The gays won. If you had told me ten long years ago that homosexuality would become mainstream in American culture, alongside gender fluidity and the general liberalization of our understanding of sexuality, I’d have commended your optimism and laughed in your face.
You’d be mad to have thought normalization would happen so quickly. Yet here we are, in 2019, and it really seems like the domestic fight has ended. Nearly everyone I know across all spectrums of age, ethnicity, and gender has evolved in their view, seemingly en masse, and come to accept that which they grew up rejecting, or at the very least accept the need to accept. We have seen gay marriage move from a state of near complete illegality to the law of the land with a pen-stroke (yeah, that’s a problem for another time). We have seen the acceptance of our queer brothers and sisters that seemingly moments ago in our history we casually beat to a pulp after a fun night out with the lads. We now demand of every member of our society the complete unquestioning acceptance of individuals who we were told existed actively against God’s will, who harmed the fabric of our society and the healthy future of our children. Our view has flipped so rapidly that not even our tweets cannot keep apace with the change (sorry Kevin H).
— Think about that for a second. Isn’t it crazy? Twitter has a longer time in our cultural consciousness than mainstream gay acceptance. No wonder Trump became President.—
Now that the long fought-for normalization has been gained, it seems to have been utterly and totally gained, even retroactively. We now cast our piercing gaze of righteous judgement backwards through our past, calling out the abuses that happened back then, I think in order that we can absolve ourselves from solving those difficult abuses still going on now.
Yes, here we go, into the meat of this article. Just because marriage equality, alongside social acceptance and tolerance (I’m watching you Queer Eye), have made impressive gains domestically, it does not mean we should abandon the cause. Certainly the gay rights victory has not been totally completed, gays still face higher abuses than straights but not near previous numbers, and trans members of our great human family still suffer the slings of their siblings in shamefully high numbers, yet I contend that this is because they are still largely ostracized from much of the gay-community which signals to the rest of mainstream society that they are acceptable to marginalize. I mainly contend that we’re in the last percentiles of the struggle (Oh I know the victims disagree). Where then should the now-directionless energies of the movement go from here?
As with most movements, the likely answer is the dissipation of the passion into the void, other than a general sense of goodwill to the memories of the cause. With fond reminiscences of marches against intolerance, campaigns against bigoted county clerks, and sensational parades, gay men and women will go about their lives as all Americans generally do, concerned largely only in their own daily affairs. This is their right to do, they should be obliged to do no more. Homosexuality in and of itself does not commit you to the cause, I do not write for the impartial. I write for the impassioned who no longer know where to commit these flames to burn.
Where once the opposition could be beaten at the ballot box, the threat now seems distant and uncertain. Except, that is, in the news. We always seem to still be hearing stories about abuses beyond our borders. 70 countries still outlaw homosexuality. Outlaw! Nearly all these countries sit in the UN, all of them really, they help maintain and preserve the current international peace and order, and contribute daily to the human conversation. Yet they deny the right to mere existence for a good portion of their populace. A recent poll–and I know all polls are trash and should be ignored as they only try to promote an agenda of their own blah blah blah this is my agenda–said 50% of people aged 13-20 today in America do not identify as exclusively heterosexual. Now, I’m not sure about all 70 of those countries, but I imagine they have a pretty binary view of sexuality being you’re either straight or you’re not, so that’s a potential half of their population living under direct oppression with that law, and one must wonder where else they oppress. I get that the nature of governments is to oppress some people in some way or another in order to create structure and society, but the duty is to limit the oppression to where necessary, and limit the abuses of the populous. (Yeah I know, I’m a liberal, sorry about that.) Their oppression of homosexuality is more likely than not just indicative of their general disposition towards the citizenry in general as something to rule and control.
This then is my challenge to the community. The domestic front nears total victory. A mainstream gay candidate currently runs for president, and nobody mentions his sexuality as a detriment, something that would’ve killed anyone a decade ago. In fact, the only truly controversial article regarding Mayor Pete and his sexuality is that he is not gay enough! This is what normalization looks like. How nice does it feel, how right that we can all now begin to sit down at the table together and break bread as nothing more than just people. This right is denied so many of us bound to this earth. By misfortune of the womb, millions of gay men and women across the globe must live in silence, and fear at the price of sounding their voice. We have the power to change this.
The United States of America owns the military of the planet earth. Every country on earth could unite against us and it would be an even fight. We wield this power both in the hard power of might and the soft power of diplomacy and economic coercion. The dollar acts as the foundational currency for almost 80% of the world’s economies and economic transactions. The backing of international currency today is the faith and credit of the United States of America’s government. Gay activists must begin advocating for using this power in the name of gay rights. Hillary Clinton traveled the world telling anyone who would listen that women’s rights are human rights. The anti-apartheid movement of the 1980’s in the United States helped end South African apartheid. The United States firmly supports the rights and abilities of women and minorities across the world, within the limits of diplomatic reason (and those are depressingly wide limits), so why should that not extend to gay rights? Every murder is an afront to mankind, and now Jared Kushner holds a conference in Brunei a week after their sultan says all the gays should be stoned, state sanctioned murder. Where is the outcry? Where is the protest? Where is the outrage at this lesser condition to which people must be subjected? I understand this imperial presidency feels untouchable, but that’s all a veneer they’ve painted and then cultivated. The Movement normalized the impossible and then disappeared with the cause. The time for internationalism is nigh, and the gay community must take it’s rightful place in the vanguard of the newly forming global order. Too long have communities of worth been relegated to the shadows of shame. Now we must take the light shining across our nation, and shine it so that no corners of our Earth remain shaded.
I guess my point of this, my friends who are still with me (depressingly few), is this. The fight goes on. The struggle continues ever on until the light of liberation shines on every last one of we cursed beings of this mortal plane called Planet Earth. If we feel the need to struggle for any of us, then we understand deeply, if subconsciously, the need to struggle for all of us, and of course that makes a person want to give in when faced with the insurmountable challenge. It should make anyone sane consider quitting, for how monumental a task this is asking, for this calls for nothing less than the liberation of mankind from the constraints of sexual repression, a key step in the fight for full freedom. Yet what other goal could we ask for? What else is the struggle for, why else should one fight?
Why did every gay young teenager who felt terrified to come out to their parents and peers still do it? Why didn’t they just suppress who they were until it stopped existing, until the problem disappeared from the conscious mind, and they could live a normal safe life? Because they couldn’t. Because they could no longer deny the light in themselves than they could deny the light of the sun that shone upon them everyday in the sky, because they could not suppress the light of the self and so instead chose to face the terrible onslaught of the public in order that that light shine. The light of liberation that lights the way home. Young men and women still face this shame and abuse in most of our species, this same burden of being denied their right to be, to exist as themselves. The duty of the lit lamp is to share the flame with all other torches needing light, and as trailblazers on the path, gay Americans lit the first flame that shall engulf us all. The acceptance of gay pride acts as the canary in the coal mine for a country’s tolerance and belief in liberal values. It is the duty of every politically active gay person to ensure that the world become flamming.