I feel like this class covered what should be the rights of everyone yet mainly looked at the rights of illegal immigrants in our community. I believe it is easier to examine what rights are not being given to illegal aliens because the discrimination and prejudice is much more obvious.
Gay rights were briefly mentioned in class but they too are not being recognized in the United States.
One of the prominent reasons that gay rights remain unrecognized is that its group members have had difficulty joining forces to rally their cause. What's different is that unlike with Blacks, Native Americans, or Hispanics, gays (for the most part) come from the opposing party. Therefore, with homophobic, heterosexual parents enforcing a hierarchy of shame in which homosexuals rank at the bottom, these individuals are mentally assaulted at every stage in their life. If they are capable of staying closeted they remain so as to not make their live's "difficult". With African-Americans, parents can teacher their children to be proud of who they are from the very beginning of their lives. It is solely up to the individual to stand up for who they are. It is solely up tot he individual to be proud of who they are. In many cases the consequences are losing their families and the one's they love most.
The rights I speak of were addressed by bills such as ENDA which were not passed. This means businesses are allowed to fire an individual just because they are gay. This discrimination is tolerated because homophobia can clearly be seen throughout laws that our government has passed.
More GAYS were arrested during the Red Scares than were SUSPECTED COMMUNISTS. This is insane if you consider the amount of press and anger that the country has for cases such as Ethel Rosenberg.
Discrimination towards gays is everywhere. Next time you pass the salvation army bucket with a Santa ringing his/her bell at you, don't feel guilty when you don't donate - the Salvation Army uses donated funds to actively prevent the recognition of gay rights such as contributing to Prop. 8 as well as other things.
Everyone knows the publicized debate of gay marriage - let's forget the name or how it refelcts that America clearly can't get "seperation of church and state". The federal benefits clearly favor heterosexual couples. And before you bring up the children argument, make sure to incorporate how their are sterile couples, straight couple who do not want children, gay couples who've adopted, lesbian couples in which one of the mother's has kids or artificially inseminates herself.
Gay rights need to be recognized.
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Evan, thanks for bringing this issue up.
ReplyDeleteMy only comment is this- I disagree with your statement that gays lack in organization efforts compared to Native Americans, etc. I think your point is that homosexuality is repressed in society, so people that are gay but dont publically acknowledge it, are invisible to social movements. This makes organization difficult. However, social movements that are based on ethnicity might be easier to arrange as people are visibly a minority or majority.
However, with Native American activists, tribal disagreements and separtism has caused an equal hardship on Native American communities. Tribes and nations are so different from one another, and have specific needs, collectivizing American Indians as one social movement has been a difficult task in the past. The 70s saw the American Indian Movement, and some radical steps to gain American Indian rights. But these similar steps were taken by the gay rights movement in the 70s. I would say that both groups have had an equally hard time gaining rights and acceptance by mainstream America, based off their track record.
I remember taking HIST 140 and there was a decently large portion devoted to the gay rights movement and how it related to the Red Scare. Many people at that point simply feared homosexuality as it was something "new" and not discussed publicly beforehand. Therefore they simply assumed that everyone that was gay was a communist as they were both lumped as "things that were not understood." Obviously this makes zero sense to us now, but just look at Davie Hall. Enough said. Communism made people INSANE at that time. (For those of you that may not know, Davie Hall was built to be "Communist-proof", as were Hamilton and Greenlaw).
ReplyDeleteAnyway, one of the literature we read was a first hand account of a gay male trying to privately organize homosexuals to work their way into the public sphere. The degree of success was varying, but by piggy backing on the civil rights movements, they did gain some ground.
Today the issue is (I believe) less with being visible. Honestly there are some people (more females than male) who pretend to be gay because it's the "in" thing to do. Whether or not they really are, I don't know, but I have my doubts that there aren't at least some people that want the attention being homosexual can bring.
Possibly the newest hindrance to the movement is presented by Hollywood directors. I couldn't name them offhand, but over the past month, 2 openly gay directors have stated that they endorse people staying in the closet. I didn't read the full articles accompanying the headlines to be honest, but I found that a bit shocking that they publicly denounced their own beliefs.
I think that's enough of a rant for now on the issue...