Bilgrimage: A Question for Liberal America: If Not Now, When?

Still thinking about the postings on yesterday’s Arkansas Times blog, in response to Mr. Obama’s clarion call for Americans to recognize that equality is a moral imperative when it comes to how the nation treats its gay citizens.

I read on yesterday’s Towleroad blog that Obama spoke out clearly again in Beaumont, Texas. As he addressed a crowd about the evils of discrimination—against people of color, against women—he received loud acclaim. When he included gays and lesbians, the audience fell silent. He then told the crowd that homophobia is unchristian, and got at least a few cheers.

Homophobia: the prejudice that dare not speak its name—as in being identified squarely and unambiguously as prejudice, as discrimination that is just as evil as racial or gender discrimination. It takes courage to name this prejudice in American culture today, particularly when one is a political leader seeking to win a national election. It takes courage for an African-American leader to name this ugly prejudice, since it continues to be far too acceptable among African Americans who rightly decry racial prejudice to discriminate on grounds of sexual orientation.

And on today’s Bilerico blog, I read that the vigil to remember African-American gay teen Simmie Williams in Ft. Lauderdale on Wednesday addressed “what many see as a growing war on gay and transgendered people in Florida.” Bilerico’s report calls for a frank, open conversation in Florida and nationwide about homophobic violence:

“It is time that Florida, and all of America, begin to have the conversation about hate-based violence and the terror that hate crimes inflict. We demand that EVERY official from every level of government needs to speak out and say we will not tolerate this violence in our communities.”

Reading that statement leaves me with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach—primarily because of the senseless waste of gay youths’ lives, but also because of experiences that I’ve recounted in previous postings. I went to Florida in 2006 to take a job at a United Methodist institution that prides itself on its civic engagement initiatives. I was charged with leading faculty to develop a curriculum to enhance civic engagement on the part of students and faculty.

On one occasion, I made reference to GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network) as an organization whose model of civic engagement faculty might wish to examine, as they crafted civic engagement initiatives for students. For citing that organization as one among many models of civic engagement, I was punished, told that I had “put my lifestyle into the face of colleagues.”

It should not be this way. It was evident to me from the time I arrived at this church-based college that there was a real, a serious, problem with homophobia among students and in the community at large. Since the college’s civic engagement curriculum is based on the belief that students must be taught to involve themselves in every social ill found in their community, it never occurred to me in my wildest dreams that a church-based, civic-engagement oriented college would punish faculty leaders who called for open, honest discussion of homophobic violence—or, for that matter, of youth violence against homeless people.

We have a long way to go: Equality is a moral imperative. And even the churches and their educational institutions cannot skirt that moral imperative. Churches fail dismally in their moral responsibility to educate when they remain silent about homophobic violence. Churches make themselves part of the problem and not the solution, when they punish those they empower to deal with social problems, when those punished have sought to include homophobic violence among the social problems to be addressed.

These reflections lead me to wonder again about those bloggers on yesterday’s Arkansas Times forum about Obama’s moral imperative statement. I wonder, in particular, about all the “liberals” across the nation who seem to believe, as quite a few bloggers stated yesterday, that now is not the right time for the nation and its leaders to decry homophobia.

What can they be thinking, I wonder? I’d like to ask these liberals: What precisely is ambiguous to you about that statement, Equality is a moral imperative?

What do you imagine those of us who are gay and living beside you should do? What is your advice to your gay children, parents, brothers, sisters, neighbors, co-workers?

Do you want us to stand and wait for the crumbs you are willing to dole out, as you sit at the table and feast?