Bashing Anti-gay Bashing Legislation

It's amazing to us how a few oppressed minority group members oppress others; über-amazing is when their words and actions work to oppress members of their own oppressed group. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), for example, did a second story in the summer of 2007 of an African-American man, H. K. Edgerton of Asheville, North Carolina, who had been working to preserve antebellum era memories and to bring back codified racism through his (thankfully now defunct) neo-Confederate group, Southern Heritage 411. For those not in the know about neo-Confederacy, it is a hate ideology with—not surprisingly—white supremacist and neo-Nazi ties. In an interview with the SPLC's Intelligence Report eight years ago, Edgerton said, "it was better to be an African in the Southland as a slave than to be free in Africa." According to Edgerton, a life of whippings, rape and dehumanizing servitude would be a preferred life—for him and other blacks—to one of autonomy, safety and respect. However you try to understand his mental gymnastics, the strange truth is that Edgerton is a black man in favor of black slavery.

Edgerton comes to mind when reading the latest from Ann Rostow, an Austin, Texas resident and lesbian columnist/writer for the San Francisco Bay Times, that city's gay, lesbian and transgendered newspaper. No, Rostow's not a black woman trying to bring back slavery, although her town has not one but two chapters of a known neo-Confederate hate group. Instead, in her November 20, 2008, Bay Times article, Rostow—sounding like a lesbian H.K. Edgerton—denigrates the efforts of those in her own community (and, by extension, those in the larger community) who are working to broaden the existing federal hate crime statute to include sexual orientation, gender, and gender identity as protected categories. Either callously unconcerned or oblivious to the fact that some in her community—gay men—are at a high relative risk of being victims of hate crimes, Rostow asserts that the gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgendered communities "cannot afford" to spend resources on strengthening the national hate crime law. Why not? Rostow offers up a platter of bizarre reasons.

First, reciting the tired, illogical line from other hate crime law opponents, Rostow writes:

"Hate crimes are despicable. But legislation won’t end them. Hate crime penalties are rarely enforced or charged where applicable."

Let's digest those first five words: "hate crimes are despicable, but...". You know what's coming when you hear a white person say, "I'm not racist, but..." or a non-Jew begin a sentence with, "I'm not anti-Semitic, but...". With that leadoff giveaway, it's no surprise Rostow continues on with the faulty logic that because hate crime legislation won't end hate crimes from occurring, then pushing to include sexual orientation as a protected category in proposed federal hate crime legislation is a waste of time and money. Using this same logic, we shouldn't have any laws including those banning murder, rape, robbery, or embezzlement, because the laws that we have now certainly have not stopped those crimes from being committed. Hers is a lame, baseless rationale for allowing people to be victimized because of their sexuality and one we've heard and commented on before.

While not the case in some areas of the United States, in Rostow's state of Texas it is true, as she points out, that hate crimes have been very rarely prosecuted as such, even obvious ones. However, that does not mean beefing up federal hate crime legislation should be ignored by anyone. Lack of appropriate prosecution and lack of appropriate punishment for hate crime offenders means that continued civil rights work—in the forms of activism and education—needs to happen so that hate crimes are seen as the society-destroying acts that they are by all areas of law enforcement. As we've shown, there is a trend in the right direction for voluntarily documenting and reporting hate crime incidents among the nation's law enforcement agencies. This has come about in no small part by citizens demanding that the police take these steps. What needs to happen now is for people to put pressure on District Attorneys and judges so that progress made by police will similarly occur in these other areas of law enforcement.

Strangely, Rostow asserts this reason for having the GLBT communities abandon efforts to push for a hate crime bill that will protect them: "A hate crime law will be the easiest, and one of the least useful, pieces of federal legislation that" the GLBT communities can advocate for. While it is likely true that once her former-governor vacates the White House in less than two months, a veto of an expanded hate crime amendment—should one make its way to President Obama's desk—will likely not occur. Still, Rostow forgets that the two co-sponsors of last year's failed hate crime bill—Massachusetts Senator Edward Kennedy and Oregon Senator Gordon H. Smith—are in no position to fight for the cause in 2009. Senator Kennedy has been struck with a terminal, cancerous brain tumor, and Senator Smith failed to win re-election last month. It remains to be seen who, if anyone, in Congress will draft an expanded version of the federal hate crime law (and if an updated amendment is to be written during Obama's presidency, we hope that it will include homelessness status as well as sexual orientation, gender and gender-identity). But, even if Rostow is correct—that fighting for passage of a new hate crime amendment would be easy—that is no reason to not fight for it. After all, in early 2008 in California polls showed that Proposition 8 would fail. The response from some in the gay community after those early polls were made public was lack-luster; homophobic forces then mobilized, and Prop 8 narrowly passed. Instead of being useless, we believe that passage of a federal hate crime law that includes sexual orientation would deliver an important message to homophobic America.

Instead of calling on more members from her community to fight for passage of a GLBT-protecting hate crime law, one that should have been passed long ago, Rostow states:

"You know what? A federal hate crime law is not our top priority as a community. And I am not appointing myself Director of the Gay Agenda, I am stating a fact."

Her own irony is lost on her here as Rostow, indeed, anoints herself as the Director of the Gay Agenda; and, she is stating opinion, not fact. Worse, though, is that she forgets a most important lesson in life: safety first. So, in Rostow's mind, what is more important than protecting the safety of every GLBT individual throughout the United States and transforming America by making it perfectly clear in the code of federal law that trolling for a gay victim is very, very wrong? Why that would be legalizing same-sex marriage in just one state (by working to repeal Proposition 8 in California) and working toward the repeal of the military's current closet mandate for homosexual service men and women.

We get it: Rostow's just being an American woman from Texas. Being American means ignoring evil (visit any Christian church in Europe and you'll no doubt see depictions of Satan, but you'd be hard pressed to find many churches in the United States that devote any stained glass to the devil). We Americans don't like looking at evil and hate crimes are acts of evil. Period. It's preferable to thumb through Modern Bride and fantisize about your same-sex wedding than it is to think that if you and your newly wedded spouse chose to visit Shenandoah National Park for a honeymoon stop you could wind up with your throats slit as happened to two lesbians—Julianne Marie Williams and Laura Winans—in 1996. In Rostow's America you could be legally wed to your same-sex partner and have your house burned down with anti-gay slurs scrawled on the home's only brick wall with no chance for added punishment for the perpetrator as happened recently to a young gay man in North Carolina. In Rostow's America as a homosexual you could openly serve in fighting America's immoral war in Iraq—one that began when we invaded a sovereign nation preemptively under false pretenses—and come home to be killed by some of your fellow soldiers or by an Evangelical Christian from another country simply because you are gay or lesbian, again with no added punishment for the perpetrator. During the Vietnam War era, America's youth protested that if they were too young to vote or drink, then they ought to be too young to be conscripted into the military (voting and drinking ages were lowered as a result). We think that today most gay and lesbian people would rightfully want homophobic violence specifically penalized before other, important civil rights are granted. You know, safety first.

We want to be clear here: Rostow paints an either-or agenda for the gay communities. It's either fighting for the repeal of the military's Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell policy and of California's Proposition 8, or it's fighting for adequate federal hate crime legislation. She makes no room for the GLBT communities to simultaneously fight for a multitude of worthy causes which we believe they can, and should, do. Among the top-ranking of those causes ought to be pushing the federal government to revise its hate crime law to include sexual orientation as a protected category. After all, safety first. However you try to understand her mental gymnastics, the strange truth is that Rostow is a gay woman in favor of having the gay community turn its back on hate crime legislation, legislation that would immediately stigmatize homophobia and penalize acts of domestic terrorism directed at the GLBT communities.

While H.K. Edgerton fails to see he is on the same side as the oppressor when it comes to resegregating the South, we hope that Ann Rostow learns soon that when it comes to gay hate crime legislation she is on the same side as some notable homophobes, such as the Reverend Ted Pike and Peter LaBarbera.