today's gratitude (railing against homophobia)

Oh, I'm very grateful today all right. I'm grateful that what is pissing me off has no direct impact (technically speaking) on my household, on my children. I am grateful not to belong to a particular group against which blatant discrimination is tolerated, accepted, promoted. No, I am not counting being Jewish or female, not today. Ok, so, at least two groups of people I belong to do get discriminated against. A great deal, come to think of it. But I'm aware today of how fortunate I am that nobody in charge in this conservative little county I live in thinks I ought not to be allowed to take care of, or make decisions for, my children, on the basis of my choice of domestic partner. I know that I am damn lucky that I was able to choose to end my first marriage and then free to choose whom I married next, and that neither of these choices had any affect on my ability to rent an apartment, purchase a home, or parent my child.

The fact that this is not the case for any other parent is just unacceptable. I have faith that someday we will be so ashamed of this long dark chapter in our nation's history. But sadly, I do not see that day fast approaching.

"Gay" and "queer" are still socially acceptable epithets. However, calling someone out for being homosexual when they are not is punishable by law. Because we straight people must all have special protection against such a heinous slur, right? Well, yes. Because a false accusation of being homosexual could cause a straight person to lose her job, her status in the community, even custody of her children.

Some black people say that if you are a white person and you are not in the trenches, fighting to eliminate white privilege, then you are part of the problem. As an all-people-loving white person, not only do I think this is bull@%*#, and that we should each be judged as part of the problem only if we contribute to the problem or are stubbornly insenstive to the problem, but also, I think the the fact that some white people give credence to this way of thinking is proof that racism, racial slurs, and discrimination on the basis of race are less socially acceptable than discrimination against people because of their sexual orientation. Not to mention that black citizens can marry anyone they want in any state of this nation, so long as they are not of the same gender. And I don't think we are about to elect an openly gay President. Our politicians do not resign from office for adultery; they resign when they are caught being gay.

I hear that open antisemitism is lately becoming chic again in some circles, but I will save that rant for another day. I know there are many hate groups of all kinds all around this great democratic nation of ours. But I am not focusing on the Klu Klux Klan or the Neo Nazi movement right now. Because even though these groups may be more prevalent than they were twenty years ago, they are not accepted by mainstream society. Being homophobic is socially acceptable in far to much of our society. For men, it's considered manly to mock more effeminate men for being "gay". For women, it is a convenient defense mechanism when a man is "just not that into you" and deriding lesbians as "butch" is comforting for women who are insecure about their own femininity.

My question today is simply this: when will homophobia finally be as abhorrent to this nation as racism is? When will our military stop dismissing selfless heroic officers from its ranks on the basis of the gender of the person or people with whom they would prefer to sleep? When will we stop debating whether gay couples can marry? And when will parents' fitness cease to be judged on this basis?

I promise you this: there are a lot of abusive straight parents out there with full and unfettered access to the tender hides and psyches of their children. Yet, the prejudice of our nation and its courts gives a great benefit of the doubt to a married heterosexual pair of parents, and presents all manner of obstacles to letting any of us parent outside that model.

Women who want to emancipate themselves and their children from the slavery of an abusive marriage are commonly punished by the courts with poverty, and it is in this state of poverty that they must bear the burden of proving that their ex-husband should have less than unsupervised access to the children produced during the marriage. But the women who choose to emanicipate themselves from all heterosexual marriage, and subsequent to divorce, embrace a lesbian lifestyle, sometimes in response to longstanding abuse by a man or men, bear an even heavier burden to bear. Not only can a homophobic court impose a punitive level of poverty onto a lesbian mother, but it can rescind custody from that woman for no other reason than the fact that the next partner she chooses to love is a woman.

I am sick to death of this, and I am in the trenches today trying to help change this state of affairs, at least as it relates to one friend and her children. There is an interesting assumption I am reminded of today, and there has always been this assumption, whenever I have taken mouse, pen or phone in hand to inquire into these matters: that I am gay. One organization actually refused my offer to volunteer to work on their behalf a few years ago, because I am not a "member" of the GLBT community. That is very sad. Much like the black Americans who were recently persuaded by a right-to-life organization that Planned Parenthood is out to exterminate black America by aborting its babies, groups that have suffered systemic discrimination can be wary and suspicious of outside help, to their own detriment.

Be that as it may, I cannot and will not sit by while this travesty is played out in my local courts. I may not be a member of the Ohio bar, but I am a citizen of this democracy and a member of this community, and I will make my voice heard. Thanks for reading my warm-up here. I am grateful for this forum.