Posted on 03/06/2005 6:28:21 PM PST by srm913
Extreme prejudice
Events in a small Kansas town reflect the close links between the civil rights struggle and gay liberation
Gary Younge in Topeka Monday March 7, 2005 The Guardian
The flat plains and big skies of Kansas serve as a reassuring backdrop to America's emotional landscape. In the national mythology Kansas (the size of Austria; the population of Latvia) is not just any state but a cultural comfort blanket. Like motherhood, apple pie, little league and homecoming, it represents all that is steady, regular, wholesome and decent in America. The state song is Home on the Range. Kansas, writes Thomas Frank in What's the Matter With Kansas? is "where Dorothy wants to return [and] where Superman grew up". When Frank's book came out in Britain its title had been translated to: What's the Matter with America? Kansas is the state of the nation.
In this mythic terrain Fred Phelps, of Topeka (pop 122,377), Kansas, fits in and stands out. He fits in because he is a homophobe who, like most of the country, including the Bush administration, uses the Bible as the source of his bigotry. He stands out because, unlike most of the country, he pursues his agenda with a vicious zeal and animus that not even the White House could match. When Mr Phelps attended the funeral of Matthew Shephard, a young man beaten to a pulp in a homophobic attack, or those of prominent HIV sufferers, he took his "God hates fags" picket signs with him.
Phelp's granddaughter, Jael, inherited his intolerance. "The proscribed punishment for homosexuality in the Bible is death," she told the New York Times last week. "They are worthy of death, and those people who condone that action are just as guilty." Last week, Jael Phelps stood for election against the city's first and only openly gay city councilwoman, Tiffany Muller, in a primary. She also lobbied to defeat a local ordinance making it illegal to discriminate against lesbians and gays who work for the city. She lost on both counts, coming a distant last in the primary while the ordnance was passed 53% to 47%.
The victory was principally due to local factors. With the Phelpses in the frame, the vote became as much a referendum about rejecting flagrant bigotry as embracing equality. A statewide vote calling for a constitutional ban on gay marriage in April is expected to pass easily; Muller came second but enters April's runoff as the underdog. But the process by which it came about illustrates a national trend that has striking parallels with the civil rights period of the 50s and 60s, when Topeka was in the national spotlight.
Just over 50 years ago, an African American, Oliver Brown, tried to enrol his daughter, Linda, into the white junior school here. The local board of education refused to admit her. Brown, along with other parents facing similar problems across the country, objected in a suit that went all the way to the supreme court. In 1954, in a landmark ruling, the supreme court effectively outlawed segregation, in the now famous Brown v Board of Education.
The ensuing period sparked more than a decade of civil-rights activism that saw the most vicious racism and the most heroic anti-racism. It was an era in which the main political parties attempted to either disown or exploit these tensions, wavering between opportunism and prejudice when issues of principle were at stake, which bears comparison with recent developments in the struggle for gay and lesbian liberation.
Following two key court decisions in 2003 supporting gay rights - the supreme court's decision to strike down the sodomy laws, followed by the Massachusetts supreme court's legalisation of same-sex marriage - the religious right has been engaged in a huge anti-gay backlash on a national and local level. While the Democratic party has sat on its hands, the Republican Congress has exploited the issue as a means of galvanising its base and splitting the Democrats' core support. In November, 11 states passed constitutional bans on gay marriage.
Meanwhile, left to fend for themselves, lesbian and gay communities are becoming more confident, organised, sophisticated and vocal in their struggle for equality. Erin Norris led the campaign to back the ordinance in Topeka with a grassroots strategy. Eschewing television and radio advertising, they went door-to-door targeting and mobilising potential support. "If you can put a face on a human rights issue, then it can make a difference," she says. The lesbian and gay community in Topeka is becoming a key broker in local politics, providing crucial volunteers and funds for those who back equality.
'We're really fighting for our lives," says Norris. "We feel targeted, so we become really savvy really quickly." Norris says a local woman arrived at her house last week and told her she had been beaten up for having a "Vote Tiffany" sign on her lawn. "I felt really responsible," says Norris. "But she came to say she wanted another yard sign. It energised her to get more involved."
A similar mood of resilience and resistance has become evident across the country. In Spokane, Washington, where conservatives are preparing for a showdown over the proposed establishment of a gay business district, a gay businesswoman, Bonnie Aspen, told the Observer: "Bring it on. Spokane won't change without confrontation." As during the civil rights movement, such defiance is born from a mixture of strength in spirit and adversity in practice. "We've only been tolerated because we've remained silent," said Stephen Adams of Springfield, Missouri, after the state passed its gay marriage ban last year. "But we just can't be silent any more."
To compare these two struggles is not to equate them. To say they are the same would be ridiculous. It goes without saying that there are major differences between race and sexual orientation - and therefore homophobia and racism. It also goes without saying that the existence of many black lesbians and gays makes the binary opposition of the two issues redundant. To ignore the parallels would be no less ridiculous. The civil rights movement was not made from whole cloth. Nor were its achievements limited to the interests of African Americans. It was part of a narrative of extending human rights to those who had been denied them that helped remove discriminatory barriers for many, not least white women and Jews. Its roots, like its appeal, were universal. It drew inspiration from Gandhi (among others) and can give inspiration to the likes of Norris and other gay activists.
There are two main reasons why this comparison jars with many. The first is blatant homophobia. It is far easier to marginalise the lesbian and gay agenda if you can sever any association between it and other struggles for equality. The second is latent homophobia, which argues that such comparisons trivialise racism, as though the right to love who you want and still keep your job, your home and sometimes your life is a trifling matter.
Those who insist that one is worse than the other should remember that this is not a competition. Sadly, there is enough misery to go around. People like the Phelpses will make sure it stays that way. They don't need our help.
g.younge@guardian.co.uk
Mr. Younge must be using Kansas as a metaphor for his over the rainbow, judy garland-esque references. As in we are not in Kansas anymore.
Homosexuality is NOTHING to do with civil rights movemetns. Civil rightw as not about a mutable sexual behavior.
Mr. Younge might as well be demanding pedophile rights.
Hmmmm. That's interesting!
I'm sure we could open quite a few cans of worms with that exercise. You learn something new every day on FR!
http://www.rotten.com/library/bio/religion/fred-phelps/
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?sid=184
Phelps, undertaking a run for governor of Kansas, begins disseminating flyers attacking his gubernatorial competitors and other state politicians in unusually personal terms. He loses the Democratic primary.
Fred phelps does not fit in here. This is a "red" state. Fred Phelps is a lifelong democrat.
http://gaytoday.badpuppy.com/garchive/events/algorephelps.jpg
here he is after a fundraiser for Al Gore's presidential campaign in 1991.
http://www.godhatesamerica.com/ghfmir/fliers/feb2005/Howard_Dean_Letter_2-14-2005.pdf
Here he is offering to help Howard Dean reach out to evangelical christians in order to bring them to the democratic party.
http://www.biblicalrecorder.org/content/news/2004/4_8_2004/ne080404fred.shtml
"The Phelpses moved to Topeka in 1954, and nine years after opening his church, Fred Phelps earned a law degree from Topeka's Washburn University. He worked as a civil rights lawyer, and received an award from the NAACP after defending two black men who were searched by police at a party."
He worked for civil rights.
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?sid=184
"Phelps sues President Ronald Reagan for sending an ambassador to the Vatican, alleging violations of the constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion. "
He didn't like Ronald Reagan.
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?sid=184
"Phelps, undertaking a run for governor of Kansas, begins disseminating flyers attacking his gubernatorial competitors and other state politicians in unusually personal terms. He loses the Democratic primary, but garners 11,634 votes, 6.7% of the total. "
He ran for governor of kansas as a democrat.
Fred Phelps doesn't belong here anymore than you do. Face it Fred Phelps is just another hate filled leftist, really no different than yourself.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This is a copy of the e-mail I just sent to mr Younge.
BTW I've lived on three continents, been around the world. I could live anywhere. I choose to live in Leavenworth Kansas.
As soon as the name Phelps was invoked, I stopped reading. That name is an insult to life-long Kansans. That sorry excuse for a human being does not represent my state in any way, shape, or form.
:) In Leavenworth you have the best of all worlds.
bump for later read...
Gary Younge is just one of many vile fudge packing maggots
pretending to be reporters for the Gay Agenda pushing Guardian.
Who cares what they say?
The people in England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales that matter are those with real opinions about the Middle East, about the soon to be failed 'euro', and the rest. And just as with the American leftwing 'mainstream', real people don't get printed or heard there. Look to the web. See what real people are saying, about real issues.
C'mon guys. IT IS THE GUARDIAN.
I am actually surprised anyone these days posts anything from this rag. Its just desperate to sell papers, and there are always some folks who will read this cr@p but, please, never take it seriously or think it is representative of general UK views, only of those on the fringes.
Nothing new to see here, move along.
What does this writer in the UK know anything about America? Absolutely nothing from what I can tell.
Next time these guys need rescuing from some oppressive force in Europe, maybe we should tell them they are on their own.
Fortunately there are a lot of good Brits that don't take that writer's point of view.
Don't let it bother you.
I've lived in or close to Topeka all my life. Fred Phelps is definitely not mainstream here. This writer doesn't know what he's talking about.
Next time these guys need rescuing from some oppressive force in Europe
This is one pathetic article by an even more pathetic journalist.
What would the homo Nazi's and their enablers do without their two favorite straw men Fred Phelps and Mathew Shepard?
If you want on/off the ping list see my profile page.
Yep another bs article written by a Homo Nazi to push the Gay Agenda and make us the bad people.
This info has been on the street in Laramie since the murder, and is supported by the former prosecutor, but is only know making it into the MSM, because they were determined to make this an anti-gay hate crime even if the facts didn't fit.
After The Ball : How America Will Conquer It's Fear & Hatred Of Gays In The 90's
Originally published: New York : Doubleday, 1989. Subject: Gay liberation movement
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