procession, and I needed something. The student who passed them out was so happy when I asked her for one!
All these years later, I’m at the point that I’d produce the damn armbands myself and write the press releases for our advocates. Did I already mention that I’m not sure where this ends?
ROCKY MOUNTAIN LOW
I think that’s enough downbeat news, don’t you?
You may have missed the story of the North Carolina man who dumped his five-year-old dog, Fesco, at the local animal shelter because the dog was caught humping another male dog and the owner decided Fesco was gay. Within two days, however, Fesco was adopted by two gay men, Steve Nichols and his husband John Winn, who renamed him Oscar Wilde and took him for a vet checkup. Oscar was suffering from heartworms and was not looking good, Nichols told NBC. But everything is now fine, and Oscar has a new home with the guys and another rescue dog, Harry. “We’re pretty certain he’s not gay,” Nichols said, “because he hates having his picture taken. What gay person doesn’t want their picture taken?”
I don’t know about that. There’s a reason I still use a ten-year-old head shot.
Let’s see what else. Oh yes of course. I should have started this column with the news from late February that the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a fairly major GLBT case, to wit a gay rights victory from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. Late February is so long ago that I nearly forgot!
The lawsuit was filed by Lorie Smith, a Denver-based web designer who has decided to start offering wedding web sites. Smith asked the court whether or not she would be bound by Colorado’s anti discrimination law, the same law that tripped up our old friend from the Masterpiece Cakeshop bakery. Since Colorado indeed prohibits discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender in public accommodation, the court and the appellate panel ruled that Smith will be obliged to offer her services to everyone including same-sex couples, regardless of her Christian objections.
It’s not good news to see this conservative Supreme Court accept review of a case that we have won, let alone one that pits gay civil rights against religious freedom. In accepting review, however, the Court made clear that it will limit its analysis to the question of: “whether applying a public-accommodation law to compel an artist to speak or stay silent violates the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment.” In other words, the Court appears to be sidestepping the dangerous subject of religion and focussing on artistic freedom, which also (oddly) seems to take for granted the notion that Smith is an “artist” rather than a businesswoman.
We will see. The case will be argued this fall.
