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
It seems that all it boils down to is envy.
This is complete BS but what do you expect from The Guardian. It could very easily pass as if it were from The Onion.
These days whenever I see that name in this kind of article, I usually just move on. A gay friend is far more critical about Shephard than I am and we both agree that waving the bloody Matthew shirt is an easy way to "prove" one is on the "correct" side of all issues. The fact that there hasn't been another Shepard to take on the role of Star Victim in all these years since his murder kinda disproves this fool's point.
Dude--you know NOTHING about America, and merely pick and choose a few facts to try to assemble a fictional image of what this country is. Now go pray for the failure of the millions who would never have a chance at democracy if not for the evil red state George Bush presidency. And fix your teeth.
Wonder if Thomas Frank is related to Barney Frank-they seem to have the same priority at the top of their list.
Quite right.
I suggest this author get back to UK (aka "civilisation") - just get outta HERE - and maybe read a little bit from deToqueville. What an a$$
You'd think some poof in Britain would have other things to cry about than what goes on in Kansas. Try being openly gay in the Third World...
Mind you, there is one major political figure, who Fred Phelps has worked for: Al Gore, in Gore's 1988 campaign.
... or in Saudi Arabia.
K-State Grad here. Don't let the bastards get you down.
Anytime they compare black discrimination with public non-acceptance of a death-dealing, hyper-promiscuous, unnatural lifestyle, then you know you're dealing with the type of folks who "do" hundreds in meth & sex parties and wake up not knowing their own name and what kind of perversion they're physically carrying in their elimination system.
LOL, wait until they find out that the Aryn Nation is moving to KCK. Seriously, I am more than happy to keep losers like this away from Kansas. Of course, the weather could do that too. Phelps is an idiot. The fact that he's one of the few in Kansas makes him more noticable. And they chose Topeka as the lead case in Brown v. Board of Education because Topeka was the only place that they could find where there was separate but equal. It was big enough to have the two separate school systems and the black schools were as good as the white. It tested the single issue. Most of Kansas had integrated schools way before the 50s... and puleeze, lets not hear anyone in England lecture about segregated schools - one of the most class ridden systems in the world.
Whew! (Wipes forehead)
I saw the title of this thread and thought that Brit Hume was slamming the "red states".
OH, heavens no!
I would die a thousand deaths if that were the case!
Sorry for the false alarm.
The numerous states that have passed amendments have done so in defense of marriage and other institutions from an attempt to redefine them by a topsy-turvey PC-speak language of the left and some agenda driven gays wishing to make their manner of conduct mainstream. Sensible voters recognize this and merely amend to preserve the definition that marriage and the like have always have so as to prevent this language perversion and the related surmounting of the laws that would go along with such new definitions.
This writer, like countless others, falsely claims that the amendments are worded to "deny" something or take some "right" away, when instead, they merely want to preserve common understanding and in no way prevent homosexual citizens from making arrangments of sensible civil nature.
Likewise, the majority of sensible average voters understand the excess of Phelp's daughter's rhetoric and refuse to accept her as a prudent local council person -- hence her defeat as of a few days ago. America's vast middle is conservative in culture unfailingly if not always in politics and the first council of conservatism is Prudence -- a trait the the whole Phelps miniature circus has always lacked.
Likewise, he doesn't understand race in Kansas. He neglects to mention the Kansas was the original "Free State" and that my forefathers were virtually crazily abolitionist. I can say that as I have a great grandfather accused of being one of those that assisted in the raid at the Pottawatomie Creek. He also thinks that Brown v. Topeka State Board lasted ten years. What a mental midget. Brown and the legacy it left continued into the last decade. Three computer centered elementary schools were built in the most modest areas of Topeka by a board that had a white majority, all as a continuation of honest attempts to right wrongs and live by the rule of law. Guess what? The community was together in praising the results.
Likewise, the issues of state school boards participating in rolling back the general contempt shown to religions in general gives great amusement to the bulk of Kansans that see it as just deserts for educators that have ignored the electorate and promoted Secular Humanism. The vast middle on this question is letting those passionate about the evolutionary excess have their way to a great degree because they feel that educators have failed to serve the electorate in general and they need their chain jerked.
Speaking of jerks, I'll let you know what conditions I find for freedom in London before too long. I'll let you know what has been surrendered since the Glorious Revolution and we will see which locale has taken the wrong turn.
I'm sure there are people who share Fred Phelps's feelings in the U.K. The one in Topeka just screams louder. Talk about over-generalizing a state! It's a wonder he didn't think we were all BTK killers too.
More garbage from the Guardian. One is better off divining prophecies from the shape of dog crap than reading that rag.
As an aside, I remember the Guardian's effort to influence Clarkson County in Ohio (which went to Bush by the way) on the idea that because American policy effects Britain they should have a voice. I remember thinking, "Gee, I don't remember my grandfather in India ever getting much voice in the British government even though their policy had SLIGHTLY more of an impact on India than America's does on Britain."
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