[Vision2020] Equality is a Moral Issue

[Tom Hansen]

>From today's (December 16, 2006) Spokesman Review -

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Leonard Pitts Jr.: Equality is a moral issue
Leonard Pitts Jr. 
Miami Herald
December 16, 2006

This is for a reader who demands to know why I write about gay issues. His
conclusion is that I must secretly be gay myself.

Actually, he doesn't express himself quite that civilly. To the contrary,
his e-mails evince a juvenility that would embarrass a reasonably
intelligent fifth-grader. The most recent one, for example, carried a
salutation reading, "Hi Mrs. Pitts."

We're talking about the kind of thing for which delete buttons were
invented. So you may wonder why I bring it to your attention, especially
since acknowledging a person like this only encourages him. It's simple,
actually: he raises an interesting question that deserves an answer.
 
If from that you conclude (or fear) you're about to read a stirring defense
of my manly male masculinity, no. The guy is free to believe what he wishes;
I really don't care. And here, let me digress to confess that, though I
refer to him using masculine pronouns, I actually don't know if he's a he
because his notes have been anonymous. Still, I assume it's a guy because
the level of sexual insecurity the e-mails suggest strikes me as - boy, am I
going to get in trouble for this - rather guy-specific.

Anyway, to get back to the point, I'm not here to argue sexuality. I just
find myself intrigued by the idea that if you're not gay, you shouldn't care
about gay rights.

The most concise answer I can give is cribbed from what a white kid said 40
or so years ago, as white college students were risking their lives to
travel South and register black people to vote. Somebody asked why. He said
he acted from an understanding that his freedom was bound up with the
freedom of every other man.

I know it sounds cornier than Kellogg's, but that's pretty much how I feel.

I know also that some folks are touchy about anything seeming to equate the
black civil rights movement with the gay one. And no, gay people were not
kidnapped from Gay Land and sold into slavery, nor lynched by the thousands.
On the other hand, they do know something about housing discrimination, they
do know job discrimination, they do know murder for the sin of existence,
they do know the denial of civil rights and they do know what it is like to
be used as scapegoat and boogeyman by demagogues and political opportunists.

They know enough of what I know that I can't ignore it. See, I have yet to
learn how to segregate my moral concerns. It seems to me if I abhor
intolerance, discrimination and hatred when they affect people who look like
me, I must also abhor them when they affect people who do not. For that
matter, I must abhor them even when they benefit me. Otherwise, what I claim
as moral authority is really just self-interest in disguise.

Among the things we seem to have lost in the years since that white kid made
his stand is the ability, the imagination, the willingness to put ourselves
into the skin of those who are not like us. I find it telling that Vice
President Dick Cheney hews to the hard conservative line on virtually every
social issue, except gay marriage. It is, of course, no coincidence that
Cheney has a daughter who is a lesbian. Which tells me his position is based
not on principle but, rather, on loving his daughter.

It is a fine thing to love your daughter. I would argue, however, that it is
also a fine thing and in some ways, a finer thing, to love your neighbor's
daughter, no matter her sexual orientation, religion, race, creed or
economic status - and to want her freedom as eagerly as you want your own.

I believe in moral coherence. And Rule No. 1 is, you cannot assert your own
humanity, then turn right around and deny someone else's.

If that makes me gay, fine.

As my anonymous correspondent ably demonstrates, there are worse things to
be.

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Reminder (Submitted earlier by Debi Robinson-Smith) -

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Leonard Pitts, Jr. will be speaking at the Latah County Human Rights
breakfast at 9 am on January 13, 2007. He will also be the guest speaker for
an open forum that day at 2:30 pm at the Edward R. Murrow School of
communications at WSU.

Leonard Pitts is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist with a nationally
syndicated column. You have likely seen his writing in the Lewiston Tribune.
His visit to the Palouse is sponsored by the Latah County Human Rights Task
Force and the YWCA of WSU as part of the Palouse Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Celebration.  

(Book signing at both events will be available thanks to Bookpeople.)

For more information, contact Joan Opyr at the YWCA of WSU, 335 3916, or
Debi Robinson-Smith at the Women's Resource Center, 335-2572.

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Seeya at the Latah County Human Rights breakfast on January 13th, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"Gays and lesbians stood up for civil rights in Montgomery, Selma, in
Albany, Georgia and St. Augustine, Florida, and many other campaigns of the
Civil Rights Movement.  Many of these courageous men and women were fighting
for my freedom at a time when they could find few voices for their own, and
I salute their contributions."

- Coretta Scott King (March 30, 1998)