Presented at UUCL, January 4, 2004
Good morning. I'm David Weintraub, co-founder of what is now going to be called Equality Loudoun, a community and advocacy organization for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people in Loudoun County. We were originally called Loudoun Equality Action Project, but apparently we stole someone else's acronym and we have to give it back.
I should give you a little background about how I come to be speaking to you today. My partner and I had thought for awhile that somebody needed to start an advocacy group here, and we ended up doing it for a couple of reasons. One is the mere existence of Eugene Delgaudio. Another is an incident last summer when we innocently, naively, decided to go to a local Republican committee meeting to hear school board candidates, and instead witnessed a downright scary discussion of a resolution calling for a Federal Marriage Amendment to the Constitution, and condemning the Supreme Court decision that rendered "sodomy" laws across the country unconstitutional. We were actually in fear for our physical safety after sitting through this hysterical, angry, anti-gay rhetoric filled meeting. We knew there were gay people in Loudoun County, we'd seen them in Home Depot, so we decided it was time.
Anyway, I saw the announcement of your social justice committee meeting in the paper, and showed up, and was invited to come talk to you about meanings of tolerance and safe space, and why it's necessary to even have this conversation. I thank you for the invitation and the opportunity to speak with you.
I have a friend who is a member of a Quaker community. A few years ago, I think because of Matthew Shepherd's murder, the adults in this community decided that their youth really needed to confront this controversial issue of different sexual orientations and social prejudice.
So, with great trepidation, the grownups arranged for the youth to have this very difficult, heavy discussion, and the youth were summoned to this meeting. They ended up sitting in a little room, looking at each other. And the kids basically said, "What are we doing here? Why is this even an issue?"
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that probably some of you - maybe a lot of you - are having a similar reaction. Why are we here, why do we need to discuss this, of course we're welcoming, we welcome everybody, we don't care about things like sexual orientation. Maybe it's even a little insulting, to need someone to come talk to you about this question.
I was told another anecdote recently. Someone I know here in Loudoun was having a conversation with a co-worker, and it came up that the co-worker didn't realize that same sex couples can't get legally married. My friend had to explain that, no, she and her partner can't get married because they are both women, and the co-worker went all wide-eyed and said "Even in Virginia?"
Admittedly, this is a little extreme. But it's true that a lot of people are unaware, even with all the recent media attention, that discrimination on the basis of who we love is perfectly legal. They have *no idea* that we can be fired from our jobs or denied housing for being gay.
This sounds like something from the dark ages to people. When you tell them, they're shocked.
I think it's a very positive thing that people are shocked and see these things as something from the dark ages. It's a wonderful thing, in the sense that people are assuming that they are living in an inclusive, tolerant, pluralistic society.
Anyway, this is how I choose to interpret this phenomenon. I choose to have what Michael Moore refers to as "unsubstantiated hope". I think people take it for granted that they are living in such a society, they see themselves as being part of such a society, because that's the kind of society that they want to be part of, and that's why they can say "Why are we here? We don't need to talk about this. This isn't an issue."
The other side, the negative side of this, is that people say "We don't need to talk about this. This isn't an issue".
In progressive communities, in the ideal world we are busy constructing, why should this be a question at all? If we're not biased, if we just treat everyone exactly the same, it's not an issue, right? Because treating everyone the same sounds like it should be a good thing. That comes from really good intentions.
The problem with it is that the default for our culture is to assume that everyone is heterosexual and gender normative, in the absence of other information. If you differ from that default assumption, you have a choice. You can agree that your difference is not an issue and sort of acquiesce to the erasure of that difference, or you can be kind of a pain and say "It may not be an issue for you, but it's sure an issue for me."
I confess to sometimes doing this annoying thing when I am getting to know someone, at that stage of sharing the details of your mundane life. I avoid using pronouns when referring to my partner. This sounds awkward, but one can become adept at it with enough motivation. I do this because it forces the other person to confront the fact that they make assumptions, not even the assumptions themselves, but the fact that it's so automatic to make them. It's briefly uncomfortable for the other person because they are outside their comfort zone.
They generally survive. I don't do it because I enjoy other people's discomfort, I do it because it disrupts the default that would make asserting my own identity something that's too easy to label as "my issue".
So here's the scenario I see: Here's a group of really good, progressive people who want to do the right thing, who want to create a community in which there is no bias or unequal treatment based on sexual orientation, where that's a non-issue, where everyone is welcome. You've heard the arguments of the gay community that we're Just Like You, we want the same things, we want to be treated equally, etc, etc., and so you're trying to do just that.
Then here come these whiny queers. You come in here, you say what you want is inclusion and equality, then you whine about being erased. Who you love isn't an issue for us, you're the one making it an issue. What do you people want?
What I'm trying to get across is that there's an internal contradiction. Yes, queer people are the same, and we want equality, and we want who and how people love each other to be a non-issue. At the same time, we get erased constantly by that default assumption. We can't get from here to there by saying it's not an issue when it's an issue for us every day.
Safe space or sanctuary, what it means is a place where you don't pretend to be someone you're not. Where you don't hide parts of yourself or parts of your life. Where parts of you aren't erased by others, even unintentionally, or with the good intentions of treating everyone the same.
The thing I will leave you with is that what may seem like this exasperating contradiction is really just part of the objective situation, and if we move forward together with an understanding of that we'll be fine. Thank you.
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