The hatred that is homophobia: We’ve been here before
Read Time:3 Minute, 37 Second
On November 27th, 1978, Dan White armed himself with a handgun, put extra ammunition in his pocket and crawled through a window of City Hall in San Francisco, California. He went to the office of Mayor George Moscone, allegedly to talk to Moscone about not hiring him back as a city supervisor.
Dan White shot and killed Mayor Moscone, reloaded his weapon and walked across City Hall to his second target, Harvey Milk. Dan White shot Harvey Milk, killing him as well. White turned himself into police later that day. He was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and served seven years in prison, thanks to his defense attorney’s “Twinkie Defense.” White was released in 1984.
Harvey Milk was the first openly gay supervisor in San Francisco, during a time when people like Anita Bryant, Tim LaHaye and John Briggs were beginning their campaign of hate against the gay community. Some of Bryant’s public statements on homosexuals were:
As a mother, I know that homosexuals cannot biologically reproduce children; therefore, they must recruit our children.
If gays are granted rights, next we’ll have to give rights to prostitutes and to people who sleep with Saint Bernards and to nail biters.
If homosexuality was the normal way, God would have made Adam and Bruce.
The Briggs Initiative, so named because of its champion and creator, John Briggs, also known as Proposition 6, would have banned gays, lesbians and even heterosexuals who supported them from teaching in California public schools. Briggs appeared on a San Francisco television program with Harvey Milk, and during the banter back and forth, maintained that homosexuals wanted to recruit and abuse children. Prop 6 was defeated, thanks in large part to Harvey Milk.
Right wing zealots claiming homosexuals are pedophiles. Adam and Bruce. Saint Bernards. No gay teachers. Fast forward thirty years, and we now have these types of statements:
Bryan Fischer, American Family Association:
There is an overwhelming correlation between homosexual preferences and pedophilia. This is further evidence that homosexuality is in fact a sexual deviancy. For this reason alone, no homosexual should be elevated to the United States Supreme Court.
Rick Santorum, current Republican presidential candidate:
In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That’s not to pick on homosexuality. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing. And when you destroy that you have a dramatic impact on the quality.
Rick Perry’s “Strong” ad:
I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a Christian, but you don’t need to be in the pew every Sunday to know there’s something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school.
One Million Moms demanding that JC Penney fire Ellen DeGeneres:
Funny that JC Penney thinks hiring an openly homosexual spokesperson will help their business when most of their customers are traditional families…DeGeneres is not a true representation of the type of families that shop at their store. The majority of JC Penney customers will be offended and choose to longer shop there.
Go back thirty years to a November day when the murders of George Moscone and Harvey Milk by Dan White shocked a city to the core. Go back to the moment Virginia Foxx told the House of Representatives that Matthew Shepard was not the victim of a hate crime, in front of his mother, Judy Shepard. Go back to the rape of James Hornik and his treatment at the hands of the LAPD who told him “a gay man can’t be raped.” Go back to my friend being raped by Army soldiers while serving overseas because they told her it would make her straight.
We’ve been here before. Who has to die before we realize this is all so familiar? Who has to suffer another child dying by their own hand before we wake up and see the truth? Ronald Reagan opposed Proposition 6 in 1978. Where are our brave politicians, on either side, standing arm in arm with gay activists, shouting “Enough!”
We’ve been here before.
Thanks to Wikipedia, SPLC, Think Exist.com and Eurthisnthat.com for contributions to this article.
Happy
0 %
Sad
0 %
Excited
0 %
Sleepy
0 %
Angry
0 %
Surprise
0 %
0
0
As a friend of Harvey Milk and Mayor Moscone, and involved in the early S.F. Gay Rights movement… the 21 Century is moving in the right direction and at a faster pace,thankfully. However, never put your guard down and speak OUT when ever those bigots want us to go back in the closets or take away the gains we have made toward equal right. I outed myself back nationally at a time it was not yet fashionable to be openly gay,even in San Francisco, when I created the ANITA BRYANT’S HUSBAND IS A
HOMO SAPIAN! T-shirt back in 1977. However, we must also speak OUT when those within our own community use heterophobic statements. I never wanted anything more or less then equal rights… and each new day is a step closer in our time in getting there.
The answer to this problem is simple. Homophobic people just need to stop having children. Considering that straight people are, by and large, the source of homosexual individuals, if such bigoted people want to curb the numbers of gay individuals they just need to stop having children.
Not only do they live in a world with fewer gay people, they aren’t able to pass on their hatred as effectively to the next generation and in a few years, after they die off, the sane of us can start doing things right.
Fantasies aside, I cannot conceive of how these people can act the way they do. I can comprehend how a mind can become twisted due to religion or other sources of bigotry, but comprehension and understanding are two separate things.
There are few things that get me as irate as the kind of hate these people espouse. And few things that bring me as much sadness as seeing innocents lose their lives at the hands of an idiotic ideology.
Yes, we’ve definitely been here before. How many times will we have to repeat this? I don’t want to spend the rest of my life worrying over my right to marry whomever I love or the rest of my high school years to be spent wondering if anyone else will help if I’m attacked-and if people will acknowledge it as a hate crime or…say it was own fault?
Enough with the hate, it’s time to see reason.
I remember the Moscone/Milk assassinations. I also remember the rioting in the streets of San Francisco when Dan White got the moral equivalent of a slap on the wrist. I remember Anita Bryant, a horror of a woman with mediocre talent who attempted to bolster her own career on the backs of the LGBT community.
It’s been thirty-four years since Moscone and Milk were killed; Dan White is long gone, having committed suicide after his release from prison. Bryant is still around, making much the same noises as she did back then despite the fact that she is a divorced woman who would not meet with approval in her own church.
Bryant seems to have run out of steam, but her successors have brought us full circle: Maggie Gallagher. Bryan Fischer. Tony Perkins. Porno Pete LaBarbera. The Phelps clan. And the worst part is that it looks like the entire Republican Party has attached itself to this fringe movement and its attacks on personal freedom.
I applaud JCPenney for refusing to knuckle under to these bigots. Speaking as a Gay man who is rapidly approaching fifty, I have been living with at least the knowledge of these bigots for close to forty years, and I am bone-weary of them and their hatred. And as for my fellow citizens who would vote these extremists into office, SHAME. Shame on you all.
Scott-As a straight woman rapidly approaching 50, I commend your activism, your amazing spirit and I echo your sentiments. Shame, indeed.
As a straight woman in my early 60s, I also remember most of those things with horror. Though I didn’t actually get involved, fighting for the rights of the lgbt community until 1998, I can clearly remember yelling at my TV screen whenever the likes of Ms Bryant showed up. I also remember giving up orange juice (or at least making sure it came from somewhere other than Florida) when she was the spokesperson for Florida’s orange growers. (for some reason I didn’t remember much about Harvey Milk until I saw the movie “Milk” and then it was mostly remembering the horrific way in which those like Bryant and Briggs regarded gays.) In 1998 I was a recent widow with a new computer and a new internet connection when the murder of Matthew Sheppard hit the news and my first response, on an AOL message board, was simply a cry of “WHY????” How could anyone hate someone they didn’t even really know that much? And I still scream that every time I read of another child killing him/herself because of the bullying they endure.
Christine I remember the Anita Bryant commercials and the sadness of the Matthew Sheppard murder. The suicides I have see as a result of bullying live with me each day.
Well said Scott. Well said indeed. For the life of me I will never understand how so many people, millions could be so bigoted, then again religion is a dominant force in their lives and they are taught from young ages to adulthood what is right and what is wrong in the eyes of their deity as articulated by their hate filled preachers. I agree: SHAME!