I still find the ads completely offensive. I think they will contribute to more self-loathing in the lives of closeted and out gay people. I think they could incite violence towards gay people. I think Stand For Marriage DC is dead wrong and out to demoralize gay people–they know what message that ad sends. This isn’t about a vote as much as it is about keeping a people oppressed.
However, GLAA’s strategy is not to fight the ads. They are saying this is a Free Speech issue. Their thirty years in fighting for gay people stands for itself.
Rick Rosendall has been good enough to email me back and forth, and to comment on my comment on the GLAA forum. Here is Rick’s comment:
Jerome,
Yes, I know that some of us are closeted and struggling. Many are indeed victimized. If all of our problems were already solved, GLAA would not need to exist. So the fact that we are still at this shows that we understand that our work is not yet done. But the fact of injustice against us does not mean that we have to embrace victimhood as our identity. Power is not a commodity that someone else gives us; we gain it by asserting it, by standing up and speaking up for ourselves, and by organizing and doing all the things that GLAA has been doing since 1971. And the First Amendment has protected our advocacy. We cannot set it aside opportunistically because someone else’s free speech offends us. Instead, we respond to that offensive speech. And all the signs suggest that we are winning.
When you say, “Ads like these put marriage to a vote,” that is false. The ads call for putting marriage to a vote, yes. Let me be clear: Bishop Jackson and his allies have a right to place ads calling for an anti-gay ballot measure. They do not have a right to the ballot measure itself. The first is exercising their free speech, while the second would infringe the rights of others. GLAA has been fighting against the proposed ballot measure. We are responsible for the law that was passed by the D.C. Council 30 years ago prohibiting ballot measures that would have the effect of infringing rights under the D.C. Human Rights Act. Is it possible that Congress could interfere with the marriage equality bill? Yes, though it is unlikely. Is it possible that we could lose the court fight over the proposed initiative? Yes, though it is unlikely. We helped organize the Campaign for All D.C. Families in order that our community would be prepared for every contingency. We are not being lax or complacent. But the odds, and the tide of history, are with us.
While I still believe that it will be detrimental for GLBT people to see that ad all over DC, GLAA believes we’re about to win this one issue. I just hope it doesn’t come at a cost to ourselves. I still feel as if not fighting for the removal of this ad is paramount to accepting it, and the message it sends, whether we are emotionally impervious or not. Others find it as reinforcement for self-loathing. I’m ashamed of Stand For Marriage DC–and Christ would have nothing to do with them. Nothing.
I concede to GLAA, though. They know what they’re doing. So far only 26 people have read my entries on this subject, so I’m probably not going to start a grass roots protest of GLAA (even if I wanted to, which I don’t) nor will I make a difference in Washington DC.
My opinion is still my free speech. I still think the ads are a marketing nightmare for WMATA, but GLAA is assured that nothing will come of them. Okay, I’ll watch and learn. Let’s see what happens. If another California or Maine doesn’t happen, I’ll be thrilled. If it does, we need to question our tactics.
Interesting debate on what is and what is not Free Speech heating up in gay circles courtesy of Full Equality Now, GLAA, the ACLU and WMATA (the metrobuses of DC) as well as Advocate and Towleroad. See my earlier post on what’s happening here.
In summary, an anti-gay group has put full bus-length ads on the sides of WMATA buses asking for Same-Sex marriage to be put to a vote. Some gay groups (Full Equality Now) oppose the ads, some groups (GLAA and the ACLU) say the ads are just an exercise of free speech.
Many gay people in the comments section of sites that are reporting this news take opposing sides. Under question is just what the First Amendment covers and what it doesn’t.
What I don’t like is the smugness of those calling this a Free Speech issue, asking that people who disagree with them leave the country or shut up altogether. It’s a silencing of others, or calling them stupid, that seems ironic if you hold that Free Speech is so important. So is my right to disagree.
Zeke, a commenter on Towleroad’s site, made some great comments that I want to share:
Though I agree with the sentiments of JACK and others who defend the rights of people to say vile and ignorant things it drives me insane that JACK and others here, and elsewhere, continuously MISQUOTE, MISUSE AND MISTRANSLATE the First Amendment of the Constitution to make their point.
NO Amendment of the Constitution, FIRST or otherwise, addresses private companies, private individuals, private organizatins or ANYONE other than the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT from limiting a citizens speech. It CERTAINLY doesn’t limit one citizens right to respond negatively or censoriously to another person’s speech or to boycott a person, business or organization whose speech he/she finds objectionable. Why do people act as though negatively responding to something someone says is NOT an act of free speech that should be protected as much as the original free speech that offended?
PLEASE read the damned Constitution and the First Amendment before and understand what it says and means before you misquote it and misuse it to make a point that is valid without doing so.
[and later he says]
To be clear about what annoys me.
If people were calling on Congress to have the ad removed from the bus, THAT would calling for a First Amendment violation.
If people were calling for the City Council of DC to remove the ad, due to the fact that the Congress has veto power over any DC Council decision, THAT might very well be calling for a First Amendment violation.
Calling on the bus company to remove the ad, is NOT calling for a First Amendment violation.
Boycotting the bus company or anyone else responsible for the ad is NOT calling for a First Amendment violation.
Bitching and moaning about how offensive the ad is NOT calling for a First Amendment violation.
The first two examples would violate the First Amendment’s free speech protection.
The last three examples are examples of FREE SPEECH in response to FREE SPEECH.
You can’t claim to be an advocate for free speech in one breath and then claim that people shouldn’t do/say offensive or ignorant things in response to offensive and ignorant things.
Yep, we’re allowed to ask the buses to take down the posters–which has been my point. Though the buses may not sponsor the ads, they are carrying them around the city and should expect that some people will be offended by the BUS, not just the ad.
There is no censorship in asking WMATA to figure out which ads they should run. Certainly those people who have been comparing this ad to an ad put up by holocaust deniers or the KKK have a point. If they put up an ad like that today, they would be roundly criticized and the bus WOULD REMOVE THE AD. Make no mistake, the WMATA already practices self-censorship–which is their right (and not a First Amendment violation). We just wonder why they aren’t practicing it here.
The First Amendment has been challenged in court multiple times. Because of these court cases, we are not allowed to speak words that might incite violent overthrow of the government (the Sedition Act), or incite crime, or use “fighting words” that incites violence, and according to a court case, Fordyce vs. Frohnmayer, (Fordyce v. Frohnmayer, 763 F.Supp. 654, 656 [D.D.C. 1991]) OFFENSE was considered by the Supreme Court as a violation of Free Speech.
While the plaintiffs were not successful in their case (that a certain art exhibition hurt them spiritually) it was only because they had not attended the exhibition nor looked at the catalogue. But look at the judges response:
The court rejected the claim, especially as “plaintiffs do not even allege that they have either seen the exhibition or studied the catalogue . . . [and thus] have failed to show that they have endured any special burdens that justify their standing to sue as citizens.” Id. But the court left open the possibility that the plaintiffs might have a claim if “they had to confront the exhibition daily, . . . the exhibition was visible in the course of their normal routine, or . . . their usual driving or walking routes took them through or past the exhibition.” Id.
(taken from Freedom of Expression for the National Endowment for the Arts, an interdisciplinary education project partially funded by the American Bar Association, Commission on College and University Legal Studies through the ABA Fund for Justice and Education.)
I think this qualifies under the judges’ summation of Offense. Full Equality Now is right to ask for the removal of this ad.
This ad is an offense to an entire group of people when Stand for Marriage DC suggest that same-sex marriage rights are void because Stand For Marriage DC thinks gays don’t deserve them. While nothing requires Congress to step in, WMATA has the right to. In fact, we have the right to ask WMATA to include this ad under the heading of ads they already don’t put on the sides of buses. And WMATA has the right to take it down based on their own policy.
RIDERS have a right to ask for the ad to be removed, and to exercise their freedom to boycott the bus. There’s not a violation of free speech here.
And, if Fordyce vs. Frohnmayer is to be used, there’s a case for Congress to step in.
But asking for the removal of this ad is NOT A VIOLATION OF FREE SPEECH. This is, as Zeke said, an exercise in Free Speech in response to Free Speech.
The First Amendment doesn’t Allow Discrimination and Defamation: A response to Colbert King
How is this not mobile city-sponsored Discrimination?
In the Boxing Day edition of the Washington Post 2009, Colbert I. King had a column discussing whether Stand For Marriage, a group against marriage equality for GLBT people, had the right to post ads on Washington DC city buses. When Stand for Marriage DC put the ads on the metrobuses, an opposing group, Full Equality Now, took offense, and asked for the posters/ads to be removed.
Their case argued (according to King’s summary) that the posters should be removed
“…on the grounds that they disrespect gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) city residents. Full Equality Now asserts that the ads force GLBT people to “stare down discrimination as they board the bus to go somewhere or are even passed by an advertisement on the street.” That, says Full Equality Now, targets D.C. residents on the basis of sexual orientation, in opposition to both common decency and the standards of nondiscrimination in WMATA’s own policies.
“We do not deserve to face this message when we ride the bus,” the group wrote in a letter to WMATA General Manager John B. Catoe Jr.
King then asks “should they be taken down?”
He doesn’t have to answer right away because another group of people have jumped into the discussion–namely ”Mitch Wood, president of the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance; Arthur B. Spitzer, legal director of the ACLU of the Nation’s Capital; Jeffrey D. Richardson, president of the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club; Aisha C. Mills, president of Campaign for All D.C. Families; and activist Richard J. Rosendall.”
They wrote in response: ”As supporters of civil marriage equality, we also embrace the principle of free speech enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which makes our own advocacy possible. Indeed, the then-named Gay Activists Alliance thirty years ago won a court battle against WMATA for the right to place educational posters in Metrobuses with the message, ‘Someone In Your Life Is Gay.’ WMATA is a quasi-governmental body and is thus subject to the First Amendment. We, the undersigned, therefore urge you to reject the misguided censorship advocated by Full Equality Now DC.”
Speaking not only for themselves but also for people like me, they said: “Free speech is not only for those whose beliefs we find acceptable. The proper response to offensive speech is more speech. Your proper response to Full Equality Now DC, therefore, is that those who object to ads by Stand For Marriage DC are free to place their own.
“Thank you for resisting pressures to favor or disfavor particular viewpoints, from whatever political direction they may come.”
Because these gay people and the ACLU argue for the Freedom of Speech, King backs off, and agrees with them, saying
“So it was heartening to see how some citizens reacted to the issue raised by the Metrobus advertisements. The conflict provided a good — but rare — example of citizens standing up for the principle of protecting despised speech of a disagreeable speaker. We owe them thanks for supplying the essential ingredient that has been missing in this year’s freewheeling debates: tolerance.
And to think, it occurred in our nation’s capital. First Amendment and freedom lovers should be proud.”
I think, however, the Wood-Spitzer Alliance was a bit too quick in jumping back, curbing the Full Equality Now folks, and that King may have rushed in with bad judgment.
It’s nice that Wood-Spitzer Alliance (as King calls it) gives suggestion that if gay people don’t like the ads, they can defend themselves with other ads. Well, great. Let’s shell out money to pay for our dignity as we ride a city bus.
The First Amendment may give people free speech, but the Metrobuses are provided by the city, and the citizens pay for them. The riders have to pay for them again as they pay for their metrocards–meaning that city bus riders pay double for the city buses–twice as much as regular citizens. For a group called Stand for Marriage DC–who don’t ride the city buses–to use the citybuses as a billboard, targeting a certain demographic of bus riders with discrimination, means that the city is sanctioning approval for the ads, and can therefore be seen as promoting the ads–just as they promote all the ads seen on their buses (I’m sure they have to be approved).
Paid-discrimination on city-owned, tax-payer funded, rider-supported metrobuses targeting a minority of the riders shouldn’t be tolerated any more than racial slurs are covered by the First Amendment. While everyone is entitled to believe what they want, city-owned buses are responsible for the discriminatory messages they send to their riders.
Is Discrimination really a Freedom of Speech? While it means that you can’t go to jail for what you say, it can still have quite a social stigma if you’re talking on the wrong side of human rights. But, more importantly, are advertisements on metrobuses, where riders are trapped, forced to ride a certain bus to work, covered under the First Amendment? I think the Metrobuses, and the WMATA (Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority), should consider this again. Because if they allow the posters–they are forcing this discrimination on their riders.
Can you imagine “Blacks Should be Denied Marriage” or, “Jews Should Be Denied Marriage” or “Hispanics Should be Denied Marriage”? Really once you start down that road of discrimination, anything goes. Especially, I guess, if you can pay the city for the advertising space. Mitch Wood and Colby King, would you expect blacks, Jews or Hispanics to defend themselves with their own expensive ads? Or should the city defend its citizens from discrimination and hate? Does the city want to be known for a place that if you have the bucks you can slur anyone? Or a place that defends its citizens–black, white, Jewish, Hispanic or GLBT? If it would protect one, then it should protect all.
While a lot of discriminatory phrases (or racial slurs) may be covered under “freedom of speech” they still come with heavy consequences–ask Don Imus, Michael Richards and Isaiah Washington. I’m sure they would all like their careers back. No one asked the people offended if they’d like to do their own comedy act, their own radio show, to fight back. (Although many comedians and talk show hosts did… those discriminated against were not asked to defend themselves.)
If racial slurs aren’t “sanctioned” by the WMATA, then neither should discrimination on city buses aimed at any minority–especially a permanent minority like the GLBT community. Just because there are only 10% of us, does not give you the right to put on a public city bus, one I’m forced to ride, a message that reminds me that YOU have the power to keep me from finding equality in the USA.
Mr. King, could you rethink this? And would Salman Rushdie like that his quote was used to defend public discrimination on a city bus? Er…I’m not so sure. Stand for Marriage already has the right to offend–it is their choice. But it is now WMATA’s choice to offend its riders. WMATA should consider its role in this blatant discrimination and hate speech–any sign on city property that promotes inequality tells the tax-paying citizens that it’s okay to discriminate against them.
As Rosa Parks showed us, buses have a history of discrimination—but she also showed us that a movement for equality can start there.
Thinking of its riders, I wonder which road WMATA will choose.
_________
Upon further reflection: I had no idea till I saw the Advocate coverage of this that we weren’t talking a small ad poster that fits into the slot above one seat of the bus. We are talking the equivalent of a moving billboard on the side of the Metrobus. How can we compete with that?? How can GLAA say that this won’t make a difference? Do they understand the power of advertising?? As one responder to the Advocate article said, “It would be a cold day in Hell before an ad for the KKK appears on the side of buses — free speech or not.”
GLAA responded to this post, saying that the reason they took their stand was because we were winning. That they had been assured this would not come to a popular vote, that no one was interested. But those ads make it sound like “good American people” aren’t getting a chance to say what they think…and how long before politicians will bend to that pressure? And if this gigantic ad –which would be nearly impossible to counter (since what’s larger and more mobile than a city bus? And they’re all taken with these ads?) –if this gigantic ad pushes politicians into caving then GLAA will have been dead wrong. I still stand behind this post–that Freedom of Speech doesn’t include discrimination on city buses. I sense that Metrobus has a boycott coming. But then, who can afford to NOT take their bus?
Perhaps what makes me most angry about this Free Speech defense of Discrimination is that gay people are being asked to defend themselves everywhere. If we don’t put enough money into an advertising campaign that outdoes the opposition, we don’t get rights?? How is this American? To pay for your equality? It is not Colby King or GLAA that I’m mad at, as much as I’m mad at a nation that keeps requiring me to prove that I’m equal.
If we didn’t get that in the Constitution, nobody did.
In an article from the Washington Post, the Catholic Church has threatened to end its social services to the DC area if New York passes the Same-Sex Marriage bill. The Catholic Church contributes nearly 10 million dollars to programs that house the poor, the homeless,and give medical help to those who need it. But they don’t want to offer these services to same-sex couples. In effect, the church is saying that they want to choose who gets help.
Pretty sure this is not the way Jesus would do this. Requiring others to fit His spiritual requirements before he blessed them was never his M.O. Zaccheus, other tax collectors, prostitutes, those despised during his day were all given preferential treatment by Jesus who knew the religious establishment wasn’t meeting their needs, wasn’t caring about these groups. He didn’t choose who he would help–he helped everyone.
The Catholic Church is showing how the modern church, if it is not careful, will prove its own undoing. By threatening to stop doing good—ironic—in order to keep discriminating—odd—the church undermines its own mission and its own believability in this modern world. Who will believe in the LOVE of JESUS from a group who refuses to give it, and punishes those who can’t help themselves (the homeless, dying, poor) for the church’s own bigotry. It’s like doctors putting down their medicine until their demands are met.
You can’t use the poor and sick as pawns in a political or a religious game.
Sounds like the Council members aren’t listening to the church…or maybe they are, but the message they’re giving is that the church is proving its own irrelevance.
God help the Church. God help the Church. Worse– is that the Church, which does hold a great message of hope, and serves a great God, proves itself false and irrelevant when we need her the most. God help the Church.
A ten year old in Arkansas is refusing to say the Pledge of Allegiance in his class. ”Liberty and Justice for all,” he says, isn’t available for gays and lesbians in this country. And dadgum, he’s right.
Will Phillips, you are a hero! Good for you.
I saw a bit of this too on Fox News, Channel 24, must be local in Arkansas. The commentators never said gay rights, as Will said, but “homosexual” rights…. They’re commentary shows that there is not liberty and justice for all.
Until then, I think I’d sit with Will. Where there’s a Will, there’s a way.
Courtesy of Towleroad TV: Here’s Gov. Paterson on the marriage equality bill going through NY. Love his comparisons to the Emancipation Proclamation and the Dred Scott decision. I think Maine and California’s decisions might be the Dred Scott towards a huge breakthrough for Marriage Equality. Thanks Towleroad!
Hoping that New York proves a can-do state!
I get asked a lot which books I would recommend for those seeking some answers in their struggle to reconcile their faith with homosexuality. I’ve started compiling a list of books I found most helpful. On the top of the list is Jack Roger’s Jesus, the Bible and Homosexuality–with a study guide. For churches and individuals who are seeking answers, it’s thorough, complete, but not too heady.
When I was looking, I didn’t want answers based on “feelings” or “desires” or “wants”…. I needed a way to think of homosexuality as I think of other things: in accordance with the one book that holds a lot of importance and authority in my life–the Bible. If I couldn’t find a Biblical way to make it work–a way to make it work within my faith–I don’t know how I would have coped with being gay.
Christians have a worldview that includes a personal relationship with a god–the God. This is so radical that I think we’ve lost sight of how radical it is to talk like this, both inside the Christian community and what we sound like outside of it. But the truth is—we DO communicate with a god, and that God is seriously in love with us. He watches us individually as if we were the only person on Earth, and he cares what’s happening in our lives. So, we don’t want to hurt him, and we don’t want to do anything to mess up that relationship.
This is why many Christians who find out they are gay commit suicide. They can’t find a way to reconcile these two things. The Helpful Books page is a way, I think, for people to find the merging of their faith–INTACT–with their sexuality. If they are afraid of the “lifestyle” choices of other gays, they need not be—straight men and women also choose “lifestyles” that aren’t the most productive. You can choose to do whatever you want to do with this life you are given, straight or gay. The important part is to choose life.
The Books page is for anyone looking for life.
Thanks to the Leffew Family. What a cool idea: Take videos of your very normal two-parent household and put them on youtube for all to see. There are two kids. There are two dads. There’s nothing un-normal about these videos. The parents, like some parents, occasionally need to join in a protest or walk in a parade–nothing other kids haven’t been pulled into before. For the most part, the videos are sweet, very home-oriented videos of a “normal” family.
Enjoy the compilation here when they heard they were getting an award.
Congratulations! The more people see different families functioning together, the less they’ll think of Armageddon when they hear about a two-dad or two-mom family.
I’ve noticed a widening gap happening between Christians and gays. The churches most likely to welcome them are less interested in orthodoxy, and gays are less and less interested in anything that has to do with organized religion, which has been, in the past, little more than organized hatred. And for closeted gays who are part of orthodox churches—I’m talking to you, Mr. Baptist, as well–the thought of leaving church doctrine behind when they change to a more accepting church–is as difficult as coming out. Gays shouldn’t have to come out of Orthodoxy, too. And yet, the refuges are set up on the outskirts of doctrine.
Naturally, it’s done this way because doctrine was the scourge used to whip us. So, as my MCC pastor once said, “we give people what they can handle right now.” And she believed that the scarring was so thick in the gay community that anything smacking of rules was going to be too stringent. I agree partially. We have to re-emphasize love–even over-emphasize it–because it has been de-emphasized in favor of judgment in most evangelical churches. For those running from scripture-heavy bludgeons, some inclusive churches are choosing instead to either debunk regular orthodoxy, emphasizing a circus tent of interesting theories, played merely for their challenges to conservative, normative theology {God as Woman, Jesus as Gay, The not-so divine Jesus, the less-than-miraculous God, the Error-Filled Bible}, or churches play the melody of love as often as they can, as a soother for pain, while ignoring any regulations or doctrinal beliefs.
Inclusive Orthodoxy, a website started by Justin Cannon, hopes to bridge that gap by giving churches who preach orthodoxy the skills and knowledge to be inclusive, and to give churches who are inclusive some understanding of how to keep or preach orthodoxy. Mostly, though, it helps people like me who want to keep my beliefs and my sexuality intact. I’d like to go to a Baptist church that values me as a gay man. They also list links for finding inclusive orthodox churches in your area, have topics on Bible and Homosexuality, women in the church, how to preach orthodoxy, how to practice inclusion.
Really, this website is the needed bridge between these two ideologies. We can’t afford to exclude gays from knowing Christ–even if that image has been tarnished over time; and we can’t allow churches to exclude gays any longer.
Gays can make great, orthodox Christians–whatever brand of denomination that is! We’ve been your true believers when we were closeted. We’d like to be your true believers when we’re Out.
Great argument by Dr. John Corvino.
