June 27, 2009

Where’s Our Harvey? Or Do We Need One?

Jeremy W. Peters makes some good points re: Why the Gay Rights Movement Has No National Leader:

Gay people have no national standard-bearer, no go-to sound-byte machine for the media. …

One explanation is that gay and lesbian activists learned early on that they could get along just fine without one.

Well, yes, that’s been true, but only as long as “gay activists pursued a different approach, focusing on issues pertinent to their local communities”:

City councils and state legislatures are where domestic partnership laws and legislation extending anti-discrimination protections to gays and lesbians originated.

That’s the way it’s always been — until now. Now, we’re on the national stage.

On one hand, the way to build a united, nationwide front is from the bottom up — school board elections, city council elections, local ordinances. The Republicans figured that out a long time ago, which is why their relatively quiet infiltration of local and regional governing bodies took thirty years to grow into the monster whose power peaked with the Bush II era.

The modern LGBT movement, however, was thrust into the national spotlight. When you hear someone chide LGBTs for “pushing” marriage equality too fast, too soon, remember that when marriage became a national issue (2000 to 2004), we weren’t the ones who made it a national issue; the Republicans were. Marriage, Karl Rove knew, was the one surefire bogeyman that would scare the radical Christian right to the polls, no matter how lukewarm they might be about any given Republican on any given ballot.

Rove was right. It worked. And it’s the reason no less than eleven states passed marriage bans in 2004 (with more to follow in 2006 and 2008).

Meanwhile, those of us actively working for our rights in this country were not focused on marriage. Some of us focused on hate crimes legislation. Others focused on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” And others still (myself among them) focused on immigration equality. We all supported one another, but no one — at least no one I can recall — was attempting a nationwide push for marriage equality.

Domestic partnerships, yes. Civil unions, yes. But the idea that they’d ever let us actually be legally married was unheard of. It was a nice fantasy, but no LGBT activist in his or her right mind thought it was a real possibility, at least for another couple of decades.

How ironic, but how typical: Marriage equality was thrust upon us — and what were we supposed to do, say “That’s OK, we won’t fight you on it”? — and now that we have no choice but to fight, both barrels blazing, we’re the ones blamed for making it an issue.

Not, mind you, that I personally have any regrets about the way things have turned out; circumstances are what they are, and no amount of “coulda, shoulda, woulda” is going to change anything. As long as we learn from the past and use what we learn to our best advantage, ultimately there are no defeats. (Exactly which lessons are the most valuable is a whole ‘nother discussion, for a whole ‘nother day.)

So, getting back to the question of a national leader: Do we need one? I say yes. It could be argued we’ve needed one since the day Bill Clinton signed DADT; I say DOMA was the turning point — but we could have gotten by without one until near the end of Clinton’s second term, if only we’d had any clue that Rove was going to turn us into the Christians’ bogeyman. (What we needed before Clinton, and before Bush I — specifically, when Reagan took office — was not a single leader, but more networking among disparate groups. We just didn’t know at the time how powerful the Moral Majority and all its spinoffs were becoming already. We should have known, but we didn’t.)

Now, we’re at the point of no return; there is no going back and settling for anything.

Now, we need a national leader.

Still, I’m uncomfortable with the word “leader”; the LGBT community at large (which isn’t really a “community” at all, but millions of very different people thrown together by a shared oppression) will not, and should never, march in lockstep to the dictates of any “leader.” (For a time, a great many of us did, whether that self-appointed “leadership” came from the HRC or elsewhere — and what has that gotten us? You don’t need me to tell you the answer.)

What we really need is a voice — a gay version of what Barack Obama’s fan club thought he was going to be: a voice, and not a dictator.

So, who have we got? I can’t think of anyone else right now but Dan Choi. And, judging from what I’ve seen so far, I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have on the national stage.

Posted by: Sapphocrat

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