Friday Philosophy: Who moved the camembert?

Recently I’ve read several essays gloating about the death of the anti-gay forces.  I understand the urge to do that gloating, but I’d like to caution people that a longer view is useful.  We have, in fact, won very little thus far.

And that ugly beast may be mortally wounded, but it is still quite dangerous.  Declaring victory too soon is also dangerous, if it means people stop working towards equality.

Perhaps a look at where we have come from and what we have accomplished so far is in order.  Enclosed within is a little amateur history of the movement for GLBT rights.

For those who would like someplace to start looking even further back, here’s a link to early gay history.

The modern movement for gay rights really began in the late 19th century with the first attempts at defining who we were and community building.  Granted those communities were for the most part underground and invisible to the general public, they did begin to exist in the big cities.  

Around 1895, for instance,  Earl_Lind (aka Ralph Werther and Jennie June) wrote accounts of his formation of The Cercle Hermaphroditos in NYC, which had the goal to “unite for defense against the world’s bitter persecution” of “androgynes,” “bisexuals,” “female impersonators” and “gynanders.”  {Reading list:  Lind’s Autobiography of an Androgyne (1918) and The Female Impersonators (1922)}

Note:  Next time someone says transfolk are latching onto the queer rights movement, please note that we were there at the damn start of it.

Although gay rights started to actually become an issue in the 1920s, including the abortive formation of the Society for Human Rights by Henry Gerber and the endorsement of GLBT rights by Emma Goldman, the Great Depression and WWII sort of put the kibosh on any progress.  It remained an urban subculture.

In the period 1930-31,  Lili Elbe underwent sex reassignment surgeries, ultimately resulting in her death in 1931.

The 1940s brought us the first gay bars and “friendship networks.”  The community, such as it was, was still focused on the right to exist without being criminalized by the dominate culture.

In 1950 Harry Hay, et. al., founded the Mattachine Society

The primary goals of the society were to:

1. Unify homosexuals isolated from their own kind;

2. Educate homosexuals and heterosexuals toward an ethical homosexual culture paralleling the cultures of the Negro, Mexican and Jewish peoples;

3. Lead the more socially conscious homosexual to provide leadership to the whole mass of social deviates; and

4. Assist gays who are victimized daily as a result of oppression,

Christine Jorgensen underwent sex reassignment surgery, which became public knowledge at the end of 1952.

ONE became the magazine voice of the gay rights movement at the beginning of 1953.  Its history would have been much shoter if not for the influence…and wealth…of transman Reed Erickson, who transitioned beginning in 1963 and helped found the Harry Benjamin Foundation in the mid-60s.

In 1953, there was a giant step backward when President Eisenhower banned federal employment of gays and lesbians.  States and cities followed suit.  Maltreatment of GLBT people became the vogue.  FBI surveillance of GLBT people became de rigeur.

The first lesbian organization, Daughters of Bilitis, was formed in 1955 by Del Martin Phyllis Lyon, at a time when laws prohibiting the cross-dressing of women and men were be enacted and enforced all over the United States and Canada.

In 1959 a marriage certificate for Christine Jorgensen and Howard Knox was denied in Massapequa, NY because Jorgensen had been born a man.

In 1962 there was finally some good news:  Illinois became the first state to decriminalize homosexuality.  There followed a nationwide effort during the rest of the decade, which is ongoing, to get GLBT people to “come out of the closet.”  Safety in numbers was the aim of the day.

In 1965 the first SRS was performed in US:  a Baltimore court gave Johns Hopkins Gender Clinic permission to perform the surgery so that Phillip Wilson could become Phyllis Wilson.

GLBT people began to stand up to the oppression finally.  A riot  at Gene Compton’s Cafeteria in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District occurred when management called the police to clear the place of its drag queen and transwomen clients.

Three years later was Stonewall.

All this time, the main focus was to be treated as non-criminal human beings.

The American Medical Association sanctioned SRS as the treatment of transsexualism in 1972 and the American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality as a disorder in 1973.  In 1975, the ban on federal employment for most jobs eliminated.  Progress was being made.

Unfortunately, Anita Bryant and Save Our Children became the first organized opposition to GLBT rights in 1977, working to overturn an ordinance granting protection from discrimination in Dade County, FL.  People who want to talk about anti-gay tradition should think about that.

Within two years was the formation of the Moral Majority and the linking of GLBT rights with abortion and pornography.

Wisconsin became the first state to outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation in 1982.  In 1992 same sex partnerships were recognized in Denmark.  In between was the long black days of the AIDS epidemic.

I transitioned beginning in 1992.  That was totally inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.  But first hand knowledge is important and I can talk about the way things were, if anyone wants me to do so.

In 1995 some of my personal work came to fruition when PFLAG became officially supportive of the friends and families of transgender people.  The first Transgender Lobby Day saw over 100 transfolk on Capitol Hill to work for, unsuccessfully as it turned out, for inclusion in and passage of the Hate Crimes Act and the employment Nondiscrimination Act.  We are not and never have been trying to piggy-back on LGB efforts for equal rights.

In 1996 the SCOTUS ruled that specific laws to disallow GLBT from petitioning the government were unconstitutional in Romer v Evans.  Someone at the federal level finally recognized that we were human beings.

There has been more.  Here’s a selection:

2000:

Vermont civil unions

2001:

Marriage equality in The Netherlands

2003:

Lawrence v Texas

Marriage equality in Belgium

Marriage equality in Ontario and British Columbia

2004:

Marriage equality in Massachusetts

2005:

Civil unions in Connecticut

Marriage equality in Spain

Marriage equality in Canada

2006:

Civil unions in New Jersey

2007:

ENDA (non-inclusive) passes House

2008:

New York recognizes same-sex marriages performed elsewhere

Oregon domestic partners

California:  Oh, bother

Marriage equality in Connecticut

2009:

Marriage equality in Iowa

Marriage equality in Vermont

Gender protection in New Hampshire

Marriage equality in Sweden

What of the title of this essay?  Note how the cheese of legal recognition of GLBT has moved.  We wanted at first to be recognized as human being and not to be treated as criminals.  Along with that should have come equal rights to employment, housing, and in court, along with protection against maltreatment, whether at the hands of private individuals or  police.

The sad thing is that a majority of the people think we have that…or at least did when I was Director of Education of the Arkansas Gay and Lesbian Task Force in the late 1990s.  But we still don’t, neither federally nor in most local jurisdictions.

Instead we worry about whether or not we can marry and those other things, things that affect those of us not in relationships as well as those who are, are neglected.  There still is not one act of the Congress of these United States protecting the rights of GLBT people.

Not one.

Locally we still try to fight the good fight.  Sometimes we win.  Sometimes we don’t.  Sometimes we are divided in our efforts.  April 7 was Transgender Lobby Day in Massachusetts in support of An Act Relative to Gender Based Discrimination and Hate Crimes, called by opposition forces, the “Bathroom Bill.”  In this day and age, it would be legal for married GLB people to openly discriminate against T people.  How’s that for irony?

Recently Colorado added protection of transgender people to its Hate Crimes law.  The first case prosecuted under that act begins Tuesday when Allen Andrade will be prosecuted for beating Angie Zapata to death with a fire extinguisher in Greeley.

After the murder of Brandon Teena and his companions, I went to the site of the trial to protest:  Vigil.  I won’t be there this time.  I am too old and it is too far away.

But I will be watching.

Will you?

Extending a Flower Hat in Hand We are people somewhat like you but different deserving of equality no more but no less We shouldn’t be required to beg –Robyn Elaine Serven –April 10, 2009