Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

CLICK HERE: for Dr. King's 1963 speech in Detroit, one of his best !

I grew up in a segregated world, in rural central Florida.  It is difficult for younger people to comprehend that world. As the late jazz poet Gil Scott Heron (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gil_Scott-Heron) said, "When movies were in Black and White, and so was everything else."  

Non-Southerners always want to balm their consciences by relegating racism to "The South," but the reality is that racism permeates all of American society, it was just codified and overt in the South.

Third grade photo, circa 1958, four years after "Brown vs Board of Education"

So, as the promise, or threat, of the end of legal segregation loomed over the South, the discussion of that impending change became a constant mantra among most white people.   In the midst of all of this, I was a very "strange" kid, who didn't fit in very well, and had the daily reminder of it via the name calling and generally non-esteem that I was held in by my peers.   

Me and my brother Gene, in Key West, 1959

Living with the daily torture of being "Gerber Baby" and "Mrs. Garren" (due to riding a  used girls bicycle my father had brought home when I was 7), and then my brother's tag which spread like wild fire, "Jelly Belly", life was not fun.  Then in the 4th grade, a severe flu passed through my body and left me with extensive allergies to virtually all of the environment, particularly Live Oak trees, which proliferated everywhere in that part of  central Florida.  Years later in college I found out that the Tampa Bay area has one of the highest year round pollen counts in the nation.  All I knew as a child was that my nose was constantly running, and no amount of handkerchiefs could match the constant flood of mucus and "boogers" coming out of my nose.  So I got the additional tag of having "Kooties."

Circa 1961

So the only thing that I could fit in with was the the objection to, and fear of, "integration."  I wasn't exactly a zealot about the issue, but I kept the "party line," not willing to risk even further social rejection.  Some of my pronouncements that passed from my lips then, now bring me shame, and a constant reminder of the power of ignorance and fear.

Confirmation photo, 1961, I was eleven (11) other kids were twelve (12).

6th or 7th grade

So, there was this Black man, Dr. King and his allies, who asserted that our way of life was wrong.  In the face of that, every black person in our lives became an ambassador for stability.  When asked "What do you think about Civil Rights" the universal response was "Oh, I don't agree with any of that stuff, I like things just fine the way they are."  It never occurred to us that the response was rooted in a pervasive fear of white people and that any honest disclosure would result in lynching, or the person's house being torched, or both.

In the midst of all this "Let's just get along folks," most white people were absolutely clueless to the real issues that were the daily experiences of black people in the South and ultimately the rest of America.  

We all lived through those years, Lyndon Johnson pushed more Civil Rights legislation through congress than any president in history, before or since.  He took great pride that as a "fellow Southerner" he knew first hand why the legislation had to pass.  Once it was signed, the world didn't collapse, large swarms of black people did not emerge to destroy white people in the South, the whole thing (after the fact) was sort of a big, "What was the big deal?"

Summer before school integration, in Georgia with cousin Walter and 

Uncle Carl & Aunt Velma

Early on, during the first year of a voluntary integration plan in our local school district, two of the brave young women in my high school offered me an opportunity to confront all of my presumptions.  In an instant, I saw, heard and felt humanity, and full equality of that humanity.  All of my beliefs, presumptions and sense of "correctness" melted away in that instant, replaced by a new freedom to explore reality, rather than continue clutching my fears.

Years later, I would come to the realization and acceptance of the source of my own irrevocable "differences" and make peace with being homosexual.  Just typing that word is still difficult, which is why "Gay" is so much easier.  The "Homo" word still evokes images of really AWFUL stuff, such are the levels of internalized homophobia in all of us.

The year before I realized I was gay, hiding behind my facial hair.

A year later, less hair and less weight.

Not hiding anymore.

As I began my journey into both self acceptance, and working for social change, the life and legacy of both Dr. King, and his mentor, Mohandus Gandhi, became my personal beacons of knowledge and clarity.  Particularly Dr. King because like me, he was also from the South, and was dealing with layers of fear, based in ignorance and sexual fears.  In case you're wondering about that last one, it's simple, the fears of many white people that black men unchecked would all seek out relationships with white women, and of course, rape them as well.  Like all fears, totally insane, but to many Whites, very real.  A great line from Loraine Hansberry's "A Raisin in The Sun,"  the sister in law asks (of the whites in Clyborne Park), "What are they so afraid of, that we'll eat em?" to which the sister replies, "No honey, marry em."

Many Whites in the South believed that black people carried virulent strains of venereal diseases, and fueled by the "wet toilet seat" and "water fountain" fears of spreading such diseases, lived in absolute terror that their children would catch horrific diseases if they mixed with black children.  

My aunt Louise explained the V.D. myths very simply during that time.  She had worked in a V.D. clinic during the depression as a W.P.A. worker.  She explained that the actual bacteria was so fragile in the face of sunlight or temperatures cooler than 98.6, that they had to literally run from the exam rooms where culture samples had been collected to the lab that would do the test.  But it was the depression, and telling a spouse, particularly a husband, that the disease could only come from an extra-marital affair would assure the dissolution of the family.  So the lie was fabricated so that the wife (or husband) could "save face."

Laura Louise Brackett Beasley at 78

But most people didn't know all this.  When I explained it to one older black woman, who had made her career in New York as a domestic worker in wealthy homes, she looked at me and said, "That must be why they were always so insistent on seeing my health card."  

And then I lived through and was a major participant in the "Gay Rights" movement, from the mid 70s until today.  You say "Today?" and I say "Yes, I was slandered and fired from a job at Ft. Bragg North Carolina in 2010, a (ironically Black) colleague spreading the news that I was Gay and fueling the presumption that I must also be a child molester because of it.   JIn 2013, my (straight) housemate was involved in a child visitation hearing to get more time with his (then) five year old son.  One of the objections the mother and grandmother (a retired teacher) made was that the child could not be left with me for child care because as a gay man, I am (presumed to be) a pedophile.  

So like racism, it's never really gone, or never really "over."  It's just having legal protections, sort of.  But the burden of both proof and "justice" still falls on us, not our accusers.  

What did Dr. King, and the legions of black people in the South (and ultimately America) teach me?  The first thing is that they decided they just were not going to cooperate in their oppression any longer.  They were not going to rationalize the status quo, and salve themselves with the assumption that nothing could, or would, change.  

The next gift, was honesty.  They decided to stop cooperating with their oppression by letting the status quo continue.  Instead they gently, corporately and at times, individually, started telling us the truth of their experiences, and why the system that we took for granted, was a source of constant pain and suffering for them.

And although many white people joined in their struggles later on, initially, it was just a collection of poor and middle class black people who risked all of their meager existence to challenge a reality that was suffocating them.   In other words, no one "handed" them their rights, they got out and insisted on them.  "We're not going away until it's done."  So I learned the importance of self determination, that no one will ever support "us" more than we have demonstrated our support for ourselves and each other.

Martin Luther King made it very simple in his speech in Detroit in 1963.  "What does the Negro want?  It can be summarized in three little words, all, here and now.  We want all of our rights, we want them here and we want them now."  In that simple expression, I learned the importance of assertion.  That there are always excuses and reasons to postpone change.  It falls upon those who are oppressed to assert our issues, and not go away until they have been addressed, and resolved.

And most of all, I learned forgiveness.  That ultimately, we are all on this planet together, and as he also asserted in Detroit, "We must all learn to live together as brothers, or we will perish together as fools."

He also said what was a most significant comment on becoming a "whole person,"  "As much as we want to blame white people for all of the things that they have done to us, we will never be truly free until we take responsibility for letting them do it."

How does all this apply to being Gay?   The content of our oppression is different, our identity is not our skin color.  But sooner or later, often sooner, people figure out what we are, and then the hell starts.  If we are unfortunate enough to have homophobic parents, the hell starts at home.  Because we are not "reared" by our own, we are taught to hate ourselves and each other from a early age.  My father could never make peace with significant elements of his personality, so of course, I was his worst nightmare come true, and his response to my being a "sissy" was to try to beat it out of me.  So I got beatings three times a week for most of my childhood.  He later confessed to me that he was trying to "beat it out" of me and asked my forgiveness.

The specific inspiration for tonight's epistle came from my attendance at a meeting of the "Tribe" in West Hollywood, a group of Gay men who meet once a month to discuss issues relating to being Gay.  Tonight's topic, "Otherness and Assimilation."   We all had various stories that reflect the daily challenges of trying to "fit in" while being very conscious of our "being different" in a way that can be particularly volatile, and the presumed fears of "What will happen" if we assert our issues in a group of "straight" people.

The concept of "privilege" was discussed significantly.  In racial terms, "White Privilege" is very simple.  It relates to all of the issues, fears and concerns that never occur to white people (like the issue of segregation in my youth), that form daily challenges for non-white or mixed people in our midst.  

For "Queer" people, it is all of the issues, fears and concerns that we consider on an hourly basis, that "straight" people never even think about.  Issues pertaining to love, family, relationships, employment, housing, survival and acceptance, to name a few.

If you need more specific contemplation, consider the persons you meet who you find "attractive" and you may or may not act on that attraction, mostly depending upon your marital (or relationship) status.   Presumably, those attractions cause you no internal or external conflict, the concept of "boy meets girl" is central to most of the literature in our society, and encouraged in song, poetry, literature, commerce and religion.

For us, it's "boy meets boy" or "girl meets girl", or "boy meets girl and boy" or "girl meets boy and girl" or some variation of that theme.  How do you take that one home to your family?  Or share with co-workers, have your love blessed at church, or get a "blessing" from the government so you can have access to your loved one's medical care, and make decisions if necessary for their well being.  Filing joint tax returns (at the federal level), inheritance rights, and the other few hundred legal protections that go along with being legally married.

So, on a daily basis, we are slapped in the face by all these things that straight people take for granted, and we are shut out of.  It's our version of the "White" and "Colored" signs of my youth, a constant reminder that we are not good enough, not equal and held in contempt by a larger and more powerful "them" who have passed over 260 ballot measures  in my lifetime (in the United States) to specifically exclude and separate me and my kind in the eyes of the law.  It is our version of "Jim Crow" and it is very real to us.

That's privilege, because "Straight" people get these things automatically, and we "Queers" have spent a lifetime waiting for the doors to open for us.

Dr. King is not a "Black Hero" (though his life and legacy represent the finest of the "Black Experience" in America, and in my mind, so does Malcolm X).  

Dr. King is an AMERICAN HERO, and if you hesitate at that concept, then perhaps you need to re-check your status as an "un-prejudiced" person.  

As one of the early proponents of this day becoming a holiday, I am personally thankful for the life and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. because he helped me to learn how to negotiate the very treacherous curves between "otherness and assimilation."  

As a fellow Christian, he taught me the true meaning of the hymn, "In Christ there is no east or west, in him no south or north, but one great fellowship of love, throughout the whole wide earth.  In him shall true hearts everywhere, their high communion find.  His service is the golden cord, close binding all mankind."

"I have the nerve to walk my own way, however hard, in my search for reality, 

rather than climb upon the rattling wagon of wishful illusions."

     - Letter from Zora Neale Hurston

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zora_Neale_Hurston

 to Countee Cullen

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countee_Cullen