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
IF the Phelps' are so typical, then they should have WON, not lost, on both counts, right? The writer is a fool.
Another "snip" from another column by this fool:
"If they lost their innocence on September 11 - never a particularly convincing assertion - then they cannot have it back now."
Kansas is a beautiful state and the sunflower fields take your breath away.
Kansas is YOUR state and you are proud of it with all its glory, pride in America and all the many other things it has to offer. We were there once in Liberal and I thought it was the neatest place and we enjoyed our weekend there.
Dont' let this twit make your blood boil. Consider the source. He knows nothing and proved it or he wouldn't have written such an assinine piece.
If you want to see a plethora of hate rhetoric, check out the Guardian message board Go to their home page and click on Guardian Talk.
Many thanks!
I'm glad you liked Kansas.
Where are you from?
I don't know where that came from, I followed the case, and the confessions of the 2 guys.
It was a robbery, pure and simple, the fact that he was gay, just made him easier, the 2 guys who drug users, but in their statements, confessions and eloqutions (they also gave an interview, which I would think should have been barred, I don't see how they didn't break the law again doing it) they have stayed pretty much with the same theme, he wasn't targeted because he was gay, they wanted to rob him and he had money.
Yikes! I feel like I should take a shower after reading that stuff.
Colorado!!! Neighbors, eh?
If disliking the repugnant and revisionist moral equivalency that compares gay rights to Black civil rights makes me a Homophobe, then making the gay/Black comparison makes this author, and others like him, Racists.
When gays endure slavery I'll credit the comparison. When a gay walks down the street with his sexuality evident on his face I'll credit the comparison.
The Guardian = LA Times, Washington Post etc.
Not worth your time.
Beautiful place. I went rafting on the Arkansas River and it took my breath away.
Younge is projecting. He knows that most of our US neo-Nazis are Euro-philes for a reason. David Duke even renamed his organization to EURO (European-American Unity and Rights Organization). Most of the current neo-Nazi propaganda in the USA is imported from Britain.
Bring out the fire hoses!
Don't worry. I just bought a 12 pack of Charmin.
ROTFLOL!
I love it!
Phelps is considered a JOKE by 99% of the people - EVERYWHERE. Even the most anti-gay people don't like Phelps.
He fits in
I have a hard time believing that.
because he is a homophobe who, like most of the country, including the Bush administration, uses the Bible as the source of his bigotry.
Bush is far from a bigot on gay issues or any other issues.
And you Guardian jackasses went back 50 years to find that? I'm sure I can find a lot of skeletons in Manchester, which is a lot rougher city than most, if not all places in Kansas.
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.
There's a lot of difference between someone's skin color than someone who decides to bat for the other team.
In November, 11 states passed constitutional bans on gay marriage.
Both red and blue states.
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.
That happenes. My dad's Bush sign was stolen 3 times. Some union goons tried to pick a fight with us(later backed down when we wern't budging) at other times. Politics is rough.
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."
And I'm going to shoot down anything you support as long as you people quit shoving your business in my face. What you do is none of my business and that's a TWO WAY street. Don't take my tax money(domestic benefits). Don't recruit kids. Stay out of the schools. That's ALL I ask, and apparently it is too much to ask.
This REALLY pisses me off.
I can't believe this crap was written about Kansas!
And besides, the idiots at the Guardian think TOPEKA is a "small town?"
Man, Europeans are morons. Anything over 30,000 at the very least qualifies as technically a city even though in my mind, it still is really a town for awhile. But Topeka sure as heck is a CITY.
I'm equally pissed off, man!
Now if only Colorado would stop stealing our water. :)
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