Beacon Broadside

The American Man: From Ichabod Crane to Jackie Chan

This is the third in an eight-part series of interviews with Michael Bronski about the A Queer History of the United States, this year's Lambda Literary Award winner for LGBT Nonfiction. The interviews were conducted by Richard Voos. 

Enter to win a copy of A Queer History of the United States or one of Beacon's other LGBT titles in our Pride Month Giveaway. For more information, visit beacon.org/queervoices.

Listen to Queer History Episode 3-The American Man: From Ichabod Crane to Jackie Chan

In this by-place of nature there abode, in a remote period of American history, that is to say, some thirty years since, a worthy wight of the name of Ichabod Crane, who sojourned, or, as he expressed it, “tarried,” in Sleepy Hollow, for the purpose of instructing the children of the vicinity... He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. 

[...]

The schoolmaster is generally a man of some importance in the female circle of a rural neighborhood; being considered a kind of idle, gentlemanlike personage, of vastly superior taste and accomplishments to the rough country swains, and, indeed, inferior in learning only to the parson... Our man of letters, therefore, was peculiarly happy in the smiles of all the country damsels. How he would figure among them in the churchyard, between services on Sundays; gathering grapes for them from the wild vines that overran the surrounding trees; reciting for their amusement all the epitaphs on the tombstones; or sauntering, with a whole bevy of them, along the banks of the adjacent millpond; while the more bashful country bumpkins hung sheepishly back, envying his superior elegance and address. 

From his half-itinerant life, also, he was a kind of traveling gazette, carrying the whole budget of local gossip from house to house, so that his appearance was always greeted with satisfaction.

[...]

Among these [country swains], the most formidable was a burly, roaring, roystering blade, of the name of Abraham, or, according to the Dutch abbreviation, Brom Van Brunt, the hero of the country round which rang with his feats of strength and hardihood. He was broad-shouldered and double-jointed, with short curly black hair, and a bluff but not unpleasant countenance, having a mingled air of fun and arrogance. From his Herculean frame and great powers of limb he had received the nickname of BROM BONES, by which he was universally known. He was famed for great knowledge and skill in horsemanship, being as dexterous on horseback as a Tartar... He was always ready for either a fight or a frolic; but had more mischief than ill-will in his composition; and with all his overbearing roughness, there was a strong dash of waggish good humor at bottom. He had three or four boon companions, who regarded him as their model, and at the head of whom he scoured the country, attending every scene of feud or merriment for miles round... Sometimes his crew would be heard dashing along past the farmhouses at midnight, with whoop and halloo, like a troop of Don Cossacks; and the old dames, startled out of their sleep, would listen for a moment till the hurry-scurry had clattered by, and then exclaim, "Ay, there goes Brom Bones and his gang!" The neighbors looked upon him with a mixture of awe, admiration, and good-will; and, when any madcap prank or rustic brawl occurred in the vicinity, always shook their heads, and warranted Brom Bones was at the bottom of it.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Washington Irving, 1820.

America's definition of itself has been tightly connected to our definition of manliness and masculinity. There's a contrast between the British fop and the self-reliant Colonial; the educated and rather girly Ichabod Crane, as we've just heard read, and the manly Brom Bones; the Eastern intellectual and the cowboy; finally, from the invert and homosexual to a new heterosexual man at the start of the 21st century. Would you take these in turn, starting with the earliest definition of the American Man? How and where does that definition come into being?

The American Man has a very odd history, the remnants of which are still with us today, maybe even magnified in some ways. Certainly, we see the first American Man as a reaction to the English fop, as we see in the Washington Irving story. But even before the Washington Irving story, which was written in the 1820s, we see the American Colonialist really fighting against the notion of the effeminate Englishman, an odd notion since in fact George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and those other people all wore powdered wigs, had large libraries, and were actually rather dandified. One of the first American plays ever written is called The Contrast by Royall Tyler. It features two main characters: the effeminized English sympathizer-- also an American-- named Billy Dimple; and his opponent in love-- they're both after the same girl-- whose name is Colonel Manly. So from the very beginning, we see this dichotomy, and we see it play out again and again. 

I think the Brom Bones/Ichabod Crane story is simply one early aspect of this, but one which is really formative for American culture, even now, since most school children have to read this story which is at heart a story about a queer bashing. 

Say some more--remind us of how this story ends.

In the story, which I'm sure most people know, Ichabod Crane is the effeminized school teacher who comes into this small town, who teaches children but hangs out with the women, who does knitting with them, who is part of the women's sewing circle. His opponent is Brom Bones, who is a bully. At the height of the story, relying on the legend of Sleepy Hollow, which is that the headless horseman rides at night, Ichabod Crane is very fearfully riding home one night with this legend in mind. Suddenly, from across the bridge and chasing him is, indeed the headless horseman, who we know is actually-- probably-- Brom Bones with a lighted pumpkin on his shoulder. Ichabod Crane runs off-- is bullied-- out of town, essentially, and never is seen again. Presumably, he's moved, although there's always the possibility that he's actually dead. What I think is most interesting, and most people don't realize this about the story now, although certainly it would have been true back in Washington Irving's time, is that the first line in the story says that the action takes place next to "Major Andre's tree." This is a reference to the tree upon which Major Andre, the man who worked with Benedict Arnold against the American forces, was hanged for treason. Now, people would have realized this in 1820, not now, but Major Andre was generally thought to be a homosexual or certainly a man who was in love with other men. So, even Washington Irving back in 1820 was quite aware of the homosexual subtext for the story.

So there's a link right in 1820 between the girly-man and betrayal, betrayal of your country.

Completely. And I think what's interesting is that we see this played out again and again and again, in increasingly more complicated ways, when we come to World War II, but certainly as far back as 1820 and even before that we see this dichotomy between men who are learned, men who teach, men who like women versus who want to have sex with women, men who work with children, and the more "manly" American man.

And that's reflected in the legends around Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett and in James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales as well.

Shortly after the Revolutionary War, we do begin to have these other American legends coming up. Ultimately, by the early to mid-19th century, the legends of Davy Crockett and of Daniel Boone, which are quite distinct legends, but both really show American men in this new light as frontiersman, as men going out to the West, as men who can conquer nature. A man who can-- in the case of Davy Crockett-- kill huge amounts of animals to prove his manhood. The Daniel Boone story is slightly different. He's somebody who actually seems to be taming nature versus killing it.

So the distinction that you write about in James Fenimore Cooper--the additional complexity in his work--involves that these are settlers and Native Americans in his stories.

Yes. I think if you look at Washington Irving, the paradigm here is the American Man is praised for being the bully against the effeminized Ichabod Crane. Shortly after this, we have James Fenimore Cooper, who is spinning out a different legend, which is that the white American man who is conquering the continent becomes friends with the Native American. In fact, they become very intimate friends. So in the five Leatherstocking novels by Cooper, we have Natty Bumppo becoming best of friends with Chingachgook. And the writing is quite erotic, the relationship is quite erotic. They have female love interests, but the center of the novels is this evolving male companionship and friendship, where they leave civilization, they leave the city, they leave the fort, and they go into the forest to bond together. I don't think Cooper intended for us to see them as being physical lovers, but the paradigm of the white man and the nonwhite man, or what Leslie Fiedler in his essay "Come Back to the Raft Ag'in, Huck Honey" would call "the colored man," is st up as an American paradigm. It begins back in the 1840s and we see it play out again and again. We see it with Cooper, and we see it in a slightly different way in Moby Dick, where we have the intense relationship between Ishmael and Queequeg. Melville is quite clear that they are a couple, since there is a chapter called, "The Wedding Night." We see it again even in Mark Twain, and this is what the reference is to the Fiedler essay-- we see it in the relationship of Huck to Jim, who's a runaway slave. I think that we can trace this from the 1820s throughout the 19th century.

And we see it today in movies such as Lethal Weapon with Mel Gibson and Danny Glover. And there are a spate of these movies in the 1980s with black and white cop teams. So one way of looking at these books-- be it James Fenimore Cooper or Mark Twain or Herman Melville-- is these are really the early template for what we now understand to be the buddy movie. The buddy movie as it exists now could either be Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid with two white guys, but more recently-- in the '80s and we see this today in a more advanced, complicated way-- all those cop buddy movies. The newest spate of these is with an African-American actor and Jackie Chan, so we do have the biracial tension and the biracial loving relationship, only now it's an Asian man who has replaced the white man.

Berdache and Sodomite: Language, Gender and Sex

This is the second in an eight-part series of interviews with Michael Bronski about the A Queer History of the United States, this year's Lambda Literary Award winner for LGBT Nonfiction. The interviews were conducted by Richard Voos. Listen or read below to learn about how Europeans applied their language and beliefs to the "Two-Spirt" Native Americans they encountered.

Enter to win a copy of A Queer History of the United States or one of Beacon's other LGBT titles in our Pride Month Giveaway. For more information, visit beacon.org/queervoices.

Listen to Queer History Podcast Episode 2: Berdache and Sodomite

 

We-Wa-a-Zuni, A Berdache; Full Length Portrait from First People.

"Among Mamitarees if a boy shows any symptoms of effeminacy or girlish inclinations he is put among the girls, dressed in their way, brought up with them, and sometimes married to men." Nicholas Biddle, original journals of the Lewis and Clark expeditions

"Their garments consist only of skins; the women are always clad very modestly and very becomingly, while the men do not take the trouble to Cover themselves. I know not through what superstition some Ilinois, as well as some Nadouessi, while still young, assume the garb of women, and retain it throughout their lives. There is some mystery in this. For they never marry and glory in demeaning themselves to do everything that the women do. They go to war, however, but can use only clubs, and not bows and arrows, which are the weapons proper to men. They are present at all the juggleries, and at the solemn dances in honor of the Calumet; at these they sing, but must not dance. They are summoned to the Councils, and nothing can be decided without their advice. Finally, through their profession of leading an Extraordinary life, they pass for Manitous, — That is to say, for Spirits, — or persons of Consequence." From the journals of Jacques Marquette, 1673-1677

"Among the women I saw some men dressed like women, with whom they go about regularly, never joining the men. . . . From this I inferred they must be hermaphrodites, but from what I learned later I understood that they were sodomites, dedicated to nefarious practices. From all the foregoing I conclude that in this matter of incontinence there will be much to do when the Holy Faith and the Christian religion are established among them." Franciscan Pedro Font's diary

---

The use of the word "gay" really arose in the 1920s or '30s, but there was all sorts of different language in the previous four hundred years. Take us back to some of the earliest descriptions and usages of terms to describe queer people in the Americas.

Language can be very tricky, so when we're looking at language and how it's describing people, we have to realize that sometimes other people do the describing. So, before the Europeans even came here, we had many Native tribes and groups of people who exhibited behavior such as cross-dressing, same-sex relationships for both women and for men. Each of the tribes had their own language for this. When the Europeans came here, they used the French word berdache--which was a pejorative word essentially meaning a pedophile--for these people, completely inaccurately. Yet it's a word that continues to be used by anthropologists even today.

George Catlin (1796-1872), Dance to the Berdache. Drawn while on the Great Plains, among the Sac and Fox Indians, the sketch depicts a ceremonial dance to celebrate the two-spirit person.

There's a mix in the behaviors and attitudes that you're talking about among the Native Americans, around both same-sex sexual behavior but also around breaking gender boundaries.

Certainly breaking gender boundaries for the Europeans, who were quite shocked when they came here. So the language that we have, which is used to some degree now, is the European terminology. Which I think we find repeatedly throughout the history of America. America was here before the Europeans came, they brought over the language, another word that they brought with them was "sodomite." Which is a theological term, meaning a person who has committed a sin of sodomy. Used rather broadly about anybody who transgressed accepted gender or sexual behaviors. And yet, a word that's used today, even in the general sense of the sodomy laws which are defined in various different ways. So from the earliest Colonial times, we did not have "homosexuals," we did not have "gay people," we had people who were accused of committing the sin of "sodomy" and were "sodomites."

And so both of those terms--"berdache" and "sodomite"--were really pejorative.

Completely pejorative. The first, by social implication, although considered a sin. The second explicitly, theologically, a sin. So it's important to realize that most of our laws emanate to a large degree from canon law in Europe, and were translated from the church into the state.

Fathers? Mothers? What Really Matters in Child Development

Nancy D. Polikoff is the author of Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage: Valuing All Families under the Law. She is professor of law at American University. This post originally appeared on her blog: beyondstraightandgaymarriage.blogspot.com.

Cambridge University Professor Michael E. Lamb has impeccable credentials as one of the world's leading experts on child development. Among other things, he was Chief of the Section on Social and Emotional Development of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development for 17 years. His list of publications is about 50 pages long (that is not a typo!  check it out here). He is credited with, among other things, determining that fathers, as well as mothers, matter to child development. It is no doubt that early finding of his that endeared him to the "father's rights" movement and the fatherhood movement that sought to pathologize women raising children without father involvement.

Perhaps because of the mischaracterization of his research, Dr. Lamb was drawn into the public conversation about the relationship of family structure to child outcome. Turns out that his research supported the findings that when fathers are there, they matter; in other words that there is more to child adjustment than the mother-child bond.  What his research did not support was the assertion that optimal child adjustment demands that every child have a father in the home.

In 2004, the ACLU, in a case litigated brilliantly by LGBT Rights Project attorney Leslie Cooper, called Dr. Lamb as a witness in a lawsuit in Arkansas state court successfully challenging the social services agency regulation against placing children with lesbian and gay foster parents. The trial judge referred to Dr. Lamb as the "most outstanding" expert witness in the case (coming close to saying he was the most outstanding expert witness he had ever heard), who answered questions fully with no "animus or bias" to any parties.  He testified about what did (quality of relationships, available resources), and did not (gender or sexual orientation of parents), matter to the well-being of children. Since then, Michael Lamb has participated in other litigation, most notably the Perry case challenging the constitutionality of Prop 8.

Last month, Dr. Lamb published in the journal Applied Development Science a summary of many hundreds of studies over the last four decades elucidating the factors that contribute to child adjustment. The article, Mothers, Fathers, Families, and Circumstances: Factors Affecting Children's Adjustment is available online here. This means that Dr. Lamb's professional opinion is now widely available for anyone who needs support for the following propositions:

*Social scientists have reached consensus that the following factors matter most to healthy child development: the quality of relationships with parents; the quality of relationships between the parents and other significant adults; and the availability of adequate economic, social, and physical resources.

*Family structure explains a "small (or even insignificant) portion" of differences in child outcomes

*Children in one-parent families have greater adjustment problems than children in two-parent families, but the primary causes of this increased maladjustment are disturbed relationships with one or both parents, reduced resources when there is only one wage-earner and care-giver, and unstable living arrangments and conflict around parental separation.  "The mere fact that the majority of children raised in single-parent or divorced families are well-adjusted," writes Dr. Lamb, "undercuts the argument that children 'need' to be raised in traditional families."

*Mothers and fathers are important to their children "as parents";  "father absence" is not itself important to adjustment.  (emphases in original)

*There is no support for the notion that both male and female role models in the home enhance child adjustment.

*The same factors affect child adjustment whatever the sexual orientation of parents; children with same-sex parents suffer no developmental disadvantages when compared with children of different-sex parents.

*Arguments from "some politicians and advocacy groups, especially those who oppose divorce and same-sex parenthood" that children need to be raised by "biological" parents have no empirical support.

Dr. Lamb concludes that discrimination against individuals and families on the basis of sexual orientation, gender, and marital status -- which he refers to as "outmoded beliefs in the superiority of traditional families" -- are harmful to individuals, families, and children.

To me, this is what is most important about this article. It places single-mother and same-sex couple families together and debunks the myths about both. Too often, advocates for LGBT families (especially for same-sex marriage) distance themselves from single-mother families. Those families, they say, are pathological, but not ours. I despise such arguments. The Lamb article makes clear that circumstances often associated with single motherhood, such as exposure of the child to parental conflict and lack of resources, can lead to child maladjustment. But it is not the structure of a family with children raised by a single mother that's the problem.

Time for Michael Lamb to get an "allies" award from some gay rights group....

A Queer and Pleasant Blog Tour (and Other Kate Bornstein media hits)

A Queer and Pleasant Danger is one of the books you can win if you enter our Pride Month Book Giveaway. For more info, visit: www.beacon.org/queervoices.

"If Kate Bornstein didn't exist, we would have to invent her. But luckily for queers, straights, gender outlaws, and general readers, Bornstein is out and out there." -- Dan Savage

And now, A Queer and Pleasant Danger is out and out there as well! It's been about a month since the release of Kate Bornstein's memoir, and the media, blogs, and Twitter have been lit up all over with love for this book. Here's a quick roundup of her recent blog tour and other mentions.

The Village Voice cover story by Tony Ortega, "Kate Bornstein's Amazing Voyage," complete with a comics adaptation of key moments from the memoir that graced the magazine cover. 

Bornstein's tale of disaffection from Scientology has a sense of intrigue—it involves Swiss bank accounts, a rogue group of executives leading a series of purges, and hours of intimidating interrogations—but really, it's the same story we see repeated again and again. After years of superhuman dedication, financial sacrifice, and hermetically sealing themselves from outside influences, one by one, longtime Scientologists tend to reach the same precipice. Forced out through interrogations, disconnected from family members, and simply exhausted by the constant fundraising, many veteran church members go into free fall as they are declared suppressive or simply break away. Some then become the targets of retaliation known as "fair game," which is a well-documented history of using church-hired private eyes and legal harassment.

But Al had other concerns after being suddenly kicked to the curb. He returned home to New Jersey and, three years later, was ready to become Kate. In this revealing book, we learn some particulars about her surgery. And then, there's this rather remarkable little detail: On January 24, 1986, Kate legally changed her name—and remained unaware until much later that on that same day, L. Ron Hubbard died.

Officially, it was a transition for both of them. The church has maintained to this day that Hubbard chose to leave his corporeal body in order to pursue even higher levels of spiritual training somewhere in the galaxy. And Kate—well, she had her own new frontiers to explore.

In the Boston Phoenix, Thomas Page McBee tells Kate he gave a copy of My Gender Workbook to his mom, and they discuss how writing the memoir was different than writing her previous books. 

"Most people don't think about, 'Well, if I remember back to a certain time in my life would I be able to embody that person who I was?" And, frankly, when I sat down to write the memoir I didn't think I was going to be able to. But then I started writing myself in the first-person boy — man — that I was, and it was easy. I just told the truth of it without judging myself. And yeah, it has helped me resolve a lot. Writing that book has helped me come to — a lot closer to not man, not woman, and both. And that's the kind of state of grace that I aspire to."

In an interview with Nicole Pasulka in Mother Jones, Kate talks about Judaism, Scientology, and being transgender:

"Growing up we were secular Jews, but what I got out of Judaism at that time in my life was questions. Everything was a question. "Dad, is there a heaven? Is there a hell?" You never could get an answer. That informed a lot of my reasons for getting into Scientology, because they had all the answers. They said I was not my body, not my mind. I don't have a soul; I am an immortal soul. I've lived many lives and I'll live endlessly into the future, and as an immortal soul I have no gender.

Now this is a big deal, because I never wanted to be a boy, and I didn't want to grow up to be a man."

Reviews:

Pop Matters (10 of 10):
"But what Bornstein ultimately teaches us is that non-normal, or beyond normal, can be fun, challenging, but most of all rewarding. We need to accept expressive fluidity and understand that life is not a solo performance, but the actors certainly will change." 

Lambda Literary:
"Ultimately Bornstein has written us a profoundly brave book that cracked me open, leaving me quivering and grateful for the stories I hadn’t known I’d needed to hear. A Queer and Pleasant Danger is truly a singular achievement and gift to the generations of queers who consider her our Auntie, and all those who will follow."

Religion Dispatches:
"QAPD is at least three books in one, each of which is a page-turner. The first part is a powerful, at times painful, autobiography of a transgender woman growing up before the category even existed. In some ways, LGBT-youth-memoir is a conventional narrative, but Bornstein has never been conventional and—Goddess help us—never will be. If QAPD ended at page 54, it would be a must-read for anyone interested in transgender, queer theory, or LGBT lives more generally.

But then there’s part two, on Bornstein’s twelve years in Scientology, and part three, on her eventual liberation, transition, and embrace of her kinky, post-gender, post-fame self. (Bornstein’s new book gives her status as a “cult hero” a whole new meaning.) These are also two complete books, and also indispensable."

Blog Tour:

en|Gender
"We were lucky enough to have Kate read us a chapter – the one on her expulsion from Scientology – a few years ago on a drive from Appleton, WI – where I’d convinced her to come speak at Lawrence University – to the big queer midwest college conference in Madison, WI, where she was the keynote speaker. Sometimes it’s striking what kinds of things you remember, things that maybe no one else would, but anyone – anyone and their favorite aunt – would definitely remember eating Taco Bell with Kate Bornstein in a car on a Wisconsin interstate while she reads to you from her as-yet-unpublished memoir." 

io9: "How I Helped L. Ron Hubbard Take Over the Planet"
"On the subject of taking over the planet, Scientology staff worldwide were at an emotional tone of 3.75, between Strong Interest and Enthusiasm. On the subject of doing their own jobs, however, the international tone level dropped to 0.95, smack-dab in the middle of Numbness and Terror. "Gotcha!" exclaimed the Old Man, pounding his desk for emphasis. He outlined his plan to bring worldwide Scientology staff upscale to where their feelings about their jobs matched their feelings about taking over planet Earth. Because staff were so low-toned emotionally, we had to pitch the first campaign at a level of Anger (1.5). We watched the statistics as they came in at the next week-ending. Damned stats went up, pretty near one for one. There was much celebration aboard the Flagship that night. LRH's breakthrough in public relations had worked like a charm, which, in a way, it was."

Queer Fat Femme:
"I’ve read a lot of Kate’s theory and seen her perform and keynote events but never got the full scoop of what she’s gone through. I mean, the process of getting to be a charming babe like Kate Bornstein is no less than spectacular."

Book Notes at Largehearted Boy:
Kate's music playlist includes Audrey Heburn, the Dresden Dolls, and Mx Justin ViVian Bond. 

Caitlin Song:
"Her compassion, honesty, service, and humour are rare and beautiful traits in a society supersaturated with anemic pop culture." 

Biographile
"We can’t all push so many boundaries -- and all at once -- but we can be moved and inspired by someone who does."

Watch Kate: 

Watch Kate on the Melissa Harris-Perry Show at MSNBC

See Kate reading an excerpt of A Queer and Pleasant Danger at the Beyond Visibility Conference.

Check out the Book Trailer for A Queer and Pleasant Danger

American History is Queer History: An Interview with Michael Bronski

Beacon Press is proud to announce that A Queer History of the United States by Michael Bronski is this year's Lambda Literary Award winner for LGBT Nonfiction. The news came at last night's Lammy Awards, as we were preparing to post the first in an eight-part series of interviews with Michael Bronski about the book. The interviews were conducted by Richard Voos. Listen or read below to find out why American History is Queer History.  

Listen to A Queer History of the United States, Episode One

What's the difference between a "Queer History" and a "regular" history?

 As I was writing the book and as the book was being edited, we decided that actually that was a little bit too literal, and that what we wanted to do was a Queer History, which would be rather a history of a sensibility rather than a history of what certain people did or didn't do. I think that a Queer sensibility would be a sensibility that would be from the outside. So whereas LGBT people may have lived to a large degree on the outside--although not always since many of these people were in fact not openly gay at the time--what the book does is that it looks at American History from the point of view of an outsider. So in this sense, it's not that different than, say, a black sensibility or a Latino sensibility. 

One of the things that always comes up is the terminology, and you discuss this in the Introduction and the first chapter. The language used even in the last one hundred and twenty years--gay, homosexual, invert, Sapphist--none of that existed of course when the Mayflower landed or in the first hundred or two hundred years of US History. So, how do you write a "Queer" history of the United States given that the terms and the identity and the social meanings have changed really radically over five hundred years?

I think one of the reasons we were attracted to the word "Queer" is its non-specificity. So, by "Queer," it's being used generally, meaning a point of view an outsider or a "deviant"-- non-normative experience. But you are completely right. Certainly words such as "gay" and "lesbian," "homosexual" were not used two hundred years ago in many cases. I think that none of these words were used for the first four hundred years of American history--my book begins in 1492. It is a tricky feat to actually use contemporary words to describe the activities, the emotions, the feelings, the sensibilities of people who lived five hundred years ago, or three hundred years ago. I tried for the most part not to use those words, and simply to let the people speak in their own words, and to evaluate what they were saying and what they were doing without putting our modern sensibilities onto them. 

The core argument in your book is that American History is Queer History. Lay out the argument for us if you would.

Since the 1960s, there have been movements to include those people who have been "left out" of American history. So we see Women's History, African-American history, Latino history, Native American history. And certainly when we think about Gay and Lesbian or GLBT history, that's the same impulse--to bring Gay and Lesbian people back into American history. When I began writing the book, it struck me that the more research I did, that while this project was well-intentioned, it was rather unnecessary. That in fact gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender people, African-American people, Latino people, women have always been in American history. So the very process of separating people out in order to put them back in seemed to me to be shortsighted. So the purpose of the book as I began writing it became clearer and clearer--it was simply to identify and find the LGBT people that are in American history already. The more I did this, what I discovered was that there were so many people, so many events, people's lives, people's personalities were so intertwined with what we think of as American history that there was no separation at all. 

Can you give us one or two examples that would connect what we all learned in elementary and high school about American History to the idea that the queers were here all along?

There are a multitude of examples. Two that come to mind immediately are, in the 19th Century, the 1850s, we have an intense relationship between Charles Sumner, a senator from Massachusetts who was one of the leading abolitionists, who had an intimate, passionate relationship with Samuel Gridley Howe, one of the major reformers of American culture back then. This is the man who started Perkins School for the Blind and completely reformed our notion of dealing with different physical disabilities. The letters between the two men are quite striking, and even though both of them were married--Samuel Howe actually was married to Julia Ward Howe, who wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic--their relationship was sustaining to both of them. When Howe was on his honeymoon with Julia Ward Howe, he received word that Charles Sumner was very upset and wrote him a passionate note saying that he wished that he was there with them. Interestingly, Sumner himself married later. They have complicated relationships. Julia Ward Howe, although this was only discovered about ten years ago, wrote a novel about a hermaphrodite--a man/woman who loves both men and women--that most critics now think was her own meditation on her husband's bisexuality.

I recall hearing about Charles Sumner in high school. There was a famous fistfight in the Senate that he was involved in. Obviously, we all know the Battle Hymn of the Republic. And your purpose is to connect their queer lives into American History in a way that has not been done before. 

Right. And I think there are two ways of looking at it. One way of looking at it is to say, "This is sort of interesting. This is some extra stuff we didn't know before." And we can actually prove it. We have letters, we have diaries, we have unpublished novels. But I think that's a simplistic way of looking at it. I think a more complicated way is to ask, "What did this have to do with their relationships? What did Sumner's queerness have to do with his abolition stand? What did Howe's queerness have to do with his drivenness to reform society? What did Julia Ward Howe's realtionship to her husband have to do with her impulses to the early suffrage movement and for liberation of women?" So, I think that when we look at the larger picture, the queerness, the sexuality, the really complicated sexual relationships, are integral to these people's desire to change the world and make it better. 

And you said you have an example from the twentieth century as well.

I think we see a very similar situation, and similar also in the sense that these are people involved in a heterosexual marriage, when we look at the career and life of Eleanor Roosevelt. We know now, thanks to historian Blanche Weisen Cook, that Eleanor had a very complicated, intimate, most-probably sexual relationship with Lorena Hickok, who was a journalist. At one point, Eleanor moved her into the White House with her. And that Hickok's reporting upon Eleanor Roosevelt was integral to Eleanor Roosevelt's promotion of herself as a social reformer. Along with this, we do know that Eleanor Roosevelt had a wide, wide circle of female friends, many of whom were lesbians, many of whom were involved with social work. These women as an aggregate were called "Roosevelt's Brain Trust." And, in fact, Eleanor brought them to Washington and they were instrumental in forming the New Deal. Francis Perkins, one of Eleanor's intimate friends, was the first woman to head the Labor Department. So I think when we're looking at Eleanor Roosevelt's life, it's not just interesting that she had this affair with a woman-- she also apparently had an affair with her chauffer, named Earl Miller, as well, so Eleanor's life was complicated-- but what is really amazing that there is this circle of friends--which, again, Blanche Weisen Cook calls "female support networks"--that literally changed our very notions of how social work functions in American society and how reform functions. All again based upon lesbian--or women being intimate with women--relationships.  

CeCe McDonald’s Right to Self-Defense

Joey L. Mogul is a partner at the People’s Law Office in Chicago, Illinois, and Director of the Civil Rights Clinic at DePaul University College of Law.  Mogul’s practice focuses on representing individuals who have suffered from police and other governmental misconduct in civil rights cases, and defending individuals in criminal and capital cases. Mogul is co-author, with Andrea Ritchie and Kay Whitlock, of Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States. 

On June 5, 2011, Chrishaun “CeCe” McDonald, an African American transgender woman, was assaulted by Dean Schmitz, a white heterosexual man, and his friends in a violent, racist, and transphobic attack. In the face of extreme violence causing her serious physical injury, CeCe defended herself. The Hennepin County Attorneys’ Office in Minneapolis refused to recognize her right to self-defense, and instead prosecuted her for two counts of second degree murder for the death of Mr. Schmitz.

On May 3, 2012, after a jury was selected and opening arguments were set to begin at trial, CeCe pled guilty to a reduced charge of second degree manslaughter in exchange for a recommended sentence of forty-one months imprisonment, as opposed to proceeding to trial where she faced a possible forty year term of imprisonment if convicted of second degree murder as originally charged.

The following text is adapted from a speech I gave at an event on April 22, 2012 organized by CeCe’s Support Committee at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

CeCe’s sentencing hearing is scheduled for June 4, 2012.

Gay Pride Month and the Stonewall Rebellion 

In June of 2011, Gay Pride Month, CeCe McDonald, a Black transgender woman, was the victim of a vicious, racist, transphobic attack. It is sadly ironic that she is the one criminalized for exercising her right to self-defense.

Gay Pride month is more than just a month to party (although I have nothing against partying), and it is certainly more than a parade full of politicians and corporate sponsors who want you to vote for them or buy their products.

The Gay Pride Parade and Pride Month derive from a cherished moment in queer history - the Stonewall Rebellion.

The Rebellion occurred in June of 1969 when officers from the New York Police Department (NYPD) raided the Stonewall Inn, a private drinking establishment in the West Village of New York City. The purported justification for the raid was the enforcement of liquor law violations.

The raid was nothing new. Law enforcement officers frequently used pre-textual justifications, like liquor law enforcement, to raid gay bars nationwide in order to arrest, humiliate, and in many cases abuse, all those present. This time, however, people were fed up with these unjustified attacks, and in response to the homophobic onslaught and physical brutality, people resisted and defended themselves. Led by drag queens and butches, bar patrons yelled “Gay Power” and they threw shoes, coins, and bricks at the officers and clashed with the NYPD over the next three days.

We celebrate Gay Pride in June each year to mark the moment when queers fought back, defended themselves, and said no to the violence. Thus, it is tragically ironic that, at the beginning of Pride Month, CeCe McDonald is awaiting punishment for fighting back, defending herself, and protecting her life during Pride Month one year ago.

The Facts Regarding CeCe McDonald’s Prosecution for Murder

On June 5, 2011, around 12:30 a.m., CeCe and four of her friends, who were also young queers of color, were in South Minneapolis walking to Cub Foods when they passed the Schooner Tavern. According to witnesses, Dean Schmitz began yelling at CeCe and her friends, calling them rapists who were wearing women’s clothes, as well as a slew of racist, homophobic epithets, including “niggers,” “fags,” and “faggot lover.” Schmitz further verbally assaulted CeCe, denying her gender identity, yelling out that she was not a girl, and claiming she was tucking in her dick.

When CeCe and her friends verbally responded to Schmitz and his female companions – all of whom were white – the crowd began calling them “niggers” and “faggots” and “chicks with dicks.” A physical altercation ensued, when one of the white women with Schmitz smashed a liquor glass in CeCe’s face with such force that it shattered on impact, cutting CeCe’s cheek and requiring 11 stitches.

Witnesses at the scene reported that CeCe had turned away and was leaving the altercation, when Schmitz followed her in an aggressive, hostile fashion. Eventually, Schmitz was stabbed during the altercation with a pair of scissors in the chest and he bled to death at the scene. CeCe claims she acted in self-defense.

This was not the first time Dean Schmitz had expressed racist sentiments. Schmitz was a proud racist who had a swastika tattooed on his chest. Schmitz also had a history of violence, and had three prior convictions for assaulting his ex-girlfriend’s 14-year-old daughter, assaulting his ex-girlfriend, and getting into a physical fight with his ex-girlfriend’s father.

The Racist, Transphobic Hate Violence Endured by Transgender Women of Color in the United States

Schmitz’s assault on CeCe was not an isolated incident. Transgender women of color endure egregious violence every single day across the U.S. The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) reported in 2010 that people who identified as either as transgender or people of color were twice as likely to experience assault or discrimination as non-transgender white individuals. NCAVP also reported that transgender women made up 44% of the 27 hate murders committed in 2010 despite being only 8% percent of the queer population (see http://www.avp.org/publications/reports/reports.htm).

Just this past month, 3 transgender women of color have been murdered. On Monday, April 16, Paige Clay, an African American transgender woman, was found dead in an alley on Chicago’s Westside with a bullet through her forehead. On April 3, CoCo Williams, an African American transgender woman, was murdered in Palmer Park in Detroit, Michigan. Her throat was slashed and her body was riddled with gunshot wounds. In March, Rosita, a presumably Latina trans woman, was found dead in her apartment in Miami, Florida, the victim of multiple stab wounds.

It was more than reasonable for CeCe to fear for her life, not only because of Schmitz’s own aggressive and violent behavior, but also because of the endemic and often deadly violence transgender women of color experience in this country on a daily basis. In light of nationwide trends, it is fair to ask what would have happened if CeCe did not defend herself. Would her name simply have been added to the too long list of names we recite at annual Transgender Day of Remembrance?

Is CeCe’s real crime that she lived?

The Criminalization of LGBTQ Targets of Hate Violence

CeCe is not the only queer of color to be physically attacked and forced to defend herself, only to be blamed for the violence and prosecuted in the criminal legal system. As my co-authors Andrea Ritchie, Kay Whitlock and I discuss in Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States, LGBTQ people, particularly those of color, report that police often focus on them rather than their assailants when they are the victims of violence, questioning their accounts of the incident and/or blaming them for bringing the violence upon themselves.

This was the case with the New Jersey 7, which involved a group of seven Black lesbian friends who were confronted by Dwayne Buckle, a Black heterosexual man in the West Village of NYC. Buckle made a sexual advance towards one of the women, and when she responded she was not interested, he shouted “I’ll fuck you straight, sweetheart!” He then spit on this woman, and later grew physically abusive, pulling on one of the women’s hair and choking another woman. A physical struggle ensued, and two unknown men ran over to help the women. Buckle was stabbed during the altercation and he cried he was the victim of a “heterosexual hate crime.”

As my co-authors and I discussed in Queer (In)Justice, the police responded to the incident and they refused to see the women as victims. Instead, the police arrested and charged them with attempted murder, framing them as the perpetrators of “gang violence.” Ultimately, three of the seven women felt compelled to plead to get a reduced sentence, and four of the women were found guilty and sentenced to three and half to eleven years in prison.  (For more information: See INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence: Critical Lessons from the New Jersey 7.)

The same dynamic occurred in Monica James’s case, a Black transgender woman in Chicago in 2007. Monica was pursued by an unknown white, gay man who was yelling and screaming racists, transphobic epithets at her. A physical altercation ensued, and during the struggle she bit in him in self-defense and he knocked her unconscious. Both claimed to have acted in self-defense, but she was the one charged with a host of serious felonies. In Monica’s case, the white man who pursued her was an off duty Chicago police officer. She was charged with attempted murder, discharge of the officers’ weapon and aggravated battery on a peace officer.

Her claims of self-defense were also ignored and rejected. The State also rejected her claims that she was the victim of a racist and transphobic attack, arguing to the jury this could not be the case because the officer was gay.

While Monica prevailed and was found not guilty of the more serious charges, thanks in great part to the organizing efforts of the Transformative Justice Law Project, she was still found guilty of aggravated battery.

Why Is CeCe the Only Person Facing Charges from this Incident

Against this backdrop, it is fair to question the fairness and legitimacy of CeCe’s criminal prosecution, and there are several other unanswered questions regarding this prosecution. For instance, why is CeCe the only person charged with a crime as result of this incident?

It appears several people committed crimes that fateful night. The white, presumably heterosexual woman who hit CeCe with a beer mug committed battery (possibly aggravated battery), when she hit CeCe, causing her a severe injury requiring medical treatment. Why wasn’t she charged? Is it because the State is going to call her as a witness and rely her testimony to convict CeCe? Are the police and prosecutors crediting her testimony over that of CeCe’s based on her race and gender conformity?

This woman and another, along with Schmitz, were yelling out racist and homophobic slurs and accusing CeCe and her friends of setting out to commit heinous crimes of rape (both projecting on to CeCe and tapping into archetypes that have framed Black people as perpetrators of rape and sexual deviance since slavery and Jim Crow, archetypes that have been used to justify lynching). Is it fair to infer that Schmitz’s friends may be guilty of inciting a riot, stirring people to engage in violence against CeCe and her friends?

If CeCe was white and gender conforming would she be facing murder charges today? Or, would her case be dropped by the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office like that of three other white women who claimed they acted in self-defense?

Drop Prosecution of CeCe

Paige Clay, the African American transgender woman killed in Chicago was known for saying, “If you are quiet as a mouse, no one will hear you.” Well, CeCe was not quiet as a mouse, but instead she spoke up and defended herself. And we cannot be quiet like mice either. We cannot stand silent in the face of the racist, transphobic violence plaguing the nation that is silencing, harming and killing transgender women of color. And we cannot stand silent in the face of this unfair and unjust prosecution. I believe CeCe has the right to defend herself and I applaud the valiant efforts of the CeCe Support Committee in organizing on CeCe’s behalf and calling on the Hennepin County Attorney Mike Hennepin to drop the charges. Free CeCe.

Why the Supreme Court Should Hear the DOMA Lawsuit

Carlos A. Ball is professor of law at the Rutgers University School of Law (Newark). He has written extensively on LGBT rights issues, is the author of From the Closet to the Courtroom: Five LGBT Rights Lawsuits That Have Changed Our Nation and the recently published The Right to be Parents: LGBT Families and the Transformation of Parenthood (NYU Press, May 2012). Ball has received a Dukeminier Award from UCLA's Williams Institute for excellence in sexual orientation and the law scholarship. He lives with his family in Brooklyn, New York.

Now that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston has struck down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the Supreme Court should quickly agree to hear the case. In its DOMA ruling, the lower appellate court practically begged the high court for guidance on how judges should assess the constitutionality of laws that treat individuals differently because of their sexual orientation.

In some ways, the Supreme Court has had it both ways in matters related to the constitutionality of laws that withhold benefits or impose burdens based on the sexual orientation of individuals. In 1996 (in Romer v. Evans), the Court struck down a Colorado constitutional provision that denied LGBT individuals (and no others) legal protection from discrimination. Seven years later (in Lawrence v. Texas), the Court found unconstitutional a Texas statute that criminalized consensual same-sex sexual intimacy. But the Court in neither case clearly explained how other laws that treat LGBT individuals differently because of their sexual orientation should be assessed under the Constitution. It is now time for the Court to speak on that issue.

Many of us have been arguing for a long time that lesbians and gay men satisfy the Court's own criteria for determining when to apply heightened (or rigorous) judicial review to laws that treat individuals differently because of who they are. The long history of discrimination that lesbians and gay men have suffered, for example, justifies judicial protection. In addition, it is widely accepted that sexual orientation does not affect the ability of individuals to contribute to society. We all know that there are lesbians and gay men who are doctors, lawyers, scientists, engineers, and even members of Congress. This means that courts should be particularly skeptical of laws that target individuals because of their sexual orientation.

In its ruling striking down DOMA, the First Circuit did not find it necessary to address the question of whether lesbians and gay men are entitled to heightened judicial protection. Nonetheless, after pointing to the Supreme Court's own gay rights cases, it concluded that laws which treat individuals differently because of their sexual orientation must, at the very least, be subject to a meaningful form of judicial review that denies those laws a strong presumption of constitutionality.

One of the factors that the Supreme Court is supposed to take into account in deciding whether to hear a case is the extent to which there is a need to provide guidance to lower courts on a particular question of federal law. Although defenders and supporters of DOMA agree on little, both sides should agree that we need to clear up the confusion regarding how courts should assess constitutional challenges to laws that treat individuals differently because of their sexual orientation.

The lesbian and gay plaintiffs in the First Circuit DOMA lawsuit are either currently married or were married before the deaths of their same-sex spouses. The legal issue in the case, therefore, is not whether the plaintiffs have a constitutional right to marry. Instead, the issue is whether the federal government can deprive the tens of thousands of married same-sex couples the hundreds of rights and benefits that it makes available to heterosexual married couples. The nation desperately needs guidance from the Supreme Court on the question of whether this kind of brazen differential treatment is consistent with our constitutional values of equality and fairness.

Gill v. Office of Personnel Management

GLAD DOMA Section 3 Challenge 

Outlaw Marriages: The Hidden Histories of Fifteen Extraordinary Same-Sex Couples

For more than a century before gay marriage became a hot-button political issue, same-sex unions flourished in America. Pairs of men and pairs of women joined together in committed unions, standing by each other “for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health” for periods of thirty or forty—sometimes as many as fifty—years. In short, they loved and supported each other every bit as much as any husband and wife.

In Outlaw Marriages, cultural historian Rodger Streitmatter reveals how some of these unions didn’t merely improve the quality of life for the two people involved but also enriched the American culture.

Among the high-profile couples whose lives and loves are illuminated in the following pages are Nobel Peace Prize winner Jane Addams and Mary Rozet Smith, literary icon Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, author James Baldwin and Lucien Happersberger, and artists Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg.

Read the prologue at Scribd. 

Read a review of Outlaw Marriages at Edge. 

Couples featured in Outlaw Marriages:

Walt Whitman & Peter Doyle
America's most influential poet found his muse for in a young conductor on a horse-drawn streetcar.  

Martha Carey Thomas & Mamie Gwinn
Thomas created the first graduate program for women in the United States at Bryn Mawr College, but counted on her partner for assistance with many of her academic duties. 

John Marshall & Ned Warren
The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City both owe a great debt to these intrepid collectors of antiquities.  

Jane Addams & Mary Rozet Smith
The first American woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, Addams shared her life and work with her partner of more than four decades, a woman from a wealthy family who helped keep Hull House afloat. 

Bessie Marbury & Elsie de Wolfe
Elsie de Wolfe is widely recognized as the founder of the field of interior design. Bessie Marbury was a highly successful theatrical agent, as well as the woman who made a series of suggestions to de Wolfe that led to the interior designer becoming a pioneer in her field. 

J. C. Leyendecker & Charles Beach
America's most popular and successful illustrator in the early decades of the twentieth century, Leyendecker drew on his partner of fifty years for inspiration and guidance in his work.  

Gertrude Stein & Alice B. Toklas
Gertrude Stein was an avant-garde author as well as a literary mentor for such legendary writers as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. Alice B. Toklas took it upon herself to see that Stein’s works got into print, becoming not only her partner’s editor but also her literary agent and publicist. 

Janet Flanner & Solita Solano
For fifty years, Janet Flanner served as the Paris correspondent for the New Yorker. But it was Solita Solano who encouraged her to move to Europe to jump-start her career in journalism.

Greta Garbo & Mercedes de Acosta
Screen legend Greta Garbo was the daughter of poor Swedish laborers, but her partner taught the actress how to dress and speak like Hollywood royalty. 

Aaron Copland & Victor Kraft
One of America's most celebrated composers, Aaron Copland was honored with a Pulitzer Prize, an Academy Award, and a Presidential Medal of Freedom. His relationship with a free-spirited and troubled violinist took his work in bold directions.  

Tennessee Williams & Frank Merlo
Frank Merlo weaned Tennessee Williams off a diet of drugs and casual sex so the playwright was able to create his Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

James Baldwin & Lucien Happersberger
An unconventional but long-lasting relationship helped Baldwin find the stability he needed to become one of the most important writers of his generation. 

Jasper Johns & Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Rauschenberg urged Jasper Johns not to ignore a bizarre dream he had but instead to act on it and paint the American flag-as he had done in the dream. 

James Ivory & Ismail Merchant
Ismail Merchant and James Ivory were widely recognized, during the final decades of the twentieth century, as setting the gold standard when it came to adapting iconic novels into high-quality motion pictures. Among their best-known works are A Room with a View and Howards End—both films won multiple Academy Awards. 

Audre Lorde & Frances Clayton 
Frances Clayton gave up tenure at an Ivy League university to help her partner, Audre Lorde, reinvent herself as a pioneering poet who gave voice to women of color around the globe. 

About the Author: Rodger Streitmatter, a former newspaper reporter, is a member of the School of Communication faculty at American University. He lives in Washington, D.C., with his husband, Tom Grooms.

Obama's Same-Sex Marriage Announcement: A Victory for Religion

Today's post is from Jay Michaelson, author of God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality. Michaelson is a writer, scholar, and activist whose work addresses the intersections of religion, sexuality, spirituality, and law. 

This post originally appeared at Huffington Post. 

I have to tell you that over the course of several years, as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors, when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed, monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that "don't ask, don't tell" is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I've just concluded that for me, personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.

Angry voices on the so-called "Christian right" are already screaming about President Obama's "war on religion," but today's announcement regarding same-sex marriage was actually an inspiring religious pronouncement. Why?

First, because it came one day after one of the nastiest, meanest anti-gay votes in recent memory, North Carolina's "no families but mine" Amendment 1. It offers a studied contrast between humanity and dogmatism, inclusion and nastiness. Religious and non-religious people alike can now see two very different ways of approaching how we ought to live with one another, one welcoming and the other cruel, one open to the experience of others and the other with its hands over its ears, one focused on compassion and the other focused on exclusion. Who Would Jesus Discriminate against, anyway?

Second, Obama's statement is a model of religious reasoning. Jesus said in the Sermon of the Mount, "By your fruits, you shall know them" (Matthew 7:16). This, not some obscure lines in Leviticus or Corinthians, is the real religious message regarding gays and lesbians, and it is the way Obama made up his mind on this issue. Over time, he said, he has come to understand the truth of same-sex couples, that they are as capable of commitment, love, and sanctity as opposite-sex couples, and that it is an injustice to deny the benefits of marriage to gay people.

Those are religious values; they are exactly what the Sermon on the Mount preaches, as well. "A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit," Jesus said (Matthew 7:18). Well, let's apply that method to the question of same-sex marriage. Does it produce bad fruit or good fruit? Good fruit, as Obama himself has come to understand. Therefore, it, too, is good.

This process is about the growth of individual conscience: I used to feel one way, but over time, in a careful and long process of discernment, I come to feel a different way. And look at the evidence Obama cited: People on his staff, friends, and family -- these, not abstract principles -- are what shifted his heart and mind. Thinking of his personal responsibility for the lives of soldiers serving our country -- this, not some policy point -- is the data that weighs into questions of right and wrong.

Affirming the equality of LGBT people, including same-sex marriage, is not a choice between religion and some other values, between God and gay. It is, on the contrary, a direct consequence of taking religion seriously. It's easy to sit back comfortably with one's assumptions and prejudices. What's harder, and thus what really counts, religiously speaking, is to be open to what other people and their experiences have to teach us. That's how we can fulfill the injunction of Matthew 7:16, and it's exactly what the president showed us today.

White House photo from Bigstock.

Obama Courts Equality

In the wake of President Obama's "evolution" on marriage equality, we're collecting reactions from our authors. 

Rodger Streitmatter, author of Outlaw Marriages: The Hidden Histories of Fifteen Extraordinary Same-Sex Couples

Obama’s announcement is absolutely huge. I think it will go down in history as an instance when a president had the courage to throw his weight behind an initiative that he believed in—that he wanted to be on the right side of—even if the political consequences were uncertain. It will definitely energize the LGBT community, as well as a lot of young people who are strong supporters of gay marriage. Lots of people are saying, “This is great. The guy I voted for in 2008 is back—somebody who’s committed to change and somebody I can believe in!”       

I think it also will have impact on some people who are still on the fence on the gay marriage issue. Obama’s announcement will nudge them—people who respect him—to commit themselves to this issue.

Read more about Outlaw Marriages.

  

---

Karen Kahn (pictured right with partner and co-author Pat Gozemba)
co-author of Courting Equality: A Documentary History of America's First Legal Same-Sex Marriages 

It is very gratifying to have the president of the United States recognize the full humanity of lesbian and gay Americans. I am not surprised. I am reminded of President Clinton being called “the first black president.” President Obama could be called the “first gay president.” He is slowly dismantling the institutions of discrimination at the federal level. After ending Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and choosing not to defend DOMA, declaring  his support for full marriage equality seems like the next logical step. We should congratulate our movement—and the bravery of millions of gay and lesbian people who over the last thirty years have chosen to come out and fight for their rights. It is amazing that it has been not quite 20 years since the first court—in Hawaii—declared heterosexual marriage laws discriminatory. We still have a long way to go, as the North Carolina vote indicated on Tuesday. But I think we can all rest assured that when the President supports equality, we are moving toward justice for all. (Photo by Marilyn Humphries.)

Read more about Courting Equality.

A Queer and Pleasant Danger by Kate Bornstein

Illustration by Gabi Anderson.

Out now: A Queer and Pleasant Danger

The true story of a nice Jewish boy who joins the Church of Scientology and leaves twelve years later to become the lovely lady she is today

“I was born male and now I’ve got medical and government documents that say I’m female—but I don’t call myself a woman, and I know I’m not a man. . . .”

Scientologist, husband and father, tranny, sailor, slave, playwright, dyke, gender outlaw—these are just a few words which have defined Kate Bornstein during her extraordinary life. For the first time, it all comes together in A Queer and Pleasant Danger, Kate Bornstein’s stunningly original memoir that’s set to change lives and enrapture readers.

Wickedly funny and disarmingly honest, this is Bornstein’s most intimate book yet. With wisdom, wit, and an unwavering resolution to tell the truth (“I must not tell lies”), Bornstein shares her story: from a nice Jewish boy growing up in New Jersey to a strappingly handsome lieutenant of the Church of Scientology’s Sea flagship vessel, and later to 1990s Seattle, where she becomes a rising star in the lesbian community. In between there are wives and lovers, heartbreak and triumph, bridges mended and broken, and a journey of self-discovery that will mesmerize readers.

Read a 10 out of 10 review for A Queer and Plesant Danger at PopMatters

"A Queer and Pleasant Danger is a brave, funny, edgy, and enlightening new memoir. I loved it and learned from it. Kate Bornstein shares her fascinating journey—through gender, Scientology, and more—and it was a thrill to tag along on the ride. This book is unbelievably powerful and affecting. If Kate Bornstein didn't exist, we would have to invent her. But luckily for queers, straights, gender outlaws, and general readers, Bornstein is out and out there." —Dan Savage, author, columnist, and architect of the "It Gets Better Project" 

"To me, Kate Bornstein is like a mythological figure or a historical literary character such as Orlando or Candide who, by illustrating her struggles, shows the rest of us how to live. This book is destined to become a classic." —Mx Justin Vivian Bond, author of Tango: My Childhood, Backwards and in High Heels 

"Kate Bornstein's journey from moon-eyed Scientologist to queer icon is harrowing, heartbreaking, and amazing. This narrative is surely not for the squeamish. And yet, in the story of a sea-dog named Al who became a trans goddess named Kate, we see the messy, unsettling, inspiring struggle of a lady trying—and at last succeeding—to let her own soul be known. Disturbing and wondrous." —Jennifer Finney Boylan, author of She's Not There and I'm Looking Through You 

“I read A Queer and Pleasant Danger over four nights in a bathtub and bed and was totally transported to Kate Bornstein’s world. Kate boldly lets us look under the hood of her own transformations as Jew, Scientologist, boy, girl, Buddhist and parent, leaving us with a richer understanding of the true identity underneath: human. A Queer and Pleasant Danger is a page turner, making sweet love to the paradoxes we all face." —Amanda Palmer, musician and co-founder of The Dresden Dolls 

"Bornstein is hilarious, honest, acerbic, and fearless in her writing…QAPD is at least three books in one, each of which is a page-turner."—Religion Dispatches

"Breathless, passionate, and deeply honest, A Queer and Pleasant Danger is a wonderful book. Read it and learn."—Samuel R. Delany, author of Dhalgren

Why the Story of Adam and Eve Is Right and Kirk Cameron Is Wrong: The Religious Value of Love

Today's post is from Jay Michaelson, author of God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality. Michaelson is a writer, scholar, and activist whose work addresses the intersections of religion, sexuality, spirituality, and law. 

This post originally appeared at Huffington Post. 

"It's Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve."

We've all heard the cliché, and we all know its meaning: that "male" and "female" are at the heart of God's plan for the world, and that heterosexuality is the only "natural" sexuality. Kirk Cameron, the former child TV star, made this point just a few days ago: that homosexuality is unnatural.

We know, too, that this is not a scientific claim. Actually, homosexuality is quite "natural"; it's present in hundreds of animal species and in every culture in the world. Sexual diversity is the rule, not the exception -- the plan, not the deviation.

But there is that myth, that story, of Adam and Eve. No matter the scientific evidence, no matter the countless lives of happy, healthy LGBT people, there's that story, that binary, and that claim.

Well, I'd like to take that story back -- to reclaim it for all of us, not just those of us who find love in heterosexual, monogamous life.

First, let's set aside the parts about God, the Bible, the whole theological aspect of this myth. Let's treat it just as literature -- as a text, sacred to many, but first and foremost a story of human origins and human purpose. All of us -- religious, atheist, agnostic, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, progressive, fundamentalist -- should be able to agree on that.

And in that myth, the pairing of Adam and Eve was the solution to a problem. In the more detailed version of the Genesis story, they don't just appear on the stage; human coupling is the result of divine fidgeting. God creates the human being, but then has to tinker with the original plan, because of the first flaw God finds with all of God's creation: loneliness.

"It is not good for the human being to be alone," God says in Genesis 2:18. In context, this is a shocking pronouncement. Six times, God had remarked how good everything is: light, Heaven and Earth, stars, plants, animals -- all of these are "good." The entirety of creation is "very good." Yet suddenly something is not good. Suddenly, God realizes there is something within the world as we find it that is insufficient, something that all of us experience in our own lives and that we all strive to transcend: the existential condition of being alone.

Notice, too, that Eve is not the first solution God attempts to deal with the problem of Adam's aloneness. God first presents Adam with every animal in the world -- birds, beasts, even those animals that would later become domesticated by people. But none suffices. Only then does the story of Genesis 2 tell us that God took the rib from man to make woman. Only human companionship solves the existential problem of aloneness, the first problem our religious traditions set out to address. And, finally, notice that Eve is not created, in this narrative, to make children with Adam; this story is about loneliness and love, not procreation and progeny. Indeed, Eve's femininity is not even essential to be what Hebrew calls an ezer kenegdo, and what antiquated King James English calls a "help-meet": someone able to be with Adam on equal terms and be a companion to him.

In other words, notwithstanding the many problems with this particular myth (it's been used not just against gays, of course, but primarily against women, by those who read it as setting up a gender hierarchy), this is a tale about the importance of human love and companionship.

Now, for most people, this love is indeed experienced in a relationship between a man and a woman. For about 5 percent of people (we can argue about the numbers; the range is usually 3 to 10 percent), this love is found in a relationship between two men, or between two women. And for some others, love may be found in either kind of relationship, and sexuality may be experienced as fluid.

Personally, I am one of that 5 percent. During my teens and 20s, as I struggled with my sexuality, I had relationships with women and, as much as I was able, fell in love. But something was always "off," even though at the time I couldn't quite identify it. (Maybe I knew, deep down. I don't know.) It took me 10 years of wrestling, cajoling, self-hating, and self-judging, and finally a serious car accident, which shook up my body and soul, to finally admit that if I wanted true love, the kind that the Song of Songs sings about, the kind that the Genesis myth says is so important, well, my Eve would have to be a Steve.

This is about much more than sex; it's about love. And that is the most natural thing in the world.

Now, if we do consider ourselves religious, this point matters, and it influences how we understand our sacred texts and traditions. Surely, a loving God could not want the tyranny of the "closet" -- an all-too-cozy metaphor for what is really a life of deceit, loneliness, and alienation. The Kirk Camerons of the world can still pretend that homosexuality is some kind of choice, pathology, or worse. But I have known both the life of the closet (for 10 years of my adult life) and the life of companionship. I know that my life with my partner is not simply about lust. It is exactly as the Genesis myth describes: a life of sharing, companionship, and love. Sure, for most people, "a man... shall hold fast to his wife." But in some cases, a woman shall hold fast to hers. And in some others, a man shall hold fast to another.

Of course, I know there are other Biblical texts that influence what some people think about homosexuality. In my book God vs. Gay?, I spend a long, long time parsing them out and show that they are obscure and ambiguous, and that they certainly do not contemplate loving, committed relationships. But anyone can interpret Biblical text; that's the easy part. As Shakespeare said, even the devil can cite scripture for his purpose. The hard, and more important, part is deciding which approach to take: one that leads to more love, or one that leads to more aloneness; one that leads to more of the holy, or one that leads to more of the shameful. As I approach these sacred texts, the story of Adam and Eve helps point the way, by reminding me that it is not good to be alone -- and it is very good to find someone with whom to share your life.

Adam and Eve from Bigstock.

Uncovering The History of Heterosexuality

Today's post is from Hanne Blank, author of Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality. Blank is a writer, historian, and public speaker whose work has been featured everywhere from Out to Penthouse. An independent scholar, she is the author of Virgin: The Untouched History and seven other books that explore the intersections of sexuality, gender, the body, and culture. 

This post originally appeared at Huffington Post. 

Since I began to tell people that I was working on the project that ultimately became my new book, Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality, I've been getting two major, fascinating reactions to it.

One is straightforward disbelief. How on earth, I have been asked more than once, could I consider writing a history of something that has demonstrably always existed, world without end, "male and female created He them," amen? What sort of history could there possibly be to write?

This is, conveniently, also a reasonably straightforward question to answer. Just asking someone to define "heterosexual" is usually enough to illuminate the fact that it's far from a simplistic matter of the fact that males and females exist in the world and are capable of reproducing sexually. All the other things that come up, from love and sexual desire to religion, marriage, and even ticking off the "married, filing jointly" box on one's tax form make it pretty clear that there are definitely parts of what "heterosexual" is that must have some kind of background, some kind of story, some sort of connection to history. Too, people are usually ready to acknowledge that the word "heterosexual" had to come from somewhere, and that this also constitutes a bit of history.

It seems to me that people come to acknowledge that heterosexuality can have a history in much the same way that they come to acknowledge that food can have a history. People have always, obviously, eaten food. But they haven't always eaten the same things in the same ways, or prepared them identically, or ascribed the same meanings to the food they eat. Heterosexuality -- or at least relationships between men and women, which is not entirely the same thing -- is not so different.

The other reaction I get is more complicated, and harder to respond to. Many people, particularly among my queer and feminist friends, have expressed the view that working on the history of heterosexuality is redundant, and possibly a sort of Uncle Tom-ish betrayal. Haven't heterosexuals got enough of a share of our culture's bandwidth already? Does heterosexuality really deserve to have political progressives like me spending time and effort, energy and intellect, to boost its signal?

On the surface, this seems like a very good question. And yet the history of heterosexuality itself reveals, at a stroke, the ways in which any honest history tends to undermine and complicate the structures of power and privilege.

Heterosexuality does, yes, broadcast its priorities far and wide, in our culture, with top billing and extreme prejudice. But it is notoriously, even ludicrously, bad at self-reflection and self-analysis. I've noted many times that it isn't the straight people who've managed to actually get a purchase on the history of heterosexuality. It's the queers -- Michel Foucault and Jonathan Ned Katz, to name the two most visible and important of the heterosexuality scholars who made it possible for me to even consider writing this book -- who've taken on the task of revealing what makes heterosexuality tick.

It's not a simple task, after all. All of us, queer and not queer, are born and bred, enculturated and explicitly educated to see heterosexuality as being not just normal, but Just The Way Things Are. It often seems to take a queer perspective, and queer outsiderness, to get any purchase on the idea that this might not be entirely true, and that perhaps, heterosexuality is instead One Of Many Ways That Things Might Be.

The fact of the matter is that as much as we might want to believe that we ought not lend our attention to the enormous sociocultural juggernaut that is heterosexuality on the grounds that paying attention to it only gives it more energy with which to thrive, none of us live our lives outside of the heterosexual matrix. Even if we despise the heteronormative hegemony, even if we fight the heterosexism of the patriarchy we live in with every waking thought, the fact remains that the less we know about it, the less effective our resistance can be. As much as I dislike thinking of heterosexuality as "the enemy" -- it's not, it's just an idea we use to think with -- we still need to know our enemies. Just as we need to know our friends. Just as we need, quite frankly, to know ourselves.

Each and every one of us, no matter what our own sexual orientation may be or how we may identify, has had to forge that sexual orientation or identity in the long shadow of heterosexuality. It influences every one of us, in every part of our lives. It shapes who we are and how we think. It influences how everyone we talk to thinks. And this ultimately is why it's a worthwhile project to know how it got that power, that reach, and that capacity to determine the shape of our culture and our lives.

It's also why studying the history of heterosexuality is, inevitably, not a thing that lends force and credence to that huge cultural presence, but rather takes it apart, looks at the pieces, and pronounces many of them curiously arbitrary and rather strange. Just like looking at the history of food makes us ask questions about why, for instance, we eat rabbit but not rat, why we make associations between moral virtue and the green astringency of kale but not the sweet purity of sugar, looking at the history of heterosexuality makes us wonder similar things about our attitudes concerning who desires and loves and has sex with whom, and in what permutations of biological sex.

I do understand the fear that having scholars and writers look too long and hard at the history of heterosexuality might seem to lend credence to its claims of superiority. Yet having been through the process of taking that long hard look -- and written a book that will take anyone else who cares to join me on the same journey -- I can only say that it is an experience that can only end up exposing both heterosexuality's forest and its trees.

Beginning with the very foundations, merely in asserting that heterosexuality has a history and explaining how that's possible, a look at the history of heterosexuality confirms nothing so much as the radical notion that human experience is no monolith, and that even the most weighty and powerful of our cultural institutions is only as inevitable, and only as eternal, as any of its myriad individual parts.

How is ‘Ex-Gay’ a Sexual Orientation?

Matt Kailey is a transsexual man and an award-winning author, blogger, and community leader, as well as a nationally recognized speaker and trainer on transgender issues. He is the author of Just Add Hormones: An Insider’s Guide to the Transsexual Experience (Beacon Press), a Lambda Literary Award finalist and Rocky Mountain News local bestseller, and his work has appeared in numerous publications, from anthologies to professional journals.

I don’t care for the current labels that we have for sexual orientation. I think they are confusing and confining, and I don’t think they truly represent the broad range of sexual and romantic attractions that actually exist in the species.

While labels such as gay, lesbian, bisexual, straight, and even pansexual, omnisexual, and queer can help with self-definition and the formation of communities, they can also result in shame, guilt, or concern when someone’s attractions happen to fall outside of the label that the person has adopted, or when someone is told that his, her, or hir attractions are wrong.

Regardless, it appears that these labels are here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future, and I am willing to go along with both their intended meanings and the meanings that each individual ascribes to them as he, she, or ze defines his/her/hir own sexual identity. However, I simply can’t accept the notion that “ex-gay” is a sexual orientation.

Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (how original – could they not come up with something on their own without stealing from the marvelous organization PFLAG?) are calling for the reprimand of a Maryland school superintendent, saying that his statements broke the school district’s own nondiscrimination policy regarding sexual orientation.

It seems that PFOX sent flyers home with students telling them that no one is “born gay,” and that gay and lesbian students can change their orientation if they want to. Apparently the superintendent criticized the flyers, and now PFOX is complaining that he violated the district’s nondiscrimination policy because ex-gay is a sexual orientation, too!

Sorry, PFOX, I don’t buy it. If a gay or lesbian person can truly change his or her sexual orientation, then that person is no longer gay – right? That’s what “ex-gay” means – right? So if a person is “ex-gay,” then he or she is “straight” – right?

And if an “ex-gay” person is not straight, then, given the dearth of labels that we currently have available to us, that means that he or she is gay – right? So there is no such thing as “ex-gay” – not really. Is that what you’re saying?

Or maybe what you really mean is that we should expand our labels to account for all possible sexual identities and orientations. If that’s the case, then you would certainly support the labels “pansexual,” “omnisexual,” and “queer” – right?

Or maybe what you mean is that we should just get rid of labels altogether and allow each individual to love whomever he, she, or ze happens to fall in love with – no questions asked, no judgments made, and no labels needed.

If that last one is where you’re going with this, PFOX, then I would support it wholeheartedly. Unfortunately, I have a feeling that I’m a little off base.

But I think you’re grasping at straws with your “ex-gay is a sexual orientation” argument. It’s not – not unless you are willing to move outside of the categories that we have now, and doing that is going to be dangerous for your side.

Be careful what you let out of the box. You might not be able to get it back in.

10 Surprising Facts About Heterosexuality

Today's post is from Hanne Blank, author of Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality. Blank is a writer, historian, and public speaker whose work has been featured everywhere from Out to Penthouse. An independent scholar, she is the author of Virgin: The Untouched History and seven other books that explore the intersections of sexuality, gender, the body, and culture. 

This post originally appeared at Huffington Post. 

When I began work on my book Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality, I often got teased by friends who wondered whether, in working on the history of something so commonplace, I was going to come across anything that wasn't already common knowledge. Surely, they thought, it would all be very straightforward, very vanilla, very Leave It to Beaver, and if there were anything in there they didn't already know about, they'd be surprised.

As it turned out, this was far from true. The history of heterosexuality is actually a motherlode of remarkable and sometimes deeply strange stuff, from the broad-brush conceptual to the kinds of tidbits you add to your cocktail-party repertoire. Not only does the history of heterosexuality offer up surprises that make you rethink what "heterosexual" is and means, it also makes you realize how little we really know about this thing about which most of us assume we already know everything we need to. The following are 10 of my personal favorites.

1. May 6, 1868

The words "heterosexual" and "homosexual" were coined on this day in a letter written by Austro-Hungarian journalist Karl-Maria Kertbeny to the German legal eagle and proto-gay rights crusader Karl Ulrichs.

Technically speaking, before that fateful Wednesday, it was impossible for anyone in the world to be either a heterosexual or a homosexual, because the words didn't exist yet. [Image: First mention of the word "homosexual" and "heterosexual" (in a letter from the Austro-Hungarianwriter / from) Karl Maria Kertbeny in 1868 Photo: Hungarian National Library.]

Not Kirchberg and Feenstra. [Photo: NBC Universal]

2. Kirchberg vs Feenstra

Married American women didn't gain full legal control over their own financial assets until after this landmark U.S. Supreme Court case in 1981. In overturning "head and master" laws that gave husbands a legal upper hand over financial decision making within marriages, this decision finally made it illegal for a husband like Louisianan Joan Feenstra's, awaiting trial for sexually molesting his daughter, to decide to do something classy like mortgage the house for which his wife had paid in order to pay his legal bills. (And no, that date's not a typo: 1981.)

3. The "Science" of Mutual Heterosexual Orgasm

The ideal that men and women should have mutually orgasmic sex developed during the same time period as the idea of "heterosexuality" did, in the late 1800s and early 1900s. This novel notion helped establish the new notion of distinctively "heterosexual" desire and pleasure as scientific and medically proper.

By 1922, Dr. Walter Robie would write that married coitus had to be "mutually pleasurable and simultaneously climactic... if it is to be scientifically correct."

4. Science Has Never Defined "Heterosexual"

Never mind the question of whether there's such a thing as distinctively "gay genes" or "gay brains"; we don't even know if there's such a thing as straight ones. Physical and biomedical science have yet to define or even confirm the empirical existence of heterosexuality... no one's ever even tried.

This means that scientific research being conducted on the question of what makes people gay is being done without a properly characterized control to compare with. That's bad science. 

5. Survey Says... We Lie a Lot About Sex

If you think you're better off trusting the statistics in sex surveys than what your friends say about their sex lives for an idea of what "normal heterosexuality" looks like, think again.

Research done on the accuracy of self-reporting in sexuality surveys, including a 2009 study in the Journal of Sex Research, demonstrates that in sex research as in life, what people claim about their sex lives often doesn't match up to reality. A better bet is to consider sex research stats as a representation of what's possible, not what's typical. 

6. Freud, Father of Foreplay

Though men and women have engaged in various forms of non-intercourse sexual activity since time immemorial, the idea that there was a necessary opening act to sexual intercourse called "foreplay" is something we owe to Sigmund Freud and a handful of other psychologists and medical types around the turn of the 20th century.

7. When Going Down Meant Going... Down

Some late 19th-century authorities and physicians believed very sincerely that any woman who was interested in having a man perform oral sex on her was a sadist, and any man who complied was dangerously passive and submissive. Performing oral sex on women, they believed, was a "gateway drug" that led inevitably to ever more depraved acts of submission, and could possibly drag men all the way down to what they saw as the bottom of the heap, making them into the kind of men who provided oral sex to other men.

8. What's Love Got to Do With It

For most of Western history, it was considered shameful to feel or display too much romantic emotion toward a spouse. Treating one's wife "as one would a mistress" was excessive and unseemly; as the Lady's Magazine lectured its English readership in 1774, "the intent of matrimony is not for man and his wife to be always taken up with each other, but jointly to discharge the duties of civil society, to govern their families with prudence, and educate their children with discretion." Love, shmove, marriage was a job -- not an adventure. 

9. Great-Great Grandma Used Birth Control

A passionate commitment to contraception was a part of many male-female relationships long before the Pill or even commercial condoms came on the scene. Statistical research shows that men and women began to limit their fertility during the 19th century, with birthrates among American white women declining from an average of seven babies per woman in 1800 to only about three and a half in 1900... not the sort of drop that happens spontaneously.

What were great-great grandma and grandpa using? Probably withdrawal.

10. Heterosexual? Thank a Gay Rights Activist

"Heterosexual" is not, and never was, a scientific term. Nor is "homosexual." Both were coined in the context of what we'd now call gay rights activism, during a campaign of pamphleteering and letter-writing in opposition to a mid-19th-century German sodomy law.

The idea behind the words "heterosexual" and "homosexual" was to demonstrate through language that these were merely two ways in which human beings could be sexual, distinct and equal, with the implication that sodomy laws should apply equally to everyone... or else to no one at all. 

Survey photo from Bigstock.

Watch Hanne Blank talk about her new book, Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality

Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality

“From its thorough but brisk explorations of sexual orientation’s intersections with sex, gender, and romance, this illuminating study examines our presuppositions and makes a powerful, provocative argument that heterosexuality—mazy, unscientific, and new—may be merely 'a particular configuration of sex and power in a particular historical moment.'" Publisher's Weekly

Buy from Beacon | Independent Bookstore | Amazon | Barnes and Noble | Powells

Like the typewriter and the light bulb, the heterosexual was invented in the 1860s and swiftly and permanently transformed Western culture. The idea of “the heterosexual” was unprecedented. After all, men and women had been having sex, marrying, building families, and sometimes even falling in love for millennia without having any special name for their emotions or acts. Yet, within half a century, “heterosexual” had become a byword for “normal,” enshrined in law, medicine, psychiatry, and the media as a new gold standard for human experience.

In this surprising chronicle, historian Hanne Blank digs deep into the past of sexual orientation, while simultaneously exploring its contemporary psyche. Illuminating the hidden patterns in centuries of events and trends, Blank shows how culture creates and manipulates the ways we think about and experience desire, love, and relationships between men and women. Ranging from Henry VIII to testicle transplants, from Disneyland to sodomy laws, and from Moby Dick to artificial insemination, the history of heterosexuality turns out to be anything but straight or narrow.

With an eclectic scope and fascinating detail, Straight tells the eye-opening story of a complex and often contradictory man-made creation that is all too often assumed to be an irreducible fact of biology.

Read a review at the New York Times.

Read an interview with Hanne Blank on Salon.com.

Listen to Hanne Blank's Spotify mix courtesy of Largehearted Boy.

Follow Hanne Blank on Twitter.

Watch Hanne Blank discuss the invention of heterosexuality on YouTube.

 

In LGBT Debates, Discomfort Is Part of the Point

Today's post is from Jay Michaelson, author of God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality. Michaelson is a writer, scholar, and activist whose work addresses the intersections of religion, sexuality, spirituality, and law. 

This post originally appeared at Huffington Post. 

Our national conversation about equality for LGBT people can often be, well, nasty. Opponents of "gay rights" routinely compare us to perverts, accuse us of horrible things, and deny our very existence. Meanwhile, to many religious people, gay folks really do threaten their understanding of the proper relationship of religion and society, morality and social order. It can be painful on both sides.

Yet I want to suggest that this debate is good for us as a society, and good for religion, specifically. As more religious communities, especially conservative ones, recognize the existence and humanity of LGBT people, they are forced to engage in the sort of critical thought and introspection that makes religion worthwhile in the first place. This is a good thing.

We grow as religious people through an unlikely combination of courage and humility. It takes courage to question one's opinions, and humility to recognize that we may not be as right as we thought. As St. Paul says in I Corinthians 13:11, "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me." We're not meant, religiously speaking, to remain as ethical babies. We're called to something more than that.

All of us who make religion or spirituality part of our lives are accustomed to the process of introspection. Whether we attend confession, or review our lives as part of the annual cycle of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, or have heart-to-heart conversations with Christ, or enter periods of contemplation and discernment when we try to understand what course of action is the right one, or engage in any number of other procedures of self-examination and review, those of us involved in religious communities or spiritual practice are invited, time and again, to look inward.

We are even asked to reflect on our reflection. After all, introspection is not entirely interior in nature. Our hearts and minds are informed, saturated, even, by the values we learn from our sacred traditions and the world around us. We all know this to be true, which is one reason so many believers choose to separate themselves from the world at large. But do we acknowledge the depth to which it is true? Even on a gut, instinctual level, our very hearts and minds are shaped by assumptions and judgments that may be so familiar that they pass unnoticed. And these assumptions are culturally determined: show a picture of a dog to someone born into a Western society, and they may think "pet," and possibly feel affection. Show the same picture to someone born into some traditional Asian societies, and they think "food," and feel hungry.

Notwithstanding all the common-sense advice to "trust your gut," really, our guts are not trustworthy at all and must instead be tempered by love and reason. All animals have gut reactions, after all. But only humans (and perhaps a few others, in more limited ways) are able to reason beyond them. The "gut" may contain intuition and wisdom, but it's not the sum total of humanity. We are blessed with the ability to rise beyond our gut reactions -- as some religious traditions put it, we have sparks of God within us. (Or, as some neuroscientists put it, we have pre-frontal cortexes that can mediate the impulses of the amygdala.) And we all know from experience that we can feel something in our gut and still be wrong. The process of educating the moral conscience, of growing up religiously and ethically, is, in large part, the process of applying love and reason to what we think we already knew. Love teaches us how to think justly.

This is how moral progress takes place, I think. We learn to stop trusting the gut reactions based on falsehoods we've been taught. And it is one of the gifts that our national wrestling with the question of equality for LGBT people gives to each of us. It is an invitation to be uncomfortable, because discomfort is a sign of growth; it's a sign that you've reached your learning edge, where assumptions may be challenged and difficult lessons may be learned.

Let me share a bit of my personal story for a moment. I was raised to believe that being gay was about the worst thing in the world. Before I even knew what a "faggot" was, I knew I didn't want to be one, because it was what you called kids you wanted to degrade -- "Gay Jay" was the one name that I'd try to beat someone up over. Eventually, I learned what these words meant, and, years later, that they did in fact apply to me. My first response? Horror, terror, hatred, denial. I postponed coming out, for fear that it would end my religious life and alienate everyone I knew. I tried desperately to evade the truth myself. And why? Because I felt in my deepest guts that this way of intimate relation was wrong, disgusting, depraved.

Thanks to years of love, activism, therapy, and, above all, meeting hundreds of people who have shown the stereotypes I learned as a child to be wrong, I no longer feel this way. And yet I meet people in my work who are right back at square one, still repulsed by their own sexuality. And I meet devoutly religious people who, indeed, feel that revulsion deep inside... in their kishkes, their guts. It's easy to condemn right-wing loons as ignorant bigots -- but really, how different is what they feel from what I myself felt? I understand their hatred, because I once felt it myself.

And the journey has a way of continuing. One may be comfortable with some gay men, but not with "effeminate" gay men. With lesbians, but not "butch" lesbians. Or not with transgender people. Or not with people who reject the gender binary and locate themselves somewhere in the middle of a gender continuum. And so on. Rather than see this as an unending litany of PC requirements, I want to invite an attitude of joy that there are always assumptions in need of being defeated. Yom Kippur may come but once a year, and confession once a week -- but every encounter with an "other" is an occasion for growth and renewal.

In other words, feeling uncomfortable is a sign that you're where you need to be: working through your "stuff."

Imagine if you didn't do that. In past decades, our country kept racist laws on the books because privileged white people like me felt the rightness of them in our guts. But guts should never be the end of a moral conversation. If religion has taught us anything, it is that there is a moral value in transcending our baser instincts -- and that includes the snap judgments all of us make all the time. At first, and maybe for a while, these corrections along the course of moral conscience may not "feel right." But they are the defining marks of our humanity. Discomfort can be a good sign not just for the individual, but also for entire communities and societies.

I have seen this process unfold hundreds of times regarding LGBT issues. The organization PFLAG, for example -- Parents and Friends of Lesbians And Gays -- is largely made up of folks who have traveled this journey, from rejection to acceptance to embrace. These are ordinary people, not gay activists and not gay themselves, who once had strongly anti-gay views, for whatever reason, but who were forced to reexamine those views when people they loved came out as gay or lesbian.

This journey is a painful one, but it is also crucial. It is the unfolding of the moral conscience, and it is, in my opinion, humanity at its very best. We should be grateful for it.

Rainbow photo from Bigstock. 

Rick Santorum's Homophobia Problem

Today's post is from Jay Michaelson, author of God vs. Gay? The Religious Case for Equality. Michaelson is a writer, scholar, and activist whose work addresses the intersections of religion, sexuality, spirituality, and law. 

This post originally appeared at Huffington Post. 

LGBT people awoke with a sense of dread to the news of Rick Santorum's near-tie with Mitt Romney in the Iowa caucuses. Santorum is not just the butt (pun intended) of a deservingly dirty joke; he has long been ahead of the curve when it comes to bashing gay people for political gain. He is the poster child for political homophobia.

And yet, this near-win is different, because America is different. Santorum represents not the resurgence of gay-baiting, but its last, self-defeating gasp.

Only a few years ago, homophobia was a great uniter. Short on campaign cash? Need to fire up the base? Why, flash a few images of the latest pride parade, compare same-sex marriage to bestiality, and the checks and self-rightous blog posts would flow like milk and honey. And while religiously-soaked gay-bashing wasn't the rhetoric of choice for neo-conservatives and fiscal conservatives, they went along with it, building a strong coalition between corporate capitalists and Christian conservatives.

Indeed, it has been remarked that this was Reaganism's great innovation: using social issues to convince working class people to vote against their economic interests. At first, it was the "Southern strategy," making use of coded racism. Later, it grew into gay-baiting, making use of overt homophobia. For at least twenty years, it was the winning formula for the Republican party. Enrich the rich by enraging the working poor.

Only now, things are different. Last May, a Gallup poll found a majority of Americans supported legalizing same-sex marriage. Last September, a large majority supported the end of the military's "Don't Ask/Don't Tell" policy. And over the last year, we've seen a dramatic increase of LGBT (including T) people in the media, in politics, and in our communities. 

As a result of these dramatic changes, Santorum's homophobia is more a liability than an asset. Gay people may be horrified at his near-win in Iowa, but we needn't be. His bigotry still plays to his base -- but it's only the base, only the extremists, who still soak it up.

Of course, public opinion could always turn against gay people. But I don't think that's likely, because it changed, over time, due to a very resilient and powerful force: truth. Straight folks have seen, in their own personal experience, that gay people are no more or less ethical than they are. There are lusty, libertine gays, and quiet, conservative ones. Gay people are atheist and religious, of all ethnic backgrounds, young and old, wild and mild. The stereotypes that all gay people are a certain way (lewd, anti-family, demonic, whatever) are simply not true, and anyone who bothers to -- no, allows themselves to -- get to know their gay neighbors realizes this.

And they've seen, too, that sexual orientation is a trait, not (as it has been variously labeled) a sin, pathology, "lifestyle choice," neurosis, or dysfunction. Sexuality is just part of who we are -- a good part.

That kind of truth isn't subject to the whims of political opinion. Once you see that stereotypes are lies, you don't go back to them later, especially when -- as poll after poll has shown us -- that knowledge comes first-hand. The lesbian couple in church, or the gay man raising a child, is far more potent an opinion-shifter than the latest fundraising santorum from the likes of Rick Santorum.

And by the way, this is even true within Santorum's base itself. In evangelical communities across the country, there are moderate voices questioning the way in which gay people have been singled out by the so-called Christian Right. While most evangelicals remain committed to a broad reading of Scripture regarding homosexuality, increasing numbers are voicing misgivings about whether it's really Christian to stigmatize gay people. Who Would Jesus Hate, after all?

Given the money and the races ahead in the Republican primary, there's no way Rick Santorum will be the party's nominee. Mitt Romney's PACs will destroy him just as they destroyed Newt Gingrich in Iowa, burying him under an avalanche of negative ads. But as depressing as Santorum's rise may seem to LGBT folks, this time really is different. We are not about to be victims again. On the contrary, if the polling data is accurate, the biggest victim of Santorum's homophobia will be Santorum himself.

Photo by Gage Skidmore. Used under Creative Commons.

Condemnation, Compassion, and the Complexity of Abuse

Today's post addresses the recent media surrounding revelations of childhood sexual abuse at Penn State and elsewhere. The author is Martin Moran, whose memoir The Tricky Part, was first published by Beacon Press in 2005, and was adapted from his one-man play of the same name, for which he won an Obie in 2004. Moran makes his living as an actor and writer in New York City. He has appeared in many Broadway and Off-Broadway plays, including Spamalot, Titanic, Cabaret, Bells Are Ringing, and Floyd Collins, and is currently playing Dr. Dillamond in the National Tour of Wicked. He is also at work on a new one man piece scheduled to be performed off broadway in Fall of 2012.  

Six years ago I wrote a memoir. It was about forgiveness, growing up Catholic, sex. It was an attempt to make sense of the chaos of having been molested as a kid (over a three year period) by a camp counselor many years my senior. I wrote a thoughtful book full of mercy. It went out into the world and I felt relief, gratitude. I felt I’d arrived. Somewhere. Sainthood. Peace.

I have since learned that there are moments I will be knocked to the dirt. The complexity, the half-life of sexual abuse is endless. The most recent and, for reasons I’m still unraveling, most potent sucker punch has come in the form of Penn State.

The media was already at fever pitch when, on 11/11/11, I opened the door of my hotel room to find at my feet, in huge and murderously red-colored print across the front of a complimentary copy of USA Today: “Victim Number 1.” My stomach heaved.

I didn’t want to peek but I peeled open the pages to learn that this headline was a reference, not to Sandusky’s first apparent victim, but to the brave young man (nameless in the news for now) who has been the first to step forward. Who has, with the help of a counselor, a lawyer and (I pray) his family, spoken up and brought his case, his story, to the police. Not yet twenty, this boy was described in USA Today as a hero who, because of his courage, has finally put a stop to a string of horrible crimes. Ended the ‘conspiracy of cowards,’ the countless officials at Penn Sate who remained silent.

I stepped back into my Des Moines Hotel room and fell into a chair. The tears came fast and furious.

*  *  *

On a spring afternoon two years ago I was at my desk, which overlooks the playground of a public elementary school. The kids were out for a sky blue recess, their jackets tied around their waists or tossed to the foot of the fence.  I was in the midst of writing a story about a trip to Italy. I kept looking out the window at the swirl of chirping students and the next thing I knew I had crossed to the phone in our living room. I had dialed 411 and asked for the number of a Southern California police station.

“Please hold for the Golena Sheriff’s Department.”

“Oh. OK.  Thank you operator.” Lord, it was happening. I pressed the receiver to my ear.

Golena. I am guessing it is a small town. Rural. Never been there. It is the last place that I know he resided. Where, perhaps, he still resides to this very day.

It rings twice.

“Hello. Sheriff’s office.”

The voice is female and I’m instantly relieved. Whatever it is I want to say, it seems it will be easier saying it to a her.

“My name is Martin Moran and....”   

My heart is throwing a tantrum: Hang up! This is stupid. And now the brain is off like a shot:  You’re fifty years old for God’s sake! What in the world are you afraid of? The derision of a sheriff? Disturbing Bob’s life? Do you think he could hurt you still, threaten you?  This is fucking Stockholm Syndrome kid.

“Hello?”

Breathless, I am little boy twelve and man of fifty at once.

“Yes. Hello... I am calling... I think someone may reside in your town who molested me when I was a kid. I wanted to be sure, if he’s still living, that you were aware of his... him.”

I’m relieved at how matter of fact I sound. This feels like manly progress of a sort.

“Was he ever convicted?” she asks.

“Yes, Ma'am.  In Colorado. In the Seventies. Not by me, though.”

Someone else did that brave work, I think, but don’t say as I try to quell the voices that chide me: Coward. Wimp. Co-conspirator.

“His name?

“Robert Kosanke.”

And there it is. His actual name. I said it aloud to the lady sheriff and I am writing it here now on this cold December of 2011.  In the 2005 memoir I used a Kafkaesque Robert C______. Aesthetically I loved the mystery of the blank. I felt (still do) this rendered the tale more eternal, universal. Somehow, without the weight of his real name I felt freer, less encumbered in composing the interior story of a soul, in recreating memories from thirty years before. And the publisher’s legal department felt it prudent to make slight alterations to avoid any possible litigation. Fine. It was not a book, after all, focused on blame but on a journey toward understanding.  So good, let’s not sully the page with his fucking name.

 “Still checking, the lady sheriff says.” I hear the clicking sound of what must be her fingernails at the keyboard. I am picturing a small suburban street, a ramshackle house with a truck in the drive, up on a jack, missing a wheel, tools scattered in a driveway, weeds creeping through cracked cement. I picture him gray and slow and bent as he was when I found and confronted him at a Vet’s hospital in 2002. I picture him asking a neighbor boy to help fix a tire on the old truck. Asking the kid to come on inside for lemonade. And, please God, a cop car pulling up to arrest things.

“Oh,” she says. “Yes…yes he does live here.”

So he’s alive!  I had Googled him more than once, searching for an obit or something to pop up that spoke of his demise thinking this would be the final curtain, a welcome closure. But I had (have still) never found a thing.

“We know where he is,” she continues, with a kind of Perry Mason twang. “He is a registrant.”

“What’s that?”

“He’s required to register with us periodically. It’s part of his agreement. He is current, I see.”

“ So you’re aware, I mean, able to--”

“Yes sir. We keep a strict watch on him.”

God, I pray that’s true.  The relief I feel! Someone is doing the job. The job I never did.

Before I hang up she says,  “Thanks for your call, Martin. Take good care.”

Her voice is replete with wisdom, with kindness. Or so it seems and I feel my eyes water, my throat tighten as I think: She understands. Understands everything.

It took me more than thirty years to call the cops.

Back at my desk, I kept lifting my gaze to the window, the schoolyard. Fourth graders, I guessed. Maybe fifth, leaping every which way.  They take turns at coming out for recess. The various ages have distinct qualities of play: Kindergartners all high-pitched cries, flailing limbs. With seventh and eighth graders coordination, deeper shouts and zinging projectiles. I find I often guess at the ages, at the lives of these growing, precious creatures. Sending out a wish that they safely find their way in their own time toward their authentic selves.

It knew it was the ache, the persistent niggling at the back of my head. It was an ancient guilt that brought me to the phone. A duty long deferred? A stab that says:  Marty, if you’d blown the whistle way back when, others may have been spared. How many did he go on to seduce in the months and years I remained frozen in silence. This thought kills me.

* * *

“The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

Edmund Burke.

My shame is ancient. Intractable. Shame that I allowed it to happen in the first place. That I gave in and over to the wild, confusing pleasure of sex with him. It was a relationship of sorts and I remained terrified, frozen in the bond of it. Until I dug down and wrote a book that I know added an honest voice to the paralyzing complexity of childhood sexual abuse. “I never took legal action” I have heard myself say to various questioners. “I took dramatic action.” Still the shame of not having smacked or strangled the guy will sneak up and I have to remind myself again and again that I was a kid and that along the way I have done my best, that it has taken countless steps, year by year, to unravel the damn thing and move toward speaking out, toward healing, toward forgiveness. Mostly for myself.

The recent revelations (They keep coming, don’t they? They are so many) in the issue of USA Today that I held in my hands a few weeks ago made me weep crazily for about a thousand reasons. You may have wept too and or certainly cried out in disbelief, confusion or righteous anger. Yes ‘interests’ were probably being served; grown men trapped in some insane male bastion (Catholic, Mormon, Orthodox Jews, now Football) remained quiet as kids were being violated. There are inexcusable actions and non-actions.

As I sat in that hotel room clutching that oh so American newspaper, I wept for the courage of Victim Number 1. For all the victims. I wept for the apparent sickness of the accused. I wept at my own faults and frailty. But I also wept and weep now because that newspaper I held insisted on painting a black and white tale of monsters and victims, of cowards and heroes. It’s how we like our stories. It’s how we judge and keep human events at a distance. It is terribly difficult to ponder how real and how close, how human and how common what happened at Penn State is. At the fear and greed and desire that can shatter our ethics. Our hearts.

Somewhere between all the black and white, the heroes and victims in the sad story of Penn State, is the gray of frightened human beings caught up in a world of hyper-masculinity and voiceless secrets. It calls for our condemnation. Somehow, it also calls for our compassion.  How else might we learn to talk and so truly learn from these horrific events?  To be truly aware of each other’s human plight?

The Somber History of the Transgender Day of Remembrance

Nick Krieger is the author of Nina Here Nor There: My Journey Beyond Gender. You can read more of Nick's blog posts at ninaherenorthere.com. This piece originally appeared in The Advocate.

A few days ago, I spoke to the gender-neutral housing floor at an Ivy League college about my new transgender memoir. Before introducing me, the faculty advisor wanted to discuss the students’ responses to the recent vandalism (a “fag” slur) on their dorm, and a film they watched, the trans movie Gun Hill Road, which this advisor only brought to campus after ensuring that the trans character is not killed.

I keep returning to this act of homophobic harassment and the resistance to promoting the historically dominant, tragic trans narrative as I reflect on the approaching Transgender Day of Remembrance on Sunday.

This is the 13^th year the growing community of transgender people and allies commemorates those killed due to anti-transgender hatred and prejudice. The history of this day dates back to 1998, when Rita Hester was brutally murdered in her home, and her friend, Gwendolyn Ann Smith, launched the Remembering Our Dead web project. The following year, a candlelight vigil for Hester was held, and would become the annual Transgender Day of Remembrance.

TDOR persists to raise awareness of hate crimes against trans folk, and to publicly mourn those who might otherwise be forgotten. Over 100 international events are listed on the website, along with the names (and occasionally) pictures of those we are memorializing.

In the past couple of years, some activists have brought up concerns over the grave tone and depressing theme. TDOR is the most well known acknowledgement of trans people, and as a trans-questioning person five years ago, the fact that our “special day” focused on violence and murder did little to put me at ease with myself. Almost every trans story I came across focused on pain, tragedy, loss, and suffering. I had to wonder: Is it possible to be a happy, healthy, successful trans person?

While I kept my own process of internal investigation to myself, I observed my transsexual, genderqueer, and gender non-conforming acquaintances in San Francisco from a distance. Over time, I watched them grow into themselves. I witnessed them find peace, joy, and expressions of their own unique beauty. These people inspired me to come out, and when I sat down to write my own trans narrative, I consciously decided to highlight the positive aspects of my experience, to focus on empowerment, and to find the humor wherever possible.

Now that I am a happy, healthy, successful trans person (or at least a person working on self-affirmations) invited to speak at a handful of universities as part of their Transgender Awareness Weeks leading up to TDOR, I aim to strike a balance between the somber and the celebratory, to engender hope while also acknowledging the work that still needs to be done.

Over the last decade, more than one person per month has died due to transgender-based hate or prejudice. A groundbreaking report released earlier this year, Injustice at Every Turn: A Report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, revealed the extreme challenges that trans people still face.

The statistics are alarming: 63% of participants experienced a serious act of discrimination (i.e., lost job, eviction, physical or sexual assault, bullying, homelessness, denial of medical services), and 23% faced a “catastrophic level of discrimination” —defined as being impacted by at least three major life-disrupting events. Across the board, trans people of color fared worse than the white participants.

As a trans person of many privileges (class, race, and education) talking to other (mostly) privileged college students this week, I find it important to acknowledge the disparities in what my mind links together: a homophobic act of vandalism and the intention to shift away from the tragic trans narrative at an elite university, and the unabated hate-crimes, violence, and discrimination against trans folk, most of whom lack social privileges.

I link these here intentionally, believing our struggles are all linked. While we may separate ourselves under our various social justice causes, our groups and acronyms must join together in the space of our hearts. We all must fight for equality and human rights – like the right to live – by backing, recognizing, and honoring each other.

On Sunday, we commemorate the loss of our trans folk. I call to everyone in the GLBTQIQA — buy a vowel, add a letter, become an ally — to visit the Transgender Day of Remembrance website and review some names and pictures. If you are so inclined, attend a vigil in your area, or simply light a candle in your house. Please take a small moment, even if it is right now, in memory of those in our community, this great big community of humanity, who have been killed in the past year for being themselves.

Then, take a breath and move forward, continue your activism by living honestly and authentically. In honoring our own lives, we remember the dead, something we will continue to do annually until our collective tragic trans narrative is obsolete.