On his daily radio broadcast, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins attacked the video game ‘Star Wars: The Old Republic’ for allowing same-sex relationships: “In a new Star Wars game, the biggest threat to the empire may be homosexual activists!” Stephen Reid of Bioware, the game maker, recently announced that players could have “same gender romances with companion characters” as part of “a post-launch feature.”
Nothing in this story is shocking. It’s not shocking that SW:TOR is allowing for romantic relationships between your character and same-sex NPCs (non-player characters) because this is Bioware. The same or similar options were available in Mass Effect 2 and 3 and Dragon Age 1 and 2, so if they didn’t have it in SW:TOR it would be a surprise.
Similarly, there’s nothing shocking about Tony Perkins predicting that homosexuality will be the End of All Things, though he might want to know that in this game (as in the films), the empire are…well, the bad guys. So in a world of ruthless bounty hunters and a rigidly controlling organization intent on dominating the universe, the ultimate threat is a group of people who want to live in same-sex relationships, and those who support their right to do so.
Hmm, that must be how people like Perkins perceive the real world every day.
If you somehow have missed seeing Rick Perry’s recent campaign ad, now one of the least liked videos on Youtube, here it is:
Yes, that is a real ad produced by a real candidate for president of the United States and long-time governor of the state where I live. It might seem like self-parody, but that didn’t stop a number of mocking videos from cropping up all over the place, including this satire which I quite like:
Another which is currently making the rounds:
Upon first seeing this, my reaction was basically “……so?” I still haven’t seen Brokeback Mountain, but am pretty sure I’ve heard every joke about it ever made, because if there’s one eternal truth of the universe it is this: People love joking about Brokeback Mountain. And oftentimes when they’re doing it, they’re using the reference to bring down something else by comparing it to the movie, which is hard to interpret as an endorsement of Brokeback specifically or support of homosexuality in general.
Take this example: Rick Perry is shown in his campaign ad bashing gays while wearing the same jacket as a gay character in a movie. Heehee, homophobe displaying unconscious homoeroticism! But is it, really? Perry is shown doing the George Bush thing, speaking to the heartland while outside enjoying the wilderness…or something…wearing a Carhartt jacket. Carhartt makes sturdy outerwear for sturdy people, and as Michael Heath explains it’s not at all an uncommon thing to see worn by pretty much anyone in the area Perry is addressing:
The Brokeback jacket wasn’t a Carhatt. And Carhartt clothing is associated with people who work outside in inclement weather, along with politicians who pander to them (e.g., Sarah Palin, and now Rick Perry). Their line has nothing to do with gays. It’s like politicians wearing John Deere hats or sporting Pabst Blue Ribbon decals . . . This clothing line is not defined by one mere movie about gays, where it wasn’t even featured. Carhartt is instead defined by its large popularity amongst those who Perry, Palin, Kid Rock, and Hank Williams direct their marketing efforts. I know of no other clothing line which can compete with their market share for outdoor work clothes you’re OK with getting dirty. They’re insulated overalls are especially dominant in my area since we have harsh winters here. You can make a good argument Perry’s pandering to rural populists by wearing work clothes which he’s never done a lick of work in himself. Most of us who wear this line of clothes are not worried about getting them dirty in a way you can’t launder out – as ZZ Top sang about their blue jeans, “you can tell by the oil and gasoline”. But you only embarrass yourself by pointing to one character in one movie and claiming Perry’s out of touch when in fact it’s those comparing this coat to a similar one worn in a movie who are out of touch, precisely because they validate their ignorance regarding its authentic popularity. This is not a close call.
I would add three comments to this:
Heath Ledger’s character in Brokeback Mountain didn’t wear that jacket because he’s gay, but because he’s a cowboy. Duh, right? But this is important because cowboys are conceived as being rugged, tough, traditionally masculine, which is what Perry was going for.
Suggesting that because this style of jacket was worn by a gay character in a movie, we should associate homosexuality with it when it’s worn by a political candidate really smacks of a kind of sympathetic magic. When any item of clothing is worn by a gay character, it becomes gay! No straight man should wear it ever again if he doesn’t want people to giggle and call him a queer! Is that really the leap that we want to make?
It’s true that over the top masculinity is often construed as homoerotic. But Perry isn’t dressed as a Tom of Finland illustration here. He’s just a guy wearing an outdoorsy jacket. As more and more movies are made featuring gay characters, those characters are eventually going to wear every item of clothing under the sun. Heath Ledger also wore jeans in that movie, but we’re not saying “OMG jeans are gay!” because jeans are ubiquitous for most of us. Carhartt jackets are ubiquitous in certain parts of the U.S., and as Heath points out that makes the people who are unaware of that and pointing to Brokeback Mountain look rather ignorant.
One final point, which I alluded to before– attacking homophobes by suggesting that they’re gay is not a compliment to actual gay people. Generally speaking, when people use an attribute that describes you as an insult to others, it doesn’t feel that great. There has been some speculation about Perry’s sexuality in the past, but if the future contains some revelation that he is actually bi or homosexual, two things will be certain: 1) any ensuing mockery should be for his hypocrisy, not his sexuality, and 2) having worn Carhartt outerwear in a campaign ad sure wasn’t a tip-off.
“why are you all so sure that all liberal think Carhartts are gay jacket?” Because that’s what the joke is: “Doesn’t Rick Perry look like that gay guy?” Sure. Maybe. Possibly, he looks like that one gay character from a movie. Why? Because he’s wearing a tan Carhartt jacket in an outdoor setting. I dare you to give me some other reason somebody would make that connection. So what people who make that joke are saying is that Perry looks like that one gay guy from the movie, because of the jacket. So, the jacket makes the faggot, so to speak. PROTIP: The majority of people who work outdoors in the central and western US wear clothing that’s very similar to that same jacket. That’s not a small number. I’m talking hundreds of thousands. Probably millions. To completely gloss over their existence and jump straight to the gay character is offensive to me both as a gay man and as a Kansan.
Conservatives tend to think liberals are out-of-touch with rural American, and lord how liberals are demonstrating it here. Look, my liberal friends, Rick Perry is a Texas farmer. You might be hard pressed to find a farm in Texas that doesn’t have a Carhartt’s jacket hanging in the mudroom. One Hollywood movie just ain’t sufficient to make Carhartt’s a symbol of gay culture in America. Grow up. Deal with the offensive content of Perry’s ad. But stop making yourselves look like effete urban pansies to whom flyover country is a foreign land, a place where you need a passport and a series of shots before you travel there. If you want to win America, you’d do well not to openly show your disdain for such a large part of it.
There’s an interesting discussion going on at Dispatches about Michele Bachmann’s recent statement to some Iowa high school students about gay marriage:
JANE SCHMIDT: Then, why can’t same-sex couples get married? BACHMANN: They can get married, but they abide by the same law as everyone else. They can marry a man if they’re a woman. Or they can marry a woman if they’re a man. JANE SCHMIDT: Why can’t a man marry a man? BACHMANN: Because that’s not the law of the land. JANE SCHMIDT: So heterosexual couples have a privilege. BACHMANN: No, they have the same opportunity under the law. There is no right to same-sex marriage. JANE SCHMIDT: So you won’t support the LGBT community? BACHMANN: No, I said that there are no special rights for people based upon your sex practices. There’s no special rights based upon what you do in your sex life. You’re an American citizen first and foremost and that’s it.
Except, of course, that Bachmann fails to note that the “law of the land” allows gay marriage in several states, including Iowa. That’s one important flaw in her tautology. The other is, as Schmidt alludes, that if marriage is really about having the opportunity to marry from a select body of people (men for women, women for men), then gay marriage doesn’t grant a special right to anyone– on the contrary, it grants greater rights for everyone. Currently gays can marry opposite sex partners if they want to (though they generally do not), and where same-sex marriage is legal it has become possible for straight people to marry partners of the same sex if they want to (though they generally do not). Nothing “special” about it.
The added irony is, of course, that one definition of “privilege” entails that those who have it are unaware that they have it, and unwilling to acknowledge when it is pointed out. To them, when others who are not privileged ask for something everyone else has, they are demanding a special right. This is because the privileged live in a tiny world where “something everyone else has” literally means everything that privileged person personally has and wants. Not the ability to fulfill a desire that everyone has, but in a different way. “Freedom to do X” means “Freedom to do X how I do it, and that’s it.” This is how, as a recent article in Slate points out, freedom has been defined by social conservatives as the freedom to obey their religious morality, not to do anything with diverges from it. If that makes your brain hurt, you’re not alone. That is very likely how the mortal enemy of social conservatives in America, the Muslim theocrat, defines it as well. It’s no wonder that the “freedoms” that they cherish are so remarkably similar to those of people like Michele Bachmann.
This is University of Nebraska Assistant Coach Ron Brown praying on behalf of his football team and that of Penn State prior to their game on November 12th, in the wake of the latter university’s scandal regarding former head coach Joe Paterno. Which you already know about if you haven’t been living under a rock for the past week and a half, so you don’t need any commentary on it from me. But Brown thought that God needed a comment on the matter, specifically regarding manhood and young boys:
There are a lot of little boys around the country, today, who are watching this game. And they’re trying to figure out what the definition of manhood is all about. Father, this is it right here. I pray that this game will be a training ground of what manhood looks like. And we will compete with fierce intensity. With the honor, and the gifts, and the talents that you’ve given us. And may we be reminded, Lord, as it says in John 1:14, that Jesus is full of grace and truth. May the truth be known!
Indeed– may the truth be known. And the truth is that a coach from a public university found it appropriate to use a scandal involving child molestation as an opportunity to teach little boys what manhood is, via a football and declarations about Jesus. I saw this, and thought “I can’t be the only person believes this to be very, very wrong.” And I’m not– it’s just that it’s hard to articulate all of the things wrong about it.
Here’s what Ron Brown could’ve said to the teams — and the crowd of over 100,000 — that would’ve made a real difference — instead of the worthless tripe that came out instead:
We’ve been through a lot this past week, but it’s nothing compared to what Jerry Sandusky’s victims have been through. We can never let something like this happen again.
If any of you ever sees abuse taking place — on the field, off the field, after you graduate — it doesn’t matter who the abuser is, go to the police immediately.
If you’re ever the victim of such abuse, please tell someone you trust what happened. It doesn’t matter what you think about the person who did it to you, and no one will ever think less of you for turning them in.
If you had nothing to do with the situation but you still want to help, well, we need more people like you. Please encourage your fans, friends, and family members to make a donation to a child abuse prevention organization.
That will do more for these children that our god ever can.
That would’ve taken real courage to say, so I’m not surprised we didn’t hear anything even remotely resembling that before the game.
I suppose it would have taken real courage to say, but only because of the last line– and that line should be left out. Everything else is not particularly courageous, but it is certainly important. It’s what people need to hear and know, valuable information. It doesn’t exactly take the place of what Brown said, though, because it’s not ceremonial. It doesn’t address the communal mood, the event that is about to take place. It’s a comment that should be made in addition to something else, and here’s the important thing…that “something else” should not be a prayer. This is something overlooked in Sean O’Neil’s essay concerning what he calls “muscular Christianity”:
John Sandusky is an older man who used his prestige and power to abuse boys. Perhaps, then, Brown’s prayer about a redemptive display of masculinity merely reinforces a truism: that decent men would never abuse anyone. Since lines were transgressed in obviously horrific ways perhaps the boundaries of decency need to be reinforced in just as obvious a fashion. This still raises other questions, though: Who gets to re-draw these borders at such a sensitive time of (national) crisis? Also, what will young boys learn about gender from the dominant religious portrayals of manhood in muscular Christianity? Muscular Christianity refers to the wedding of traditional conceptions of masculinity—such as bravery, chivalry, and athleticism—with evangelical Christian emphases on personal conversion and biblical devotion. Tim Tebow is perhaps the quintessential muscular Christian, combining religious and athletic vigor on the most visible athletic platform in the country: the National Football League. Muscular Christianity is also developed in more pedestrian venues, on college campuses among groups such as the Fellowship for Christian Athletes. Evangelicals espousing some form of muscular Christianity (not a term that most would use) tend to interpret the Bible conservatively—especially with regards to sexual norms. Gay sex among consenting adults, for example, is usually labeled sinful in such evangelical contexts. There are few if any progressive religious voices in these settings. . . If the only religious voices heard on the fields are the most conservative on issues of human sexuality, there may be few opportunities for athletes to combine vigorous athleticism, strong religious commitment, and fidelity to LGBT identities in the same breath.
Hoo boy. If you know me, you know what will be the sticking points here: 1) “traditional conceptions of masculinity” and 2) “religious voices heard on the fields.” Bin them both, please.
Why? Let’s start with the former. I hate to point out the obvious, but “LGBT identities” often do not conform to “traditional concepts of masculinity.” Nor is there any reason why they should, considering that “traditionally masculine” people are often outright phobic or hateful of those who are non-traditional. Just as much or more than being brave, chivalrous (ugh) or athletic, traditional masculinity entails being straight. And so far as I can tell, there is nothing about being non-straight, non-traditionally masculine, that inhibits one’s athleticism. So maybe when it comes to football or any other sport, it would be better to call a spade a spade and emphasize that. Those attributes of character that are desirable to have also– bravery, stalwartness, reliability, foresight, cunning, and so on– are by no means exclusive to the masculine. Especially not the traditional kind.
(I will also mention, though I hope it’s not necessary, the significance of focusing on how to tell/show young boys what it means to be a (traditional) man in the wake of scandal surrounding child rape. Just as with the scandals within the Catholic Church, there are plenty– perhaps Asst. Coach Brown is one of them– who interpret such an act as part and parcel of homosexuality. As something that gays just do, or that just gays do. This bigoted belief has no place on the football field or anywhere else.
Let it be emphasized: a decent person would not abuse anyone. Indecent people come in all sorts of gender and sexual configurations.)
As for religious voices on that field…why do we need those? Even disregarding the question of whether it constitutes a church/state violation to have a coach for a public university’s football team to deliver a prayer before a game, O’Neil’s grievance above illustrates precisely the problem with having a religious invocation in the first place– it creates a debate about whether it’s the right religion. Whose beliefs should prevail. Because for everyone who doesn’t worship Jesus and/or doesn’t appreciate the treatment of Jesus in the prayer given, the ritual becomes a period of discomfort rather than bolstering. And for many of those to whom the words about Jesus ring pure and true, any other religious message will seem either diluted or outright blasphemous. By all means, don’t prevent the players from practicing their faith as they see fit. But leading everyone in a massive group prayer such as this seems designed to be unnecessarily divisive and yet squelch any minority views.
I can’t help but wonder how many of those players kneeling around Assistant Coach Ron Brown feel resentful, silly, or confused. How many wish that a message acknowledging the situation but encouraging them to play a good game could be delivered without being wrapped in platitudes about what it means to be a real man and a real believer. How many of that group would never breathe a word about such sentiments, for fear that they would be ridiculed, hated, maybe even attacked by others.
3. The Family Research Council is apoplectic about Conan O’Brien getting a mail-order ordination and presiding over the same-sex marriage of one of his staff.
The title of this post might sound a little obvious to most who might read it– Rick Santorum, wrong? Perish the thought! But I think it’s important to take a look at why he was wrong, specifically, when he said this in an interview with Piers Morgan:
I think just because we disagree on public policy, which is what the debate has been about — which is marriage — doesn’t mean that it’s bigotry. Just because you follow a moral code that teaches that something’s wrong doesn’t mean that — are you suggesting that the Bible and that the Catholic Church is bigoted? If that’s what you believe, fine. […] Well, I shouldn’t say — not fine. I don’t think it’s fine at all. I think that is contrary to both what we’ve seen in 2,000 years of human history and Western civilization, and trying to redefine something that has been — that is — seen as wrong…I think is in itself an act of bigotry.
Okay, let’s unpack. Santorum is saying that the Bible and Catholic Church cannot be bigoted because of “2,000 years of human history and Western civilization,” which could mean one of two things:
Over the past 2,000 years, homosexuals have justified the belief that homosexuality is immoral, and therefore that belief is not based in bigotry.
The Bible and the Catholic Church have maintained that homosexuality is immoral for 2,000 years, and therefore can’t be wrong.
What is bigotry? A good definition would be: a determination to ascribe to a group of individuals a characteristic(s) which is/are not logically required by the characteristic(s) which they do actually have in common. This would include the belief that black people are untrustworthy, which is particularly noxious considering that skin color is a circumstance of birth, and we tend to be most offended by the insistence that a people must share some undesirable trait based on something they were born with and can do nothing (or almost nothing) about. But a trait doesn’t have to be a circumstance of birth in order for someone to form bigoted beliefs about it. If I said that people who like to play Dungeons and Dragons are idiots, that would be a bigoted claim on my part because there is no evidence at all to show that there’s a particular attraction between that game and people of low intellectual caliber, let alone a necessary connection. If there was a connection but it wasn’t absolute, then I would still be guilty of making a false generalization. But the more I insist that individuals in a group must share a negative quality because of something else that they have in common, the more offensive I become because of how much more unfounded my insulting statements clearly are.
If the first statement– that time has justified the belief that homosexuality is immoral– was Santorum’s intended meaning, would it be a good defense? Maybe…if it were true. If, over a period of 2,000 years, we could observe that sexual intercourse between people of the same gender resulted in something catastrophic every time, it might be fair to say that it’s immoral. Say, if sex between two women caused nearby buildings to explode. That would be pretty bad. We would have good reason to tell those lesbians to cut that out, and think poorly of them if they refused to.* But of course, there is no foundation for such a belief. Sexual intercourse between two people of the same gender does not inevitably result in anything unfortunate happening. And what’s more, the Bible and the Catholic Church (I’m going to continue grouping them that way in spite of the distinctions a person might want to point out, because it’s part of Santorum’s claim) do not claim that homosexuality is immoral based on any such observation, over 2,000 years or two months. Rather they claim it by fiat on God’s part, which strongly suggests that this is not what Santorum meant.
So let’s assume that Santorum is in fact saying that the sheer length of time that the Bible and the Catholic Church have been claiming that homosexuality is immoral demonstrate that it is. That the Bible has been claiming it for that duration isn’t exactly impressive– it’s a book, albeit one with a large number of translations and interpretations which nonetheless haven’t much altered the statements regarding the morality of sex between two men or two women. That the Church has maintained that homosexuality is immoral for that period of time, on the other hand, demonstrates….what, exactly? That the Church is tenacious in this belief. Does its tenacity demonstrate the truth of the belief? Not remotely. The claim that the sheer amount of time that you’ve held onto something demonstrates its worth or validity is an appeal to tradition, and it’s a fallacy.
So we see that the allegation that the Bible and the Catholic Church are bigoted for calling gays immoral is not rendered unfounded by the reality of homosexual intercourse being immoral or the fact that they’ve been making this claim for a very long time. Santorum’s last objection is to “trying to redefine something that has been seen as wrong.” In other words, he objects to people saying that a previously held claim of something being immoral is mistaken. Really? So is there no such thing as moral progress– society did not advance in any way by the willingness of people being willing to say loudly and clearly that slavery, for example, was wrong? After all, there was (and still is, in some parts of the world) a long-standing belief to the contrary. When miscegenation was legalized in the United States, there was definitely still a widespread and firmly held belief that that was wrong. Would Santorum argue that this “redefinition of something that has been seen as wrong” was therefore a bad thing? I doubt it.
Finally, there is Santorum’s allegation that believing that the Bible and Catholic Church’s insistence that homosexuality is immoral constitutes bigotry is itself a form of bigotry. Well, Rick, show us your work please…because that doesn’t hold by the definition of bigotry I’m using, or indeed any definition I know. For a start, neither the Bible nor the Catholic Church are a group of people. The Bible certainly isn’t, and the Church is an institution with identifiable agreed-upon doctrines. It might be mistaken to say that the Church is bigoted, but that could not be a bigoted statement in itself simply by definition. And there is no association being made which could constitute correlating an unfounded trait with a unifying trait– nobody is saying that the Bible and the Catholic Church say _______, therefore they must consider homosexuality immoral and are therefore bigoted. They say openly that homosexuality is immoral, and that is being evaluated as bigotry. Rightly so, I have argued, whether homosexuality is considered a circumstance of birth or not.
* If they agreed, however, and became sexually inactive or were willing to have sex with men instead, they would not cease to be lesbians. I know this. I am not at all combating the notion that sexual orientation is a matter of identity, not behavior. I am simply for the purposes of this post treating it as a behavior in order to point out that negative associations on that basis still qualify as bigotry.
Salon has an interview with Dan Savage titled “The evolution of Dan Savage” which is a pretty good read if you’re not very familiar with the progression of his career, and includes an interesting (to me) bit about his motivation for starting the It Gets Better Project:
One of the things that was a wake-up call for me last year before the “It Gets Better” campaign — why we launched it, my husband and I — was when I was sort of unaware how bad it was getting out there. You know, in the Greensburg, Indianas, and the Topachakees, Californias, where Constance McMillen was. What I didn’t realize before those suicides opened my eyes, was that as it was getting better in New York or San Francisco or Seattle, it was getting worse out in the sticks, out in mega-church land. Because those of us who are out and urban and fully integrated into our work lives and families, our existence has made it impossible for queer 14-year-olds to fly under the radar in a Greensburg. When I was a kid, and I was odd, the default assumption was that I was odd, not that I was gay. Now when a kid is odd in a Greensburg, gay or straight, the default assumption is gay. Because my job requires me to be in constant communication with people all over the country who are writing in to “Savage Love,” calling the podcast, I think I’m a little more conscious of what’s going on out there in the boonies — but even I didn’t see that. And that’s a bitter pill for those of us my age to swallow. Us out there leading our lives and being successful have actually kind of made it worse for 14-year-old gay kids in Greensburg, Ind. Well, made it worse, but that’s part of progress, right? Absolutely. I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t have lived this way, or we shouldn’t have come out. And the people who are most responsible for making it worse are of course anti-gay politicians and anti-gay preachers, and parents, teachers and peers who are persecuting these kids. But we’ve created a kind of hyper-awareness about sexuality and sexual orientation that has let to hyper-scrutiny about those things, in places where people weren’t on the lookout for it before. Everybody’s on the lookout for it now.
Savage has also referred to this increased awareness of homosexuality on his podcast, to explain why people are not only willing to claim that Marcus Bachmann is a closeted gay but condemn him for not being un-closeted. He (Savage) says that our cultural attitude has changed– that back when most gays were closeted of necessity, it was so much easier and more likely that straight people would ignore their own gaydar through ignorance or consideration or both. But now that being gay is semi-culturally acceptable, people both notice who seems gay more readily and often and expect that people who are gay should come out. So they feel more comfortable with and entitled to judge closeted gays for not coming out. Basically, that straight people used to prefer to be lied to, but not anymore. For some reason the “permalink” option on the Savage Love podcast does not lead to any such thing, but you can hear him explaining this (much better) at the beginning of episode 249 here.
Teona Brown, 19, has pled guilty Thursday, Aug. 4, to first degree assault charges and a hate crime charge in connection with the beating of transgender woman Chrissy Polis last April in Towson, Md. The attack was captured on video by a McDonald’s employee — who filmed the assault rather than step in and try to stop it — last April. The video went viral online and was used, along with new footage from a surveillance camera, in court hearings this week. CBS Baltimore has this report on the plea. Conviction on a first degree assault charge carries a maximum sentence of 25 years, and a hate crime conviction could add another 10 years. Because Brown pled guilty to the attack, prosecutors are recommending that the judge sentence her to five years in prison. A sentencing hearing has been set for next month. Polis was present in court on Thursday, but told reporters she was nervous about being there and had no comment. “I just want to lay low and keep my life as normal as possible,” she said. A second person charged in the attack was 14 at the time and has been charged with assault as a juvenile. Because she is a minor, her identity has not been released.
