The Gideonse Bible   With the beard? Yeah, you!

On Monday night, I joined Rob on the a panel at Grossmont College called “Politics and the English Language,” which was the first event in the school’s annual Literary Arts Festival. This year’s theme is “The Writer as Activist.” Our little talk was called “That SO Gay!”

Okay, enough with all the titles in quotes.

I was excited about the event, and I was honored that they asked me to join Rob. They barely know me! Well, they barely know me beyond dinner parties. They don’t know my work. Heh. Anyway, it was cool that we were going to do a talk, but it was not cool of me to start writing it the day before. And if you saw what I posted here on Sunday morning, you might know what kind of mood I was in. After three hours of driving around the western edge of San Diego looking for PSGs — finding a few in Point Loma — I settled into a plastic chair outside Cream and started scribbling. I finished a draft of a short essay about the use, misuse, and abuse of language — and about how we constructed our wedding — in a couple hours and headed to the Hole.

I needed to be surrounded by gay people after having to endure the milling crowds of the Rock earlier in the morning (as the Rock is next to a shopping center on my patrol) and then having to write about the hateful rhetoric of the Rock (and its like-minded friends) in the afternoon. All was going well — for a while. The beer was good. The conversation was good. Friends were friendly. And then I made the mistake to talking to the Costco cashier with the bad comb-over while we were in the bathroom. He’d said he’d been at Earth Day that afternoon, and since I’d heard there were ten PSGs there, I asked him if he’d seen “any of those anti-gay marriage petition gatherers there.” Whoops. It turns out that the Costco cashier with the bad comb-over is a foul-tempered, self-hating yeller. His answer: “Yeah, and it was great! We don’t deserve to get married! Why the fuck aren’t domestic partnerships enough?! Why?! I can’t tell you how ant-gay I am right now! You need to stop believing everything the gay agenda tells you!” And so on and so forth. There was spit coming out of his mouth.

Now, I wish I’d said so many things. I wish I had some fliers on me, some information to stuff down his throat. I wish I’d learned how to fist fight when I was little so I could have socked him. (But I didn’t and that’s a good thing. Of course.) But I was flummoxed. I just muttered a few responses. He kept yelling. Finally, “Have another drink” and got the hell out of the bathroom. And then I left the Hole. Because I was losing it, which you can interpret any way you want. I’d had a long day, a long weekend — really, a long week.

When I got home, Rob reminded me that the Costco cashier with the bad comb-over had a rather awful online profile.

No Victims! I’m done with the gay victim agenda on society! if this is you MOVE ON! Masc, Stable, grounded with values, none [sic] scene [except that he's ALWAYS at the Hole and online], prefer the same.. Not always looking to hook up! Ltr minded.. 34-46 masc WHITE guys, hwp. Hot kissers a ++. No face pic No Chat! No pnp/BB! Neg as of 1/08 [and there's nothing stupider than "neg as" statements]

And listed as his job:

Taking my country back!

But he actually works at Costco as a cashier. And to think I had hoped to see him when I was there buying supplies for the Equality for All folks — because I thought he would have given me a discount.

Anyway, I was in a rotten, angry mood all day Monday while I was working on my talk, and when I got to Grossmont, I was very nervous. Because I was about to stand up in front of a bunch of strangers in East County and talk about the insidiousness of anti-gay rhetoric. But the moment I got up in front of the podium, I turned it on. It went well. After the jump is my talk, minus all of my witty asides. And here’s Rob’s.

When Rob and I had this picture taken, we were getting married. We were very clear about the fact that we were getting married. That word was important to us, to me. We were not trying to buy into a governmental category that was created to keep the uppity gays from getting too uppity, things like domestic partnerships and civil unions, things that are separate and unequal, since all things separate are inherently unequal. We chose the word “marriage” and the word “wedding” – despite the fact that we were not in Massachusetts or Canada or Spain or Scandinavia where these words are free for use by everyone, not just heterosexuals – because we wanted to be clear to our friends and families that we considered our relationship just as real, important, and spiritually valid as theirs.

And that was why we asked an honest-to-goodness real-life minister to conduct the ceremony. Those of you who understand rhetorical warrants may get why a minister would be important: When she talked about God, and the Bible, about David and Jonathan and the Song of Solomon, when she explained in her careful, forceful, lyrical church-speak that our relationship was blessed by God, her words had authority. She gave the 120 people who were listening a very different interpretation of God’s word than what many of them were used to; it gave them a very powerful, very specific understanding of how Rob and I felt about our relationship and how we wanted them to feel about our relationship.

I guess it now seems as if our wedding was some sort of political rally. It wasn’t; it was a wedding, complete with dinner and tears and toasts and drunken dancing. And yet, it was a political event: Every act as an out gay person in a world that actively discriminates against gay people is a political act. This, me up here, right now, is a political act. Every time gay people assert their identity, it is a political act. Coming out is a political act, claiming our community is a political act, describing our community is a political act, and let me tell you, this process is what we social scientists like it say is “contested.” We fight about it. And here’s what I’m here to talk about: how we fight over words, and how deeply important words are in the gay community.

I’ll start with Walt Whitman. When we were first dating, Rob would send me love notes over email with quotes from Leaves of Grass. One of the poems was read at our wedding.

I love the poem. Let’s do a little political reading of it.

WE two boys together clinging,
One the other never leaving, [Sounds like a bit more than platonic love to me]
Up and down the roads going—North and South excursions making,
Power enjoying—elbows stretching—fingers clutching,
Arm’d and fearless—eating, drinking, sleeping, loving, [Sounds like a lot of fun]
No law less than ourselves owning—sailing, soldiering, thieving, threatening,
Misers, menials, priests alarming—air breathing, water drinking, on the turf or the sea-beach dancing,
Cities wrenching, ease scorning, statutes mocking, feebleness chasing, [Proto-gay activists!]
Fulfilling our foray. [A foray into love, methinks]

Whitman’s words were claimed by gays decades ago as the first great American poetics about gay love. Claiming Whitman and his words, claiming any pre-World War 2 gay and lesbian, is rather contentious. This is because, well, no one was gay back then. Using the word “gay” to refer to men who love men didn’t happen until the late 30s and wasn’t popular or common until the 1950s. But that hasn’t stopped us from claiming everyone from David and Jonathan to Alexander the Great and Plato to Michelangelo and King James to Herman Melville and Nathanial Hawthorne to Walt Whitman and Oscar Wilde – these men who loved men lived before the word “homosexual” was even coined.

That lovely word – which is so clinical and creepy – was popularized by a German psychiatrist named Krafft-Ebing in 1886. But it was really Freud, in 1905, with his book Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, who gave us the idea that homosexuality was caused by overbearing mothers and distant fathers. It took another 65 years before the psychologists give up the idea that homosexuality was a medical condition that was preventable and treatable.

And there were other words, not just the slurs and insults that Rob mentioned, words much more politically powerful: invert, pervert, sodomite. And they all have their political meanings: Invert used by Freud and Krafft-Ebing to medicalize men who loved men, to make us seem sick. Pervert was used to criminalize the behavior and the man, to make us seem evil. And sodomite. Well, that is probably the oldest, and because of that, the most egregious. It refers, of course, to the Biblical story of Sodom, a city that God supposedly destroyed because it tolerated men who had sex with men. (Though there are a lot of other, much less nasty, interpretations of that chapter.) If you call me a sodomite, you’re basically saying that God should smite me. Thanks. I hope you have a nice day, too.

The gay rights movement has always been quite aware of the political nature of words. Not only have we written books and movies, plays and TV shows, in a way to say, “Hey! We’re here!” but we’ve also been very careful about how we name ourselves. We probably stuck with the slang term “gay” probably because it had no negative connotations – the worst thing you can say about “gay” is that it means happy. We’ve also tried to reclaim names that were once used as slurs. We took back “queer” quite successfully in the 80s. Some of us have tried to take back “faggot,” but it has only worked in all-gay settings. I can say, “I’m out with the faggots tonight.” If you aren’t gay, you can’t say “faggot.” Well, you can. But you’d have trouble making friends in Hillcrest. But you’d make a lot of friends at the Westboro Baptist Church. They’ve been waging war against the fags for quite some time. Well aware of the power of words, they use the most inflammatory language possible to get their point across – and get their faces on TV. Of course, the folks at Westboro are only good at making everyone hate them – gay, straight, liberal, conservative.

The current debate (battle, argument, campaign, whatever) over marriage in California is full of language carefully chosen for political purposes. If you’re for allowing me to get legally married, you’re supposed to talk about “marriage equality,” because it focuses on fairness, not gayness, which I guess makes the non-gays uneasy. If you’re against me and Rob getting married, you’re supposed to use terms like “homosexual marriage” or “same-sex marriage” and talk about “slippery slopes” and how “this will lead to marrying dogs,” because these folks want people to be uneasy, to focus on difference, on other-ness. Not on lover and commitment and family.

Another favorite among the anti crowd is the word “protect,” so they talk about “protecting” marriage or marriage “protection.” As if the gays and lesbians are going after “marriage” with guns and knives. It’s more likely we’ll be going after marriage with floral arrangements and over-priced caterers.

But, hey, whatever works.

The people who are afraid that I’m out to destroy marriage by getting married have been pretty successful at persuading people to sign petitions over the last few months. I’m sure you’ve seen these petition gatherers at Wal-Mart or Vons or Target or maybe at your churches. They get paid by the signature and will do anything to get their payday, including telling shoppers in Hillcrest that their collecting signatures of a PRO-gay marriage initiative when they’re actually trying to get an ANTI-gay marriage amendment to the California constitution on the ballot in November. Basically, the amendment would make sure straight people will always be treated better than gay people in California. It enshrines in the constitution of California a definition of marriage that allows only men to marry women and vice versa.

Let’s look at that¹:

Only marriage between one man and one woman is valid or recognized in California, whether contracted in this state or elsewhere. [So if you get married in Massachusetts or Canada, you’re immediately divorced here in sunny California.] A man is an adult male human being who possesses at least one inherited Y chromosome, and a woman is an adult female human being who does not possess an inherited Y chromosome. [Just in case transsexuals dare to want to get married. Or you plan on buying a chromosome that your parents didn’t give.] Neither the Legislature nor any court, government institution, government agency, initiative statute, local government, or government official shall abolish the civil institution of marriage between one man and one woman, or decrease statutory rights, incidents, or employee benefits of marriage shared by one man and one woman, or require private entities to offer or provide rights, incidents, or benefits of marriage to unmarried individuals, or bestow statutory rights, incidents, or employee benefits of marriage on unmarried individuals. [They’re trying to cover all their bases. Except they’ll never be able to cover some of the really important ones, like, say Hollywood or academia. Ha!] Any public act, record, or judicial proceeding, from within this state or another jurisdiction, that violates this section is void and unenforceable. [In other words, Californa to the Gays: Drop dead!]

Knowing the power of language, these folks focus on this idea of a “definition,” as if their definition is the only one that is valid, that matters. I wouldn’t be surprised if they called for a boycott of Merriam-Webster when they discover that the dictionary of record in the United States includes the idea of same-sex marriage in their definition.

Here it is:

Main Entry: mar•riage

Pronunciation: \ˈmer-ij, ˈma-rij\
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English mariage, from Anglo-French, from marier to marry
Date: 14th century

1 a (1): the state of being united to a person of the opposite sex as husband or wife in a consensual and contractual relationship recognized by law (2): the state of being united to a person of the same sex in a relationship like that of a traditional marriage b: the mutual relation of married persons : wedlock c: the institution whereby individuals are joined in a marriage2: an act of marrying or the rite by which the married status is effected; especially : the wedding ceremony and attendant festivities or formalities3: an intimate or close union {the marriage of painting and poetry — J. T. Shawcross}

They’ll yell and scream about “homosexual activists” taking over the dictionaries.

They’re doing that right now actually, now that the petition gatherers haven’t been able to get everyone and their mother to sign. The “homosexual activists” have been out there working against these anti-same-sex marriage folks (who the pro-marriage equality folks call “extremists” and “bigots” who use “hate speech” and spread “lies”). I guess my activist buddies and I have been doing our job. But we prefer to be called “gay.”

Rob just called from Grossmont. He’d run into a former student, now friend who said that in class today, a bunch of students were talking about the talks on Monday. One girl was talking about how much my talk “opened her eyes.” She had no idea that “any of this “was going on, how people were using and abusing language.

So, take that Costco cashier with the bad comb-over. I’m changing hearts and minds.

¹It turns out that this language, which I found on VoteYesMarriage.com is not the actual language of the proposed amendment. ProtectMarriage.com, which is the official center for this idiocy, claims that the language is actually, “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” VoteYesMarriage.com seems to be a secondary group, and I cannot yet figure out why their language was different.