Political Prose

When optimists should be shot

“I am such a complete atheist that I am afraid God will punish me.” Such is the pithy wisdom of Jára Cimrman, the man overwhelmingly voted the “G…


“I am such a complete atheist that I am afraid God will punish me.” Such is the pithy wisdom of Jára Cimrman, the man overwhelmingly voted the “Greatest Czech of All Time” in a nationwide poll earlier this month. (A state TV station in the Czech Republic sponsored the survey, inspired by a hit BBC show that birthed similar “Greatest” polls across the continent.)

Who is Jára Cimrman? A philosopher? An inventor? An explorer? All of these things, yes, and much more. After a few days of investigation here in Prague, this is what I have uncovered:

Born in the middle of the 19th century to a Czech tailor and Austrian actress, Cimrman studied in Vienna and Prague, before starting off on his journeys around the world — traversing the Atlantic by steamboat, scaling mountains in Peru, trekking across the Arctic tundra. Astounding feats soon followed. Cimrman was the first to come within seven meters of the North Pole. He was the first to invent the light bulb (unfortunately, Edison beat him to the patent office by five minutes). It was he who suggested to the Americans the idea for a Panama Canal, though, as usual, he was never credited. Indeed, Cimrman surreptitiously advised many of the world’s greats — Eiffel on his tower, Einstein on his theories of relativity, Chekhov on his plays (you can’t just have two sisters, Cimrman is said to have said — how about three?). In 1886, long before the world knew of Sartre or Camus, Cimrman was writing tracts like, “The Essence of the Existence,” which would become the foundation for his philosophy of “Cimrmanism,” also known as “Non-Existentialism.” (Its central premise: “Existence cannot not exist.”)

This man of unmatched genius would have been bestowed the honor of “Greatest Czech of All Time” if not for the bureaucratic narrow-mindedness of the poll’s sponsors, whose single objection to Cimrman’s candidacy was that “he’s not real.” (Jára Cimrman is the brainchild of two Czech humorists — Zdenek Sverak and Jiri Sebanek — who brought their patriotic Renaissance man to life in 1967 in a satirical radio play.) Thus, although Cimrman handily won the initial balloting in January, Czech TV officials refused to let him into the final rounds of the competition, blatantly biased against his non-existentialism.

How should we interpret the fact that Czechs would rather choose a fictitious character as their greatest countryman over any of their flesh-and-blood national heroes — Charles IV (the 14th-century Holy Roman Emperor who established Prague as the cultural and intellectual capital of Europe), Comenius (the 17th-century educator and writer considered one of the fathers of modern education), Jan  Hus (the 15th-century religious reformer who challenged Catholic orthodoxy), or Martina Navrátilová (someone who plays a sport with bright green balls)? The more cynically inclined — many Czechs among them — might point out that the Czech people have largely stayed behind their mountains for the past millennia, with little interest in, or influence on, happenings elsewhere in the world. Cimrman is so beloved because he is that most prickly of ironies: a Czech who was greater than all the world’s greats, but who for some hiccup of chance has never been recognized for his achievements.

Personally, I like to think that the vote for Cimrman says something about the country’s rousing enthusiasm for blowing raspberries in the face of authority. Throughout its history — from the times of the Czech kings who kept the German menace at bay through crafty diplomacy, to the days of Jan Hus and his questioning of the very legitimacy of the Catholic Church’s power, to the flashes of anti-communist revolt that at last came crashing down in 1989 during the Velvet Revolution — the Czechs have maintained a healthy disrespect for those who would tell them what is best or how to live their lives. Other countries soberly choose their “Greatest” from musty tomes of history, but the Czechs won’t play this silly game. Their vote for a fictional personage, says Cimrman’s co-creator Sverak, says two things about the Czech nation: “that it is skeptical about those who are major figures and those who are supposedly ‘the greatest.’ And that the only certainty that has saved the nation many times throughout history is its humour.”

Cimrman — if he were with us today — would agree. A man of greatness, he was always a bit skeptical of those who saw themselves as great, or who marched forward under the banner of greatness. As Cimrman liked to say, “There are moments when optimists should be shot.”

—Victor Tan Chen

Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

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Commentary

Cake before breakfast

A Mother’s Day lesson about the non-traditional family.


Brian Michael Weaver and his son enjoy some time together.

“Go home tonight and ask Mom or Dad to help you find your homework,” I said to a second grader in my class. He belongs to one of those “conventional” nuclear families with a mother, a father, and a sister — all biological. His parents are high school sweethearts who still hold hands and make each other laugh.

Two children in my primary class differ from this mold. One is an adopted child. Family conflicts prevent the second, Brianna, from living with her biological parents. She, instead, lives with her aunt — and her aunt’s female partner.

Brianna had overheard me when I told her classmate to “ask Mom or Dad to help you find your homework.” It wasn’t the first time I had made this faulty hetero-presumption, the “mom and dad” slip. An administrator had once pointed out a similar mistake. That time, in a letter to my pupils’ parents, I suggested that children raid “dad’s closet” for white-collar shirts to use as scientific smocks the following week.

How many other children with same-sex parents or caregivers have teachers who take for granted the momanddad childhood experience? Did it register on Brianna’s radar? How would the women raising Brianna react?

I should know better. After all, I am the adoptive, gay father of a kindergarten son at the same school.

And yet it took a Mother’s Day art project to jar me into recognizing my own insensitivity to adoptive parents and children within the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community. I was teaching students how to make “coupon books” for their moms, when, a quarter of the way through, I remembered Brianna.

For whom would she be making Mother’s Day gifts? Would it be her mom, her aunt, her aunt’s partner — or all three? My mind raced through the rest of my students’ family situations, and I was relieved that she was the only student for whom I needed to adjust the lesson.

I knew that one of my other students was making a coupon book for her adoptive mother. Still, I called her adoptive parents to warn that Mother’s Day may “strike nerves” among adopted children. At that moment I realized that my own son also would be making a Mother’s Day gift in his kindergarten class for the first time. I had neglected to prepare my own motherless child for this holiday.

Not to worry.

My son’s teachers, brilliant as they are, had asked their students to make their Mother’s Day gift for a “VIW” (“Very Important Woman”). At first my child claimed to remember his mother, whom he hadn’t seen since birth. He recalled, or so he said, a mother who “made cake before breakfast” for him. Logan strongly notices and feels the turmoil of not having traditional parents. Consequently, it is no surprise when he invents and imagines facts about his birth mother, perhaps to give his family life some semblance of normalcy.

But that day in class, when he had to make a Mother’s Day gift, he settled on making his gift for a VIW whom he sees on a regular basis — his “Baba” — my mom.

No room for “my two dads”

I had taken pains in some cases to “train” my school community to understand that the fact my son has a gay dad does not mean he has “two dads.”

I’m reminded of how teachers used to treat Jewish and Christian holidays as a bit of a balancing act: “Can I use Christmas stickers on anything in class during December? If I do, should I use equal amounts of Hanukkah stickers? What about Kwanzaa?”  

In 10 years as an educator and three years as a gay dad, I’ve seen political correctness toward LGBT families grow from a quiet seed to a more paramount issue monitored and negotiated in our classrooms and communities. As my own son’s teachers taught me, there’s finally room for parents, students, and teachers to negotiate the definition and parameters of family.

One thing, however, is not negotiable between my son and me, when it comes to our family structure: There will never be “two dads,” even if I were to find a male partner.

After all, I am the dad — the one now making cake before breakfast!

STORY INDEX

ORGANIZATIONS >

OutProud
The National Coalition for Gay, Lesbian Bisexual and Transgender Youth advocates and provides queer teens with resources and support.
URL: http://www.outproud.org

Gay Parent magazine
The oldest free nationally-distributed publication dedicated to LGBT parenting
URL: http://www.gayparentmag.com/

ProudParenting.com
An online portal for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender parents and their families worldwide
URL: http://www.proudparenting.com/

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Commentary

Seeing Rainbows in Black and White

Best of In The Fray 2005. The movement for same-sex marriage may not be the latest incarnation of the struggle for civil rights


Although I have crossed the 40-year mark of adulthood, the territory that accompanies being black, female, and lesbian poses a continuous struggle 37 years after “Stonewall.” Still, as the gay marriage debate escalates, I’m not convinced the civil rights claims at the forefront of the gay and lesbian political platform echo those of the African American civil rights movement, as so many claim.

Historically, the gulf between the heterosexual and homosexual populations have been wide; however, members of both groups will likely agree that sexual preference outside the norm can be a liability. Since the loss of a major media market career and intentional exclusion from gay and lesbian social circles have peppered my perspective, I might inflame the men and women to whom I am connected by sexual preference. In fact, my take on the matter may land a little too close to the majority’s opinion for their comfort.

Earlier this year when the California Supreme Court announced that withholding same-sex marriage licenses was unconstitutional, throngs of gays, lesbians, and their supporters in every corner of America basked in the momentary victory. Countering this positive development, the gay community in Houston (where I live) sustained a slight slowdown in political momentum when the “good ‘ol boys” in the Texas House sent a proposed constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage to the State Senate for consideration. Subsequently, the Senate has decided that passage of the same sex marriage ban will be a voter-driven issue.

Additionally, the reaction from civil rights organizations has divided many African Americans. In a shift from the bastion of homophobia long associated with the black community, the California chapter of the NAACP made public its support for a bill that will legalize same-sex marriage statewide following this significant ruling. Undeniably, the wheels of justice are in motion but in reality’s bigger picture, securing full-fledged marital equality for gays and lesbians remains an uphill battle.

The marriage ban is a glaring inequity but more opponents might soften their stance if given clear-cut evidence of the severe threat it poses to the gay and lesbian concept of family. Consider today’s locked doors of legality for gays and lesbians who lose partners to death. In some instances, surviving partners lack legal protection to ensure equitable distribution of property and financial assets. Even then, next-of-kin who are void of compassion may retaliate with judgmental weapons blazing in an all-out lifestyle objection slugfest.

Under similar circumstances where children extend the gay or lesbian family, it is not uncommon for partners to suffer the humiliation of having to relinquish parental privileges. Though the legally binding partnership has its inherent advantages and disadvantages, most gay and lesbian couples in marriage-ready relationships are still eager to sip the bitter with the sweet. Unfortunately, a large segment of heterosexual America sees us as mere sexual beings, nothing more.

Still, since one’s choice of battle must be weighed carefully, my glass is not raised in celebration of victory without sizeable reservations.

It troubles me that the gay marriage movement is flimsily packaged by white gays and lesbians in the civil rights rhetoric written by African Americans. Banning same-sex marriage is not equivalent to Jim Crow laws, which made blacks second-class citizens.

Admittedly, I was remarkably naïve when I started unraveling the fabric of gay and lesbian culture. If racism was absent anywhere in America, I was certain it did not exist in the gay and lesbian community. After all, I had firmly latched onto the “We are Family’’ bandwagon as an unofficial gay and lesbian anthem during the heyday of disco.

Then, reality set in. On numerous occasions, I was asked to present multiple pieces of identification to enter predominantly white gay establishments. Then, I overheard the friend of a white associate whisper “you didn’t tell me she was a nigger” immediately after a chilly introduction in a local lesbian bar.

While gender and color are tangible, sexual orientation is not always so easily classifiable. The African American gay and lesbian community is extremely diverse; many don’t fit the stereotypical mold of “limp-wristed queens and diesel dykes.” In fact, some have gone to great lengths to remain in the closet for fear of career collapse and/or social retribution. Having experienced the former, I now never give my professional colleagues confirmation of my lesbian membership.

Some years ago, my career at an NBC affiliate was destroyed from the fallout of an unfounded and disparaging accusation directly related to my sexual orientation. I made what I considered to be a harmless remark that women in sports are often mistaken for lesbians to a female subordinate. Several weeks passed and I had no idea that news executives were conveniently churning my comment to seal a sexual harassment charge behind the scenes. Their action was even more suspicious since my termination came on the heels of a threat to legally resolve a clear case of gender discrimination with respect to compensation.

Perhaps some will conclude that I guided the career-slicing dagger when I insisted on more insightful media coverage as opposed to the endless footage of frolicking gays and lesbians to commemorate a celebration of Gay Pride. In the conservative minds of my peers, I assume the assignment editor directive I issued flung the closet door wide open.

I tried to revive my career several times but bad news travels fast in network-affiliate TV circles. Matters worsened when a highly regarded African American media coalition I had hoped to enlist dismissed my case as a “domestic issue.” Rising above the “trumped up” charges that ousted me from my newsroom perch was a slow and painful process.

Unlike some white gays and lesbians who push others to come out, I do not feel compelled, as a black lesbian, to follow an agenda that may feed microscopic inspection or voracious speculation in and out of the workplace. As the societal and political tones indicate, the waters of racial and sexual discrimination are still deep.

In fact, subtle or overt racism is never far from my daily experience. More often than not, race and gender prevail as magnets of discrimination long before sexual orientation. The burden of having to prove one’s worth when outfitted in black skin remains unchanged. Unfortunately, this burden is not alleviated in the gay community.

A paved road for white gays and lesbians does not necessarily smooth the bumpy road gays and lesbians of color are forced to travel. Systematic separation by class and color within the diverse gay and lesbian community is a well-kept secret that thwarts unity for all under the rainbow umbrella.

Some white gay and lesbian powerbrokers who head prominent organizations designed to protect our collective interests rarely deem it important to reference or rectify the social and political division that has long been in play. One would think that an examination of the weeds within our own yard would merit a discussion agenda entry at least.

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Blog

Separate but equal: linguistic plurality in the European Union


Gabriel von Toggenburg reports on the dilemmas facing the development of the European Union as it embraces linguistic plurality in his article, “Europe’s Linguistic Plurality: Gem or Stumbling Stone?”

The toll on the EU pocketbook is heavy: according to von Toggenburg, it takes roughly 800 million euros a year to pay for the amount of translation and interpretation the law currently requires for the benefit of European citizens.

It’s not so much due to the vanity of member nations, von Toggenburg reasons, so much as it is the result of Community law, which dictates that “national parliaments cannot position themselves between their citizens and Brussels as ‘official translators’ of the law.” And the reality behind the “equality” accorded to so many “official” languages in the European Union is that the minority languages wind up “mostly ignored,” possibly due to the relatively low frequency with which they are used in official circumstances. After all, Von Toggenburg notes, “there is no constitutional principle governing the strict equality of the official languages.”

He points out that while English has become the primary transitional language within Europe, the European Union never intended to become a monolingual entity. As a result, the new European Action Plan for Language Learning and Linguistic Diversity has been launched with the objective that European citizens speak “as many languages as possible, at the very least two languages in addition to their mother tongue.”

As to the question posed by the German Constitutional Court ten years ago, regarding whether democracy is possible without a “shared open space” and a single “European discourse,” von Toggenburg refers to the working examples of India and Switzerland.

Does European democracy need a European language? The answer is no. How else would the democracies of India or Switzerland be possible? What is lacking is a European press which deals with European issues for a European readership and audience. Multilingual initiatives such as café babel are what is called for, and not just in the name of linguistic plurality, but for the love of Europe.

Fiona Wollensack translated von Toggenburg’s article from the German.

—Michaele Shapiro

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News

Debajo del arcoiris

A queer youth prom in Mexican American Chicago.


Giovanca performs a dance number to a Spanish-language song. (Elizabeth Gawne)

Though Andreas Villazane, 22, was his high school’s prom king — its first Hispanic prom king, in fact — the night wasn’t quite complete.

“I didn’t go to prom with my boyfriend because I was afraid of what people would think,” he says, touching the collar of his coral dress shirt. He looks up and smiles. “We couldn’t go to prom together, so we got to do it tonight.”

Villazane sits at a confetti-spangled table behind a bevy of red and black balloons, taking a breather from the dancing at Noche de Arcoiris (Night of the Rainbow), a queer youth prom held in Pilsen, Chicago’s largest Mexican American neighborhood. Behind him, in the Mexican Fine Arts Museum’s West Wing, the few wallflowers watch the crowd from the sidelines. Fledgling drag queens test their heels on the dance floor, from time to time touching the ends of their hair. A girl in a red salsa dress, grinning, elbows a male friend towards a tall, dapper boy in a fedora, and a slightly older white lesbian couple, one in a suit, the other wearing a midnight-blue gown, grin sheepishly at the boys grinding on the dance floor. Two girls share a tender kiss.

The event is hosted by WRTE 90.5 FM’s Homofrecuencia, the country’s only Spanish-language queer youth radio show, as a reclaimation of the beloved and benighted high school ritual. It is, to the best of their knowledge, the first time a queer prom has been held in Chicago outside of the North Side’s Boystown, Chicagoland’s mostly-white gay mecca. “That’s part of the point,” says Homofrecuencia producer Tania Unzueta,. “We want to create a safe space for us within our own communities. We want to be who we are, where we live.”  Unzueta says the invisibility of Latinos in the queer community inflicts a crisis of identity on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and quuer Latino youth. “It implies this dichotomy,” she sighs, “that gay means white, and Latina means heterosexual. If youth can’t see gays within the Latina community, and Latinas within the gay community, it affects their image of themselves.”

Rafa and Giovanca, the newly crowned Noche de Arcoiris’ prom king and queen, mug for the camera. (Elizabeth Gawne)

Between songs — mostly top-40 hip-hop and dancepop, with a dash of salsa — Unzueta goads promgoers to sign up to compete as prom king or queen. “Gender doesn’t matter!” she adds. “Sign up for whichever one you want.”  Later, as the contestants strut and dance onstage, one of the kings-to-be seductively strips off his tie, and suggestively begins to unbutton his shirt. “No, no!” shouts Jorge Valdivia, WRTE’s general manager — but he’s laughing through the reprimand. “We want to keep doing this prom!”  

About half the dance’s attendees are high school students or recent graduates; the others, older queer singles or couples seeking to revisit, and reimagine, their own high school proms. Alicia Vega is a board member of Amigas Latinas, a Chicago-area group for Latina lesbians founded in 1995 that was instrumental in promoting and supporting the event. She looks in wonder on the starry-eyed couples entwined on the dance floor. “I’m genuinely amazed that these youth are able to come out at such a young age,” she marvels, her dark eyes twinkling. “I couldn’t imagine taking a girlfriend to prom.” Vega didn’t come out until college, and didn’t meet other Latina lesbians until she encountered Amigas Latinas.

With other Latinas, she says, “there’s an automatic connection. There’s a lot of cultural issues we share, particularly involving family.”  That most Latinos are  Catholic plays a large part in their experience of homophobia and heterosexism, as do cultural expectations surrounding marriage and children. “It’s like that in Hispanic culture,” comments Helen Guerrero, a Northeastern Illinois University freshman. “Parents think your purpose is to have a job, get married, and have children. Especially if they’re religious.”  Unzueta adds, however, “some parents don’t understand that being a lesbian doesn’t mean you don’t want children. Then again, they don’t understand that if you’re a woman” — straight or gay — “you may not want them either.”  These combined pressures make “school and home … very different worlds,” she says. Even Jose, a high school junior whose mother is lesbian, is out to friends but not to his family. “It hasn’t really come up,” he says quietly.

Onstage, amid students’ hooting and cheers, Valdivia and Unzeuta finally select a prom king and queen: Rafa, a slim boy with a winsome smile, and Giovanca, a dazzling drag queen with round, doll-like eyes. Valdivia places a purple tinsel crown on each of their heads, grinning. Earlier, Giovanca performed not one, but two drag numbers in the evening’s show, which also featured the hip-hop moves of the Chicago Gay Youth Center dance troupe, a performance by Andres de los Santos, the Midwest’s only Spanish-performing drag king, and the brief heartfelt remarks of Carlos Tortelero, director of the Mexican Fine Arts Museum. “This is always your home, remember that, okay?” Tortelero says. An unassuming man with warm blue eyes, he made the rounds of the room during the prom’s catered Mexican dinner, shaking the hands of everyone in sight. Giovanca remained the crowd’s undisputed favorite, however: Flaunting sculpted legs, flawless lip-synching and flashy dance moves, she, too, rounded the room, taunting and flirting with men and women alike.

Giovanca, out of drag, is Victor Gomez, a Homofrecuencia radio contributor and host. Gomez nonchalantly strips off a slinky red dress and sleek brown wig as we talk backstage before the event. “There aren’t enough resources for queer youth in Pilsen,” he remarks. “There aren’t places where they can meet each other, support each other. When you have to go outside your community to get that, it seems unfair. The North Side isn’t always somewhere you fit in.”

Arreguian and Guerrero met and began dating at their Catholic high school. (Emily Alpert)

Guerrero echoes his comments. “Around here there isn’t really much for anyone who’s into the same sex,” she says, pushing her dark curls back behind her ears. She adjusts a dainty string of pearls over the neckline of her black lace dress. “You don’t meet anyone unless someone introduces you to them.”  She’s accompanied by her girlfriend, high school junior Yolanda Arreguian, who she met at her Catholic high school. I ask her how she knew her girlfriend was gay. She narrows her eyes satirically, and gestures demonstratively to Arreguian, who wears a dress shirt and tie, her hair short and spiky. Short of butch/stud visibility, word of mouth is the main way queer community is built in students’ high schools, particularly those where conservative or religious students have prevented the formation of gay-straight alliances.

“I’m the only openly gay student in my high school,” says Arreguian. Behind her glasses, hers is a direct and candid gaze. “I don’t care who knows, and I like being out.” At her Catholic high school, Arreguian actively organizes masses and attends religious events. “I might not agree with what Catholicism says about homosexuality, but I haven’t lost my faith,” she contends.

Over a massive cake, frosted with Homofrecuencia’s inverted-triangle logo, I marvel to Unzueta at the confidence of Arreguian and the other youth I’ve met. She nods, but reminds me that these teens “are comfortable being here to begin with. There’re others we still need to reach, who think they’re the only gay Latina people in the world.”  In contrast to Guerrero and Arreguian, who say “weird stares” are the worst they endure at their Catholic high school, other students have suffered unremitting taunting and threats at their schools. Some have dropped out.

I ask Arreguian how she developed the confidence to be an active, openly gay student at her high school. “I figure that being Latina alone gives you so many stereotypes,” she begins. “There’s stereotypes about being Hispanic, about women, about gay people, and I break all those stereotypes. I’m a Latina getting an education. I’m a girl getting ahead in life. I’m a tomboy and I’m proud of it.”  She grins. “I like telling people about it, because so many stereotypes can be broken by us.”

Guerrero taps her arm, ready to return to the dance floor. “And I think the fact that I can come out here with my girlfriend and not have everyone’s eyes on me is wonderful,” she adds, before Guerrero pulls her away from the table to dance.

STORY INDEX

ORGANIZATIONS >

Amigas Latinas
URL: http://www.amigaslatinas.org/

Boystown.com
URL: http://www.boystownchicago.com/

Homofrecuencia
URL: http://www.wrte.org/homofrecuencia/

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Political Prose

Latter-day crusades

But at the end of the film, after Balian has surrendered Jerusalem, Saladin enters the city and finds a crucifix lying on the floor of a church, knocked off the altar during the three-day siege. And he ca…


But at the end of the film, after Balian has surrendered Jerusalem, Saladin enters the city and finds a crucifix lying on the floor of a church, knocked off the altar during the three-day siege. And he carefully picks up the cross and places it reverently back on the altar. And at this point the audience rose to their feet and clapped and shouted their appreciation. They loved that gesture of honour. They wanted Islam to be merciful as well as strong. And they roared their approval above the soundtrack of the film.

Robert Fisk, a veteran Middle East correspondent for The Independent, has a thoughtful piece on Ridley Scott’s Crusades epic, Kingdom of Heaven, and the reactions of the Muslim audience in the Beirut theater where he saw it. There are just enough historical parallels between that ancient, blood-drenched conflict and the fighting going on today in the Middle East to make one uncomfortable. (It probably doesn’t help that President Bush — in one of his lesser moments of eloquence — once described his war on terror as a “crusade.”) Just as before, the question to be decided is whether there is enough honor and mercy on both sides to quell the fundamentalist thinking and permit, someday, a peaceful resolution. Fisk suggests the answer is yes.

—Victor Tan Chen

Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

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Blog

Quote of note


“They thought I was anti-American because I didn’t want to compromise, but in my high-school ethics class we had Communists, Democrats, Republicans, Gothics — all types. In all our classes, we were told, ‘You speak up, you give your opinion, and you defend it.’”

Tashnuba Hayder, a 16 year old girl, was deported with her mother and sister to Bangladesh, after being held by the FBI on suspicion of terrorist leanings. Tashnuba believes she was targeted because she was not a citizen, and that her detention was a result of her exercising her right to freedom of speech and expression of religion.  She was picked up by FBI agents posing as youth services workers, in an effort to combat the FBI’s growing concern over potential teenage suicide bombers within the United States.

—Laura Louison

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News

The perfect couple

A look at just how far Michigan State University has come since its anti-gay purges in the 1950s.


The perfect couple on a spring break cruise in  March 2004. Photo snapped by Lindsey’s mom, who considers Todd her “adopted son.”

I met Todd on a curb outside a Target store. When I heard a high-pitched squeal reminiscent of sixth grader, I instantly knew I found a friend. It was all part of Michigan State University’s freshman orientation. They welcomed us with shopping bargains; I came home with a catch.

When Todd, my friend Danielle, and I exchanged phone numbers on the bus ride back, I knew Todd wouldn’t call Danielle; he would call me. Unlike Danielle, Todd and I both knew our exchanges weren’t a regular pick-up attempt. He called that weekend.

Todd was born and raised in Chassell, Michigan. You’ve probably never heard of Chassell because it’s located so far north in the upper peninsula of Michigan that Todd could basically reside in Wisconsin. Although Todd doesn’t have a yooper (the name by which downstate Michiganders refer to Upper Peninsula dwellers) accent for some odd reason, when he’s feeling festive, he will whip out his impersonation of an average yooper’s slang: “Aaaaayyyy, let’s go in da howuuuse.” His hometown is so small that Todd graduated with 23 people, including himself, and had to drive an extra 20 minutes every morning to get to the closest school that had a pool for swimming practice.

“They don’t like anyone who’s not like them,” Todd says of his family. “White, middle-class Americans.”

I imagine the conservative and religious Sauvola clan embracing me, fawning over the perfect daughter-in-law, except for the fact I’m gay.

Why don’t they have straight rallies?

Although fast friends, Todd and I took two months to come out to each other. Our discomfort showed in our hesitation at attending the annual Gay Pride rally held directly across from my apartment  complex. Despite a little skepticism — “Do they have straight rallies?” we’d asked each other — we walked over.

There were men in leather g-strings, protestors outside the fenced area screaming we were all going to hell, and the two of us— confused, new to the scene, and somewhat bothered by the fact that there were 3-year-olds present.

Quickly, however, we came to appreciate the sense of unity a Pride rally can provide. Everyone there was either LGBT, or accepting of our lifestyle, and damn, it felt good.

Michigan State has come a long way when one considers that 50 years earlier, rather than gay pride rallies, two massive purges took place on campus, in dorms where Todd and I might have lived. Police ransacked gay persons’ homes, arrested them, and forced them out of college.

Witnesses told of friends who were handcuffed and taken in for lie detector tests to determine their sexuality — as well as their future careers. Two professors were “excused” from their teaching responsibilities, while nearly 30 men were harassed or contacted by the police.

Today the campus, like much of America, has changed. According to Michigan’s Triangle Foundation, voting statistics from the 2004 election show MSU’s campus town of East Lansing as one of only two cities in Michigan that voted for equal gay rights on marriage. Despite this seeming embrace of acceptance, the history of both the city and university reflects a continuing struggle of the kind of repression Todd and I still face on an almost daily basis.

During the 1990s, when Todd and I were mere 8-year-olds, not even thinking about boys or girls, MSU assembled a task force on LGBT issues. Between 1990 and 1992, the task force dug through old campus newspapers and personal accounts — a total of 100 people, middle-class folk, gay, straight, old, young, faculty, staff, and students, offering their private thoughts and experiences — to unearth a history of what happened on MSU’s large midwestern university from the ‘30s through the present.

In the 1930s, MSU’s campus (then Michigan State College) had nothinglike the amount of tolerance it has today. In fact, if you were gay, you guarded your secret and kept a watchful eye out for any undercover surveillance. According to the task force report, the closest establishment to same-sex bars back then was the Black and Tan Club on Shiawassee Street in Lansing. The B and T Club was not a gay institution, but something equally risky — a place where black and white people danced together, and where, emboldened by this barrier crossing, the occasional homosexual person would show up. The gay revolution, however, didn’t begin to appear until the 1950s.

In that era, despite the hatred toward gays, there was still hope for a place of their own, the task force reports, and two bars opened thei doors to the homosexual public. The Quick Bar, and later, Woodward, gave small groups a place to go, and more began to follow. These bars not only gave gay people a place to relax, and socialize, such as Spiral — the hippest gay bar in downtown Lansing — does for Todd and me, but they also allowed LGBT folk to open up and meet other people like themselves. The task force reports that after the bars opened, groups of people would meet in their homes and have private parties, expanding their gay networks.

Coming to terms

My own upbringing mirrors the slow adjustment of MSU and the state of Michigan because it has taken me years to accept my own sexuality.

I was born in Flint, Michigan, notoriously known for its run-down General Motors plant, Michael Moore, and the forever deteriorating image of the city since the car factory shut down. My parents, both GM employees, relocated when I was in fourth grade from Burton, Flint’s nastier sister city, to Grand Blanc, a ritzy, well-off city that’s known for the annual Buick Open — a golf extravaganza Tiger Woods and other pros play in. I went to Goodrich Area Schools, situated a few miles up the road from my home, in the middle of acres of corn fields. Corn isn’t really exciting, and neither was Goodrich.

It’s been hard for me to open up and be myself. In sixth grade I already knew something was “wrong” with me when I fell asleep dreaming of a female criminal whom I, the undercover agent, was supposed to hunt down and cuff. I found her in a corner in an abandoned warehouse, and all I could fixate on in my dream was her breasts. At the time, I didn’t really know what homosexuality was, so I told myself it would be alright. I would be alright.

Right I was about my sexuality; wrong I was about it being alright. After dating a dopey gothic boy almost my entire my freshman year of high school, I started to date a girl. I met her in the hallway one afternoon after lunch period. I had heard rumors she was gay. She was a year younger than me, and even our first conversation flooded with flirting. She told me, “The rumor’s true,” and walked away, telling me she’d see me later.

We kept our relationship secret from most of the school, but everyone pretty much knew we were dating. When you live amongst the corn, the corn has ears, and those ears pick up small bits of talk all day long. We never faced any hatred, however; Goodrich was pretty laid back. But, on the other hand, I felt I was separating myself from my family. I had to come clean with my mom, my confidant, so I wrote a page-long letter dishing everything to her — my relationship, my feelings for women, my fear she would reject me. I left it on the table, and slept between bumps and knocks in the house, constantly waking with the lump in my throat suggesting that my mother was at my door.

The next morning was the worst of my life. My mom cried, told me it would be alright, told me not to lie to her anymore, and told me a lot of other do’s and don’ts. She said we would get through the awkward stage, as long as I didn’t lie to her about dating people.

The last part didn’t take. I continued to lie to everyone at home, then in college until my sophomore year. But that was before I met Emily.

Emily came along months after Todd. In fact, when I first laid eyes on Emily, it was Todd who listened to my lovelorn descriptions of her. He was my personal relationship advisor, giving me the nod or shake of the head when cute or interesting ladies walked down the street. In my eyes, Emily was perfect — quiet, reserved, fashionable, and edgy. There was an aspect to Emily that was so mysterious, I couldn’t help but want more.

After Emily’s roommate, Katie, and I paired up for a project in history class, my interest was piqued. Katie constantly bitched and moaned about how irresponsible Emily unplugged her alarm clock at least once a week. I laughed and wondered how someone could deal with such a jerk, but after Emily and I started going out, I didn’t mind the alarm clock being unplugged every now and then.

Throughout all of this, Todd was by my side, slipping homemade cards featuring dancing butterflies under my door whenever love’s roller coaster took a dip.

It was during that freshman year when, down in the dumps and seeking an escape from MSU life, Todd and I headed out to the only 18-and-over joint that was also gay-friendly — Spiral Video and Dance Bar. We ventured out alone, and ended up at a table with another couple. They bought us tequila shots for the rest of the night and we danced in a foursome on the sweat-soaked floor. After being driven home drunk by the even drunker
couple, Todd and I declared Spiral would be our new home away from the dorms, and that’s where we would spend our weekends, dancing the night away.

Stolen pride

Emily, Todd, and Spiral were part of my coming out. Life on campus also allowed me to grasp my gay roots. Everyone was so liberal and open; there were signs hanging in dorms for meetings with other gay students, and the people I came out to never dropped their jaws in disbelief. I am so thankful I wasn’t on MSU’s campus during the 1960s, when life wasn’t a root beer float with whipped topping.

Fortysomeodd years ago was the breaking point for both homosexual people and campus administrators. Before then, there was no reference to homosexuality or gay arrests in any police report, on or off campus. But in the decade famous for its massive protests of the Vietnam War, it was evident gay people were gaining a voice and the police were clearly on guard. In 1960, “homosexual activity” was added as a category for complaints through MSU’s Department of Public Safety. Within a year after the category was added, nearly a dozen complaints and six arrests were made for what police referred to as“people engaged in or attempting to procure homosexual activity.”

As arrests continued through 1962-1963, campus landmarks were renovated in hopes of altering “physical arrangements to discourage the recruiting of homosexuals.” The campus student union had its basement men’s room remodeled in hopes that gay people would stop meeting there. Yet the handfuls of hidden spots on campus where heterosexual people, such as beneath the Belmont Tower, met remained intact.

In 1969, after police raided the Stonewall Inn — a dark and dingy predominantly gay club in Greenwich Village — campus groups become electrified by the resistance put up in New York. They admired their gay brothers and sisters who resisted the police force, and they too wanted to take a step into the accepting future. It was then, after Stonewall, that a weekly discussion group for homosexuals was formed off-campus, and MSU became one of the few universities across the country to have a gay organization.

Another positive step toward acceptance happened when the Gay Liberation Movement was registered as an on-campus student organization on April 27, 1970, and following it, the MSU Radicalesbians. Not far behind was a human sexuality course, taught by Eleanor Morrison, which focused on the components of sexual orientation and had assigned readings by lesbian and gay authors. MSU was becoming more accepting.

But progress for gay people is usually followed by repression. On March 4, 1972, the Michigan Gay Confederation established and planned the first Gay Pride Week on MSU’s campus. In June 1972, the start of what was to be Gay Pride Week provoked the first confrontation between MSU administrators and the Gay Liberation Movement.

Jack Breslin, MSU’s Executive Vice President, denied the organization permission to hang a banner at one of MSU’s campus entrances.

Complaints were filed with the MSU Antidiscrimination Judicial Board on the basis of sexual discrimination. In lieu of the complaints, Breslin responded, “I honestly believe that it is well within the powers of the MSU Board of Trustees to refuse permission for activities promoting lifestyles which are clearly at odds with the general atmosphere of the university.”

Arguments ensued regarding whether homosexuals should even be allowed to file complaints with the Judicial Board, and eventually the Board of Trustees decided complaints could only be filed by gay people if they were related to job discrimination. Through all of this, the banner was still not flying, and the first Gay Pride Week had come and gone.

Finally, in 1973, on-campus gay groups were allowed their banner recognizing Gay Pride Week. Kind of. Before the week began, administrators announced that the poles were going to be removed for “maintenance reasons,” the banner’s ropes were cut, and the landmark vanished from sight.

Downward spiral

Todd and I used to joke during our freshman year that if we didn’t find partners, we’d settle down together, get married, and fake the rest of our lives. If we were straight, we’d be able to do whatever we wanted. Todd and I could kiss by campus landmarks and no one would think twice about it. We could go into lingerie stores and buy handfuls of bras and underwear for me, and the clerk wouldn’t hesitate to serve us. If waiters asked the question, “One check, or two?” and we replied, “One,” they wouldn’t smile sly grins and think to themselves, “I wonder if I can get both of them home tonight …” It happens to Emily and me all the time.

Usually, though, we can find safety from the wandering eyes and glaring stares when we go to gay bars. So, a few weekends ago, Todd, Emily, and I went to our old favorite, Spiral. We still go to Spiral after all these years because it has a New York feel in our very non-New York town. When walking in, the industrial feel of the nightclub is punched out in tall, metal chairs adorned with red velvet on the cushions. Candles burn, little lounges are filled with red velvet couches, the bathrooms have red velvet curtains instead of doors, and the overall feel is pristine and modern.

Emily and I were sitting, sipping our glass-bottled beers, when a man approached Emily to tell her she was beautiful. She smiled, thanked him and proceeded to ignore his presence. You get these creeps all the time at the gay bar — men out to woo a lesbian.
The man finagled his way into a seat next to Emily and continued to tell her she was gorgeous. I tried shooting him a no-trespassing look, letting him know I was the only one who was going to eat sushi that night. There’s nothing more frustrating than a straight person trying to convert your lover. Instead of throwing a big fuss, though, I just pulled Emily onto the dance floor.

All of a sudden, I see him again. He’s talking to Emily, and I can tell by her uneven smile that he’s still telling her she’s beautiful, still trying to get into her pants, still being a pig.

“We’ve been together for two years,” I hear. “I’m sorry, I’m not interested.”

Emily’s smile is waning and my patience is growing as thin as the air on the packed dance floor. My friends, who can feel my tension, form a human wall between Emily and the man. It’s literally me, Emily, two friends, and the man trying to squirm his way into our dance circle. We’re still trying to keep our cool, dancing, but the man persists. He gives my friends the finger, picks my girlfriend up, raises her to the ceiling, and puts his face in her crotch.

I don’t remember if I shoved the guy, grabbed Emily, or if he just let her go, but we spilled off the dance floor in one fluid motion. I found Todd and his date and explained the whole situation; disbelieving, Todd and his date gallantly offered to kick the guy’s ass. I couldn’t stop thinking if Emily and I had been a straight couple, the man wouldn’t have had the nerve to so aggressively try and break us apart. I was surprised by the depth of my own anger. I hated this interloper and, if I didn’t want to be banned from my favorite gay bar, might even have entertained the idea of macing the bastard’s eyeballs.

And this is still the life we live, every day. We’re constantly battling to open ourselves up, dealing with a society that still wouldn’t mind repressing us and all the while politely doesn’t understand us. MSU has given Todd and me the chance to become who we are, and become more assertive along the way. We might not be 100 percent open, but we’re getting there.

Without the help of MSU’s understanding student population, or the Pride festivals Todd and I still venture to today, I might still be resting in the proverbial gay closet — a place where no LGBT person ever likes to hang out. And those pride festivals Todd and I used to feel weird about? We go to them every year, in as many cities as we can. Last year, Todd spent the night at my apartment, and when we woke up, the park across the river was filled with white trailers, rainbow flags, and tons of people. People just like us. We got dressed and walked over together.

This time, we stood by the fence where the protestors were and laughed at them. We ate elephant ears and strolled around the various vendors. We were happy children were there, because after all, when I have kids, I’m going to want them to see all sides of life. But most important, and closest to my heart, my girlfriend broke her pact of never showing public displays of affection and held my hand. And for the first time ever, I finally felt complete.

STORY INDEX

TOPICS > RESOURCES

Michigan State University’s LGBT website
Resources, event listings and services for students, staff and others.
URL: http://lbgtc.msu.edu/

ORGANIZATIONS >

Triangle Foundation
One of Michigan’s organizations serving the LGBT and allied communities.
URL: http://www.tri.org/

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Fifty-five billion down…


“It is a splendid start and one hopes that they will, from here, go on to cancel all debt for most of the countries — I gather it is about 62 countries — who are heavily indebted.”

A G8 finance ministers meeting yesterday in London agreed to eradicate $40 billion of debt for 18 nations.  The majority of these nations were African, and nine more countries stand to qualify for further debt relief within the next 18 months, bringing the sum total to $55 billion worth of amnesty.

The agreement will save the nations a combined $1.5 billion in annual loan repayments. Cautious praise for the agreement suggests that impoverished nations such as Uganda will be able to use the funds to fight AIDS and hunger, among other concerns.  

However, the African continent owes a total of $500 billion dollars to the World Bank, IMF, and African Development Bank. The G8’s debt relief initiative, while an encouraging start, is not a remedy for the financial handcuffs that developing nations find themselves trapped in.

—Laura Louison

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