Institutionalized Homophobia. This is bigger than a black, white, and brown issue

Dear friends,

I have been very careful to watch the current news around Prop 8. I do this not only because Prop 8 affects my wife and I directly, but I want to be careful to watch the reactions of people outside of and inside my community.

I talked a while ago about the use of blame in regard to finding the "culprits" who are responsible for the proposition passing, thereby writing discrimination into the California constitution. I am very sad to see this happen, as it turns people against each other instead of uniting under a common goal, creating a better life for all people.

After elections and votes, we often see "The blame game" being played. We are seeing it now with the countless discussions in news and television that start with, "Should the GOP blame Palin?" While I understand strategists from both sides looking at every angle in order to make changes for the next election, release of "blaming" initiatives do nothing but tarnish the image or reputation and guide us toward finding blame and targeting that person as a "problem." It serves nothing more as a tool to take the heat off of other people who were also responsible for the loss. In the case of Proposition 8, we are doing this to African American and Latino residents of California and taking all responsibility away from White and Asian voters. This form of oppression takes groups who are already institutionaly oppressed and turns them against one another.

A recent article on Alternet.org (taken from CounterPunch) discusses the Black/White divide and institutional homophobia in the case of Proposition 8. While I disagree with the name-calling of Palin, this issue addresses something that we are so unwilling to address. That of institutionalized homophobia really being an umbrella of power and wealth in this country. This is an issue of who has property and how they are willing to exercise their power. An excerpt from the article describes one way in which we can address changing what happened on Proposition 8.

In challenging white LGBT people who justify not working alongside African Americans due to their supposed higher rates of homophobia, Black lesbian Barbara Smith argues:

Institutionalized homophobia in this society is definitely a white monopoly. And when we do see examples of homophobia in people-of-color contexts, what that should motivate people to do is to increase the level of solidarity with gay men and lesbians of color so that we can challenge homophobia wherever it appears.

The massive outpouring of protesters on the streets of California's cities since the ban shows the potential to organize a repeal of Prop 8 in coming months. But they will need to devise a strategy independent of the Democrats' equivocation and corporate-funded organizations wary of rocking the boat. LGBT activists in this budding movement should go directly to Black and Latino allies and develop a multiracial and collaborative challenge to the bigotry of anti-gay marriage forces of every race.

Included in the strategy should be a demand on the new Obama administration and Democratic-controlled Congress to carry forward with their party platform that opposes the Clinton-era Defense of Marriage Act. It's time to repeal that law and end federally sanctioned bigotry against gay marriage.

In the case of Civil Rights, as Derrick Bell and other leading CRT scholars show, most changes result out of interest convergence for those in positions of power. Interest convergence, as defined by Bell, is when "the majority group tolerates advances for racial justice only when it suits its interest to do so" (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001). This tenet of Critical Race Theory also can be used to describe sexual orientation and the response of interest convergence in cases of LGBT people. Showing how marriage for LGBT people enhance and influence the lives of all people would cause people to examine their votes carefully.

I urge people to not place blame and to look directly at the overarching structural component largely at play here. The reasons for a lot of this is institutionalized homophobia. I look to the Campaign to End Homophobia to describe this umbrella of discrimination.

Institutional homophobia refers to the many ways in which government, businesses, churches, and other institutions and organizations discriminate against people on the basis of sexual orientation. Institutional homophobia is also called heterosexism.
Institutional homophobia is reflected in religious organizations which have stated or implicit policies against lesbians, gays, and bisexuals leading services; agencies which refuse to allocate resources to services to lesbian, gay, and bisexual people; and governments which fail to insure the rights of all citizens, regardless of their sexual orientation. (taken from, http://www.endhomophobia.org/homophobia.htm, November 17, 2008).

This is much bigger than one man or one woman. This is bigger than one church or one pastor. This is a societal system of oppression toward one group of individuals. I encourage each of us to stop blaming each other and have real discussions outside of just our own personal experiences. We need to examine the structures who continue the oppressive system we live in. Continue to tell your stories to each other and sit in fellowship with one another. I will buy anyone a cup of coffee who is willing to chat with me about any of this. Just comment away and we will chat.

I urge everyone to examine their own lives and how those lives are affected by this vote. I urge you to seek out others and see how it affects them and their families. I then encourage you to look at the system in which we live. Get the facts. Know the stories. Find where our interests cross. We all can move forward without losing all of ourselves and losing our beliefs. Now is the time to figure out how our interests converge.

Do not blame one group. Do not blame each other. Move on and move up. Heed the advice of Louis Nizer when he said,
“When a man points a finger at someone else, he should remember that four of his fingers are pointing at himself.”

Peace,

Stacy

Further reading:

Critical Race Theory: An Introduction by Richard Delgado & Jean Stefancic

The Nation: Cold Feet; Why America Has Gay Marriage Jitters