by Dwight Cathcart

by Dwight Cathcart

Friday, August 16, 2013

What makes good people good

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This week the news is out of Russia and has to do with the anti-gay laws there, their effects on Russian LGBT people and on the Winter Olympics 2014, and what the rest of the world is going to do about it. First response was from gay bars around the world dumping Stoli down the drain, then from people who said Stoli was made in Latvia and owned by Russians in Luxembourg. What to do? Then came the discussion over whether the anti-gay laws would be enforced against gay Olympic athletes and against gay travelers visiting Russia for the Olympics. Apparently. People proposed moving the Olympics to Vancouver, which has an Olympic site already built from its own successful Winter Olympics in 2010.

People have been weighing in on whether it is right to move the Olympics—or to cancel them entirely this Olympiad. These people speak of the Olympic athletes who have trained for four years and who expect to be given the opportunity to test their skills against other athletes from around the world. People compare the right of these athletes with the right of gay and lesbian people in Russia to be safe. This is a nice argument, if you can ignore the LGBT persons whose rights are being trampled on so that an athletic contest can take place.

I don’t know at what point I would think it is legitimate to abandon the defense of the rights of lesbian and gay persons so that some other event can take place, but, so far in my life, I have never encountered such a moment. The people making the decision to abandon the defense of the rights of gay people are all—pay attention here—straight people. I would have some respect for this process if I saw that gay people were being asked to give up the defense of their rights in favor of some other, greater,  good. But actually, there is no other, greater, good that exists that could possibly justify the gay person giving up his human rights. We are being told to give up the defense of our rights, because this other thing is more important to the whole world than your rights are to you. But you didn’t ask the gay person, before you bartered away his rights. This is blackmail, and the gay community should not submit to it. 

Beware of people who want you to make a severe sacrifice for them. Good people don’t do that. Good people sacrifice for you.
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Monday, August 5, 2013

This is what is essential about us

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There has always been the danger that the more assimilated we are, the more we will become like them and therefore lose what makes us unique. Assimilate us, and eventually we disappear. This has been a danger for Jews, for black people, for women, for Native Americans, and for every wave of new immigrants to arrive on these shores. It may be that assimilation means loss of identity. Assimilation has been the technique our culture has used since the beginning to cope with new populations: It will make them like us.

This is bad because the gay community has learned how to conduct its romantic and sexual relationships without benefit of the law. That’s major, and in that area we have it all over heterosexual people. We conduct our relationships without benefit of divorce, charges of adultery, property settlements. We know the difference between sex and love and can talk about which persons are available as sexual partners without having the state play a part in any of these arrangements. And when necessary, we know the point at which our agreements among ourselves need to be re-negotiated. If we’re assimilated—just because there are more of them than there are of us—the probability is that we will drop all this and take up the practices of heterosexuals. 

We have developed a way of preserving the freedom of individual persons while enabling that person to form various kinds of important  relationships. We know how to conduct long-term relationships without any officer of the state anywhere to be seen. Every week, as new states offer marriage equality, we see pictures of couples who have been together twenty, thirty, forty years, who are now getting married. We have been refining our ability to live long and successful lives with no partner, and we show every week that we know how to live alone. We already know how to do it. We make a contribution to our culture just to the extent that we don’t allow heterosexuals to make us forget that we know these things. We need to teach them what we know. We need to say, very loudly and repeatedly, We know these things. And then we need to say, You folks need to learn what we know. 

There’s another reason that it’s bad for us to assimilate. If we care about the civilization we are a part of, we care about preserving our ethnic heritage—that is, the ethnic heritage of gay people— just as much as we care about the ethnic heritage of the various waves of Africans who were brought here or of European Jews before and after World War II, or of the tribes of Native Americans who’ve always been here. 

What we need from heterosexuals is the equal protection of the laws. What they need from us is our difference. 
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Designed by Edward Wharton.