High school music teacher Matthew Cox didn't make it home to Michigan for Christmas. Instead, he was allegedly murdered by one of his own students. On December 20, the 32-year-old Cox picked up Basic High School student Juan Aguirre and his brother Jose Delatorre and took them back to his house in Henderson.OK, now here is where the garbage defense unravels; the thugs choke Cox for 10 minutes, until he stops moving, and tie up his hands and feet. Do the the sexually terrorized young men call 911? Do they run to their home and ask for help? No.The brothers told police in the report that they played video games with Cox. Before leaving, however, they say Cox went upstairs with Juan. Juan says that while they were alone, his teacher became sexual with him and made him feel uncomfortable.
Jose drove them back to Cox's house, where the two teens stole his electronics. The brothers left Cox's dead body on his couch and Juan says he kissed his teacher's cheek before they left. The teens say they didn't mean to hurt him, they just wanted to rob Cox. Juan also told police that their mother helped them to hide Cox's car at a local casino.
As I mentioned above, gay panic worked in a case in Grand Rapids, Michigan in April; Steve Scarborough was charged with felony murder and faced mandatory life in prison without parole for the murder of Victor Manious. Mind you, Scarborough admitted in a taped confession that after an alleged sexual advance by Manious, Scarborough hit Manious with a bat, stuffed him in a car trunk, then went on a four-day binge, using the dead man's cell phone and credit cards for shopping sprees, gas and air fare to Texas. What was the verdict? Voluntary manslaughter, which carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison. The jury was aware that Scarborough had a previous criminal record, but obviously believed that he was a victim of an assault by Manious and the victim must have had it coming to him.
Let's hope this kind of defense can be put to bed in 2009. I won't hold my breath.
Martin Luther King, Jr.’s April 1963 Letter From A Birmingham Jail is one of the defining documents of the American anti-segregation movement. Just about anybody who was alive in the early 1960s has heard of it. Dr. King wrote the Letter during a period of incarceration in Birmingham, Alabama. This was one of numerous occasions when civil disobedience on behalf of racial equality landed him behind bars. If the work MLK put into his Birmingham Jail essay is any indication, he certainly used his time in lock-up constructively. It was written in response to a public statement by eight White Alabama clergymen who opposed the confrontational tactics he used. They’d denounced him for leading street demonstrations, and argued that other, less disruptive means should be used to combat institutionalized racism.
It should come as no surprise that Dr. King’s oratory was no less powerful on paper than it was in the pulpit. After publication in the 12 June 1963 edition of The Christian Century, his response stirred such a strong reaction that it was distributed more widely. Most people read the text when the Atlantic Monthly reprinted it later that month. The following year, the Birmingham Jail Letter became the centerpiece of Dr. King’s bestselling book Why We Can’t Wait.
Since the passage of Proposition 8 in California, and media stories about Black Californians supporting the measure by huge margins, an old debate has flared up again: Are Gay Rights Civil Rights? Are Gay activists being arrogant when they say so? And is it wrong to expect President-Elect Barack Obama, an African-American, to identify with LGBT citizens fighting separate-but-equal provisions?
To me, a Black Gay man who has endured both racism and heterosexism, and who sees no difference in the kind of discrimination they generate, this debate has always sounded silly. That said, I find it outrageous that some anti-segregation veterans would argue that Black folk have an exclusive claim to the term Civil Rights, and that no other movement dare use it. Excuse me? Have these folks never heard of the Women’s Rights movement? The Farmworkers’ movement? The Disabled Rights movement? I don’t recall hearing any objections to those groups using the language. I find it even more outrageous that some idiotic Lesbian and Gay pundits lend this argument credence.
In the final decade of her life, Dr. Martin Luther King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, stressed repeatedly that Gay Rights was a Civil Rights concern. She was the “fierce advocate” President-Elect Barack Obama now claims to be, but unlike him, she walked the talk! In 1998, she called for Civil Rights movement veterans to support our struggle. In 2003, she personally invited the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force to participate in a 40th anniversary commemoration of her husband’s March On Washington speech. In 2004, two years before her untimely death from cancer, she shocked many in the Black community by championing marriage equality (something her colleague, Rev. Joseph Lowery, still refuses to do). Mrs. King also stated publicly that, contrary to what some religious reactionaries might believe, her late husband did have LGBT citizens in mind when he spoke of equal rights for all people.
I knew this was true because an openly Gay man, Bayard Rustin, had been one of Dr. King’s chief organizers. But is an understanding that Gay people deserve equal rights reflected in his writings? While MLK never made any explicit references to LesBiGay Americans (nobody with a national profile spoke openly about us back then, and besides, his enemies were fag-baiting him behind the scenes), I suspected his language was broad enough that support for LGBT equality could be inferred. I also suspected that a study of his writings would point up strong parallels between racism and heterosexism. My suspicions were confirmed almost immediately; I had to look no further for confirmation than Dr. King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail. I found the text conveniently located on the Web, and I’d like to share excerpts with you here; as is my habit, I've edited them slightly for style.
I’m struck by the similarity between the jive talk MLK had to deal with four decades ago, and the jive talk today’s Gay Rights advocates hear. We're currently catching flak from the Mormon church and other Right Wing religious institutions. Why? Because we've finally summoned up the courage to picket their houses of worship and cry out against their cruel persecution of us. Recently, they went so far as to spend thousands of collection plate dollars on a mendacious New York Times ad, portraying themselves as innocent victims of Gay intolerance. (Yiddish lesson for today: Can you say "chutzpah?") That ad can be seen as a modern spin on the 1963 White clergymen's statement targeting Dr. King. Our national advocacy organizations have yet to answer this gross distortion of fact, and they probably won't, but it's instructive to read how MLK responded to the outraged fundies of his day:
You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects, and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city's White power structure left the Negro community with no alternative. There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known . . . Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the latter consistently refused to engage in good faith negotiation.
I wouldn't presume to estimate how many times equality advocates like the Rev. Mel White and others have approached heterosexist churches, seeking to initiate constructive dialogue. I only know many such approaches have been made over the years, and every one I've heard about has been rebuffed. The organized church is firmly entrenched in its philosophy of heterosexual supremacy, a (faulty) Scriptural interpretation that it’s not content to just espouse within its own walls. No, it must need spread this pestilence in the public sphere. Worse, it seeks to impose heterosexual supremacy on secular society by targeting the civil liberties of homosexual citizens.
Here's my response to the fundies' absurd accusations of anti-religious bigotry: If they don't like people objecting to their frequent violations of church/state separation, they only have themselves to blame. If they think they can expect us to lie still while their feet press down on our backs, they're out of their sanctimonious minds! But that's the kind of clouded thinking that supremacy doctrines produce. Isn't it our duty as compassionate human beings to help them think clearly again?
To be sure, Dr. King had his own beef with the institutional church. He wrote:
I have been so greatly disappointed with the White church and its leadership . . . I felt we would be supported by the White church. I felt that the White ministers, priests and rabbis of the South would be among our strongest allies. Instead, some have been outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement, and misrepresenting its leaders; all too many others have been more cautious than courageous, and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained glass windows . . . in the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched White churchmen stand on the sideline and mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities.
I've watched Straight and even some Gay religious folk do the same thing. They're quick to talk about church unity, which they value over social justice. They evidently want the heads of Lesbian and Gay Christians bowed in shame as well as in worship. They decline to challenge their leadership's hateful proclamations against LBGT identity (yes, I'm talking about the Pope, but certainly not him alone) and they won't lift a finger to correct the church's distorted Gospel. Have you ever asked questions similar to the ones Dr. King asks in this next excerpt?
I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mississippi and all the other southern states. On sweltering summer days and crisp autumn mornings, I have looked at the South's beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. I have beheld the impressive outlines of her massive religious education buildings. Over and over I have found myself asking: "What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices when the lips of Governor Barnett dripped with words of interposition and nullification? Where were they when Governor Wallace gave a clarion call for defiance and hatred? Where were their voices of support when bruised and weary Negro men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest?"
Where were their voices when celebrity pastor Rick Warren likened Gay relationships to pedophilia and incest? When Bishop Harry Jackson, Jr. equated homosexual love to ancient temple prostitution? When Bishop Eddie Long called Gay men "faggots" from his pulpit? When Rev. Ken Hutcherson joked about dismembering effeminate men? When the Pope characterized Gay and transgender humanity as a threat to the Earth's survival?
Conservative evangelicals swear they don't engage in hate speech, but the record speaks for itself. How many of their Sodom and Gomorrah sermons have motivated the fatal beating of a Gay man (or a presumed Gay man, such as happened recently in New York City)? How many of their misquotations from the Apostle Paul's letters have triggered the gang rape of a Lesbian? How many transgender teenagers have committed suicide because they validate a defunct Holiness Code that never even applied to Christians? Exactly how many LGBT youngsters are bullied and ostracized every day because of their reckless condemnations? Where is the church’s support for victims of its own vilification? A vilification that has neither basis nor justification in Jesus Christ's teachings? More important, where is its repentance? There's a terribly urgent need for repentance here.
Dr. King wanted to know what God such cold-hearted "Christians" worshiped. I'd answer his question with one of my own: Can Satan be considered a god? Nearly half a century ago, MLK took critical note of how far the organized church had strayed from its Gospel, and he warned that a day of reckoning was nigh:
So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an arch-defender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent, and often even vocal sanction of things as they are . . . but the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.
We're living in the 21st century now, and there’s been no discernible improvement in the organized church’s behavior. On the contrary, it’s gotten progressively worse. There’s not a trace of authenticity left! As Jesus Christ did before him, Dr. King indicted the orthodoxy in no uncertain terms, but he praised religious leaders who dared to defy their status quo-loving denominations and call for racial justice. His words of affirmation are also balm to Straight allies like Rev. Jimmy Creech and other Gay-affirming clergy who suffer the wrath of church administrators today:
Some have been dismissed from their churches, have lost the support of their bishops and fellow ministers. But they have acted in the faith that right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. Their witness has been the spiritual salt that has preserved the true meaning of the Gospel in these troubled times. They have carved a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment.
Speaking of disappointment, have you read a Gay Rights opinion piece lately? Right now the Gay blogosphere, as well as news-oriented sites like The New York Blade and The Huffington Post are riddled with stern op-eds from self-described “queer” activists and their heterosexual (heterosexist?) sympathizers. These op-eds scold Gay people for daring to want marriage equality, for objecting to hatemonger preachers at a President's inaugural, for demanding full recognition of their American citizenship. That's not the worst of it, either. In an 11 December 2008 New York Blade article, Neil Giuliano, the president of GLAAD, declared: “It (the equality struggle) isn’t about demanding your rights.” Incredibly, he saw nothing wrong with making such a spineless statement.
Giuliano and his oh-so-pragmatic colleagues at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the Human Rights Campaign and the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund advised us to cease and desist irritating the powers-that-be with explicitly Gay concerns. They said we should concentrate on the economy, health care and other “big tent” issues. If the United States government fails to live up to its promise of equality for all, so be it; our “leadership” couldn't care less. According to them, brazen discrimination against LGBT folk can and should be tolerated for the greater good of society.
Dr. King was also interested in society’s greater good. The difference is, there was nothing exclusionary about his concept of society. He believed that discrimination against any minority group threw our justice system out of balance, and that such an imbalance threatened everyone’s Civil Rights:
I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
Our “fearless” leaders seem to feel that just electing a Democrat to office is enough to set the stage for equality. We’re supposed to throw all our hopes on the Democratic candidate, work like crazy to get him elected, and then hurry up and wait while he attends to every other constituency’s needs but ours. Oh, he’ll eventually get around to Gay Rights, the pragmatists assure us. He just can’t proceed too quickly or aggressively on our behalf, because that would cheese off his other constituents who happen to friggin' hate our guts!
It’s in our best interests to always put his agenda before ours, and God forbid we should make a fuss if he appears to renege on his promises. In other words, the Gay Rights struggle is a partisan political fight, to be waged according to partisan political wisdom, and no emphasis at all should be placed on the moral considerations that justify it. This strategy is so embarrassingly lame, it’s almost quaint! Dr. King had to confront the same retarded reasoning in 1963. Here’s what he had to say about trusting a political candidate to correct social inequalities:
We are sadly mistaken if we feel that the election of Albert Boutwell as mayor will bring the millennium to Birmingham. While Mr. Boutwell is a much more gentle person than Mr. Connor, they are both segregationists, dedicated to maintenance of the status quo. I have hope that Mr. Boutwell will be reasonable enough to see the futility of massive resistance to desegregation. But he will not see this without pressure from devotees of Civil Rights.
Try substituting the name Barack Obama for that of Albert Boutwell, the name Mr. Bush for that of Mr. Connor, the label heterosexists for segregationists, and the term Gay Rights for desegregation. Try it, and you’ll see how Dr. King could easily have been referring to the last Presidential election! Certainly, Wayne Besen and other high-profile Gay activists spoke of Mr. Obama as if his victory were the linchpin that would trigger full LGBT equality. Now, as the President-Elect kisses up to enemies like Rick Warren, they have reason to worry about him keeping his promises.
They have yet to learn what MLK understood implicitly: No disenfranchised minority group gets its Civil Rights served up on a silver platter. You can hire whichever cook you want to cater the dinner party, but if you aren't sitting at the table, you’ll never taste the food. You've got to make reservations at the dinner party. If you can’t make reservations, you've got to disrupt the damn meal! You must make it absolutely clear to the power structure that it can’t dine in peace until your place at the table has been set. Never mind my clumsy dining room metaphors, though. MLK explains the process much better than I do:
My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in Civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily . . . we know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed . . . there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.
"Echoes from a Birmingham Jail" continues with Part Two.
High school music teacher Matthew Cox didn't make it home to Michigan for Christmas. Instead, he was allegedly murdered by one of his own students. On December 20, the 32-year-old Cox picked up Basic High School student Juan Aguirre and his brother Jose Delatorre and took them back to his house in Henderson.OK, now here is where the garbage defense unravels; the thugs choke Cox for 10 minutes, until he stops moving, and tie up his hands and feet. Do the the sexually terrorized young men call 911? Do they run to their home and ask for help? No.The brothers told police in the report that they played video games with Cox. Before leaving, however, they say Cox went upstairs with Juan. Juan says that while they were alone, his teacher became sexual with him and made him feel uncomfortable.
Jose drove them back to Cox's house, where the two teens stole his electronics. The brothers left Cox's dead body on his couch and Juan says he kissed his teacher's cheek before they left. The teens say they didn't mean to hurt him, they just wanted to rob Cox. Juan also told police that their mother helped them to hide Cox's car at a local casino.
As I mentioned above, gay panic worked in a case in Grand Rapids, Michigan in April; Steve Scarborough was charged with felony murder and faced mandatory life in prison without parole for the murder of Victor Manious. Mind you, Scarborough admitted in a taped confession that after an alleged sexual advance by Manious, Scarborough hit Manious with a bat, stuffed him in a car trunk, then went on a four-day binge, using the dead man's cell phone and credit cards for shopping sprees, gas and air fare to Texas.
What was the verdict? Voluntary manslaughter, which carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison. The jury was aware that Scarborough had a previous criminal record, but obviously believed that he was a victim of an assault by Manious and the victim must have had it coming to him.
Let's hope this kind of defense can be put to bed in 2009. I won't hold my breath.
Martin Luther King, Jr.’s April 1963 Letter From A Birmingham Jail is one of the defining documents of the American anti-segregation movement. Just about anybody who was alive in the early 1960s has heard of it. Dr. King wrote the Letter during a period of incarceration in Birmingham, Alabama. This was one of numerous occasions when civil disobedience on behalf of racial equality landed him behind bars. If the work MLK put into his Birmingham Jail essay is any indication, he certainly used his time in lock-up constructively. It was written in response to a public statement by eight White Alabama clergymen who opposed the confrontational tactics he used. They’d denounced him for leading street demonstrations, and argued that other, less disruptive means should be used to combat institutionalized racism.
It should come as no surprise that Dr. King’s oratory was no less powerful on paper than it was in the pulpit. After publication in the 12 June 1963 edition of The Christian Century, his response stirred such a strong reaction that it was distributed more widely. Most people read the text when the Atlantic Monthly reprinted it later that month. The following year, the Birmingham Jail Letter became the centerpiece of Dr. King’s bestselling book Why We Can’t Wait.
Since the passage of Proposition 8 in California, and media stories about Black Californians supporting the measure by huge margins, an old debate has flared up again: Are Gay Rights Civil Rights? Are Gay activists being arrogant when they say so? And is it wrong to expect President-Elect Barack Obama, an African-American, to identify with LGBT citizens fighting separate-but-equal provisions?
To me, a Black Gay man who has endured both racism and heterosexism, and who sees no difference in the kind of discrimination they generate, this debate has always sounded silly. That said, I find it outrageous that some anti-segregation veterans would argue that Black folk have an exclusive claim to the term Civil Rights, and that no other movement dare use it. Excuse me? Have these folks never heard of the Women’s Rights movement? The Farmworkers’ movement? The Disabled Rights movement? I don’t recall hearing any objections to those groups using the language. I find it even more outrageous that some idiotic Lesbian and Gay pundits lend this argument credence.
In the final decade of her life, Dr. Martin Luther King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, stressed repeatedly that Gay Rights was a Civil Rights concern. She was the “fierce advocate” President-Elect Barack Obama now claims to be, but unlike him, she walked the talk! In 1998, she called for Civil Rights movement veterans to support our struggle. In 2003, she personally invited the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force to participate in a 40th anniversary commemoration of her husband’s March On Washington speech. In 2004, two years before her untimely death from cancer, she shocked many in the Black community by championing marriage equality (something her colleague, Rev. Joseph Lowery, still refuses to do). Mrs. King also stated publicly that, contrary to what some religious reactionaries might believe, her late husband did have LGBT citizens in mind when he spoke of equal rights for all people.
I knew this was true because an openly Gay man, Bayard Rustin, had been one of Dr. King’s chief organizers. But is an understanding that Gay people deserve equal rights reflected in his writings? While MLK never made any explicit references to LesBiGay Americans (nobody with a national profile spoke openly about us back then, and besides, his enemies were fag-baiting him behind the scenes), I suspected his language was broad enough that support for LGBT equality could be inferred. I also suspected that a study of his writings would point up strong parallels between racism and heterosexism. My suspicions were confirmed almost immediately; I had to look no further for confirmation than Dr. King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail. I found the text conveniently located on the Web, and I’d like to share excerpts with you here; as is my habit, I've edited them slightly for style.
I’m struck by the similarity between the jive talk MLK had to deal with four decades ago, and the jive talk today’s Gay Rights advocates hear. We're currently catching flak from the Mormon church and other Right Wing religious institutions. Why? Because we've finally summoned up the courage to picket their houses of worship and cry out against their cruel persecution of us. Recently, they went so far as to spend thousands of collection plate dollars on a mendacious New York Times ad, portraying themselves as innocent victims of Gay intolerance. (Yiddish lesson for today: Can you say "chutzpah?") That ad can be seen as a modern spin on the 1963 White clergymen's statement targeting Dr. King. Our national advocacy organizations have yet to answer this gross distortion of fact, and they probably won't, but it's instructive to read how MLK responded to the outraged fundies of his day:
You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham. But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects, and does not grapple with underlying causes. It is unfortunate that demonstrations are taking place in Birmingham, but it is even more unfortunate that the city's White power structure left the Negro community with no alternative. There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community. Birmingham is probably the most thoroughly segregated city in the United States. Its ugly record of brutality is widely known . . . Negro leaders sought to negotiate with the city fathers. But the latter consistently refused to engage in good faith negotiation.
I wouldn't presume to estimate how many times equality advocates like the Rev. Mel White and others have approached heterosexist churches, seeking to initiate constructive dialogue. I only know many such approaches have been made over the years, and every one I've heard about has been rebuffed. The organized church is firmly entrenched in its philosophy of heterosexual supremacy, a (faulty) Scriptural interpretation that it’s not content to just espouse within its own walls. No, it must need spread this pestilence in the public sphere. Worse, it seeks to impose heterosexual supremacy on secular society by targeting the civil liberties of homosexual citizens.
Here's my response to the fundies' absurd accusations of anti-religious bigotry: If they don't like people objecting to their frequent violations of church/state separation, they only have themselves to blame. If they think they can expect us to lie still while their feet press down on our backs, they're out of their sanctimonious minds! But that's the kind of clouded thinking that supremacy doctrines produce. Isn't it our duty as compassionate human beings to help them think clearly again?
To be sure, Dr. King had his own beef with the institutional church. He wrote:
I have been so greatly disappointed with the White church and its leadership . . . I felt we would be supported by the White church. I felt that the White ministers, priests and rabbis of the South would be among our strongest allies. Instead, some have been outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement, and misrepresenting its leaders; all too many others have been more cautious than courageous, and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained glass windows . . . in the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched White churchmen stand on the sideline and mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities.
I've watched Straight and even some Gay religious folk do the same thing. They're quick to talk about church unity, which they value over social justice. They evidently want the heads of Lesbian and Gay Christians bowed in shame as well as in worship. They decline to challenge their leadership's hateful proclamations against LBGT identity (yes, I'm talking about the Pope, but certainly not him alone) and they won't lift a finger to correct the church's distorted Gospel. Have you ever asked questions similar to the ones Dr. King asks in this next excerpt?
I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mississippi and all the other southern states. On sweltering summer days and crisp autumn mornings, I have looked at the South's beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. I have beheld the impressive outlines of her massive religious education buildings. Over and over I have found myself asking: "What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices when the lips of Governor Barnett dripped with words of interposition and nullification? Where were they when Governor Wallace gave a clarion call for defiance and hatred? Where were their voices of support when bruised and weary Negro men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest?"
Where were their voices when celebrity pastor Rick Warren likened Gay relationships to pedophilia and incest? When Bishop Harry Jackson, Jr. equated homosexual love to ancient temple prostitution? When Bishop Eddie Long called Gay men "faggots" from his pulpit? When Rev. Ken Hutcherson joked about dismembering effeminate men? When the Pope characterized Gay and transgender humanity as a threat to the Earth's survival?
Conservative evangelicals swear they don't engage in hate speech, but the record speaks for itself. How many of their Sodom and Gomorrah sermons have motivated the fatal beating of a Gay man (or a presumed Gay man, such as happened recently in New York City)? How many of their misquotations from the Apostle Paul's letters have triggered the gang rape of a Lesbian? How many transgender teenagers have committed suicide because they validate a defunct Holiness Code that never even applied to Christians? Exactly how many LGBT youngsters are bullied and ostracized every day because of their reckless condemnations? Where is the church’s support for victims of its own vilification? A vilification that has neither basis nor justification in Jesus Christ's teachings? More important, where is its repentance? There's a terribly urgent need for repentance here.
Dr. King wanted to know what God such cold-hearted "Christians" worshiped. I'd answer his question with one of my own: Can Satan be considered a god? Nearly half a century ago, MLK took critical note of how far the organized church had strayed from its Gospel, and he warned that a day of reckoning was nigh:
So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an arch-defender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent, and often even vocal sanction of things as they are . . . but the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.
We're living in the 21st century now, and there’s been no discernible improvement in the organized church’s behavior. On the contrary, it’s gotten progressively worse. There’s not a trace of authenticity left! As Jesus Christ did before him, Dr. King indicted the orthodoxy in no uncertain terms, but he praised religious leaders who dared to defy their status quo-loving denominations and call for racial justice. His words of affirmation are also balm to Straight allies like Rev. Jimmy Creech and other Gay-affirming clergy who suffer the wrath of church administrators today:
Some have been dismissed from their churches, have lost the support of their bishops and fellow ministers. But they have acted in the faith that right defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. Their witness has been the spiritual salt that has preserved the true meaning of the Gospel in these troubled times. They have carved a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment.
Speaking of disappointment, have you read a Gay Rights opinion piece lately? Right now the Gay blogosphere, as well as news-oriented sites like The New York Blade and The Huffington Post are riddled with stern op-eds from self-described “queer” activists and their heterosexual (heterosexist?) sympathizers. These op-eds scold Gay people for daring to want marriage equality, for objecting to hatemonger preachers at a President's inaugural, for demanding full recognition of their American citizenship. That's not the worst of it, either. In an 11 December 2008 New York Blade article, Neil Giuliano, the president of GLAAD, declared: “It (the equality struggle) isn’t about demanding your rights.” Incredibly, he saw nothing wrong with making such a spineless statement.
Giuliano and his oh-so-pragmatic colleagues at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, the Human Rights Campaign and the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund advised us to cease and desist irritating the powers-that-be with explicitly Gay concerns. They said we should concentrate on the economy, health care and other “big tent” issues. If the United States government fails to live up to its promise of equality for all, so be it; our “leadership” couldn't care less. According to them, brazen discrimination against LGBT folk can and should be tolerated for the greater good of society.
Dr. King was also interested in society’s greater good. The difference is, there was nothing exclusionary about his concept of society. He believed that discrimination against any minority group threw our justice system out of balance, and that such an imbalance threatened everyone’s Civil Rights:
I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.
Our “fearless” leaders seem to feel that just electing a Democrat to office is enough to set the stage for equality. We’re supposed to throw all our hopes on the Democratic candidate, work like crazy to get him elected, and then hurry up and wait while he attends to every other constituency’s needs but ours. Oh, he’ll eventually get around to Gay Rights, the pragmatists assure us. He just can’t proceed too quickly or aggressively on our behalf, because that would cheese off his other constituents who happen to friggin' hate our guts!
It’s in our best interests to always put his agenda before ours, and God forbid we should make a fuss if he appears to renege on his promises. In other words, the Gay Rights struggle is a partisan political fight, to be waged according to partisan political wisdom, and no emphasis at all should be placed on the moral considerations that justify it. This strategy is so embarrassingly lame, it’s almost quaint! Dr. King had to confront the same retarded reasoning in 1963. Here’s what he had to say about trusting a political candidate to correct social inequalities:
We are sadly mistaken if we feel that the election of Albert Boutwell as mayor will bring the millennium to Birmingham. While Mr. Boutwell is a much more gentle person than Mr. Connor, they are both segregationists, dedicated to maintenance of the status quo. I have hope that Mr. Boutwell will be reasonable enough to see the futility of massive resistance to desegregation. But he will not see this without pressure from devotees of Civil Rights.
Try substituting the name Barack Obama for that of Albert Boutwell, the name Mr. Bush for that of Mr. Connor, the label heterosexists for segregationists, and the term Gay Rights for desegregation. Try it, and you’ll see how Dr. King could easily have been referring to the last Presidential election! Certainly, Wayne Besen and other high-profile Gay activists spoke of Mr. Obama as if his victory were the linchpin that would trigger full LGBT equality. Now, as the President-Elect kisses up to enemies like Rick Warren, they have reason to worry about him keeping his promises.
They have yet to learn what MLK understood implicitly: No disenfranchised minority group gets its Civil Rights served up on a silver platter. You can hire whichever cook you want to cater the dinner party, but if you aren't sitting at the table, you’ll never taste the food. You've got to make reservations at the dinner party. If you can’t make reservations, you've got to disrupt the damn meal! You must make it absolutely clear to the power structure that it can’t dine in peace until your place at the table has been set. Never mind my clumsy dining room metaphors, though. MLK explains the process much better than I do:
My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in Civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily . . . we know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed . . . there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.
"Echoes from a Birmingham Jail" continues with Part Two.
The Los Angeles Times has a recent piece out (December 29, 2008) on how the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, entitled DSM psychiatry manual's secrecy criticized.
The subheader for the piece is The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is being revised under a cloak of confidentiality. Critics say the process needs to be open, and cite potential conflicts of interest. From the article:
An update is underway for the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, known as the DSM, which defines the emotional problems for which doctors prescribe drugs and insurance companies pay the treatment bills. Psychiatrists working on the new edition were required to sign a strict confidentiality agreement.Critics contend that the American Psychiatric Assn. should allow outside observers to review the scientific debate behind new and revised diagnoses.
Among the most prominent to speak out is the editor of the manual's third edition, Dr. Robert Spitzer, hailed by peers as the most influential psychiatrist of his generation. If the DSM is often called the profession's bible, then the DSM-III is the King James Version. Released in 1980, it set the standard by which others are measured.
Recently, Spitzer broke ranks by publishing an open letter to the profession protesting the confidentiality mandate.
A copy of Dr. Spitzer's open letter is here. Here's an excerpt from the letter:
[Below the fold, the Spitzer Letter and possible transgender/transsexual related issues behind the lack of transparency.]
The June 6 issue of Psychiatric News brought the good news that the DSM-V process will be "complex but open." At the 2008 annual meeting, outgoing APA President Carolyn Robinowitz, M.D., stressed that with the development of DSM-V now under way, APA is demonstrating its commitment to "transparency" at a time of heightened public concern about pharmaceutical industry and other special-interest ties to medicine.I found out how transparent and open the DSM-V process was when in a February e-mail to me from Darrel Regier, M.D., vice chair of the DSM-V Task Force, he informed me that he would not send me a copy of the minutes of DSM-V Task Force meetings as I had repeatedly requested over the past year. He explained that he and David Kupfer, M.D., chair of the DSM-V Task Force, had come to this decision because the Board of Trustees believed it was important to "maintain DSM-V confidentiality." He noted that the Board had developed an "acceptance form" that all task force and work group members were required to sign that essentially requires work group and task force members to agree to not discuss with anybody anything having to do with DSM-V. The language is quite clear:
"I will not, during the term of this appointment or after, divulge, furnish, or make accessible to anyone or use in any way... any Confidential Information. I understand that 'Confidential Information' includes all Work Product, unpublished manuscripts and drafts and other pre-publication materials, group discussions, internal correspondence, information about the development process and any other written or unwritten information, in any form, that emanates from or relates to my work with the APA task force or work group."
...It is hard to understand how the confidentiality agreements will benefit the process of developing DSM-V. Until they are no longer required, the DSM-V process can hardly be described as "transparent" and "open."
Many trans people are already not pleased with who's on the committee reviewing the updates for DSM-V. I know my gut-level guess with why the process of updating DSM-V is being secretive isn't because the committee members are significantly concerned about possible financial links to pharmaceutical manufacturers, but instead because the committee doesn't want to deal with angry, 
frustrated trans people who don't like how the discussion is going on updating the Gender Identity Disorder (GID) diagnosis. And frankly, my gut feelings have been wrong more than once -- but it's just one could make the case that it appears they're hiding their deliberative processes to minimize public flack from trans people that want medical stigma removed from their diagnosis (in the way LGB people had the stigma of homosexuality removed with the issuance of DSM-III)...the appearance of impropriety verses a known impropriety.
This reminds me of one of my favorite colorful sayings from when I was in the Navy:
It looks like sh**, it smells like sh** -- it must be chocolate, right?
Whatever the reason for the confidentiality agreements, I'm with Dr. Spitzer -- updating DSM-V should be a "transparent" and "open" process that doesn't require confidentiality agreements.
~~~~~
Further reading:
* WSJ Health Blog: Confidentiality of Psychiatric Manual's Update Draws Gripes
* Spitzer Blog: DSM-V: Open and Transparent?
* Website: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
~~~~~
Related:
* Gender-Variant Children And Transsexuals Will Likely Still Be Disordered In DSM-V
* Documenting The DSM-V And GID Controversy
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