Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Sept. 21, 2001)
45 \ y X T O W A R D G L O B A L W E L L N E S S ... f S P : So m e have argued that we are second- class citizens hut citizens nonetheless. 1 think this is m istaken. ^ It is tme that citizenship is not a single bundle, and we may have som e items and lack others. But “classes” o f citizenship belong to die past. M od em dem ocratic citizenship does not include the idea o f classes; it is an egalitarian concept. In egalitarian societies, the dividing line is less one o f classes than it is o f “ in or out.” I do not believe that those who deny us rights and responsibilities are seeking to m ake us sec ond-class citizens; they would like to deny us m em bership altogether. T M : I was very moved by your concept of lesbian and gay people as “ strangers.” Can you explain what you mean by this? S P : 1 use the term “strangers” to describe the situation o f people who find them selves not sim ply “outside” a com m unity nor “ inside” as full m em bers hut rather as figures o f am bivalence or ambiguity. T hey may have been raised within a com m unity and believe them selves to he part o f that com m unity, until they find for som e reason that others think o f them as outside it. O r others may think o f them as in it hut not “really" not like “us." They live in a space that is partly acknowledgment, partly willful ignorance, partly rejection, and in that space the balance among these may shift with startling rapidity. Strangers may forget, or not know, that they are strangers until they are hit with an insult, a law or an assault or simply with a cultural event that assumes they don’t exist. O ne o f my favorites was Ross Perots remark in 1992 that if he became president he would not appoint any gay or les bian people to his C a b i net because “the A m eri can people wouldn’t like it." It just never occurred to him that many A m er icans are gay or lesbian. T h is is not an inci dental remark. W hen a group is rhetorically opposed to “ the A m erican people” or when A m erica is characterized in a way that many o f us will find impossible to join, we are being con- stnicted as strangers o n ce again. the United States next year because gay rela tionships are not given immigration rights reserved only for heterosexual couples, I cer tainly can say that at best I see myself as a third-class pseudo-citizen of my country. S P : Your experience is a perfect example of how a citizenship structured on the assumption of heterosexuality works to make noncitizens out of queers. Those who would tell you that you are a cit izen regardless of whether a particular law acknowl edges your relationship have not seriously faced the way that citizenship shapes our daily lives. The refusal to recognize your relationship is only one step removed from the [Immigration and N at uralization Service] policy, effective until recently, that considered homosexuality per se a bar to immi gration. W hen such a basic element of cultural life and meaning is denied to some, they become out siders even while they seem to he within. T M : How do the battles over gay marriage, military service and immigration for binational gay couples provide stark examples of this “ stranger” condition? S P : T h e battles over marriage in this coun try and in others have been im portant both for our lives and for what they reveal about the assum ptions o f m odem dem ocratic states. T hose who would deny us marriage outright live in a world o f singular values, where there is one way to live and those who would deviate should he punished or pitied. But more interesting is the “liberal” response that offers civil partner ship hut not marriage. In Norway, gays and lesbians may register their partner ships, hut they cannot be wedded in a state church or adopt children. S o m e in the U .S . h ave suggested sim ilar distinctions. T hese pro posals how to our desire to he united as adults, hut they co n tin u e to exclude us from broader ” understandings o f k in ship, and they deny the sanction o f religion. T hey treat us, in short, like contracting adults. You contract for yardwork, I contract for partnership; it’s all the sam e. But d on ’t go mess ing with my marriage and my kids! Proposals for civil partnerships leave us as strangers. We might have legal rights that are largely the sam e as heterosexual married people, hut we will still he denied cultural equality. H eterosexuals do not live their lives waiting to he called into strangeness hy som e passerby on the street who calls them disgusting. They do not have to “ m anage their identities,” in Erving G offm an ’s phrase, as we do. A n d if queers think that a marriage license will change that for them , they’re in for a rude awakening. G erm an Jews in the 1920s were full citizens, hut that did not make them unrecognizable. Their strangeness was both a gift and a wound. So is ours. "If the fundamental promise of citizenship is acknowledgment of one another and common concern for one another's physical safety then I would say that lesbians and gays are not yet citizens of the United States [ ¡ T~ — L__J / f j - J . IZI ------- J— \ L— — 1 1 j J / E x p e r ie n c e Sh errie T ah a th e (503)236-5910 D iffe r e n c e N IK K E N Schedule a f r e e in-hom e dem onstration o f the LEADING m agnetic technology IN D EPEN D EN T D IS T R IB U T O R w w w .n ik k e n .c o m D is tr ib u to r I D. L i J ja ÍJJJM l VOICE PERSONAL ADS Also check out t M ain ai t a i H it Mato a date go get timer Page 42 and 43 seepages 12 or 51 A s ballet-makers, Canfield and Balanchine both stress speed and athleticism. Both respect the past without repeating it... And each, in his own way, is distinctly American." Bob Hicks, The Oregonian 2001 James Canfield, .Artis Artistic Director — Shane Phelan T M : How does this affect how we relate to one another within the lesbian and gay community? S P : Always, as we steer through these straits, we are tem pted to abandon the weakest or most different or those who tmly threaten the dom i nant culture. A s with all strangers wrestling with inclusion, those o f us who com e close to achiev ing normality tend to buy it hy breaking solidar ity with those who most personify our difference. For gays and lesbians, this has m eant rejecting bisexuals and transgendered people. T h is rejec tion allows us to say that we’re really stable, fixed in our identities, and that our gender identities arc just as normal as those o f heterosexuals, so including us won’t really disrupt the status quo. Now 1 want to say that I don’t believe this fail ure is due to the personal flaws o f any given leader or group. S(x:ial scientists have noted this phe nom enon o f “secondary m arginalization” for decades, across groups that we might call strangers. It is, I think, part o f being a stranger that there is no "right answer.” T here are plenty o f wrong lines, hut there is no answer for strangeness short o f the transformation o f the dom inant culture. S P : I d on ’t frankly know whether or when our condition may improve. Visibility is a huge step, and we’ve gained rights and changed the culture in the last 40 years in ways that no one would have thought possible in 1960. But have we really chipped away at patriarchy or at Am erican phallic pride? I’m not sure. |T1 T M : As a gay American in a seven-year relationship with an Australian man and fac ing the likelihood that we will have to leave T im MILLER is a solo performer and the author of Shirts & Skin, published by Alyson. He can be reached at htmeunm.aol.crmjmilienakltmrruller.html. T M : Do you think we always will be “ strangers” in our country? What might has ten this process? Are you hopeful that our condition might improve? October 13-20 Keller Auditorium call 503/2- b a l l e t or Ticketmaster world premiere
