Whatever happened to Gay Pride this summer? Or so I’ve heard folks wonder. Are we so assimilated that there’s no need to march – or parade – for equality, resistance to het norms, for finding ourselves and each other?

Well, there are Pride things happening (including events in Randolph, which I didn’t attend and are not part of this diary), just not necessarily where and when we’ve come to expect.* And three or four recent episodes of homegrown homophobia underline the fact that while we’re legally equal in the Green Mountain State, we still face ignorance and prejudice.

[The Pride Parade and Festival are scheduled for Sept. 21-22 in Burlington, according to the organizing committee’s press release.]

Stonewall ‘Memorial’ at the UU Church

In June, on the actual very anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion (the 27th, into the wee hours of the 28th originally), the first well-publicized event of this year’s Vermont LGBT Pride was held at the Unitarian Universalist Church at the top of Church Street in Burlington.

It was billed as a “memorial” for the rebellion, and the organizers attempted to keep it solemn and “non-political”: Reverend Roberta requested no applause, although there was laughter, thanks to Sam Sanders and Paige Bailey, among others. I brought a “New Glory” flag into the church and sat with it off to the side.

Sanders and Bailey related their memories of being in New York before, during, and after the police raid on a seedy, mafia-run bar where queers and drag queens and street kids hung out. Sanders in particular painted word pictures with such detail, it was a  “You Are There” moment. Bailey reclaimed and proclaimed her identity as a “bulldagger,” as her African American community named her.

The NYC police never expected a bunch of pansies, dykes, and drag queens to fight back against their arrest – they never had before, they knew the routine: the search to identify three items of gender-appropriate clothing, the gathering of names cross-checked with IDs, then a quick release for most, and a perp walk to the waiting wagon for those who refused or who conformed the least. In the rising tension, a butch dyke in handcuffs, who had fought and escaped from the wagon repeatedly, was hit by a cop with a baton, and manhandled into the wagon. “Isn’t anyone going to do anything?!” she cried out. And the dam broke. The queers fought back, forcing the cops to hole up inside the bar awaiting reinforcements, watching as dykes, bulldaggers, faggots, crossdressers and assorted street folk black and white, young and older, rammed the doors with a parking meter ripped out of the sidewalk.

There was no applause, as requested, just a wave of sighs as listeners slowly came back to the Burlington UU, here where we have a legal right to exist and our relationships are not clandestine because of fear of arrest.

Susan Murray (co-founder of Vermont Freedom to Marry, and co-counsel on Baker v. State that resulted in the legislative “compromise” of Civil Unions in 2000, followed by marriage equality in 2009) ably emceed the event. There was a short candle-light vigil on the steps of the church after the ‘memorial.’

It was so assimilated, and so frustrating to those of us who had lived through the years of no rights and no official help when gay guys started dying of the disease later named AIDS. I wanted to make three points before the crowd dispersed. And here’s what I said:

“One: This was called a ‘memorial.’ BUT WE AIN’T DEAD YET!

“Two: We’ve done a lot of work to get equal rights here, BUT WE AIN’T DONE YET!

“The third thing is: Don’t you DARE take the rights we have here in Vermont for granted, they can all disappear in a day. And that day is THE FIRST TUESDAY IN NOVEMBER: VOTE, PICK A CANDIDATE AND WORK TO KEEP OUR RIGHTS!”

[After the jump: Heroes, Saints & Martyrs; Separation of Church & Hate, more …]

Heroes, Saints, & Martyrs at St. Paul’s Episcopal

The next event that I attended in this year’s extended LGBT Pride celebration was an art show at St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral (anyone beginning to see a trend here?). The show consisted of 40 depictions in photos, drawings, and calligraphy by Judith McMannis of martyrs, saints, and heroes. It included the gay Franciscan priest and NYFD Chaplain Father Mychal Judge, who died ministering to the fallen in the North Tower command post when the South Tower collapsed on September 11, 2001. Among the heroes was Beth Robinson, who argued Baker v. State before the Vermont Supreme Court where she now sits as one of the Justices, and worked tirelessly to get legal marriage equality in Vermont. There were actual church-denominated saints and martyrs, noted for faithful ‘friends’ of the same gender, and for whose sake they had been kidnapped, or tortured. The parents of one local gay man were honored as heroes for making an about-face from their church’s antigay teachings when their son came out.

The thing that was missing was any acknowledgment that Christian churches have been largely responsible for creating lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender martyrs since before the Inquisition. There was no apology (unlike at the Chicago Gay Pride parade, although more research has revealed troubling information there, too).

So I brought my own sign to the event. I’ll say this for the Christians at the opening reception: it was a well received conversation starter.

Churches and LGBT Pride

Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s great when churches stop persecuting us queers and teaching their members to hate and fear us. The UU folks were one of the earliest churches to welcome lgbtq members. Vermont Episcopal Bishop Tom Ely was instrumental in persuading Rep. Jeff Young (a Democrat who had voted against the marriage equality bill) to vote in favor of overriding Governor Jim Douglas’s veto, and I deeply appreciate that effort toward civil equality. The Episcopals just accepted a “blessing” liturgy for same-sex couples – not a marriage liturgy, mind you.

Yet I can’t help but notice that almost every Christian church identifying itself as “welcoming” to lesbians and gay men wants to march in the Pride Parade with their banner and their gay, lesbian, and ally members all decked out in rainbow colors. They’re advertising – just as the bars with their floats and the nonprofit organizations are – trolling for customers and donors; the churches want us to swell the ranks of their congregations, and, oh btw, we should bring our tithes, too.

And I have to ask whether these Jesus-come-lately organizations have really earned a right to be in the Pride Parade. Have they or their denominations made any apologies for their long histories of preaching against us?* Have they ever offered to work behind the scenes with the parade organizers? They could, for example, work in traffic control or security, so the lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgender folk who are doing those volunteer jobs might get a chance to participate in the joyful dance up Church Street one time. Not one church, not once has made such an offer to my knowledge in my memory of more than 25 Pride marches and parades.

*[The Episcopal Church has, in fact, apologized for its rejection of gay and lesbian people in a statement that was accepted at a national church gathering. I have seen it, but I cannot now locate the document online.]

Separation of Church and Hate

Have the “Welcoming” churches attempted dialog with the evangelicals and fundamentalists on the theological basis of acceptance and Jesus’s “greatest commandment” to “Love God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself”? If so, I haven’t heard of it. Have they ever attended those churches and spoken individually at whatever social gathering might follow the service and just chatted with the members about being in a welcoming church? There are not even any rumors about such a thing happening.

So I wonder why it is that this year’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer Pride celebration seems so focused on Christian churches (although some would not count the UU as “Christian”).

A friend on the Pride organizing committee said the churches “offered.” With June about to expire sans celebration, the Stonewall memorial was pulled together quickly, and the UU agreed to host the event on short notice. The St. Paul’s art show was cosponsored with the local chapter of Integrity.

Homegrown Homophobia

Do those two events balance somehow the continued existence of homegrown homophobia? To wit:

A local Salvation Army chapter has fired a worker who came out as bisexual during a conversation with her boss.

Local UVM ice legend Tim Thomas, the Bruins’ goalie (who has been on leave since well before this tempest), wants to “stand by” the anti-gay remarks of the president of Chick-fil-A, which have become an online controversy in the last couple of weeks. The Muppets know more about equality and integrity than Tim Thomas does.

You remember Chick-fil-A, the company suing Vermont tee shirt maker Bo Muller-Moore over his slogan, “Eat More Kale.”

And in my own hometown, a member of the combined Methodist-Congregational (United Church of Christ) church in the middle of the village said that gay people would not be welcome there, that the bible says gay people should be killed. She said it to the next-door neighbor of friends of mine, a gay couple looking for a church to attend, perhaps to join. The neighbor warned them away, leaving them amazed and daunted that such institutional and personal homophobia could still exist here in gay-friendly Vermont.

The list could be much longer, including the parental abduction of a child born into a civil union (NYT tiered subscription) and the alleged assistance of the abductor’s church (BFP subscription with 10 freebies/month) in getting the newly “born again” parent out of the country so as to not comply with court-ordered visits by the “other mother.”

Separation of Church and State

The reason the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) passed Congress in 1996 (Senator Leahy voted for it, but has since had a change of heart as a sponsor of S.598, the Respect for Marriage Act) was as a sop to right wing religious fanatics, who, with the connivance of the Republican Party, threatened to push for a constitutional amendment that, if ratified by two-thirds of the states, would have enshrined anti-lgbt bias in the constitution. The law prevents the federal government from legally recognizing same-sex marriages or civil unions regardless of their legal standing in any state. And it allows states to ignore the principle of “full faith and credit,” which essentially requires that contracts executed in one state be honored in another.

There is no such amendment to the U.S. Constitution. But 30 states have passed amendments to their state constitutions defining marriage as “one man, one woman.” Six more do not recognize same sex marriages or civil unions from other states. These laws are based in a particular and highly selective Christian reading of their holy book. They have no place in state policy in a country that pledges itself to equal treatment of all under the law.

Repealing DOMA and enacting ENDA, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act would be two small but important steps toward get some religion out of the federal government. Having liberal churches in conversation with their gay-oppressive co-religionists would make even bigger steps possible.