I am at the Republican National Convention, and though I am a staunch Democrat who’s possibly even further to the left of Dennis Kucinich, I decided that I must immerse myself in real GOP Culture and not just hang out with unwashed lefty anarchists. Of course, the most painless way to do this for a Democrat such as myself is to spend some time getting used to the Other Side with a contingent I’m very familiar and comfortable with: The Gays, or in this case, the Log Cabin Republicans. Yes, Dorothy, there are Gay Republicans. And no, we’re not in Kansas, anymore.
I told Log Cabin Communications Director Scott Tucker that my friends were perplexed by Log Cabin Republicans’ very existence, as was I. He didn’t miss a beat. “Did they look at you like you had three heads?”
Ever since I met Del 55 years ago, I could never imagine a day would come when she wouldn’t be by my side. I am so lucky to have known her, loved her and been her partner in all things,” Lyon said. “I also never imagined there would be a day that we would actually be able to get married.—Phyllis Lyon.
Gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender delegates and allies gathered on the 37th floor of the Grand Hyatt in Denver on Monday afternoon to celebrate how far the gay movement has come. There was reason to celebrate— the first openly gay representative to serve in the Alabama statehouse, Rep. Patricia Todd, as well as other openly gay candidates within reach of winning state and national office, were on hand at the Hyatt.
If there was ever a group to be fighting and pushing for greater awareness, attention and equality it would be many of the leaders in that room overlooking downtown Denver.
Rep. Todd had worked with the HIV/AIDS community in the South, but when pressed about what can be done to reduce stigma for people living with HIV in the South, she mustered a platitude: “more funding.”
The issue of HIV wasn’t addressed until someone brought it up.
You would think that things would be different by now.
Sixteen years ago, Bob Hattoy was the first HIV positive person many Americans had ever seen.
He had been working for Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign for a few months when he was diagnosed. Two months later, he had a prime time speech assailing George H.W. Bush for not researching how, exactly, AIDS kills. He died of AIDS in 2007.
“Listen, I don’t want to die,†Hattoy said in his four-minute address, trying to keep his composure. “But I don’t want to live in an America where the president sees me as the enemy. I can face dying because of a disease. But not because of politics.â€
These days, politics isn’t killing American HIV-positive people, so much as a glaring lack of leadership on and attention on the American AIDS epidemic as it exists today. If black America were its own nation, it would have the 16th highest HIV/AIDS rate in the world. The South is home to 40 percent of new infections.  Latinos are 14 percent of the U.S. population, but were 22 percent of new HIV/AIDS infections in 2006. And in 2006 there were more than 56,000 new HIV infections, and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention had been underestimating the number by 40 percent annually since the late ’90s. Gay and bisexual men remain the majority of new infections, but middle-aged white women and African American men and women are among the most vulnerable groups. Disease does not discriminate.
HIV/AIDS has evolved into an international issue since George W. Bush took office. The President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) has distributed millions upon millions to treat, prevent, and reduce stigma for positive people in Africa. It is one of, if not the most successful and lasting hallmark of Bush’s Compassionate Conservatism, which we saw far too little of.
AIDS medications, nicknamed cocktails because of the mixology involved, are more effective and affordable than ever, before but there are still many people left behind, either too poor or-even worse-ignorant of their HIV status and infecting others. America needs a PEPFAR of its own.
All these years later, and and it’s still the disease that dare not speak its name.
“We have some really conservative pockets in Alabama that they don’t really want to talk about AIDS,” Rep. Todd said. “We know how to prevent [HIV transmissions] but we don’t have enough money to prevent it, especially in states like Alabama.”
Some saw the lack of leadership as a case of misplaced priorities.
The gay and lesbian leadership is “pushing things like gay marriage, and civil unions,” said Sandy Nelson, a 66-year-old Hillary Clinton delegate from rural Missouri. “What the hell is civil unions going to do if you’re dead?”
News just broke that the California Supreme Court has overturned the ban on gay marriage that they initially enforced in 2004 after San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom gave the green light, opening a month-long window when thousands of gay couples traveled to the Bay Area to get hitched.
The Supreme Court basically said that Newsom couldn’t take matters into his own hands, and neither could they until the lower courts acted first. Fast-forward to 2008, and the Supreme Court finally declares “that domestic partnerships are not a good enough substitute for marriage in an opinion written by Chief Justice Ron George,” according to the New York Times.
The LA Times offers a more in-depth analysis of the decision, essentially saying that this is hardly the end of the road, even in California.
The state high court’s ruling was unlikely to end the debate over gay matrimony in California. A group has circulated petitions for a November ballot initiative that would amend the state Constitution to block same-sex marriage, and the Legislature has twice passed bills to authorize gay marriage. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed both.
I find the hypocrisy and lack of foresight in the US deplorable. As we look back, 40 years removed from the height of the Civil Rights Movement, the contradiction inherent to the phrase “all men are created equal,” as written by slave-owners, is now widely accepted among all but the staunchest of rascists.
Yet most are incapable of drawing the parallel here. In the infinitely-wise words of Chris Rock, “gay people deserve to be just as miserable as the rest of us.”
For the record, I love marriage and I love my wife. And although the dynamic does shift between a couple after marriage, the bulk of the significance is legal. Provided you worked well before taking the plunge.
Still, some people in this country continue to cling to some anachronistic credo of Christianity calling the shots in people’s lives when it comes to who they can and can’t marry. Make no mistake, the easiest way to maintain national homophobia without ascribing to it is shifting the blame to God. Bush all but donned a white collar each time he spoke publicly in support of the ban on gay marriage.
