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
Kansas has been my home almost all my life. It is a place I dearly love, with beautiful landscapes, fields of sunflowers, and the friendliest people I have ever met. I take it personally that this sorry excuse for a man condemns my state due to the stupid comments of one hot-blooded zealot who, by the way, gets picketed everywhere he goes, including my former high school. By nature I am not a violent individual, but if Gary Younge ever sets foot in my community, I will rip him a new one.
Another tidbit I find interesting is Younge's references to Thomas Frank's book, which doesn't even have an original title. "What's The Matter With Kansas?" was originally a famous op-ed penned by the author William Allen White in 1895. By the way, Kansas' response to Thomas Frank is "What's The Matter With YOU?"
The writer is a bigot.
These b*stards have no idea what they're talking about!
Someone was going to write a book called "What's Wrong with the UK," but there wasn't enough paper.
LOL!
Wrong... according to this writer, their only crime is using a bible.
I can't believe such garbage was written.
What does this writer in the UK know anything about America? Absolutely nothing from what I can tell.
In all due respect, Kansas is not a microcosm of America. Neither is New York, Indiana, Washington or Texas. When you think of America you have to think of her as a whole or she doesn't make sense.
Consider the source...for the most part, the Guardian is like the NYT, but with an extra dose of malt vinegar.
You're absolutely right. The writer had an agenda from the start: to travel to a quintessential, down-to-earth red state, locate a nutjob, and use it to slander the entire country.
Kansas is wonderful, this guy is a loser. Don't get worked up.
I know...
It's just that I don't understand sometimes how people could fail to appreciate its wonders.
His loss, though...
I'd be tempted to knock him on his ass myself.
He doesn't know anything about America. He doesn't know anything about Americans. He doesn't know anything about Kansans.
Yet he blabbers at length about all. That's what makes him a bigot.
If I were in charge of everything -- I'd arrange to have every graduating high schooler travel cross country -- east and west, then north and south. In my younger wandering days I did this -- by hitching, hiking, bus and car. And it forever colored my perceptions of this country and deepened my appreciation.
Matthew would not have been beaten to a pulp if he had paid his meth dealer in a timely fashion.
I had a similar epiphany; mine came from spending two years overseas. I always appreciated my country, but I really had no idea until I spent those two years on distant shores. Let's just say that you learn a healthy dose of gratitude.
Yes, indeed!
Care to enlighten me to this bit 'o info? tia
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