Gay Today: Viewpoint

Emerging from the Tunnel

By David Williams
Editor, The Letter

Ever the optimist, I told an internet pal last month that I thought 1998 would be a turning point in the struggle for equal rights for gays. No, Nostradamus didn't speak to me in a vision. History's grand pendulum has inevitably started to swing back, I opined.

"Look at 1948," I said. "One of our darkest hours. Republicans finding pinkos at every desk, gays getting fired by the hundreds. But by 1958 we'd won our first court fight, and ten years later Stonewall was getting ready to blow."

Matthew Shepard (top), Tammy Baldwin (left) and the defeat of Georgia's sodomy law made news.

In 1978, Anita Bryant energized the right and by 1988 the country had grown increasingly antagonistic to gays. But last year we held back several major defeats, and by 2008, I predicted, we'd be riding a crest of wins.

"I didn't think you were into numerology!" he quipped.

Sorry, don't believe in it; I'm a history major. But there's much to my theory. We like to think of progress as a straight line, but it's not. It's more like those unpredictable Appalachian roads that keep curving back upon themselves as they slowly hairpin up the mountain.

The last few months have brought many signs that the road is turning to our favor.

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The nationwide uproar over Matthew Shepard's brutal crucifixion.

The Georgia Supreme Court's destruction of the state sodomy law.

The passage of gay rights ordinances in Miami, Toledo OH, and DeKalb IL.

That amazing $2.8 million settlement for Tyra Hunter's mother.

The US Department of Education's decision to convince public schools to initiate anti- gay harassment policies.

An Oregon court's ruling that laws against sex discrimination also apply to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

The US Department of Justice's announcement that it would start using that same argument in federal courts.

The November 3 elections, a Republican defeat; voters elect the first out lesbian to Congress. In Louisville, a win for Fairness from the mayor on down.

Here in Kentucky, we saw increasing confidence across the state. Most exciting was the "hell raising" by the WKU Lambda Society in Bowling Green, but many Kentuckians were accomplishing things that ten years ago we could only have hoped to see in our lifetimes. We actually got the legislature to enact a hate crimes law that includes us. How did we ever do that?

Are we free of the religious right's threats? Hardly. Like annoying characters in a tedious play, those people will never shut up. But the country is slowly waking up to the ways in which their mean-spirited words have caused us harm. Heated rhetoric does breed violent deeds. Don't they remember what Christ said about that? Matthew Shepard's horrible death brought that home like no talking heads ever could. Most Americans don't care for brimstone on their corn flakes.

When this decade began, gays quipped it would be the "Gay Nineties," playing off a phrase often used to describe the 1890s. But until last year the 90s hadn't felt so gay. 1998 was our vindication. 1998 showed us we weren't moving backwards: we simply mistook a tunnel for a cave. The road was always there: we just couldn't see it.

1998 showed us our way out. It showed us we can win. Most importantly, it convinced many others that we deserve to win. That's perhaps the best news of all.

Kentucky's GLBT newspaper
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