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Viewpoint
It was the Summer of '03

By Bob Minor
Minor Details

Tyrone Garner and John Lawrence made history this summer when the Supreme Court used their case to overturn the country's sodomy laws The summer of '03 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's judgment ratcheted up the rhetoric, defining the next battles in their "culture wars." But they'd been doing that already this summer.

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," America's 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 "President" agreed with the SBC's 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's heterosexuality. He then followed with the apparently humble "we're all sinners." Everyone 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's failures regarding Iraq, North Korea, Liberia, the deficit, unemployment, and congressional deadlock on prescription drugs. "With President Bush's popularity dropping and the serious problems confronting America worsening, the Administration seeks to divert attention by demagoguing on the issue of same-sex unions," the Massachusetts Congressman said.
Walmart surprised some when the traditionally conservative retailer annouced that it would add sexual orientation to its anti-discrimination policy

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't 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 "sexual deviation," declaring they "cause trouble in the temples."

On July 31, the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, took time off from dealing with the Church's own on-going, multi-million-dollar-settlements, sexual abuse mess to release a twelve-page edict condemning "homosexual unions" and anyone who supports them. "Legal recognition of homosexual unions would obscure certain basic moral values and cause a devaluation of the institution of marriage.…To 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's actions "spiritual terrorism," an action by "the elite old-boys-club."

Not to be outdone, on August 7, right-wing televangelist Jerry Falwell announced that he was drawing a "line in the sign" and 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 a "moral fall." In the tradition of a slew of ex-gay leaders Johnston, who had appeared in a national advertising campaign with his mother saying he'd "walked away form homosexuality through the power of Jesus Christ," is accused of having unprotected sex with men while failing to disclose his HIV-positive status.
The Rev. Gene Robinson won approval of the House of Bishops of the Episcopal Church and became a bishop in August

So, it's already been quite a summer. And there's 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 '03 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.
Robert N. Minor's book Gay and Healthy in a Sick Society is due out in November. He is the author of Scared Straight: Why It's So Hard to Accept Gay People and Why It's So Hard to Be Human (HumanityWorks!, 2001) and Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Kansas.
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