Proposition 8 and the Linguistic Fight Against Intolerance

Posted by Beau Friedlander, Air America at 6:52 PM on November 13, 2008.

Last week Ralph Nader wondered aloud if President-elect Obama would be an "Uncle Tom" to corporations. The comment was met with outrage from progressives and conservatives alike, landing the one-time spoiler on Fox News to get a tongue lashing from an appalled Shepard Smith.

The reason: Ralph Nader didn't have the proper cultural visas to talk that way about an African American.

The Prop 8 debate has focused the thinking parts of America on the gay-straight divide, privileged language (the perils of "queer" speak in straight circles), and the garden-variety biases that helped pass Prop 8 last week.

Last week Ralph Nader wondered aloud if President-elect Obama would be an "Uncle Tom" to corporations. The comment was met with outrage from progressives and conservatives alike, landing the one-time spoiler on Fox News to get a tongue lashing from an appalled Shepard Smith.

The reason: Ralph Nader didn't have the proper cultural visas to talk that way about an African American.

The Prop 8 debate has focused the thinking parts of America on the gay-straight divide, privileged language (the perils of "queer" speak in straight circles), and the garden-variety biases that helped pass Prop 8 last week.

I was at a dinner last night where one of the guests doggedly pursued the question of gay celebrities, Prop 8, and closet homosexuals. Barbra Streisand was the victim of this straight man's homophobia (presupposed crypto-lesbian -- although how the guest arrived at this premise I don't know). James Brolin emerged as an effeminate "beard." The guest was straight. Several people at the table were not. There was nothing "cryptic" about the demarcation line that immediately sprung up between these cultural adversaries at that table. Like Nader before him, the guest didn't have the right cultural visa to "talk queer."

Defeating Prop 8 was important for innumerable human reasons. Hospital visitation, parenting rights -- if you live in DC and drive over the Virginia border (and you're in a same-sex marriage) and you didn't give birth to your child, depending on how you've arranged your life, in legal terms, you may find that you are no longer recognized as your child's parent. So, what happens if your child needs hospital care? That's the point. What about the heartbreak of a life partner dying alone because an intensive care unit was designated an immediate-family-only zone?

The "No on Prop 8" campaign was a mess. The outcome hard to parse. A gay-averse version of the Bradley Effect may have been in play, or maybe the advanced algebra of context and intent was too complex for Californians. "No on Prop 8" was a moving target with competing messages spinning California voters dizzy while on the "Yes" side of things, a few tightly framed memes were pushed out -- the worst but most effective of those messages: No sex ed to little kids regarding homosexual sex. Even a straight crypto-gay-outer like the guy from my dinner last night might agree.

The desire to "out" someone is tied to fear. Last week that fear razed a considerable piece of our humanity. Intolerance is hard to see sometimes. It materializes like motes in a shaft of light. The benefit of Prop 8's passage if there can be any at all is hard to talk about because it is so small compared to what was lost, but it has to do with arriving at a better understanding of why gay marriage might matter and how language and culture offer sometimes subtle and sometimes stark expressions of intolerance that act as barriers to equal rights for the gay community.

Tagged as: gay rights, proposition 8