by Dwight Cathcart

by Dwight Cathcart

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Focussing on the most important thing

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Now it is time to focus on the Supreme Court. 

Here are the stakes: Ruth Bader Ginsburg was born in 1933, Stephen Breyer in 1938, and Anthony Kennedy in 1936. These three justices were part of the majority in both major GLBT civil rights cases of the last twenty years. It is possible that one of these justices will have to be replaced before the next presidential election. If Romney is elected, and if he has a chance to nominate a replacement for any of these three justices, it is likely that he will choose someone like Samuel Alito or John Roberts, or, even worse, like Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas, who dissented in both of these cases.  

If that were to happen, this would be the result: Lawrence v. Texas, decided in 2003, which overturned all sodomy laws, could itself be overturned. The majority on that decision would flip from a presumed Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan, to a four person dissent facing a majority composed of Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Alito and a new conservative justice. Romer v. Evans, decided in 1996 by a 6 to 3 opinion, recognized that gay people must be constitutionally protected. The majority on that case would flip from a presumed Kennedy, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan, to a four person dissent facing a majority composed of Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Alito, plus the new conservative justice. 

The point here is that, were Romney to win the election, the makeup of a court would make it possible for a conservative majority to work its will with our rights. We are one vote on the Supreme Court away from being a different kind of nation, and the election of Romney would supply conservatives with the chance to get that vote. See also Daily Kos. Time. and Huffington Post. 

When you consider what to do with your support this summer and fall and with your vote, consider this: there is no more important issue facing gay people than the makeup of the Supreme Court. 
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Friday, August 17, 2012

Travolta and the failure of our language on sex

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Last week people wanted John Travolta to come out, and he wouldn’t, and then writers retracted their requests, ending up with statements like, “Nobody’s personal life is my business.” We think very badly about sex in our culture.

Mary Elizabeth Williams, writing in Salon, says “frankly, if being a guy who regularly has sex with other guys doesn’t make you gay, I’m not sure what does.” She gets close to the heart of the confusion here.  She would have “being gay” defined by the man’s actions. It’s not. Sucking cock does not make you gay. Even enjoying sucking cock, does not make you gay. Sleeping with women does not make you straight either. In our culture, during my whole life, we have told ourselves that a series of actions made us a certain kind of person. That is emphatically not so. A man’s sexuality is defined by how a man thinks and feels. I have only to look at the humanity around me to see that this is so. 

Consider these things: There are more than two genders and gradations of each one, with no clear bright line separating anything, as each story of a transgender person tells us. And how do we find out what gender a person is? That person will tell us. My desire may likewise take many forms—life-long for one gender and for one person or for several people for a shorter period or for many people. I may, in fact, have two or more different kinds of relationships simultaneously—a long-term, permanent relationship based on the totality of the way humans can connect and a series of short impermanent relationships based on sex, or vice versa. In and Out don’t describe anything real. I am what I am. I don’t need coming out as a gateway to myself nor do I need coming out to tell other people about such a private thing as my sex. In short, I can be a major Hollywood star, in a long-term marriage, and can have sex occasionally with men, and it’s nobody’s business but my own. (What I can’t do, of course, is be publicly homophobic while sucking cock.)

In these matters, one size does not fit all. The Christian church did humanity in the West a huge disservice by trying to impose one set of vows on all people in the Christian marriage liturgy. Some people wanted monogamy, some didn’t. The agreements people arrive at to give structure to their relationships should be open to occasional renegotiation by the people involved. No one else can know the factors that are brought to bear upon any person’s choices. The choice is private.

I have nothing to say about John Travolta’s sex. On the other hand, no public figure has anything to say about my sex, either. I seek what is right for me, with one great commandment governing all—do no harm and allow no harm to be done to us or our children.
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Sunday, August 5, 2012

When Larry Kramer and 200 men taught us how to fight

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My partner is out of town for the weekend, and this afternoon I went by myself to Dark Knight Rises. Much of the outdoor shooting takes place on Wall Street in pitched battles between the New York police and the bad guys. In the first image, Wall Street is cleared of traffic and the cops are crowded at one end of the block in front of the Stock Exchange. The bad guys are crowded down at the other. Powerful image.
It made me think of the first big AIDS demonstration, which was in the same place—on March 24, 1987, in front of the New York Sock Exchange. There were about 200 gay men and women. They stopped traffic, and by doing so, captured the media. Because many of the participants had AIDS, they had manipulated the cops into putting on rubber gloves and masks, and they looked terrible. Our guys were in all the papers the next morning—except the Times—and it was clear from the media that the guys with AIDS were the good guys. It was from this demonstration that Larry Kramer formed ACT UP, focussed on the chokehold that the FDA had on AIDS medications. 
It was a small demonstration—two hundred men and women—in comparison to all those policemen in Dark Knight Rises, and what I was thinking of this afternoon, sitting in the cinema, was how huge the effect of ACT UP had been on vast stretches of American life—on public health, on the practice of medicine, on pharmacology, and, of course, on the place of gay people in American public life.  
A friend made the same point about the Stonewall Riots. They were really very small, weren’t they? Well, yes. But it doesn’t take vast throngs of men and women to change the nation, if the few you have are of the right sort. Our few had science on their side, and the Constitution, and, of course, morality. No wonder they were powerful. And another thing. The men and women at this first demonstration of the group that became ACT UP taught us that decorum is a weapon the other side uses against us. So ACT UP taught us again (we have to keep learning this) to stop being polite.
On AIDS and the transformation of America, read Steven Epstein, Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. 
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Thursday, July 26, 2012

Boy Scouts, here are our medals

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When I was thirteen or fourteen in South Carolina—we're talking about the early fifties here—the Boy Scouts were different from all the other activities a boy could do. We went on weekend overnight campouts to some local "woods," and I looked forward to it all week long.  At night, after the campfire and after the songs and stories, and after whatever else we did, I rolled out my sleeping bag next to one of the adult leaders, and then, when it was dark, I reached behind me and found the Scout leader's arm and pulled it over me. I loved that. It was the only place in my life where I could snuggle up close to a man. The adult allowed his arm to remain across me for a few minutes and then he removed it. Often I got his arm again and pulled it over me, and after a few minutes he pulled it back. This helped me to go to sleep. When I had grown up some, I regretted having lost those moments at the overnight camping trips with the Boy Scouts, but the memory of them kept me going until, several years later, I was awarded Eagle Scout rank and Order of the Arrow. I have forgotten what the Order of the Arrow was, but I remember believing at the time that it was important.
I don't believe that organizations like the BSA contribute much to the growth and development of children. I don't think I am a different adult from what I would be if I hadn't gone out for Scouts, but I do remember vividly lying in my sleeping bag next to my Scout leader after dark and feeling warm and protected and comforted, when I didn't get those feelings at any other place in my life. At a time in my life when I felt isolated, alone, fearful, inadequate, Scouts gave me comfort. 
It is the memory of lying in my sleeping bag next to my Scout leader—and my gratitude for that memory—that has prevented me from returning my Eagle Scout Badge to BSA. Even though it is clear that the BSA has turned its back on me, I didn't feel I could turn my back on that memory of that man who understood what some boys need and let me get what I needed from him.
In the intervening years, my son was born and grew up and chose not to enter Scouts. Now my grandson is approaching that age. Given the situation, I am going to stay away from his decision to go into Scouts or not. I doubt that he does. 
But today, I have mailed off to Irving, Texas, my Eagle Scout badge and that sash that Boy Scouts wear with all the merit badges. My partner, C, asked what I was doing, and then said, "Wait a minute." And in a minute he came back with his badges. He said, "Here, put these in too." And I did.  
Returning these badges is a way of coming out to the Boy Scouts of America, letting them know that they have—and had—gay scouts they have to respect. When we have in our culture organizations like the Boy Scouts of America and, up until the repeal of DADT, the armed services, it is important to constantly inform them and everybody in the public that we are gay and that we're here, that, in fact, we have always been here, gay in the Scouts and gay in the military (I was gay in the military from 1959 to 1961), and in all the other organizations that have pretended they could change reality, get rid of us and make us not exist. We’ve always existed, and we haven't ever gone away, there are still gay boys in the Scouts now, and the Boy Scouts of America can’t make us go away, just by passing some silly little rule in Irving, Texas. There are always going to be gay boys in the Boy Scouts of America. Do the Scouts really think they can succeed where the Army, the Marines, the Navy, and the Air Force of the United States of America have failed? 

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Friday, July 20, 2012

Our literature, our lives, coming out

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Some writers have taken “coming out” as the beginning of the plot and then made a novel of it. It might start, “In 1993, when I was fourteen, I came out to my best friend….” Others have taken “coming out” to be the climax of the plot, whose final sentence might end, “And then, in 2006, I came out and lived happily ever after….” 
If you’re a new novelist, there are several problems with these plots. One is that we’ve read these novels already. A more serious complaint is that, whether you make coming out the climax of the novel or the beginning of the novel, a major part of a person’s life is going to be ignored (or have to be imagined). In some kinds of fiction, that’s OK. When Shakespeare’s lovers get married in the fifth act, we are not invited to wonder what comes next. 
But some kinds of modern fiction, being more realistic, do wonder. For many of us, coming out happens somewhere in the middle of our lives, after some major event and before some other major event.  Even a guy coming out at ten years old has some pretty intense stuff going on, before and after.   
When I sat down to write Race Point Light, I planned to base this novel loosely on a typical life of a man in my generation, and all the different parts of that life were real life, every single part of it—his childhood, the run-up to his marriage, his marriage, his children’s births, the run-up to his divorce, his divorce, his coming out, his move to an urban gay community, AIDS, his meeting the man who was going to become his partner, their fighting disease together—and it makes a different kind of novel.  In Race Point Light, coming out is neither the end of anything nor is it the beginning of anything. Much more realistic. There is nothing about this life that is ever after.
Race Point Light tells a story that begins a long time before the narrator comes out and that ends a long time afterward. It’s the story of a man’s life that is typical of many gay men in post-war generations. Race Point Light explores the drama in these lives, and it has the added advantage of being close to the way we really experience ourselves. There is no fairy tale here.
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