Frank Cocozzelli Presents His Annual Coughie Award: And the Winners Are . . . Maureen Mullarkey and Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone!

It's that time of year — Coughie time! I have come to look forward to Frank Cocozzelli's annual announcement of his Coughlin Award, given to the U.S. Catholic who has, well, here's Frank's explanation of what the Coughie is all about: 

Maureen Mullarkey Strikes Again (and a Reminder About Commonweal Catholic Centrism)

Remember Maureen Mullarkey? Sure you do! Back in 2009, when it became public that she had contributed to the prop 8 campaign to strip gay citizens of California of the right to civil marriage, though she had made a name for herself as an artist painting drag queens, I posted commentary about her. And then I noted her cozy connections to, well, see my conclusion below.*

More Mullarkey: Maureen Mullarkey and the American Catholic Center

I’ve been following with interest the story of artist and art critic Maureen Mullarkey this week. As I reported on Wednesday, Mullarkey has painted iconic depictions of drag queens and gay pride parades, and speaks of the latter as "marvelous spectacle" and "assertion[s] of solidarity" (http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2009/02/dana-rudolph-educational-challenge-of.html). She claims to celebrate these spectacles as “an erotic celebration loosed for a day to keep us all mindful that Dionysus is alive, powerful and under our own porch.”

Yet now that the final list of donors to prop 8 was released recently, it appears that Mullarkey donated $1000 to the cause to ban gay marriage in California.

As I’ve tried to understand the mentality that permits a person to claim to celebrate a group of people to whom she wishes to deny human rights, I’ve found that Mullarkey has an . . . interesting . . . history. In addition to giving repeatedly to Republican politicians (including McCain-Palin), Mullarkey donated to the infamous Swift Boat Vets group in 2004 (www.newsmeat.com/fec/bystate_detail.php?st=NY&last=MULLARKEY&first=MAUREEN).

This, it will be recalled, is the smear group whcih alleged that war hero John Kerry had a checkered military record, as he campaigned against George W. Bush—who had not served in Vietnam, as Kerry had. Mullarkey is unabashed about her support of this smear group. In 2004, she posted on the Dust in the Light blog to compare the Swift Boat group to the “truly wretched of the earth,” whose voice is always in danger of being suppressed by the powerful (http://dustinthelight.timshelarts.com/lint/000850.html).

The previous year, on the same blog, Mullarkey responded to a posting about marital fidelity with the following stunning observations:

By every account I've seen that deals with the issue of monogamy among homosexual men, sexual infidelity seems to be the glue [unglue] that permits the relationship to continue.

That is the reverse of heterosexual relations in which infidelity--even when it is honored in the breach--is considered a sin against the partner and against marriage itself. Or, as a gay friend said to me, "Fidelity means something different to me than it does to you." In short, gay marriage signals an end to the equation of monogamy and sexual fidelity (http://dustinthelight.timshelarts.com/archives/00001894.htm).

Straights, good; gays, bad; heterosexuals value fidelity; homosexuals practice infidelity: in case her simplistic (and stereotypical, and intentionally demeaning) analysis here wasn’t sufficiently clear, Mullarkey posted a p.s. to the following statements, noting,

In all, parenting is part of the air breathed by heterosexual couples. It is absent from homosexual male relationships and the majority of lesbian ones as well. The institution was designed for stable parenthood, not to gratify adults' needs for recognition. Do we want to add to those conditions that erode its purpose?

Parenting is part of the air breathed by heterosexual couples. It is absent from gay male relationships (all: no qualification here) and most lesbian ones. Try telling that to the multitude of committed (and faithful) gay couples raising families across the country—who seem curiously outside the scope of Mullarkey's vision. But, then, recognizing the existence of such families and their contributions to society would force Mullarkey to revise the preconceived ideological stance she has taken regarding gay lives and gay relationships. The facts are so confusing, when we have already decided what we believe.

Mullarkey’s views about gay marriage (abetted, it seems, by the testimony of the gay “friend” cited in the preceding dismissal of the notion that gay people can be monogamous) remain unchanged. After her donation to prop 8 was made public this week, she informed the media that "marriage is the union of husband and wife - a premise so simple, so fundamental that nature and civilization itself both testify to the truth of it” (http://lohud.com/article/20090204/NEWS02/902040414/-1/newsfront).

In the same interview, Mullarkey depicts herself as the victim, not the aggressor: she likens the “attacks” on her by gay people outraged that she benefits financially from the gay community while removing rights from us to Nazi "brownshirt tactics."

Mullarkey also alludes to that gay “friend” of hers once again in this interview, as she maintains that she can have regard for “individual gay persons” while, well, bashing the group to which those individuals belong:

Artists are not in the habit of imposing ideological conformity on one another or demanding it from others. Moreover, regard for individual gay persons does not require assent to a politicized assault on bedrock social reality and the common good.

I’m always fascinated when those who stereotype and demean gay human beings play the my-gay-friend card—as Mullarkey's candidate Mrs. Palin did during the recent presidential campaign. When I hear the Mullarkeys and Palins of the world tell us about their gay friend, I can’t help hearing echoes of those conversations about which I blogged in my previous posting discussing Mullarkey’s prop 8 contribution—the conversations of my elders as I came of age in the Civil Rights period in the American South.

As I noted in that posting, I can remember my uncle (and countless other white folks of the same time and place) declaring, as they stoutly opposed black civil rights,

I have black friends. Lots of them. Good ones.

But they know their place and they stay in it.

Interesting, isn’t it, how it’s possible to have “friends” among those whose humanity you relegate to a second-class status, to a place beneath you? Interesting, too, that I never actually met or heard the real voices of those black friends of my uncle—and that reporters could never actually find that gay “friend” of Mrs. Palin.

I’d be interested to hear from Maureen Mullarkey’s gay “friend” now that her donation to prop 8 has been made public.

Mullarkey has played the Nazi card before, by the way, as she attacks those who disagree with her right-wing views. Her Studio Matters website contains transcripts of letters to the Nation in 1987, responding to her review of Andrea Dworkin’s Intercourse and Catherine McKinnon’s Feminism Unmodified (www.studiomatters.com/essays/porn2.html). Readers Pauline B. Bart and Jane Mansbridge find Mullarkey’s review of these two ground-breaking feminist works “vitriolic and unreasoned,” as does Mary Lee Sargent, who finds that Mullarkey does a “trash job” on the two books.

Both letters also note that their writers were disturbed by Mullarkey’s playing of the Nazi card. Bart and Mansbridge argue that “the use of Nazi imagery to describe their books is both inappropriate and shocking, and trivializes what happened in the Holocaust.” Sargent is equally incisive:

Aside from the lesbian hating in her review, most offensive were the references to Dworkin and MacKinnon as storm troopers, Hitlers and Nazis, taking out after men (Jews). This is crude, racist propaganda reminiscent of the frequent claim that black people are reverse racists when they criticize whites. Women are reverse sexists or even fascists when they criticize men, their ideas and sexual practices. Jews were an oppressed and despised group in. fascist Europe; the fascists were the oppressors. Men cannot be equated with Jews because they are not the oppressed and despised group in "Amerika." Women are. Just read Mullarkey's piece again if you don't believe it.

Perhaps my saddest discovery of all, as I’ve sought to understand Mullarkey’s support of prop 8 this week, is that she has written for the distinguished centrist Catholic journal Commonweal. Her website autobiography proudly notes this fact (www.maureenmullarkey.com/addenda/addenda.html). Numerous google hits confirm the connection.

As I’ve said before (http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2009/02/brother-that-dare-not-speak-his-name.html), I find Commonweal and other centrist-liberal American Catholic journals often impervious to gay human beings in general and gay Catholic brothers and sisters in particular—impervious to our very existence, to our real lives and real voices. In fact, I find the American Catholic center far more hospitable to those who demean and stereotype gay human beings (as Mullarkey does proudly and defiantly) than to those who are gay.

A world that has abundant room for Mullarkey and none for its gay brothers and sisters is not a world in which I belong, especially as that world talks on and on about love, inclusion, catholicity, and communion. Love etc. is hardly the message I take away from Mullarkey's musings about gay people and gay lives.

But that’s the point, isn’t it, with these centrist Catholics: we don’t belong. We’re not invited in, not really. It’s so much easier, after all, to report entre nous what our gay “friend” whispers to us about the gay lifestyle, as we discusses gay issues and gay lives and the gay place in church and world.

That is, it’s easier (if perhaps not entirely just or entirely charitable), when we don’t really want to revise anything at a fundamental level—including our own place in the scheme of things.

Dana Rudolph: The Educational Challenge of Attaining Gay Visibility

Dana Rudolph has an interesting piece in yesterday’s 365Gay news (www.365gay.com/opinion/rudolph-educating-our-allies). It’s about the continuing need for gay folks to involve ourselves with our allies in an educational process about our lives as gay citizens.

Rudolph notes that she had a conversation last week with the straight parents of her son. These are straight allies of the gay community, who have LGBT friends and support gay rights. Since tax season is upon us, Rudolph happened to mention the hassle she and her partner go through every year as they file separate tax returns, and the penalties they incur as a result.

The straight couple were astonished. They had no idea that gay couples—including married ones—have to file separate “single” tax returns which economically penalize gay couples, and make the challenge of raising children more difficult. And Rudolph, in turn, was astonished—by what even straight allies of LGBT people continue not to know about our everyday, nitty-gritty lives, about what we are sometimes put through as we make our way in the world, trying to carry on and do the best we can with the cards dealt to us.

Rudolph calls on the gay community to continue educating our allies about our lives. As she notes, we necessarily spend a lot of our time and energy combating those who try to make our lives living hell. But even among those who love and support us, while they do not live in skin like ours, there are still misperceptions and large information gaps.

Rudolph notes,

As important as it is to challenge those biased against LGBT families, it is equally important to work towards strengthening our allies. It is not enough that they agree with the need for equality, though that is a start. We must help them understand the specifics of how inequality hurts us and the fact that it still does so, even as marriage equality continues to spread.

We must also make sure to convey that LGBT rights don’t begin and end with marriage equality, but extend to employment protections, anti-hate crimes and anti-bullying legislation, adoption rights, transgender rights, and more.

I agree. I’m not sure I would choose the word “education” for the process of back-and-forth communication that I think needs to occur between the gay community and well-disposed folks at the center. I think I myself might choose the word “dialogue,” since it avoids possible misunderstandings of the word “education” as “talking down to.” But, regardless of what term we use, Rudolph's point is well-taken and important.

One of my goals with this blog is to try to spur such dialogue. In my experience, it’s sorely needed. What people don’t know about the experiences of “ordinary” gay and lesbian citizens would fill many books. I can recall my surprise several years ago when I was challenged by the president of a college at which I worked to talk frankly with a co-worker she had placed in authority over me, who seemed intent on targeting me and several other openly gay men at our workplace.

This administrator succeeded in having two of the men fired on grounds that seemed murky to me. When I protested both firings, she turned her ire on me. The president wanted us to talk to see if we could find common ground.

This co-worker happened to be an African-American woman—a well-educated one with a doctorate from an ivy-league university. When we met and shared our experiences about struggling with discrimination, I was very surprised to find that this well-educated woman had no idea—not a clue—that I had no legal right to visit my partner if he happened to be hospitalized. She had no idea in the world that I or any other gay person anywhere in the U.S. might go to a hospital, ask to see a sick partner, and be forbidden that right.

She did not know that, if I were violently assaulted solely for being gay, I could not turn to federal hate-crime laws for protection. She did not know that I had no legal protection from being fired simply because I was gay.

I’m not sure that our conversation resulted in a great deal of education. There are times, I have concluded, when people simply do not want to know—to know better. People sometimes do not want to know better, because knowing implicates them. It challenges them to confront their own prejudices and misperceptions. It nudges them to widen their sympathy to include those they may have dismissed as the demeaned other.

On this blog, I keep hammering at the center—I keep trying to spur dialogue with the folks who occupy the center—because I have the strong sense that those who occupy the center-liberal area of the public forum are not strongly committed to gay rights. Or to open, honest conversation about gay issues. Or to the kind of dialogue that might open their own eyes and the eyes of others about gay lives.

Some of the ignorance at the center is willful ignorance. It’s the kind of ignorance with which we allow ourselves to live when we don’t want to listen, to see, to understand our own complicity in what happens to others. Some of it is due to liberal unwillingness to stand in solidarity with those on the margins. Liberalism is a political philosophy of calculation rather than of solidarity—a political stance we take when we want to try to guess which way the wind will blow so that we can blow with the wind and end up on the right side.

There is a fascinating story about this dynamic on a number of blog sites today, including Joe.My.God's blog (http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2009/02/maureen-mullarkey-prop-8-supporter.html). Now that a final list of those who contributed to the battle to pass prop 8 (and ban gay marriage) in California has been released, one of the surprising names that people have found on this list is that of artist Maureen Mullarkey. Mullarkey has painted drag queens and depictions of gay pride parades that are considered iconic.

According to Joe.My.God, on her website, Mullarkey states that gay parades are a "marvelous spectacle" and "assertion of solidarity." She characterizes gay pride parades as follows: "It is an erotic celebration loosed for a day to keep us all mindful that Dionysus is alive, powerful and under our own porch.”

Mullarkey donated $1000 to the cause to ban gay marriage in California.

Fascinating: on the one hand, an artist benefits from the gay community through depictions of members of that community, and she praises that community for putting on great shows. On the other hand, she wants to prevent members of that same community so adept at Dionysian celebration from marrying.

What’s going on here? As I thought earlier today about the dynamic underlying this seemingly conflicting set of impulses—what some Methodist friends of mine refer to as the hug-slap dynamic of their church vis-à-vis gay folks—I remembered a conversation I once overheard my uncle having during the Civil Rights struggle of the late 1950s.

My uncle prided himself on being a good old boy who enjoyed the company of other good old boys. Those old boys included black as well as white co-workers and friends (or, perhaps "friends" is more accurate, in the case of his black co-workers). On the occasion that has lodged in my memory, my uncle and several family members were talking about their (fatuous and self-serving) hope to keep their “friendships” with African Americans alive while resisting the civil rights for which said friends were fighting.

Here’s how my uncle put it:

“I have black friends. Lots of them. Good ones.”

“But they know their place and they stay in it.”

And that, dear ones, is, I fear, the message that Maureen Mullarkey and many other of our “allies” and “friends” want to give us. You’re fine as long as you entertain me and make me pretty. Please do keep dressing hair, arranging flowers, decorating my house, dancing and singing. Make me feel sexy with your decadent celebrations, which remind me that there is more to life than paying bills and shlepping to the grocery store.

But please don’t ask to enter “normal” professions like teaching, ministry, the law, politics, or just about any and every vocation found outside the ghetto we’ve set up for your confinement. Don’t expect to have power. Or a voice. Or to be listened to, even when you have credentials that should command respect, and are living a “normal” life with a spouse to whom you’re faithful.

There is an assumption—a huge, determinative one—in the minds of many center-liberal straight “allies” of the gay community that gay people exist to provide some color to the drabness of “normal” heterosexual everyday life. We are the flamingly pretty (but stationary and mute) potted plant on the stage of history, the stage on which they themselves, the normal and powerful, prance and talk and act.

We will be tolerated so long as we know our place and stick to it.

We will be tolerated only so long as we willingly submit our real lives, real stories, and real forces to be painted over with the exotic Dionysian designs preferred by our "friends" and "allies."

This is not a new dynamic. It is one with which people of color have long coped. It is one with which all stigmatized others who are tolerated only insofar as they are content to remain confined in the ghetto provided for them by the “tolerant” center must always cope: tolerated as exotic, repudiated as normal.

There’s the dynamic that has—somehow—to be exposed and overcome, if we are to engage in fruitful dialogue with our allies. And it can be overcome only when those at the center open their conversation up so that our real voices can be heard and our real faces can be seen, not the bowdlerized ornamental voices and faces we’ve been forced to adopt as we remain in our places.