October 29, 2008

Flashback: The Briggs Initiative (with a Nod to George Santayana)

“I think there’s gonna be riots if this thing passes.”

— Cleve Jones on the Briggs Initiative, 1978

I’m kind of amazed at myself, and not in a good way.

It just dawned on me that it’s very, very strange that, in the five months since the California Supreme Court decision, and with all the feces flung at us by the forces of anti-equality, I don’t think I’ve once mentioned the Briggs Initiative.

Californians of a certain age will remember Briggs, a.k.a. Proposition 6, all too well. I was a junior in high school, and among my electives was Film Analysis, and—

Before I go on, and before the haters start screaming, “See?! You were indoctrinated in school!” let’s get one thing straight: I wasn’t. I’m one of those ReaLesbians® who knew I was queer as a three-dollar bill before I knew there was word for it, or could even speak it. At the time of my little story here, I’d already been shagging my steady girlfriend for months — an impossibly tall, impossibly beautiful blonde who looked a lot like Cameron Diaz (and who, I’ll have you know, was a straight-A grind, a devout, completely virginal Christian who still went to Maranatha camp every summer until she left for college, and who taught me what it was all about, not the other way around).

That said…

Film Analysis was a little less interesting than I’d hoped; our teacher was extremely knowledgeable and loved his subject, but, frankly, he had the personality of a houseplant.

Things changed one day when he told us he had something to talk to us about besides the significance of the Battleship Potemkin steps scene. He told us about Proposition 6, which proposed to bar gay men and lesbians from teaching in California schools — and, in fact, proposed to sack any teacher for saying anything remotely positive about homosexuality.

He told us about it every day, in fact, until Election Day, 1978 — I don’t think we once looked at another film.

I’m glad he did. I got a civics lesson I never forgot.

Mr. Houseplant didn’t try to sway us one way or the other on the issue (and why try anyway, as we were all too young to vote), but brought the details of the latest developments to class each day for discussion. He never got into the issue of homosexuality itself — whether it was “right” or “wrong” — his take was solely as a teacher, and as an American deeply concerned by what amounted to a modern-day McCarthy witch hunt. The message I took away — and have held close to my heart every single day for the past thirty years — was: If they can do it to one group, they can do it to any group.

And that was wrong.

Was he gay? I have no idea. But does it matter? Mr. Houseplant (I swear to you, I forgot his name years ago, ‘though not his lessons) taught me that discrimination in any form was wrong. Such a simple lesson it was, but invaluable, especially for a 16-year-old who would rather be doing anything besides sitting in a classroom.

Considering the stunning parallels between the witch-hunting Briggs Initiative and the current Anti-Marriage Initiative, Proposition 8, I’m truly amazed at myself that I haven’t gone into this before. I’m even more amazed when I consider the freezing-cold nights (and one lovely Sunday) Buffy and I spent as extras in Milk (more about that shortly; the world premiere was last night), and the impact of the wave of anti-gay amendments in addition to Briggs had on the era we were re-creating.

While Buffy was certainly already aware of Harvey Milk, she was just a little tyke when all this was going on, and, raised on the East Coast, was even further removed from the revolution taking place in San Francisco in the 1970s. Being in Milk gave her a nearly firsthand experience of the events of 1978. Just being in the Castro, made over to look as it did in the days my friends and I would hang out there on weekends as teenagers, brought up a lot of memories I hadn’t thought about in decades, which I compulsively passed along to Buffy as soon as they entered my mind. “Harvey’s, that used to be The Elephant Walk… and up across the street, there was Headquarters, which was strictly men — but they didn’t mind if lesbians came in… Lesbian territory was the Mission — you could have dinner at the vegetarian Artemis Café, where there was usually live music, and then head over to Amelia’s, which had a gorgeous, huge, wooden bar downstairs, and great dancing upstairs… I learned from one of Amelia’s bartenders that coffee filters work even better than newspaper when you’re cleaning glass… Of course, Artemis and Amelia’s have been gone for years, so the lesbians sort of took over the Café San Marcos — that’s the club you see at the corner of Market — which is just called the Café now…”

And on and on Chatty Cathy would go.

But the real lessons came from other extras, as we chatted to pass time between takes. There was the 70-year-old gay man who had dug his motorcycle jacket out of mothballs (and still cut a dashing, sexy look), a true survivor of his generation, who had a front-row seat at the White Night Riots. There was the retired schoolteacher, who sported the “NO ON 6″ button she had kept since 1978. There were many others.

Re-living those days, even if it was all pretend, was bittersweet — but the one thing I didn’t know was how I would see those days anew, through Buffy’s eyes. In February — with no inkling that just three months later we would face the fight of our lives — Buffy reflected after the candlelight march we had re-enacted two nights earlier:

There is still the work left unfinished in the wake of Milk’s death. As I’d mentioned previously it seems despite the passage of 30 years so little has been accomplished. Back then some Gay Rights legislation had been passed only to be met with a backlash by RRRW activists who enacted their own laws. History has been repeating itself with George W. Bush and his “Family Values” crowd. Every attempt we make to get LGBT rights legislation passed is met with equal opposition from them, and they work across the nation to put in place laws that will restrict our human rights in every way possible.

We must fight harder than ever before to ensure that Harvey Milk’s death was not in vain. To ensure that his vision for LGBT equality comes to pass. If it means taking to the streets over and over again we must do it. Bigotry and narrow-mindedness cannot — must not — be allowed to prevail.

That’s practically prescient.

Last night, Buffy and I were talking about violence against No On 8 supporters, and how my mom is worrying that I’ll get hurt — but how I can’t not be on the streets Election Day. Still, I told Buffy, I feel like I could have done more. She disagreed with me, telling me I’ve gone above and beyond the call — and while Buffy’s opinion is more important to me than anyone else’s, I still feel I could have done more… can do more, even with just six short days to go before November 4th.

In failing to recount the Briggs milestone, I feel I’ve missed a teaching opportunity — a lesson in Santayana’s Aphorism on Repetitive Consequences (”Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it”).

With everything else in front of me — in addition to contributing to two marriage projects, I’m working on Part 3 of my “Salute to Traditional Marriage” video series (see Part 1 here and Part 2 here) — I don’t know how much time I can devote to taking us all back to the ugly days of Briggs, and the devastating assassinations of Harvey Milk and George Moscone. But I’ll start you out with the Edge article by Roger Brigham that inspired this post in the first place:

Back to Briggs: Latest No on 8 Ad With Sen. Diane Feinstein Brings Back Memories of Another Referendum

As Yogi Berra so memorably said, it’s deja vu all over again. In this case, it’s specifically 1978 all over again in California.

Yes, right wing extremists are describing their efforts to abolish marriage rights for queers in terms of Armageddon. But longtime Californians need only reach into recent history to get a sense of perspective on the importance of next Tuesday’s vote on state Proposition 8.

Political leaders view this referendum on gay marriage as a kind of Briggs Initiative revisited. As the most recent high-profile politician to weigh in on the matter, Sen. Diane Feinstein stars in the latest TV ad urging folks to vote “No.” Feinstein, by the way, was a rising local politician in San Francisco City Hall when the Briggs Initiative was defeated and shot into national prominence when she assumed the mayoralty on the assassination of Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone.

The parallels between this year’s Prop 8 and 1978’s Briggs Initiative “resonate because we are yet again at a watershed moment,” commented Kate Kendall, executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and a member of the No On 8 campaign. “When ’Briggs’ was defeated, it changed the landscape in the entire country for LGBT people. If we defeat Prop 8, clearly we’re in a different place than we were 30 years ago.”

The Briggs Initiative, more properly known as California Proposition 6, was pushed onto the 1978 ballot by a prominent Orange County conservative gadfly, John Briggs, who depended on it as part of his futile effort to rise from the State Senate to the governor’s mansion.

His amendment would have allowed the firing of teachers for ever mentioning anything positive about homosexuals. It ended up galvanizing the LGBT community; after polls showed it leading by huge margins, it ended up losing in a landslide — after it was denounced by former Gov. Ronald Reagan, no less.

“Defeating the Briggs Initiative created opportunities that have nothing to do with teachers in school, and Proposition 8 would would affect things that have nothing to do with marriage,” Kendall said. “There was not an issue that the defeat of Briggs did not enhance when it came for greater inclusion.” …

Lavender Newswire

October 29, 2008

Flashback: The Briggs Initiative (with a Nod to George Santayana)

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