Lately, I’ve been feeling like
I need to apologize to every gay person I know. I didn’t vote that
way, I want to tell them, and I’m not obsessed by your
presence.
I can’t fathom all this horse-pucky about gay
lifestyles. I have no idea how so many voters, letter-writers and
politicians can exist in such a state of ignorance and hateful
spite. I don’t know where it comes from.
In Montana, we
voted out the Republican majority in the Legislature. We got rid of
a governor who’d boasted about being the “lapdog” of
industry. We reaffirmed our commitment against cyanide mining. We
even resoundingly passed an initiative in favor of the medical use
of marijuana. Yet we voted by a large margin to close the door on
gay marriage and add an amendment to the Constitution limiting
marriage to heterosexuals.
Since the election, our local
paper has resonated with letters to the editor on both sides of the
issue. Some of the anti-gay invective is stunning, and sobering.
Gays are, in the eyes of some, a threat to the fabric of society, a
threat to our very safety, a tribe of lepers waiting to debase our
youth and erode the pillars of culture. Accept gays, according to
these citizens, and you open the floodgates to immorality and
perversity.
In the current session of the Montana
Legislature, a bill has been introduced to allow civil unions
between gay partners. That debate has stirred up the cauldron of
invective all over again. The very idea that gay people might be
allowed rights — like the rest of us “normal” citizens
— is anathema. How could we even consider this legal gesture
of compassion and justice?
I count a number of gay people
as my friends. Not once, ever, have I felt personally threatened in
any way by any one of them. Not once have I had a second thought
about leaving my children in their care. Not once have I had a
single moment of unease with one of them.
They are
teachers in public schools. They work in government offices. They
sell real estate. They own homes. They volunteer on the boards and
committees that run our communities. They play softball and work
out in gyms. They buy groceries and attend concerts and stop at red
lights and have checking accounts.
They are also, several
of them, parents. I have been around them with their children. They
are exactly like parents everywhere. Concerned with safety,
vigilant in their care, distraught by difficulties, and loving in
the fundamental way parents are compelled to be.
The
suggestion that the example of their lifestyle will inevitably lead
their children down a debased and immoral path, or even worse, that
it is only a matter of time before they invite their children to
share their lifestyle, is so rude, insulting and ignorant that I
can’t imagine how to respond. I am left stammering for words in the
face of it.
I want to know, truly, how many people who
voted against gays or write these letters, have actually felt any
degree of personal threat from a gay person. How many can point to
an example?
On the other hand, we have all heard the
cases of gay people left to die on a fence, or beaten to death in a
bathroom, or kicked out of the military, or excluded from society.
It is commonplace. And, ironically, we don’t have to read very far
in our community newspapers to unearth examples of debased morality
and crimes perpetrated by members of the heterosexual majority
— cases of incest, of rape, of child molestation.
When was the last time a heterosexual was ostracized, beaten,
abused, or even vaguely threatened by gays, in your hometown news?
Can you come up with even one instance?
After this last
election, many of us feel as if we live in the midst of an enemy
camp. This is a feeling gay members of our society know only too
well. That I now have some greater awareness of what that feels
like is no solace at all. To the gay people surviving in the midst
of a homophobic society, I can only offer my apologies.
Alan Kesselheim is a contributor to Writers on the Range,
a service of High Country News (hcn.org). He
lives and writes in Bozeman, Montana.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
