Monday, October 11, 2010

Coming Out, Out, Out, Wherever They Are

UPDATE: GOP Candidate for Governor of New York, Carl Paladino, who's homophobic statements are linked below, and who did multiple television appearances after making them, took an intransigent position to criticism.  Now, he has flip-flopped, appearing to change his previous adamant position against the LGBT community.


 In the course of doing so, Paladino appears to try to shift at least some of the responsibility for the remarks to the orthodox rabbi who wrote the original script, while taking credit for, and in my opinion, overstating the significance of minor redactions he made. 

What Paladino does not take back is his incredibly offensive position on homosexuality being dysfunctional and invalid, or his position on realistic and objective information on same-sex orientation being taught in school.  Presumably, what Paladino is apologizing for are his statements on same-sex displays of affection in a gay pride parade.

Under most circumstances, I believe it is important to accept almost any apology, and to genuinely forgive any offense given.  Trying my best to be kind, after not only the original scripted statement, but the subsequent multiple television interviews,  for example, where he had ample opportunity to expand on his original position, I find Paladino's apology to be insincere at best, and more of a self-serving, politically expedient maneuver at worst.  This is more worst than best, more too little and too late, more expedient and self-serving than believable.

It appears that Paladino is simply prepared to kiss off the minority orthodox Jewish rabbi who wrote his original speech, and the vote that got him in trouble in the first place - but, not a kiss in a gay way.

an·ti·gay   /ˌæntiˈgeɪ, ˌæntaɪ-/ [an-tee-gey, an-tahy-]
–adjective
opposed or hostile to homosexuals or to homosexual social reforms and institutions, etc.

ho·mo·pho·bi·a   /ˌhoʊməˈfoʊbiə/ [hoh-muh-foh-bee-uh] - noun
  unreasoning fear of or antipathy toward homosexuals and homosexuality.  and  irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or homosexual  and intense hatred or fear of homosexuals or homosexuality 

National Coming Out Day is an international observance by the LGBT community promoting Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transgender and Asexual Awareness.  It is celebrated by parades, rallies, dinners, and other events on college campuses and in various towns and cities worldwide, on October 11th.  Except for the UK, where it is celebrated on October 12th (no idea why, but I'll provide an update if I find  out).


The event dates back to 1988, honoring the  Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights, which was in response to President Ronald Reagan's failure to provide leadership in addressing the disease AIDS / HIV, and to also protest the SCOTUS decision, Bowers v. Hardwick, criminalizing sodomy between consenting adults in the privacy of their own home.  There had been an earlier March on Washington in 1979.

National Coming Out Day is intended to celebrate individual recognition of their sexual identity.  Candace Gingrich-Jones, much younger half-sister of Nut Gingrich,  was the spokesperson  for the event in 1995. The celebration is currently organized in the United States by the Human Rights Campaign, but events are also held  in Canada, Switzerland, Germany, Croatia, Poland, the UK, and the Netherlands, and the list of countries continues to expand.  But not, so far, into those parts of Africa where there has been an attempt to criminalize homosexuality, encouraged by the ultraconservatives in the United States.

While considerable progress has occurred in the fight against AIDS/HIV, the larger issue of opposition to understanding sexual orientation and gender identity continues to be a battle, with resistance coming predominantly from the right.  An interesting exception is the uneasy relationship of groups like Log Cabin Republicans and GOProud with the other conservatives.

Some prominent voices, like Ann Coulter, are coming around; despite her harangues in the past, she was the Headliner at "Homocon", a GOProud fundraiser.  It got her dumped as a speaker at the WorldNet Daily's  "Taking America Back National Conference".  A better name would have been Taking America Backward; WorldNet Daily is the notorious birther site and promoter of other extremist positions and conspiracy theories adored by the far right.  [Birther Queen Orly Taitz is their secular saint, to give you a reference point.]

Meanwhile, New York's lagging GOP candidate for governor, the porn-emailing and racist Carl Paladino, was recorded declaiming to Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn, "And I don't want them [schoolchildren] to be brainwashed into thinking that  homosexuality is an equally valid or successful option.   It isn't."   His campaign headquarters hastened to assert that Paladino "isn't anti-gay"; he's just Roman Catholic.  If this isn't an homophobic point of view, I cringe to think what they would consider homophobic.  Obviously Paladino is against giving students age appropriate accurate information about gender and sexuality, which is not the same thing as brainwashing.  Promoting exclusively his unscientific and hateful outdated notions of human sexuality is the brainwashing Paladino prefers, directly contrary to the information published most recently in the Indiana University (Bloomington) sex study, the National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior .  Paladino also wouldn't want students told anything ever compiled from the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction  founded in 1947 - (same campus), about how human sexuality is expressed by real, living human beings, not mythical puritanical and unreasonable stereotypes.  Paladino wants students taught ideology, not factual information.  I would call that brainwashing, not education.  Education deals with subjects, even sensitive subjects like sex, in a mature, less emotional, more objective way that strives to be accurate and informative, not destructive and damaging.

And we have the recent coming out of former RNC chairman, Ken Mehlman, admitting not only to being gay, but to having denied his sexual orientation while leading the RNC in anti-gay activism. Mehlman is now an activist in promoting causes, like gay marriage, against which he previously led the opposition.  It has been the basis of a great deal of criticism of Mehlman on the right.

And of course, this  day is a celebration of opposing the most vile and backward attitudes towards sexuality and gender issues; there are those who still promote the idea that sexuality and gender are chosen, or the notion that it  is possible to change the sexuality you are born with.  There are those, who like the husband of Michele Bachmann, make quite a killing off of scams that it is possible "to pray away the gay", despite the position that this is both wrong, and even damaging, by every credible psychological and psychiatric professional association in the United States and the rest of the developed world.

Then we have backward cultural neanderthals like radio personality and hate monger disguised as religion, Bradlee Dean, who still claims that homosexuality is criminal and an abomination, and the claim that homosexuals are all  serial child molesters, despite lacking any remotely plausible basis in fact for his claims.

It is too bad that the young man who jumped off a bridge to commit suicide this week did not have the support for his being outed.  It is too bad that leaders of some religions, like the Mormons and some orthodox Jews, have  added to the pressures and pain of those who discover they are in the sexual orientation minority.  It is nothing less than tragic that conservatives have not supported anti-bullying, particularly not supporting  it for those students who are LGBT, given events like the breaking of an 11 year  old boy's arm by four  bullies for being a cheerleader.  And we have the positions of extreme right wing politicians who, like Senator De Mint want to ban gay teachers; or the positions of Senator wanna-bees like Sharron Angle who  would ban gays from being parents, despite the evidence that the sexuality of gay parents has nothing to do with their ability to be conscientious, loving parents, and despite the evidence that the children of gay parents are not any more likely to be gay than the children of heterosexual parents.

So, clearly, this is an event that still has room to grow, so long as there are people who would deny gays the same equality and acceptance as other people, so  long as one group of people decide they have the right to approve the healthy adult sexuality of other people.  So much for non-intrusive, not-overreaching, not big government as nanny.   We will just government, if the right gets their way, by bullies  - but there is an encouraging crack in that solidarity from back in the ignore-AIDS Reagan era; because clearly, that is no longer the monolithic position on the right, just the position of the reactionary and extremist die-hards

There is hope yet, as time, in  the vernacular of the old news reel days, and the  LGBT community, marches on.  How appropriate that a day about inward exploration and knowledge should also be a day honoring Columbus for his exploration outward to the boundaries of knowledge.

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