02 December 2009

A Continuation Of The Discussion

This past Tuesday, the D.C. City Council passed the bill to legalize same-sex marriage in the District. It is the first of three final hurtles to jump before homosexuals can marry in the Nation's Capital. Today, The Washington Post posted an article that explains how some black residents, especially those who lived through and fought during the Civil Right Movement of the 1960's, are none too happy that this struggle is being compared to that struggle. It's something I've heard many times before, from blacks and whites alike. But in this article, one piece jumped out at me like a neon green dot on a grey wall.
"You can choose to be gay or not," Marshall Brown said. "You can never choose to be black or not."

Not so, his son said. "People are born that way," Kwame Brown said. "That could be a generational difference between the way he thinks and the way I think."

"That's a fair argument," the father said when told of his son's view about sexual orientation. But the elder Brown wasn't about to equate gay rights with the civil rights movement.
I'm glad that the Elder Brown can see the merits of the "people are born that way" argument. It was his next statement that gave me pause.
Homosexuals, he said, "can hide it so easily, but we can't hide that we're black."
So here are the big questions that beg to be asked:
  • If blacks could have hidden easily their blackness ... that is, if they could have used a cream or other such ways to hide the color of their skin ... would they have settled with the laws of the days before the Civil Rights Movement?
  • Would the lighter-skinned among them have sold out those of their brethren who were to the extremes of the color human spectrum in order to just fit in and work with the system that existed at that time?
  • Would they have simply accepted their situation or would they have still fought to make things better, equal, and more perfect?

I think I already know the answer. Which makes their arguments all the more ridiculous.

2 comments:

novadj61 said...

"If blacks could have hidden easily their blackness ... that is, if they could have used a cream or other such ways to hide the color of their skin ... would they have settled with the laws of the days before the Civil Rights Movement?"

"Would the lighter-skinned among them have sold out those of their brethren who were to the extremes of the color human spectrum in order to just fit in and work with the system that existed at that time?
Would they have simply accepted their situation or would they have still fought to make things better, equal, and more perfect?"

my answer to that question is a resounding YES! i believe blacks would in large part have accepted the situation because there would have been less of a "situation" to accept, so to speak. there are already several instances in which lighter skinned blacks were treated as Mediterranean or of foreign exotic origin and received better treatment. even on the plantations, the lighter skinned slaves were treated better and given more respect (for lack of a better word) than darker blacks. many blacks who COULD pass for white, did so and accepted the status quo and went on with life.

i think in large part that mr. brown is speaking on an issue that i myself have spoken on many times before and will continue to speak on and that is the incessant NEED to BE gay, to ACT gay, or to push it off on others the way many of us do. homosexuality is not something you can "be". it is who you are. yet, many of us go out of our way to BECOME gay once we come out of the closet as if one MUST be overly effeminate, or call other men 'girl', or flirt with every man we see regardless of orientation, or disrespect others simply because we feel a particular group has disrespected us. in these respects, YES we CAN choose to be gay.

we have distorted "gay" into some sort of social club, rather than the orientation. homosexuality in and of itself means being attracted sexually to the same sex, but we want to make it about all the "other" things. for instance this travesty exhibited by sir adam lambert at the AMA show a couple of weeks ago. YES, straight individuals practice public displays of affection, but i think it was way over the top to simulate oral sex on national network prime time tv just so you can get back at madonna for kissing brittney....WTF?!?!?

"Homosexuals, he said, "can hide it so easily, but we can't hide that we're black."

this means that while black people are VISIBLY black and cannot change that, you cannot just look at someone and tell right off the bat if they are gay or not for the most part. this is rapidly changing as we adopt these new ideas of what gay is. i submit that these new ideas are in large part what is keeping our community from advancing to the heights we seek.

in closing, i don't believe the gay rights issue should be compared to the civil rights issue either because they ARE two completely different issues. blacks were, and in many cases still are treated differently "SOLELY" based on the way they look, and for no other reason at all. just that they were black. gays (i believe) are largely discriminated against because of the way we portray ourselves and present ourselves to society and the way we seem to thumb our noses at the general public.

right, wrong, or indifferent, these are my thoughts on the topic. bottom line is...i can NOT choose to be homosexual. god made that choice for me when i was born. i CAN, however choose whether or not i am going to be an obnoxious, run of the mill fag or not.

Basilio Bocalan said...

I'm curious...would a straight man hitting on every woman he sees constitute as someone who's being "too straight"?

When coming out of the closet happens...someone basically just opens up who they really are...naturally! Not becoming "MORE GAY" than necessary, but some of the restrictions in their behavior is slowly stripped away.

This all boils down to how you were raised to act in public...regardless if you're gay, straight, or otherwise. Or if you were even thought some kind of common decency.

Not as to say that if a gay man incessantly hits on a straight man after being warned doesn't deserve a punch in the face...cause surely they do. THAT is called "asking for it"!

P.S. Adam Lambert wasn't the first to simulate oral sex on stage...Madonna (ever the pioneer) did it when she did an all victorian era presentation of "Vogue". If he got carried away, so what? Why are people stressing over something quite trivial? Why he did it is open to interpretation...me, I don't really care. He's a musician, not a gay rights leader, but an entertainer.