Coming Out Remains a Daunting Challenge

Earlier in the month I wrote about a decision by the Virginia Beach school board to cancel a gay-straight alliance assembly at Cox High School.  The event has now purportedly rescheduled and I had an unhappy telephone call with one school board member who did not appreciate my "assume the worse until proven otherwise" attitude given my many years of activism within that school division. The call ended with me telling the board member that I would wait to be proven wrong.  During the shit storm of negative local, national and international news coverage that the school board created for itself (something that the board has an amazing talent to do), The Virginian Pilot ran a guest column by  New York resident Grace Bonney, founder of DesignSponge and author of “In the Company of Women.” What made the column so striking is that I know Grace and her parents. She attended school and swam for years on the neighborhood swim team with my children for years. While taking the Virginia Beach School Board to task, Grace also explained the torment that so many LGBT teens still experience.  Here are highlights from her excellent piece: 

IN 1994, I was an eighth-grader at Lynnhaven Middle School. It was that year that I would have my first, but not last, experience with homophobia.

I fell in love with my best friend, who happened to be a girl, like me. At an age when I should have felt free to ask questions and be curious about who I was, I was shut down quickly and swiftly by students who figured out the nature of my relationship before I had time to understand it myself.

Their bullying took the form of notes at first, passed in front of me and left in my locker. Then they found it funny to cough and whisper “dyke” when my friend and I walked the hallway.

Discussions of these complicated feelings didn’t go well at home. And Lynnhaven Middle had no Gay-Straight Alliance or LGBTQ+ club for me to turn to. So instead, I spoke to no one. I became someone who spoke up less and doubted myself more. I was afraid of being singled out. To be noticed felt like being caught. It was then that I realized that the spaces I once thought were welcoming and safe were not.

Rumors of my sexuality followed me into high school at First Colonial, where I spent most of my freshman year convincing people that I wasn’t “that girl” and that no — I didn’t have crushes on all my female friends. I kept my head down, worked hard and, when college rolled around, I got as far away from Virginia Beach as I could.

It wasn’t until I turned 30 that I faced the truth about my sexuality. I was afraid of not being accepted and loved for who I really was, and I was afraid for my physical safety if I lived openly and honestly. On a daily basis, I was reminded that those fears were still justified in most places in the United States.

I’ve worked hard to overcome the damage done as the result of living in a community and school system that wasn’t more outwardly accepting and supportive of LGBTQ+ students. But as much as it pains me to admit, there is still a part of me that has internalized that homophobia and thinks I should be a little quieter and a little less open, loud and proud about who I am.

But that voice — that self-hatred and self-doubt — is exactly the voice we have to stop the next generation of children from hearing.

Most people assume that because more people from the LGBTQ+ community live openly and are depicted on TV and movie screens that things are better — safer, even. But openly LGBTQ+ students are still the victims of bullying on a daily basis, both online and off, especially in spaces like schools that should be safe havens. And according to The Trevor Project, each episode of LGBT victimization, such as physical or verbal harassment or abuse, increases the likelihood of self-harming behavior by 2.5 times on average.

So when I heard that Cox High School had postponed its very first gay pride assembly, I was confused and heartbroken. The school said officials had decided (one day before the event was scheduled) to be “more inclusive.” If Cox does not see the heartbreaking irony in asking students who are routinely excluded to make their event more inclusive (especially when it never excluded any students or required them to attend), they are missing a much bigger point.

In addition, School Board member-elect Victoria Manning told The Pilot that “this is a controversial subject, and I do not believe it is appropriate to hold a gay pride event during instructional time.”

By suggesting that LGBTQ+ pride is controversial, Manning is sending the message that students who were born gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex or asexual are somehow inherently problematic. I for one am tired of seeing LGBTQ+ people, especially students, asked to take a seat, be quiet and wait while the rest of the world gets more comfortable with our very existence.

No person, student or otherwise, should ever feel that their voice isn’t worth hearing and supporting. No person should ever feel their identity is controversial.

As an alumna of this school system, I expect and demand better from the people who are shaping the next generation of students in our hometown. And as someone who knows what it feels like to put someone else’s comfort ahead of my own for years, I can tell you that the results can lead to permanent damage.

Ironically, Grace and I were struggling with similar feelings and fears in what we both seeming felt to be isolation, consumed with fear of discovery.  It took me many more years than Grace to come to terms with my sexuality as I finally came out in mid-life.in late 2001.   What is so disturbing is that people like school board member elect Victoria Manning continue to act as if LGBT individuals are controversial as they prostitute themselves to Christofascists who strive to unconstitutionally impose their toxic religious beliefs on all.  Religious belief has ZERO place in the public schools. ZERO!  I continue to wait to see if my worse fears about the Virginia Beach School Board were justified or not.

Limbaugh to GOP: Don't Accept Caitlyn Jenner

The attacks on Caitlyn Jenner from the far right continue as gas bag Rush Limbaugh - the four time married defender of the "sanctity of marriage" - unleashed a rant against Caitlyn Jenner.  Limbaugh is beyond despicable not to mention a complete hypocrite given his own past scrapes with the law over his illegal prescription drug use.  If Limbaugh had any sense of shame, he shut his big mouth.  That, of course, will never happen since Limbaugh and his sheep like followers have no shame and no moral decency.  Politico looks at Limbaugh's foul attacks.  Here are excerpts:

Conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh thinks Republicans should reject Caitlyn Jenner, even if she agrees with them politically.

Limbaugh said on his radio show Tuesday that liberals are trying to “redefine normalcy” in an effort to stigmatize conservatives and that conservatives shouldn’t agree to their terms by accepting Caitlyn Jenner as a woman.

He likewise dismissed a conservative blog that wrote that Republicans should embrace Jenner as one of their own to seem more humane, saying that doing so would constitute falling into a liberal trap.

Under this system, “conservatives and Republicans are the new weirdos, the new kooks,” the pundit said, “and that is part of the political objective here in normalizing all of this really marginal behavior. I mean, if less than 1 percent of the population is engaging in it, it’s marginalized behavior. It isn’t normal, no matter how you define it.

Limbaugh had previously discussed Jenner’s transition after the former Olympian, then known as Bruce Jenner, told ABC’s Diane Sawyer that he identified both as a woman and a Republican, despite the party’s history of tension with the LGBT community.

“Maybe this is why God put me on this earth,” Jenner told ABC. “To deal with this issue.”

After the interview, Limbaugh said that liberals were pleased because they support “anything to upset these damn conservatives and Republicans that believe in their precious social issues.”

During the segment, Limbaugh expressed his belief that being transgender is “a mental illness,” citing the research of a Johns Hopkins professor.

Lionizing Jenner, Limbaugh said at the time and reiterated Tuesday, was a media tactic in a political battle between liberals and conservatives on social issues.

“This fits everything the media wants to do in terms of turning the culture upside down, redefining what ‘normal’ is, getting revenge against the majority for all of these decades of discrimination and mockery and disapproval and all these religious fanatics judging other people simply because of, quote, ‘who they love,’ unquote.”

 I guess Limbaugh justifies his multiple marriage and serial monogamy based on the fact that divorce and multiple remarriages are so prevalent among "godly Christians" in the Bible Belt. 

6th Circuit's Judge Jeffrey Sutton: Modern Day Segregationist?

Sutton - Is he a racist too?

Reactions to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals' ruling upholding marriage bans continue and outside of knuckle dragging Christofascists circles, none are very favorable towards Judge Jeffrey Sutton who not surprisingly is a George W. "Chimperator" Bush appointee. As previously notes, Sutton's "let the people decide" analysis would have been very popular in the South in the 1950's and 1960's and one can only speculate that we would still have segregated schools and bans on interracial marriage if Sutton's approach had been applied by the Supreme Court in cases such as Brown v. Board of Education and/or Loving v. Virginia.   Sutton clearly underscores the dangers of placing a cretin in the White House.   Here's one good take down of Judge Sutton:

Well, the media reports are correct. Sutton's lengthy introduction, before the analysis: "And all come down to the same question: Who decides? Is this a matter that the National Constitution commits to resolution by the federal courts or leaves to the less expedient, but usually reliable, work of the state democratic processes?" 

 Sutton did make two cute rhetorical moves with Loving. First, he insisted that the Court assumed marriage only encompassed opposite-sex unions, since the Court did not say differently and because the couple in Loving where not same-sex. Second is this: "Loving addressed, and rightly corrected, an unconstitutional eligibility requirement for marriage; it did not create a new definition of marriage." But this seems too clever by a half--all definitions of a thing are based on eligibility requirements for the definition of that thing. Is Sutton really suggesting that Loving would have come out differently if, instead of the law saying "If any white person intermarry with a colored person, or any colored person intermarry with a white person, he shall be guilty of a felony," it said "marriage shall only be between two white persons or two black persons"? 

Say this: Sutton hit every possible argument and issue surrounding marriage equality (although he soft-pedaled his discussion of the "marriage is for men and the women they accidentally knock-up" argument). So the opinion presents a good vehicle for thorough consideration (and reversal).

Finally, a question: Judge Daughtrey in her dissent described at length the facts underlying the claim by the Michigan plaintiffs. Under Michigan law, unmarried couples cannot jointly adopt, which means only one parent is the legal parent of the child and there is no guarantee that, if the legal parent dies, the child will be allowed to stay with the other, non-legal parent. But that imposes huge financial costs on the state, if it has to bring that child into the foster care system, not to mention the human and social cost to the child and the entire system. But if the ban on same-sex marriage imposes such costs, doesn't that render it irrational, if not based on animus?

Of course, all of us know that animus IS the real motivation.  Wonkette has an even less kind analysis:

Let’s skip ahead now to the lone dissenting voice of reason, Judge Martha Craig Daughtrey, who politely points out that, ahem, that argument is some kind of bullcrud:

There is not now and never has been a universally accepted definition of marriage. In early Judeo-Christian law and throughout the West in the Middle Ages, marriage was a religious obligation, not a civil status. Historically, it has been pursued primarily as a political or economic arrangement. Even today, polygamous marriages outnumber monogamous ones—the practice is widespread in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, especially in countries following Islamic law, which also recognizes temporary marriages in some parts of the world. In Asia and the Middle East, many marriages are still arranged and some are even coerced.

But oh well, guess the majority forgot about that, because it sure does insist — over and over and over again — that up until about a decade ago, there was one definition of marriage, everywhere, for all time. And that is why the real question is whether the court has the authority to overrule The Voice Of The People, when The People have been homophobic bigots for all these millennia.