LGBT allies: Keeping the issue straight

Chuck Morris, Ph. D. and renowned scholar, came to speak at our school this week. He calls himself an "accidental activist" at Boston College, where he teaches. He incorporates material on the history of homosexuals into his course because as someone of homosexual orientation, he simply feels that this is material that should be exposed to anyone desiring a full education.

He has gotten into trouble with his school's administration many times, but this doesn't discredit his behaviors in his mind at all. In fact, it confirms his actions - exposure is what he believes people need before real acceptance can occur. He teaches his listeners that right now, the problem with the LGBT Movement is a lack of participation by those who do not necessarily self-identify as L, G, B or T.

This got me thinking. This is a problem for most social movements, and as far as I can tell, every message Morris sent was absolutely accurate. He asked about our college campus participation in the LGBT Movement, and all answers seemed to point in exactly the direction he warned us about - that the participation in the movement is almost solely by those who self-identify as gay or bisexual. In other words, the only people who advocate for gay rights are those who are gay.

This might seem to make sense at a glance, but there is a very important flaw to point out: People tend to advocate for their own self-interest. The problem here, then, is more likely to be that people on campus who self-identify as strictly heterosexual do not see advocacy for gay rights as beneficial to their own lives.

Like the Feminist Movement to men and the Civil Rights Movement to people of caucasian descent, the LGBT Movement is subject to the extreme misperception that it would "only help gay people," and even that it would somehow hinder the lives of heterosexuals.

Important note: EVERY SOCIAL MOVEMENT HELPS EVERYONE. Social movements in the U.S. generally aim at placing the importance of what we generally accept to be ideals of humanity over those aimed at perpetuating financial success or power for one or another previously instated party (not political party, but high-end person or group). We all benefit awhen these ideals are recognized, no matter who we are or consider ourselves to be.

Consider LGBT advocacy, the backlash it is victim to and what exactly that backlash implies. The LGBT Movement advocates for gay marriage. This doesn't affect any of us who aren't gay, but rather speaks to the idea that marriage is about love. If it isn't, what is it about? To find an answer to this, we have to think about what it is that heterosexual couples can do and gay people cannot. I think the answer is clear. Is marriage about reproduction? Is reproduction completely unrelated to love in the extreme form of either/or binary?

In a country that currently creeps toward a divorce rate of 50 percent (we have recently jumped from 41 percent to 46 percent) and a population so large that two of our most urgent reforms are housing and immigration laws, I hope that the answer to this question is a resounding "(bleep) no!" So why can't gay people marry?

On a very basic level, like so many movements before and alongside it, the LGBT Movement petitions against hatred. Any claim made for the movement's absolute correctness on this front requires no further justification.

A side-note, though, is the inherent extension of hatred: fear. Anyone who has carelessly used the word "faggot" or has openly described something unpleasant or unwanted as "gay" can be certain that she or he has unwittingly done so in front of someone close to her or him - probably a good friend or a relative - who has questions about his or her sexual identity, and who has in that moment silently decided to refrain from confiding these questions in the user of these hate words.

Within every group committing acts of violence against a homosexual party, there is at least one member who has sealed his or her own lips about his or her heterosexual doubts for fear of receiving that very same punishment; there is probably another who simply decides not to talk to his or her friends about anything he or she may dislike ever again.

Hate generates fear among everyone. All expressions of hate, toward any person for any reason, serve to control the factors of self-identity in a way that traps us all. So long as hatred surpasses equality as our ruling social force, every single one of us is subjected to its repercussions.

If we want to sustain our right to pursue happiness, our general well-being and our freedom to be safe to be ourselves, we must eliminate hatred, the source of fear. The LGBT Movement and its allies are doing this. The question as to why we are not all involved in this universally beneficial social work is ultimately unanswerable without casting a very suspicious shadow over our own sense of humanity. It is time that we all got the LGBT Movement "straight"