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Day eighteen of LGBT History Month features Chris Hughes, cofounder of Facebook and the publisher and editor in chief of The New Republic.
I was having a drink with a good friend of mine, when she asked me why gay, lesbian, and bisexual people* made “such a big deal” of their sexual orientation.
I asked her to clarify what she meant, and she said that she would never identify herself as straight.
I asked, “Are you exclusively attracted to men?”
She said, “Yes, but I would never introduce myself like, ‘Hi, I’m [Name] and I’m straight.’ I just think of myself as [Name].”
I fumbled in looking for the words to express my frustration with this question. She’s always been supportive of me, even when she doesn’t agree with everything I think, say or do, and I knew that this question was merely coming from a place of curiosity and simple ignorance.
And I’ve been thinking about this question ever since. I knew what she was referring to. Why do we make such a big deal of our sexual orientations? Why do we take part in pride parades? Why do we make certain deliberate choices about what to wear, how to talk, how to act? Why do we keep posting about it on our Facebook walls? Why do we keep coming out to people? Why do we keep talking about it?
So I was debating with myself yesterday about whether or not I should make a follow-up post to my previous one about Chick-Fil-A given all of what went on yesterday with the appreciation day. Then last night I actually dreamed about it all, and that made up my mind.
According to Dan Cathy, the President and COO of Chick-Fil-A, we queers are “inviting God’s judgment” as we “shake our fist at Him” by wanting the right to have civil marriages. Chick-Fil-A has been at the center of LGBTQ related controversy before by financially supporting anti-LBGTQ groups. However, this is the first time (that I’m aware of) that a specific statement against LGBTQ interests has been made by Cathy.
This morning, my Facebook newsfeed exploded with praise from my Patrick Henry College acquaintances for the continued Boy Scouts of America ban on out gays as members or leaders.
I was perusing pro-LGBTQ blogs this afternoon and came across a most amusing story. Apparently some brilliant person decided to create a Facebook fan page called I bet this turkey can get more fans than NOM, and it did. The fan page currently has over 1,000 more “likes” than the fan page on Facebook for the National Organization for Marriage (NOM).
For those that may be unaware the National Organization for Marriage is a 501(c)(4) political advocacy group, and while they call themselves a Christian advocacy organization, they are more closely aligned with Catholicism than Christianity in general. Marriage according to NOM is only between one man and one woman, which really makes me wonder what they do with all the polygamous marriages of people in the Bible like Jacob/Israel, King David, King Solomon, etc. and that’s not even considering all the concubines they had. Gosh darn it, but the Bible is full of stories of ‘non-traditional’ marriages. One would think that if God was so determined that marriage was supposed to between one man and one woman, as NOM claims, then He wouldn’t have included so many positive and non-condemned stories of polygamy (please don’t read this as me arguing in favor of polygamy, I’m just trying to point out the inconsistency of traditional marriage advocates).
NOM was founded by Maggie Gallagher, who recently did an interview with Dr. Martin Olasky at Patrick Henry College, where she said that passing marriage equality would be a suppression of religious liberty (specifically her type of Christianity, which demands that she condemn queers and all things queer related) and would separate marriage from it’s core function and idea: making babies.
The National Organization for Marriage has been labeled as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Center for “their propagation of known falsehoods — claims about LGBT people that have been thoroughly discredited by scientific authorities — and repeated, groundless name-calling.“ In addition, NOM has been exposed as using photo manipulation and racial wedge tactics. In response the Human Rights Campaign and the Courage Campaign launched a website called NOM Exposed to “track and challenge the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage as it tries to influence elections and legislative campaigns across the country.”
