When I was a junior in college, I lived and studied in a small town in Italy. The food was spectacular, the countryside was breathtaking and the gay life was, well, nothing to write home about. It didn’t take long living there before I bemoaned the country’s attitude toward sexuality. I had envisioned it as so many Americans think of Europe – a sexually liberated place where everyone is open about their identities.
But over the eight months I spent there, I found that a great number of people were stuck in outdated and dogmatic ideas toward sexuality. I encountered a startling number of adult men who were admittedly gay but afraid to come out, and far more people who were ignorant toward homosexuality than I expected. I figured this was largely thanks to the strong influence of the Roman Catholic church and the heightened emphasis on traditional family, and over time I learned to deal with it. But I couldn’t help but feel that being gay or thinking beyond traditional sex and gender norms was just something you didn’t do in Italy, unless you lived in Milan and were a fashion model.
In the United States, I’ve come to find myself often just as frustrated with the public’s attitude toward homosexuality as when I lived in Italy. It’s much different here, to be sure. I rarely, if ever, feel uncomfortable or unsafe being open about my sexuality in public. The dating scene is much more visible, and resources such as the LGBTQA make it easy to feel like part of a community. However, all of this is what makes watching decisions like the California Supreme Court’s decision to uphold Proposition 8 so difficult.
There is an embarrassing hypocrisy regarding homosexuality in the United States that was embodied in Tuesday’s ruling. Being gay in the United States has become practically hip. Granted, I say this while living in a liberal town on the West Coast – if I lived in rural Nebraska, I might feel differently. But our popular culture has become overwhelmingly accepting of gay people, to a degree that would have been unimaginable even ten years ago. Gay marriage is now legal in three states – including Iowa – and will be legal in two more come September. Portland’s mayor is the nation’s first openly gay man to lead a major city. And a bubbly blonde lesbian has become the hero of middle-aged soccer moms nationwide. It would seem it’s finally OK to be gay in America.
Yet, somehow, it’s not. Apparently, though gay people may be trendy and fun to hang out with, they still aren’t all worthy of equal rights. But – and here’s where it gets confusing – according to the California Supreme Court, some are? Tuesday’s ruling allows California’s 18,000 existing same-sex marriages to stand, a decision which, in its strange and contradictory nature, is quite indicative of the state of U.S. gay rights. Accepting gays and lesbians is all well and good, as long as we’re not too accepting.
Chief Justice Ronald M. George asserted that Proposition 8 did not entirely repeal the “constitutional right of same-sex couples to ‘choose one’s life partner and enter with that person into a committed, officially recognized and protected family relationship.’” Instead, he wrote, “the measure carves out a narrow and limited exception to these state ‘constitutional rights.’” He argued that Proposition 8 did not annul “all of the other extremely significant substantive aspects of a same-sex couple’s state constitutional right to establish an officially recognized and protected family relationship and the guarantee of equal protection under the laws.”
You can practically hear the inner conflict within this argument, which essentially asserts that gay people have every right to be married, but because of a technicality, they can’t call their relationships “marriages.” It’s as if the court knows it should just throw up its hands and give in, but can’t quite bring itself to do so. Just like the American public, the court, which ruled last year that the California Constitution guaranteed gays and lesbians the right to wed the partner of their choice, is torn between full acceptance of gay and lesbian rights and arbitrary adherence to outdated tradition and technicalities.
On the other hand, the civil rights horizon is looking brighter. Our president is black and he just nominated a Hispanic, unmarried woman to the Supreme Court. People have even begun calling the fight for same-sex rights the “New Civil Rights Movement.” Considering recent anti-hate crime legislation and the fact that my mom is finally comfortable asking me about my relationships, I’d say times are changing. But, though he may be less visible than 50 years ago, Jim Crow is still around. In the United States, gays and lesbians might be allowed on the bus, but they still have to take the backseat.
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