"Anti-gay bias is being replaced by fairness"

Op-ed published in the Indianapolis Star, 11/13/01

Steve Sanders

In its own inimitable way, Martinsville may have done us all a favor. When
a town official published insults against "Hadji Hindu," "Buddy
Buddha" and "queers," and when citizens showed up at the city council to
wave Bibles and bray their approval, they gave us a revelation: America's
bigots are living in their own version of end times.

They emerge periodically to shake their fists at civilized values like
tolerance and equality. But their behavior looks increasingly like the
desperation of people who can't cope with the modern world.

Most Americans have figured out that you can't have an intelligent
discussion with people who hate. (And what else can you call it when some
people say "amen" after a man proposes that gays be rounded up, put out to
sea and sunk?) Most now see that it's pointless to argue public issues,
much less religion, with people whose only frame of reference is a
selective and simpleminded misuse of Scripture.

And so in politics, the courts and other forums where reason sometimes
prevails, the religious right is racking up a striking series of defeats.

On the issue of gays in particular, the tide has turned: it's now the
right-wing activists who look like a fearful and isolated minority. Groups
like the Family Research Council must realize the skies have darkened when
George W. Bush appoints three openly gay men to federal posts, including
an ambassadorship, in his first year. The FRC sputtered that Bush has
embraced the "homosexual agenda." The White House and most everyone else
ignored them.

Then the Republican-controlled U.S. House voted to lift an edict that had
prohibited the District of Columbia from offering city workers domestic
partner benefits. When the Senate approved a DC appropriation bill last
week, not even Sen. Jesse Helms moved to restore the ban.

But the extremists aren't just losing their grip on Washington. Around
the country, their grassroots network is being undone by hubris,
miscalculation and lies about the "gay lifestyle."

Last Tuesday, voters in three small Michigan communities soundly defeated
ballot initiatives pushed by religious conservatives that would have
prevented their towns from protecting gays against discrimination.

People, it seems, have tired of outside agitators who want to divide their
communities, and have gotten wise to old shibboleths about gays and
"special rights."

Here in Indiana, "pro-family" activists can no longer get a hearing in the
General Assembly for his anti-gay adoption bill. Just since August, the
Governor has protected state workers from anti-gay discrimination, the IU
trustees unanimously approved domestic partner benefits, and the Star
headlined a political story this way: "Courting gay voters now seen as
routine." And why not court gay voters when fairness and equality make
good politics?

Polls repeatedly show more than three-quarters of Americans think gays
should be treated equally in the workplace. A majority now says gays
should be able to serve openly in the military. And two-thirds of high
school seniors support same-sex marriage.

Among employers big and small, a new vision of family values is taking
hold as the number offering partner benefits has jumped 50 percent
nationally in the past two years.

Courts have begun embracing these new family values as well. In
Washington state, the supreme court has said gays may be entitled to the
estates of partners who die without wills -- an important legal protection
for same-sex relationships. The Colorado Supreme Court ruled this month
that parenting time in custody cases may not be restricted because of a
parent's sexual orientation.

Finally, when Jerry Falwell went around the bend and blamed the events of
September 11 on gays, feminists and civil libertarians, even Rush Limbaugh
and other prominent conservatives hastened to distance themselves.

In short, as far-right politics are pushed to the fringe of our civic
life, anti-gay absurdities and fear are being steadily replaced by
fairness and decency. And so let Martinsville be Martinsville. Indiana
and America will always have their backwaters. But it's increasingly
clear where the mainstream now flows.