LGBT News Dolce & Gabbana on gay marriage

The term "gay mafia" is often thrown around as an insult when gay people actually go out to defend ourselves or hold other people accountable for their actions. There are some, especially among our own allies and our own people, who believe that we should "respect" those who hate us--people who are actively supporting or working with those who are seeking to oppress us. We see some of that up thread.

I'm not an accommodationist. I believe in full and total equality, without any compromise, and I believe strongly in rejecting institutionalized and internalized bigotry. Some people are not willing to take that stance, and are willing to accommodate those with bigoted views. I want to see those who are bigoted socially punished for their actions, with the intent to intimidate and silence other bigots.

We cannot make the world love us, but we can fight to make the world inhospitable to those who hate us.

The term "gay mafia" made a resurgence in the wake of the Brendan Eich scandal last year. Here and here are two very well written articles discussing it.

Here is the thing. Are you denying that there is a very clear and real line between us and them? There are people out there, unfortunately, who believe that we do not deserve equality. They hate us, and if they are gay, they hate themselves. Does anyone actually believe that Dolce & Gabbana are overflowing with self-love, after saying that they hold these beliefs because they are Catholic? No, they drank some of that bigoted holy water, and have internalized it. That is sad for them on a personal level, but on a wider social level is harmful to us. Right now, as I write this, there are people dedicated to fighting against our equal rights holding up Dolce & Gabbana as examples of gay men speaking the "truth." Our enemies view what they have said as a propaganda coupe, and they are exploiting it.

Just yesterday, the Presbyterian Church USA voted to recognize marriage equality. Why did this happen? Did the Bible suddenly change? No. The culture changed, and the Presbyterians realized that if they wanted to stay relevant they would have to embrace that change. Just as religious groups in the past were forced to change to acknowledge the equality of women, and work at banishing their racist views that were supported and justified by many using their religion and faith as an excuse.

It is social and cultural pressure that causes people to change. It is initially coercive. It has to be, because it is trying to dislodge the dominant cultural and social narrative--which is that gay people are not equal to straight people. It is a culture that devalues us and our relationships. When we displace that with a culture that values us and our relationships alongside heterosexuals and their relationships then we become the dominant cultural and social narrative. Anyone who understands basic sociology understands that in order for cultures to function and share their values, they must show social disapproval for values that run counter to it. This is how cultures are held together and remain coherent. This is why today it is unacceptable to say the N-word and it will get you fired from your job and socially ostracized. This is because being an overt racist is no longer socially and culturally acceptable. There was a time in the very recent past when it was not only accepted, it was largely the norm.

Right now we are in a period of transition in the West. There is a strong division between those who see us as equal and those who still do not. There are some people who would stop us here at the half-way point. They will argue that we should respect and tolerate those who hate us, though they never make good arguments as to why. They will mumble something about respecting diversity, opinions, their religion, and other such nonsense. However, what that actually means is that we stand against explicit bigotry, where people no longer have the right to attack and kill us, no longer have the right to call us fagot in public to our faces, but can still discriminate against us implicitly. It results in a world of "religious freedom bills" where individuals who claim that their religion trumps our right not to be discriminated against, and thus get their bigotry codified into law. We see this happening all over the United States right now.

That is the problem. There is no room to compromise. We are either equal to straights, deserving of all the same rights and privileges, or we are not. There is no middle ground there. There is no such thing as "mostly equal." Mostly equal means that you are still not equal.

 

Well I can't say I really disagree with any of that.. definitely I don't believe in settling for less than equality and I don't have sympathy for people who do, especially if they're lgbt that makes me rage

I'm just not that militant activist I guess I'm not going to martyr myself to this. Things are pretty ok with gay rights where I live too which plays into my relative apathy

 

Things in my life, personally, are pretty good. I feel that I am one of the privileged individuals. Sure, there are people out there who have it even better than I do, but when compared to the majority of our community around the world--I have unparalleled privilege. And for me that comes with a level of responsibility.

It comes with a level of responsibility, because all the privileges that I possess I did not earn for myself. Someone else gave them to me. The members of our community who came before us, they sacrificed everything for us. They risked losing their families, and many of them did. They risked their social reputations, and getting fired from their job. They risked being social outcasts, being arrested, harassment that many people believed that they deserved. They sometimes risked their lives, and lost them as a consequence. Because of the sacrifices that they made, I am able to enjoy the privileges that I have today, privileges that they themselves in most cases never lived to see. Privileges that even I--in my own lifetime--did not think I would ever possess.

I was already an adult when the Supreme Court of the United States struck down the sodomy laws. For the bulk of my life I lived in a state where I could be arrested simply for having sex. I was already an adult before that law was struck down. When I was growing up, I didn't dream about marriage and family. I did not believe those things were possible for people like me. I did not even see myself as really having a future, because I did not even know what a future for a gay man looked like. I grew up being taught that I was an abomination, a deviant, a pervert, someone who was innately sinful and destined to forever burn in hell. I grew up in a time when people would say things like, "Homosexuality is a SIN and AIDS is the CURE!" I watched people pray for AIDS to spread and kill us all.

That's the world that I grew up in--that's the world I remember. And that is the world that is dying, and it cannot die fast enough. I know the life that I am living now is far beyond any privilege that I could have imagined in my youth, in large part because I did not even think I would be alive. So when I see people in our community suffering, whether at here at home or abroad, I know deep in my bones that it could have been me. When some asshole of a parent tortures their son to death because they thought he was gay, I know that could have been me. When gay Russians have to flee as refugees because their government has criminalized their open existence, and the countries citizens have decided that it is open season on them, I know that it could have been me. When there is an active witch hunt in Egypt by the government to arrest and imprison LGBT people, I know it could have been me. When members of our community living in Jamaica are forced to live in a storm drain like rats, I know it could have been me.

I get angry when I see these things, because I know that the only thing that separates me from them is the time and place in which I was born. I am no different than them. Because of all the privileges and advantages that I have today, things that I could have never imagined growing up, I have a responsibility to use those privileges to fight for those who still lack them.

It is disgusting to me when I see some bigot cry about being persecuted. He or she does not know what persecution feels like--we have suffered and endured things far worse from them in an effort to get equality. Now, as their privilege starts to erode, their position starts to become unpopular, they whine and cry about being called a bigot. They cry over facing social consequences for their bigotry. I do not feel the least bit of empathy for them, because they are responsible for everything I just discussed. The world that they would have us live in would have all of us here suffering similar fates.

For me, I don't have the choice to be apathetic. I cannot be apathetic, because I know that becoming too comfortable in my privilege will open the door for the bigots to find ways to reclaim their losses. The bigots are not going to go away and suddenly give up. They are going to continue to fight, whether here at home or abroad, and we--if we value the gains we have made and hope to make more--have to be prepared to fight them at every opportunity.

 

Hm. Various thoughts here.

First, totally agree with virtually everything Aldrick has said. :eusa_clap With some very limited and defined exceptions, the ability to fog a mirror does not automatically mean that anyone is 'owed' respect.

Second, making a deliberately provocative statement (in a venue in which it seems highly unlikely that the resulting reaction would be a surprise) and then refusing to explain or discuss said statement, while simultaneously attempting to paint those asking for additional information as 'attacking', being 'PC', or otherwise being in the wrong/worthy of nothing but dismissal - is a fairly obvious exercise in passive aggression.

I spend part of my non-EC time on the admin team of another forum, and that kind of behavior being attempted over there would get the person attempting it laughed out of the room (at best) and accused of either 'stirring the pot' or even flat out trolling, at worst.

Third, attempting to equate the statements made to a matter of personal taste, such as whether or not one likes potatoes, is logically flawed. People do not generally question matters of taste in food because:

a) it is commonly understood that such matters are literally a matter of hard to quantify issues of emotional and physical reactions to stimuli and that nearly everyone has likes and dislikes in this area. So explanations are rarely expected.

b) The issue is generally considered both personal (in the sense of only impacting what a given individual chooses to eat) and trivial.

c) Such issues are not generally couched or considered in terms of what others should or should not be allowed to do, not just in behavioral terms, but in terms of the full power of law and society being turned to the task of forcing them to do/not do something. No one is trying (or likely to try) to pass laws forbidding any given group of people from eating potatoes or punishing them if they do. The same cannot be said about single people or LGBT people having/adopting children.

Fourth, D&G went off the rails on this on a number of points, but one of the main ones (IMO) is the way in which they chose to address the issue of IVF. Others have already mentioned the issue of characterizing the children as 'synthetic'. I would point out that in making that characterization they very deliberately chose (or attempted) to make this, not about their personal ethics or beliefs re IVF (e.g., issues around the use of a surrogate mother, feelings that an IVF child would not be theirs, ethical or moral concerns about the number of unused or failed embryos that might be produced as part of the IVF process, etc.), but rather about the children, their parents, and people who are attempting (with great amounts of emotional stress and soul searching) to conceive using IVF or other techniques. They tried to present these people as somehow being at fault or 'less than' themselves.

Bleh.

Todd