Virginia's History of Stonewalling Against Gay Rights

This weekend as many in New York City - and many other parts of the USA - recognize the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, an openly gay man is in the upper tiers of the Democrat presidential primary contest, Ralph Northam, the most gay friendly governor in Virginia's history occupies the Executive mansion in Richmond, and numerous LGBT individuals hold local and state elected office, Virginia still lacks any non-discrimination protections for LGBT employees or even those merely seeking housing. Why?  The answer can be summed up in one word: "Republicans." If a second word is needed, then I suggest "Christofascists."  These two groups have worked hand in glove for decades to thwart any advances in LGBT rights in Virginia and have stonewalled against any progress.  Thanks to them, same sex relationships carried the potential of a felony conviction until the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Texas' and Virginia's (and eleven other states') sodomy statutes in 2003. In 1975, a statute was enacted barring same sex marriage.  Not content with that message of hate, in 2006 the Republicans and Christofascists rammed through the so-called Marshall-Newman Amendment to the state constitution in a very disingenuous campaign only to have that struck down by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals and then the U.S. Supreme Court in 2014, and 2015, respectively. Despite the latter rulings, thanks to Republicans, the 1975 statute and the Marshall-Newman Amendment remain of the books even though unenforceable. A piece in the Roanoke Times looks at Virginia's discriminatory history which can only be ended by voting control of the Virginia General Assembly to Democrats  in Virginia's November, 2019, elections.  Here are highlights:

You may hear the word “Stonewall” a lot today. It will not refer to the Stonewall we’re most familiar with.

The Stonewall in this case is not the Confederate general but the 50th anniversary of the so-called “Stonewall riots” in New York in 1969.

If you don’t know what those are, then consider this more of the history we never learned, perhaps because this history concerns what one 19th century poet delicately called “the love that dare not speak its name.”

The Stonewall Inn was a famous gay bar in New York City. On June 28, 1969, police raided the establishment, and violence broke out. The details are complicated . . . What matters is what happens next: The two days of street violence marked the beginning of a gay rights movement.

Some context for the times: Even the city’s most liberal newspaper, the legendary counter-cultural Village Voice, refused to print the word “gay” in advertisements. Within six months of the Stonewall riots, no fewer than three gay-related publications sprang up in New York. Within two years there were gay rights organizations in every major city in the western world.

Of course, the Stonewall riots weren’t really the starting point of the gay rights movement, just the modern one. France was the first country to legalize homosexuality — in 1791. . . . .However, the Stonewall riots served as an ignition spark that galvanized a movement, in much the same way that Rosa Parks getting arrested served to ignite a civil rights movement for African-American equality that had been going on for a long time.

Social movements do not always move in straight lines, and Virginia provides a good example. In the years following Stonewall, Virginia took one step after another to crack down on anything that resembled gay rights. Meanwhile, gay Virginians — who, of course, had been there all along — were becoming more and more visible.

In 1975, Virginia decided to ban same-sex marriages. The idea of such a thing had not crossed the public mind before then, but now it had and Virginia wanted to make sure such a thing didn’t happen here. That same year, Roanoke had at least three establishments catering to a gay clientele. The first had been quietly operating since 1953 — the Trade Winds, on what is now Elm Avenue and Franklin Road. Others opened in 1973 and 1975. By the time The Park opened in 1978, Roanoke counted six gay bars, although many people were unaware any of them existed. Such was the nature of Roanoke, and the nature of the times. Roanoke’s gay community first gathered for a “Pride in the Park” event in 1990; the organizers also made sure it attracted no media attention. They later described the event as “real scary” because the 300 to 400 attendees weren’t sure how the event would go.

Subsequent “Pride in the Park” events were publicized, but many in Roanoke were still unaware there was any gay community here at all until one tragic night in 2000. That September, a Florida drifter targeting the gay community walked into the Backstreet Café on Salem Avenue and opened fire — killing one man and wounding six others. Even in those pre-social media days, Roanoke was national news. And Roanoke’s response? Nearly 1,000 people marched through the streets to decry the shooting. The Roanoke Times reported the reaction to the shooting this way:

It has led untold numbers of gays to reveal their orientation publicly for the first time, produced Roanoke’s first gay political action committee in years, persuaded two lawmakers to reconsider their opposition to adding sexual orientation to hate crime laws, and brought international attention to Roanoke’s heretofore barely visible gay citizenry. Until now, average straight Roanokers probably didn’t think they knew any gay people, said the Rev. Catherine Houchins, a lesbian minister. “Now they’re finding out we’re their neighbors, their customers ... their employers, their employees.”

In some ways, the Backstreet Café shooting was Roanoke’s Stonewall riot — except that no one died in New York. Someone here did. Yet six years later, Roanoke still voted against one major goal of the gay rights movement — the right to marry.

A mere statue against same-sex marriage wasn’t considered strong enough. In 2006, the General Assembly passed and sent to voters a proposed constitutional amendment than would write the ban into the state’s fundamental law. Called the Marshall-Newman Amendment after its sponsors — Del. Bob Marshall, R-Manassas, and state Sen. Steve Newman, R-Lynchburg — the amendment passed by 57% to 43%.

In 2014, Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring declined to defend the amendment in federal court, calling it unconstitutional. The courts later agreed, striking down that provision of the state Constitution — a year before the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for same-sex marriage everywhere.

Despite the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, though, the Marshall-Newman Amendment remains part of the state’s Constitution — unenforceable but still on the books in case some future U.S. Supreme Court changes its mind.

Today, there are openly-gay elected officials in Blacksburg, Roanoke and the General Assembly, something unthinkable at the time of the Stonewall riots. One of the top-tier candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination is gay and that’s not even the most interesting thing about Pete Buttigieg’s background. Yet in Virginia (and lots of other states), someone can still be fired simply for being gay. In some ways, Virginia still stands like a stone wall.

Was Orlando Straight America’s Stonewall?

Like so many in the LGBT community, I continue to feel the lasting effects of the Orlando massacre that brought out in the open the hatred the LGBT community faces daily.  As my husband has said, that could have been us had we been in Orlando visiting and looking for a fun dance club to visit. And it could have been any gay/gay friendly bar across the country.   While a wake up call to those of us who are LGBT, as noted in a piece in Huffington Post, one can ope that what happened at Pulse on June 12, 2016, will over time prove to be the seminal act of terror/horror that gave straight America the wake up call that it needed to recognize its own complicity in the slaughter.  In my view, there needs to be a much larger discussion of religion's role in fomenting homophobia and the responsibility borne by "good Christians" who fail to forcefully confront - and hopefully over time, silence - the purveyors of anti-LGBT hatred who continue to stand in pulpits across America.  The truth is that Christianity is the wellspring from which homophobia was globalized.  The following are highlights from the HuffPo piece on how Orlando will make a lasting difference:

President Obama made history last Friday by conferring national monument status upon the site of the Stonewall Rebellion. As of yesterday’s dedication, Stonewall became the first national monument commemorating an event in LGBT history. That the president took this step with the nation still reeling from the antigay massacre in Orlando highlights how the two events — Stonewall and Orlando — are intertwined as major inflection points in the movement for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) equality.

The mass shooting at Orlando’s gay nightclub Pulse jolted straight Americans in much the same way that 1969’s Stonewall Rebellion accelerated the LGBT rights movement. Like Stonewall, Orlando catalyzed a collective self-reckoning and resolve for progress. But unlike Stonewall and the other anti-LGBT attacks that followed it in the decades since, Orlando’s aftershocks have rocked all of America - most notably Straight America - and not just LGBTs.

No LGBT American needed yet another reminder of the dangers we face on a daily basis. Orlando was not the first mass murder motivated by antigay hate.  . . . Many LGBT Americans have been the victims of violent crimes motivated by antigay or antitrans animus. In fact, the FBI classifies LGBT Americans as significantly more likely than any other minority - including Latinos/as and African-Americans - to be targeted by hate crimes.

So, while the Orlando mass shooting was horrifying to LGBT people, it did not necessarily surprise us. It was anti-gay violence and hate of the kind to which we have grown accustomed. We have learned to coexist with precarity, and walk the netless high wire that outness often entails.

Orlando’s aftermath, however, has differed materially from that of prior anti-gay mass hate crimes. This time, LGBT Americans were not left to mourn alone. To the contrary, there has been a loud, sustained, and unprecedented outcry by straightpeople condemning what happened in Orlando - and not solely as a mass shooting of unprecedented magnitude, but as an expressly and intolerably antigay mass hate crime.

Some statements rang hollow, like those from politicians and religious leaders known for trafficking in antigay hate in exchange for votes or donations. But a great many came across as sincere and heartfelt.

Some of the boldest displays of solidarity came from corners not usually known to be welcoming, nevermind attuned, to the LGBT community. Sports, for example. 

Teresa Jacobs, the mayor of Orange County, FL, which includes Orlando City, at the Lake Eola vigil that drew 50,000 straight and LGBT mourners lamented that the straight majority’s indifference to homophobia’s ubiquity helped the Orlando Massacre happen. She said: “We failed them when we were insensitive....and we failed them when we knew it was wrong, and we did nothing.” She observed that her “generation and the generations before were indoctrinated with beliefs and messages that fostered and perpetuated hate and prejudice, sometimes intentionally....” She called “on every member of our straight community to open their hearts to acceptance, to embrace diversity, and to cherish our differences.”

Slate’s J. Bryan Lowder reported from Orlando that “[a] number of queer folks [he] spoke with...observed that, in the wake of the tragedy, straight people in their lives seemed to be experiencing a kind of revelation about how precarious and stressful being LGBTQ still is in America.” He quoted one person as saying, “people are getting woke, right?” . . . . Many straight Americans arrived at these distressing realizations in Orlando’s wake, after having been lulled into the false reassurance that last year’s nationwide marriage equality victory represented the full normalization of gay life. 

This heightened interweaving of Straight with LGBT America cultivated the familiarity and empathy demonstrated so vividly, everywhere, over the last two weeks. It rendered the Orlando Massacre a catalytic event in LGBT history - as a straight counterpart to Stonewall. It is a watershed moment that is accelerating progress in the LGBT movement by raising awareness, activating countless new straight allies, and mainstreaming demands for full LGBT equality.

Orlando’s aftermath has recruited legions of new straight allies to the LGBT movement. The LGBT civil rights movement is no longer a movement for and by LGBT Americans. It is an American movement. For and by all of us.

I hope the author's prediction proves right.  Meanwhile, we in the LGBT community need to keep the pressure up on  the many new straight allies and help to focus efforts on destroying the roots of homophobia in America: toxic religion and shameless Republican politicians who use anti-LGBT animus literally daily to promote themselves with the hate-filled Christofascists.  

Pride After Orlando

I frequently note that living one's life "out and proud" is one of the most powerful forms of activism that we in the LGBT community can do.  Making people realize that we are not the ugly stereotypes that the "godly folk" like to disseminate can and does change hearts and minds - at least among decent, thinking people.  One way of doing this is to go to Pride events which in some ways are true acts of rebellion and well as opportunities to celebrate solidarity.  I'm sure that many in the straight community do not understand because they are part of the all too often oppressive majority.  The husband and I will attend Pride Fest today, both to celebrate with friends, but also to be visible and send a message that we will not be intimidated and we are here and never going to slink back into invisibility.  An op-ed in the New York Times expresses this mindset.  Here are excerpts:

June is pride month around the country, and it will continue to be. This weekend, celebrations will take place in Portland, Ore., and Chicago. The weekend after in New York City and San Francisco. All pride parades happen in defiance of people who want the L.G.B.T. community to be scared and ashamed. Most years those people are just parents who won’t talk to you about your personal life; for a decade it was a plague the government wouldn’t fight because they thought gay men deserved it. This year we thought it would be politicians trying to make going to the bathroom impossible for trans people. Now, after a massacre, it is more than that. But every Pride parade is an act of rebellion. And our preferred form of rebellion is getting drunk, sweaty, loud and naked.

Before the parade last weekend, my friends and I talked about Orlando, we talked about gun violence, we talked about horrible things politicians had posted, then deleted. There were rainbow streamers and inflatable unicorns and the flat knowledge that 49 people had been executed the night before for being gay. We walked the half block down to the parade, and it was alive. Go-go boys on fire trucks, Dykes on Bikes, serried ranks of L.G.B.T. Methodists mixed with dance music and light inebriation into a good time. It got better.

Our reaction wasn’t somber. We didn’t cancel the parade. We had fun. That is what gay people do. Every gay, trans or lesbian adult I know had to fight hard against family and social training to be an out, proud person. Our answer to loss and indignity, it seems, is to give a party, have a parade, and celebrate bits of happiness.

The uprising at Stonewall, our most famous civil rights moment, happened at a bar. It wasn’t noble or solemn, it was drunk, surly, and there were sequins involved. Those trans women and drag queens didn’t just stage a polite protest about repealing sodomy laws or cross-dressing prohibitions. They fought back against a police force invading our bar, the one place where the simple right to get a vodka soda and make out with a cute gay girl or boy in peace was something we could take for granted. It may seem frivolous, but when society has denied you dignity, honesty and safety, frivolity is all you’ve got.

And frivolity still comes through. When I logged into Grindr, a gay hookup app, on Sunday night, I was first greeted with a pop-up that let me know where and how I could help victims of the Pulse shootings.

It’s a dark, cruel joke, but ours is a culture that is not unfamiliar with darkness and cruelty. When people kill us, pass laws against us, make cheap jokes about us, they aren’t actually saying all gay people should die. They’re saying all L.G.B.T. people should know our place, live in silence, lie about who we are. Societal homophobia wants us to be ashamed, and finds ways to punish us if we refuse. The greatest gay rebellion is honest expression of our truth.

When word surfaced that the Orlando shooter had frequented gay bars and dating apps, some speculated that he might have been doing research to plan his attack. Gay people understood the other very real possibility, that the attacker might be a man with homosexual desires whom society had filled with so much secret shame that he would do anything to prove his distance from the gay world. It’s a tragic, complex truth that means however revolting I find him, I also have sympathy for the ways shame and the inability to live honestly may have twisted this man into a murderer.

The people who were at Pulse nightclub in Orlando on Saturday made the choice to be out and gay, and they paid a horrible price for it. The people who were out in West Hollywood on Sunday, and who will come out around the country this month, were there for all the L.G.B.T. people before us who suffered and struggled to be out and honest, and we did it with pride.

Presidential Proclamation: LGBT Pride Month

Brace yourself for more spittle flecked hysteria from the Christofascists and claims that Barack Obama is nothing less than demonic.  Why?  Because Barack Obama has signed a presidential proclamation designating June as LGBT Pride Month.   Worse yet, at least in the minds of the "godly Christian" folk is that Obama acknowledges the struggles faced by LGBT Americans and expresses his support for LGBT equality.  Joe My God provides highlights from the proclamation:

"As progress spreads from State to State, as justice is delivered in the courtroom, and as more of our fellow Americans are treated with dignity and respect -- our Nation becomes not only more accepting, but more equal as well. During Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) Pride Month, we celebrate victories that have affirmed freedom and fairness, and we recommit ourselves to completing the work that remains.

"Last year, supporters of equality celebrated the Supreme Court's decision to strike down a key provision of the Defense of Marriage Act, a ruling which, at long last, gave loving, committed families the respect and legal protections they deserve. In keeping with this decision, my Administration is extending family and spousal benefits -- from immigration benefits to military family benefits -- to legally married same-sex couples.

"My Administration proudly stands alongside all those who fight for LGBT rights. Here at home, we have strengthened laws against violence toward LGBT Americans, taken action to prevent bullying and harassment, and prohibited discrimination in housing and hospitals. Despite this progress, LGBT workers in too many States can be fired just because of their sexual orientation or gender identity; I continue to call on the Congress to correct this injustice by passing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.

"This month, as we mark 45 years since the patrons of the Stonewall Inn defied an unjust policy and awakened a nascent movement, let us honor every brave leader who stood up, sat in, and came out, as well as the allies who supported them along the way. Following their example, let each of us speak for tolerance, justice, and dignity -- because if hearts and minds continue to change over time, laws will too.

"NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim June 2014 as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month. I call upon the people of the United States to eliminate prejudice everywhere it exists, and to celebrate the great diversity of the American people.

"IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this thirtieth day of May, in the year of our Lord two thousand fourteen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-eighth." - Barack Obama.

Of course, if Obama was serious about ENDA protections, he would sign an ENDA executive order.

40 Years Later, Still Second-Class Americans

Frank Rich is one of my favorite columnists - he can write such hard hitting and sarcastic columns that cut to the heart of issues. Today his column looks at the status of LGBT rights forty (40) years after the Stonewall Riots (the Stonewall Inn is pictured at left). Yes, much has improved for LGBT Americans, but in many states such as Virginia, we remain second or third class citizens due to ignorance and most importantly religious based bigotry. That gays continue to be treated as second class citizens due to our non-conformity with the religious views of others makes a mockery of the freedom of religion that the USA and states like Virginia claim to grant to all citizens. The fact that gays face religious based discrimination daily shows this promise of religious freedom to be a lie. As long as such discrimination continues and gays are legally inferior and abused by homophobic judges, etc., the image that America like to project of itself to the world is false and also a lie. Here are some column highlights from the New York Times:

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LIKE all students caught up in the civil rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s, I was riveted by the violent confrontations between the police and protestors in Selma, 1965, and Chicago, 1968. But I never heard about the several days of riots that rocked Greenwich Village after the police raided a gay bar called the Stonewall Inn in the wee hours of June 28, 1969 — 40 years ago today. Then again, I didn’t know a single person, student or teacher, male or female, in my entire Ivy League university who was openly identified as gay. And though my friends and I were obsessed with every iteration of the era’s political tumult, we somehow missed the Stonewall story. Not hard to do, really.

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But if we had read them, would we have cared? It was typical of my generation, like others before and after, that the issue of gay civil rights wasn’t on our radar screen. Not least because gay people, fearful of harassment, violence and arrest, were often forced into the shadows. As David Carter writes in his book “Stonewall,” at the end of the 1960s homosexual sex was still illegal in every state but Illinois. It was a crime punishable by castration in seven states. No laws — federal, state or local — protected gay people from being denied jobs or housing. If a homosexual character appeared in a movie, his life ended with either murder or suicide.

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On Monday, President Obama will commemorate Stonewall with an East Room reception for gay leaders. Some of the invitees have been fiercely critical of what they see as his failure, thus far, to redeem his promise to be a “fierce advocate” for their still unfulfilled cause. The rancor increased this month, after the Department of Justice filed a brief defending the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the most ignominious civil rights betrayal under the last Democratic president, Bill Clinton. . . . The White House has also asserted that its Stonewall ceremony was “long planned” — even though it sure looks like damage control.

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But the most prevalent theory is that Obama, surrounded by Clinton White House alumni with painful memories, doesn’t want to risk gay issues upending his presidency, as they did his predecessor’s in 1993. . . . The cultural climate is far different today, besides. Now, roughly 75 percent of Americans support an end to Don’t Ask, and gay issues are no longer a third rail in American politics. Gay civil rights history is moving faster in the country, including on the once-theoretical front of same-sex marriage, than it is in Washington. If the country needs any Defense of Marriage Act at this point, it would be to defend heterosexual marriage from the right-wing “family values” trinity of Sanford, Ensign and Vitter.

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No president possesses that magic wand, but Obama’s inaction on gay civil rights is striking. So is his utterly uncharacteristic inarticulateness. The Justice Department brief defending DOMA has spoken louder for this president than any of his own words on the subject. Chrisler noted that he has given major speeches on race, on abortion and to the Muslim world. “People are waiting for that passionate speech from him on equal rights,” she said, “and the time is now.”

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Action would be even better. It’s a press cliché that “gay supporters” are disappointed with Obama, but we should all be. Gay Americans aren’t just another political special interest group. They are Americans who are actively discriminated against by federal laws. If the president is to properly honor the memory of Stonewall, he should get up to speed on what happened there 40 years ago, when courageous kids who had nothing, not even a public acknowledgment of their existence, stood up to make history happen in the least likely of places.

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LGBT Americans are citizens just as much as the hate-filled Christianists who seek to continue to make our lives a living hell. If Obama truly believes in equality for all Americans, he will heed Rich's advise.

Forty Years Later

The lower photo is of the Stonewall Inn taken this past January when the boyfriend and I were in New York City. Much has changed while much has stayed the same - especially in some parts of backwards states like Virginia.