Hey Homophobes: We're Not Listening...Nah-nah-nah-nah-nah

The passage of equal marriage rights by the Supreme Court of the United States last month was a landmark moment for the human rights movement in America. In one fell swoop, years of same sex discrimination imploded and rainbows flew across the nation. Our troubles did in fact melt like lemon drops, and I was met with a grounding peace I had never known.

That’s not to say, of course, that the adversity we had been faced with for centuries dissipated into bitter sweet candies. The homophobes, the God-fearing, Bible-thumping, holy rollers, even the borderline opposition (you know, those people who have gay friends they love and respect but would never grant them the same rights) have risen and screamed out in agony after losing this war. The waters surged and the levees shuddered in the storm they tried to concoct. Many have refused to honor the law, others have whined and tantrummed and cried on social media, posting under the hashtag #godwins and fighting on Instagram about their discriminatory beliefs and dated moral codes. I have no doubt the Westboro Church and other Evangelicals are keeping their eyes peeled for the first sign of God’s vengeance: natural disasters, a terrible tragedy somewhere, a surprise renewal contract for American Idol, possibly a glass of spilled milk, who knows? God may not like cookies. People are even going to ridiculous extremes in calling attention to the passing law. One county in Missouri has decided that they will fly their flags at half-mast once a month every month for the next year, mourning the death of traditional marriage. One store owner has even posted a sign outside of his shop lamenting “No Gays Allowed.”

But what I found is that with the support of SCOTUS, I’m taking it all in stride.  Where frustration and anger and exasperation once boiled, now laughter, smirks, and little chortles blossom. In debates on Instagram with anti-gay posters, I laughed, I joked with them, I professed my love for them in an attempt to stave them off, then carefully and light-heartedly slammed a few ridiculous arguments they threw out. When I read of the half-mast flags, I snorted at the pathetic attempt to whine and pout nationally. When I saw the photo of sign at a highly exclusive, hetero-only hardware store, I revered his First Amendment Rights to be an asshole. And here’s why:

When California first voted on gay marriage in 2000 with the long since forgotten Prop 22, I remember the anger and the frustration I felt as a 16 year old who couldn’t vote (who couldn’t comprehend why we were voting on my personal life in the first place) and whose fate was in the hands of millions of adults who had never met me. I remember reading the arguments, listening to the debates about gay marriage and beating my fists on the table because I had no voice and couldn’t convince these people who were against me to let me live my life. When Prop 8 revisited the ballots, I found my voice, and I would argue on every forum I could find, desperately trying to sway the majority, screaming for my own pitiful right to just love and marry whomever I wanted. And I would rage. The anger that boiled in me overflowed in the face of adversity, of the opposition who had raised more campaign money, who spent more dollars convincing people that equal rights were not only a sin but the end of civilization as we knew it. I felt as though I was trying to beat back a tidal wave, and I was failing miserably. Nothing I said made much of a difference. We lost. We lost by a much smaller margin than that of the 2000 vote, but we lost nonetheless. The gay-bashing, the public demonstrations, the TV advertisements, all the homophobia thrown in my face that people had spent countless hours and money on had stripped me of any hope of being normal.

When SCOTUS released their decision on June 26^th, 2015, all of that genuine adversity disappeared. You know, the adversity that could actually do any harm. In one moment, the opposition had lost, and there was nothing more to be said. The law is done, the Supreme Court declared it so and there can be no challenges, no appeals, no more votes, no more ballots, no more campaigns, no millions of people with their hands in my life, directing me this way and that. This is true freedom.

In the discussions on the boards, many people retorted with “I have a right to my opinions!” Which is entirely true; however in the past, these opinions impacted your choices on the ballots and the votes, which stopped them from being simple opinions and became tallies to take my rights away. Now they have been reduced to nothing more than ignorant, hate-fueled, ridiculous points of view that mean nothing to me. I don’t have to waste my time and energy convincing you of anything. My life is mine now. You can go to your corner of the world and be stupid, I can go to mine and be whatever I want, married to whomever I choose, and I don’t have to give you a second thought. I can laugh at your pathetic attempts to bitch and moan and fly flags at half-mast, because your little dramatic displays will not change the fact that you lost; though I won’t hesitate to remind you of the countless homosexuals who have gone to war and defended that flag and the country that wouldn’t give them equal rights so you could have your childish fit in the land of the free.

And yes, I even defend the store owner and the numerous bakeries who refuse to serve homosexuals and their partners. This is America my friends, and the first amendment guarantees your rights to believe what you want and act how you choose with your own property. I believe these store owners have the right to refuse service to whomever they want, just as I would reserve and exercise the right to refuse service to any racist, homophobic, Islamophobic, Anti-Semite, sexist, bigoted asshole who walked into my store.  If you take away their rights to choose who they serve, they can take away our rights to choose as well, and I don’t want to give assholes cake. It’s my cake. Mine. However, as an American, I have the right not to spend my money in your store. This is a capitalistic country; you need my money to keep your shop in business. If you want to throw away your life savings, your blood, sweat, and tears that you poured into this business over some moral beliefs, so be it! I will go elsewhere, I will advise my friends to go elsewhere, and you can sit in your empty store and count your blessings and your overdue bills. That’s freedom baby.

Now don’t get me wrong, there is still some real shit going on out there, there will still be gay-bashing, there will still be fights for other rights like gay adoption (we won the workplace discrimination bit), but choose your battles. Don’t sweat the small stuff, the ridiculous stuff, the infantile stuff. We won. Let the idiots scream it out until they grow tired and slip away like a toddler ready for a nap. Their opinions, their viewpoints, their beliefs do not define us or determine our lives any longer. 

Whispers in the Rainbow Painted Night

Monumental. That is the only word that has been cycling through my mind today following the Supreme Court Ruling legalizing gay marriage throughout the states. Simply monumental. This is so much more than a piece of history, this is the catalyst of the gay rights movement; this is our Women’s Vote in 1920, this is our Brown vs. the Board of Education, this is the close of our Civil War. I cannot even begin to wrap my head around the significance of this vote, this ruling, this declaration of humanity in the US. There is a peace to be found in finally being recognized.

Naturally I had no doubt that SCOTUS would legalize gay marriage, they had the safety net to do it. When they were first invited to hear the mind-bending arguments against the California rulings of Proposition 8, only a handful of states had legalized gay marriage. It was politically and socially unsafe to suddenly be the trailblazers for equal rights, to force so many undetermined states into acknowledging what the majority still viewed as an abomination. No one wanted to be the ones to let gay marriage in. Let’s face it: from 2010 to 2014, doing the right thing was career suicide for the justices. But no one wanted to be the ones to extinguish the possibility of equality forever either, because they knew the change was inevitable. More and more states were moving towards legalization, and many other countries in the west have been passing equality laws for years. Waiting and biding their time, the justices shuffled their feet and turned away petitions to hear any cases on gay marriage until a fair amount of states had already taken it upon themselves to pass the laws, and when those who hadn’t were few and far between, they went for the kill. Silencing those hanging in the balance, the court ruled in favor of the rainbow, and took all the credit for what most states had to do on their own.  But their ruling has eliminated any possibilities for an opposition to file an appeal, to motion for repeal, to put a new law on the ballot or to amend a standing one. It’s all said and done.

But this of course has drawn the little cockroaches from their dark corners to begin their pouting and spouting of hatred, promises of rebellion, ignoring the ruling, even some declarations to divorce their straight partners and preachers who swear they will set themselves on fire (whatever, just call me first so I can grab the marshmallows). Perpetrators of discrimination are still demanding tolerance of their own narrow-minded and bigoted views, and others just stand in noticeably stunned silence over the loss. But as I said to one person earlier this evening, “you had a good run, 3,000 years of hatred; you need to accept that your time has come to an end.”

The suffering that the gay community has endured over the years worldwide has been unimaginable, including social stigmas, gay bashing, the exclusion from gay rights and protective anti-discrimination laws, horribly violent gay cure therapies, and even murders and genocides (it is estimated that anywhere from 10,000-25,000 homosexuals were killed by Hitler’s Third Reich movement). We’ve even been blamed for horrible events such as the Newton shootings, 9/11, global warming, and natural disasters like earthquakes, tsunamis, and hurricanes. Me personally, I wouldn’t be that offended by the insinuation, I’d be more inclined to use them as a pick up line: “hey baby, you know that earthquake last night? That was me.” *WINK*

But all jokes aside, growing up gay in the US these past few decades has been hell, as I documented more thoroughly in my previous posts, Though I have no idea how hard it was five or six decades ago, I realized earlier today that today’s generation has no idea what we have gone through, the struggle we faced, the fight we fought so they can have what we never did: security and freedom in who you are from birth to the grave. Many of my gay clients are out in the open: they have boyfriends and girlfriends at school, they’re out to parents and friends, and they’re loved and supported. Some still get bullied, but none of them have any idea who Matthew Shepard is or the torture he went through for being himself in the 90s. It's a different time and a different world, many of us had parents who struggled (and continue to struggle) through their acceptance of us. We never would have dared to be out in high school for fear of getting beaten or killed, and mind you, this was in Southern California in 2002, not Alabama 1980; the way things were such a short time ago are distant shadows for today's youth. This morning, one client haplessly raised his hands and noted “we have equal rights…yay.” Child, this deserves so much more than a slightly enthusiastic yay. This is historic. And we’ve lived to see it.

We’re equal. We can marry. Soon we will have total federal protection with anti-discrimination laws. Soon we will be able to adopt children and provide loving homes to our families all over the US. And with this comes a new revelation: we’re okay. We are normal. We don’t have to cry anymore. We don’t have to die anymore in the face of cruel, heart-rending adversity. We’re human, just like everyone else. And finally, this country thinks so too. The voices of hate have become whispers in the rainbow painted night.