Equal and Equivalent

Our seven-year-old has started second grade and that means it’s fractions time in the James household. At the dinner table the other night, Sophie walked us through her budding understanding of “equal” and “equivalent.”

“Did you know that 1/2 and 3/6 are equivalent?” she offered in her best “teaching my parents” voice.
“What does “equivalent” mean?” we queried.

A pause. Finally she says, “When things are the same but different.”

(I’m positive someone with greater fluency in the nuances of mathematics could completely unravel the metaphoric thread I’m weaving but bear with me.)

Last spring, the battle over North Carolina’s Amendment 1 produced a diverse, committed coalition of forces unified against enshrining relationship discrimination (of both homosexual and unmarried heterosexual couples) into the state constitution. There were a host of specious arguments offered by supporters of this ultimately successful legislation. Ron Baity, founding pastor of Winston-Salem’s Berean Baptist Church and the head of Return America, promoted one line of though that sticks with me.

In February 2012, Baity addressed a gathering of religious leaders at a Day’s Inn in Southern Pines about the urgent need to pass this amendment “protecting traditional marriage.” Baity’s homophobic sermons are legendary, but that’s not the part of his 40-minute speech I remember from watching it on YouTube a week later. What struck me were his references to “studies” from the Netherlands, the first country to legalize same-sex marriage in 2001. The data show, insisted Baity, that even when given access to marriage, “the homosexual” does not avail him or herself of the right. “96% of [Dutch] homosexuals and lesbians,” he asserted, “remain unmarried.”

Baity went on to claim that a “Dutch poll” found that even those who are married “will have a sexual relationship with at least eight other homosexuals every twelve months.” In Massachusetts where same-sex marriage has been legal since 2005, there are “stats,” Baity pronounced, showing that in the first three years over 6000 gay and lesbian couples got married. Since 2008, however, same-sex marriages across MA townships are “in the single digits.” Why the drop off? He offered this explanation:

“The homosexual community wants their false marriages to be accepted in this country like traditional Biblical marriage. It’s a social issue with them. They just want the status. They don’t care about the marriage. […] They just want the status of saying, ‘Our marriage is just as important as traditional marriage. [Statistics show] we’re not going through the process. We’re already enjoying our lifestyle. We just want [what the] status quo [has]’.”

For Baity, such evidence illustrates that LGBTQ individuals want the rights that come with marriage but are unwilling to accept the commitments that marriage requires. I have not been able to uncover what credible study actually says what Baity claims. He might have been referencing the work of M.V. Lee Badgett of the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law & Public Policy at the UCLA School of Law. Badgett wrote a book that analyzed the impact of same-sex marriage legalization in the Netherlands. In a 2009 New York Times interview she noted that while the image of marriage for straight couples – its emotional and spiritual commitment to another person – changed little since same-sex marriage was approved, the impact of having a socially legible relationship on how gays and lesbians are seen and see themselves is palpable. Even if like heterosexual men and women they choose not to avail themselves of that right. Badgett writes,

“Only marriage has the social understanding to back up the legal status, and the social meaning is as important as the legal rights.”

Badgett’s study shows that despite the calamity predicted by supporters of Amendment 1 in NC (and those backing similar legislation on Minnesota ballots this November) marriage is not changed by allowing gays and lesbians to have that right; it’s the idea of equality that changes.

So Pastor Baity is partially correct.

Hear me out.

I don’t think I’m going out on a limb to argue that LGBTQ citizens who want to marry want that right because it is the status quo. It is the legal path to the same privileges enjoyed by other married American citizens like health insurance, inheritance, social security benefits, even pathways to citizenship itself.
Marriage is also the gateway to being seen as equal. By having the same privileges, queer folk become legible in ways that have ramifications beyond marriage. This is the real threat for Baity, one he tries to dismiss by implying gay people are biologically incapable of monogamy and therefore of ever really respecting or embracing marriage the way straight couples do. (I’ll leave divorce statistics unspoken. You can look those up yourselves.)

And here is where my daughter’s fractions lesson comes back into focus. In very real ways, equivalent rights are unacceptable. Many who opposed Amendment 1 did so because they saw the measure as an affront to equality. But there is a risk to pursuing marriage rights above more broadly conceived measures, like employment non-discrimination, universal healthcare, and immigration reform. While these initiatives might seem focused on equivalencies – domains outside of marriage where certain rights could be accessed – their potential impact is vast, especially for people who do not wish to marry. As marriage becomes the gold standard of LGBTQ equality, we would be wise to remember the many activists (past, present, and future) who argue for queerness as a challenge to traditional institutions, like marriage, that tend to fix and naturalize ideas about gender and sexuality.

As I celebrate NC PRIDE this weekend and consider the post-Amendment 1 political landscape, these are the questions at the forefront of my mind. If equality is only accessible through erasure of differences be it regarding marriage, monogamy, dress, or desire is it really equality? How can we strengthen and expand our coalitions of supporters beyond the question of marriage? Should we make a political and cultural space for equivalence? How do we fight for equal rights while also fighting for the right to be different?

Life-changing

I just finished my second summer teaching for the non-profit organization Student U in Durham (http://studentudurham.org/). At the end of each summer, each teacher gives a Presentation of Learning to the other faculty and administrators. Here’s what I learned.
NOTE: Dan is Dan Kimberg, founder of Student U (Duke class of ’07) “Best Part of Me” is a Student U 6th grade English assignment Global Connect is the Student U equivalent of social studies Instead of homerooms, Student U has “families”“Family,” “identity,” “life-changing.”

I’ve heard those words thrown around a lot this week. I don’t use those words to describe Student U. But here’s something else I’d use them for. When Dan tells the story of Student U, he often tells a love story in parallel about his wife. I’d like to do something similar with my presentation. This is a love story about a person and a place. I hope it has a happy ending.

On April 22nd of last year I attended my first ever Student U event, the summer faculty dinner. That was the same week I admitted to myself and my inseparable best friend of two years that I loved her. Of course, she knew that already. I think I’d been telling her I loved her since the middle of freshman year – in an oh-my-god-you-brought-me-take-out-LoYo, I-love-you– kind of way. That week I told her something different, something deeper and more scary. That I loved her, in fact was in love with her, exactly as much as wouldn’t freak her out. Turns out she wasn’t freaked out at all, just kind of exasperated that it had taken me so long to own up to – so much so that she scrawled FINALLY in her journal in capital letters with several underlines.
That week I started keeping the biggest secret I have ever kept and probably ever will keep. And I was bad at it. It ate me up. I watched my sister, who I’m very close to, start to think I didn’t like her anymore. What other reason could I have for not inviting her to dinner out with my “best friend?” Why did we always hang out without her? I watched my mother get mad as I lied to her face about something she already knew and had been hinting at, but I just wouldn’t claim. Eventually I caved to my family.

I kept my secret more completely at Student U. I couldn’t handle the prospect of an imbalance in which my entire extended network of work friends knew before her immediate family did. That summer I should have been a 6th grader at Student U rather than a teacher. What I needed was a caring mentor like Imani walking me through questions of identity in Global Connect. A patient English teacher like Alex helping me understand that sometimes the Best Part of Me can feel like the worst. The extent of my coming out at Student U that first summer was hesitantly flashing a wallet photo at one teacher on his way out to the mini-bus (because I ‘thought he might understand’) and tearfully confessing to Ms. Caroline during eval week at the very end of the summer (which was a little ironic, since she always seemed to be the one in tears).

Over the course of the following year at Duke more and more people were entrusted with my –our– secret, and as it turned out most of them were already in on it. What had been so confusing to me had been pretty damn obvious to them. As time went on I got more comfortable in my own, new skin, even if I didn’t quite know which label to slap on it. Maybe I was a lesbian, maybe I was bisexual, maybe I was straight with this one crazy exception. All I knew for sure was that I was in love.

Just as I started to come to terms with that part of my identity, my state legislature started to outline, in no uncertain terms, a very public, and possibly permanent rejection of it. I don’t cry very often. It’s hard to make me cry. But when Amendment One passed on May 8th of this year, I cried – I didn’t think I would, but I did. How humiliating, to think you loved me back. Oh, North Carolina, how I have always defended your charms and endearing qualities. How you were only part of the South in the good senses and never the bad. How wrong I was.

I have always been a homebody, making intentional decisions to stay in one spot to watch it grow and change. My friends and family members who’ve run off to out-of-state colleges or raved about study abroad – I’ve always argued with them about the value of staying put, of falling in love with one place. They sampled many different dishes, while I held on to my one onion that is Duke and Durham and North Carolina, hoping to keep peeling and peeling, until I knew it through and through. For 20 years, I peeled back layer after layer only to find you were rotten in the middle, North Carolina, that you made me sick.

At the end of last summer I came away with the conviction that I could devote my professional life not only to teaching, but to teaching here. In Durham, in North Carolina. But for all my roots here, all my layered memories, I have found I cannot stay. Not in a hometown, in a homestate that thinks it is vitally important to declare in its founding document that my love is second-class, my commitment false, and my life toxic to those around me. Many anti- Amendment One campaigns threatened that passing this kind of legislation would drive away valuable LGBT-friendly employers and employees who could help boost our state’s economy and institutions. I want to help make that threat a reality. I will be that homegrown talent that takes an NC education and leaves for greener pastures. I want my departure to be a consequence of Amendment One. This was the background current running through my head all summer and it made me angry and distant more often than I would have liked. Angry to reflect on the way my students ridicule gay people while unknowingly talking to one. Angry to remember the fall tutoring session in which a student explained to me (an atheist – or, on a good day, agnostic) that gay people were going to hell and this should be sufficient justification for me to allow her to continue mocking the ‘fruity’ waiter she’d had at TGI Friday’s. When I countered by citing the recent string of LGBT teen suicides, she simply asked why they didn’t just stop being that way then, if they were only going to get bullied and kill themselves.

This anger led me to be distant. I admired Rosemary, Imani, Amanda, and others for hitting these issues head on with their students. But did I use marriage equality as my sample essay topic in English? Of course not. Did I have real heart-to-heart conversations about “that’s so gay?” No. Because I could feel my blood start to boil and flush my face red when students asked if they could say “homo” instead.

But I became distant in a much more general way as well. With the exception of one boy, I don’t know this group of students in the same way I knew last year’s. And I wonder if that’s because I felt the futility of forging yet another connection with a place inside of a place where I am no longer welcome. Occasionally I was struck with the irony of creating a Student U “family” within a state that believes I am pathologically incapable of raising a real one. I didn’t want to fall in love with this place any more, give any more of my self to it. It would just make it that much harder to leave against my will.

I hope someday – 10, 20, 50 years from now – I can come home again. I’ll be waiting.

-Liza, Trinity ‘13

Parenting Without Papers

[Editor's Note: We are SO excited to bring you ANOTHER amazing out faculty blogger, Dr. Jules Odendahl-James.]

At the end of February, I spoke at the Duke Together rally against Amendment 1 on the West Union Plaza. I was there to talk about the harms this discriminatory amendment poses for my family, which consists of myself, my spouse of 17 years, and our 7-year old daughter. {You might have seen us the “Make it Better” video that Duke Together released at the end of March.} That event in February, I’m almost ashamed to say, was the first large campus event where I spoke openly about being a gay parent and my most palpable emotion was fear--fear that by being visible I was putting those I love at risk not to mention myself.

Earlier on that same February day, I was a participant in a “Know Your Rights” training facilitated by NC Dream Team as part of STRANGER: A Festival of Hospitable Acts, a civic engagement project sponsored by the Duke Center for Civic Engagement and the Department of Theater Studies. The Dream Team typically reserves this training for undocumented students, workers, and their families but agreed to facilitate a version of their workshop to help us understand more personally the range of emotional, physical, and legal issues faced by North Carolina Latino/as. There were some dominant themes:
• Fear -- of exposure, of entrapment, of discrimination, of loss of everything one knows and holds dear.
• Resolve -- to speak out for fair business, legal, and educational practices in relationship to immigrants old and young, those with papers and without.
These young activists are unwilling to hide, remain silent, and hope for others to change a dysfunctional system. Their resolve also what puts them at risk; however, it’s a risk they feel compelled to take. If they don’t, who will?

I began to imagine myself in the shoes of our facilitators. No, I do not risk arrest and deportation if I am pulled over for a traffic violation. No, police officers typically do not single me out on the street and ask my name, to see some ID, or demand to know “What are you doing here?” No, I do not worry about my ability to get through a day without being accosted, my workplace raided, or being torn, summarily and without legal counsel, from my family and sent to a place I do not know as home.

And yet, I can be denied access to and the ability to direct care for my child or my wife, if we have to seek medical care in a county or from a facility where the staff refuses to acknowledge me as a parent and a spouse. In 2010, I lost my legal standing as a same-sex, “second” adoptive parent via a summary judgment from the NC Supreme Court in Boseman v Jarrell. So did hundreds of others. I am now dependent upon benevolent schools, doctors, and employers to accept me as a mother despite that ruling. If something were to happen to my spouse, despite the many costly legal documents we have in place to protect ourselves, a member of her extended family could step in and argue for a blood tie to the child I have raised. And I would have to rely upon the mercy of the court for custody.

The immediacy of the fear is absolutely different for LGBT and Latino/a North Carolinians, but the risks for living “without papers” (be they birth certificates, valid Social Security cards, or adoption decrees) is shared. And, while I am fortunate that Duke University provides benefits to its LGBT employees and their families, my position is provisional. My temporary access to the generosity of this employer adds complications and, admittedly, has influenced my willingness to be public and vocal about LGBT equality.

As I sat in the “Know Your Rights” workshop, I was reminded of an exchange that happened at a Race to the Ballot town hall. Race to the Ballot was a statewide marathon in which EqualityNC staffer Jen Jones ran from city to city appearing at public forums to talk with citizens about the ramifications of this legislation. At a meeting in Boone, a supporter of Amendment 1 demanded to know how one speaker, a lesbian non-birth mother, could legitimately consider herself a parent. “Did you and that woman conceive your child?” He was visibly shocked at her answer of “Yes,” and at her question of him. “Can you see that I am the mother of that child? I was there at her birth and have raised her. Can you believe that she is as much mine as your children are yours?” “No,” he responded with blunt honesty, ”I just can’t.”

It is this refusal to recognize LGBTQ North Carolinians as equal that Amendment 1 will enshrine into the state constitution. This is more than just an issue of semantics about marriage; it codifies a particular religious morality as a rationale for discrimination. It not only prevents relationship recognition for both unmarried gay and straight couples, but also makes it impossible for North Carolina law to conceptualize of such unions for the foreseeable future. Without legal standing as full subjects, any and all rights and responsibilities to partners, communities, and institutions are rendered inconceivable.

On my most pessimistic days, I think this is the unspoken endgame when it comes to LGBTQ individuals, as well as un/documented, Latino immigrants in North Carolina: to make invisibility not a temporary survival strategy, but a permanent legal position from which we have few, if any, means of recourse. On other, more hopeful days, I think of how much the fight to defeat Amendment 1 has galvanized and connected seemingly different communities and encouraged people to come out, to see themselves and make themselves seen as complete subjects in the face of the law. Resolve in the face of fear can no longer be a dream -- it must be a reality.

To learn more about The NC Dream Team visit their website. To learn more about Duke Together and other statewide organizations fighting Amendment 1 visit our website. [Photo Credit: Justin Cook, Commitment NC Project]

This is my home too

When the Amendment 1 was proposed, I was upset, but I really don’t think I realized that is was actually real. It was surreal and something to worry about later. But in the last couple of weeks, it has become starkly real to me. It’s hit me that these are my neighbors, my friends, and my family, some of which will definitely vote to deny me even the possibility of having equal rights. And these people will say (if I ever get the nerve to confront them about it, which I surely will not) that it’s not personally against me—that it’s an issue of principle, not individuals. But it can’t be divorced from me personally. This is the state where I grew up, and my community back home is asserting its disapproval of me, and so are many of the friends that I have come to love and respect. It makes me nervous that these sorts of feelings are becoming more and more socially acceptable. I have always sensed a tension at home (tiny rural area in NC, cows outnumber people, mostly socially conservative, that sort of thing), but in my experience people have managed to at least keep it largely to themselves. I think they haven’t expressed any direct malice because it’s not something that they regularly think about. Now, though, LGBT issues are the topic of discussion, and I dread what I know that I will hear in two short weeks when I go back. I have been thinking a lot lately about coming out at home, to my family if to no one else. But now I’m afraid the climate may be too hostile for this to even be an option. I’m afraid of the insensitive passing remarks and conversations that I’ll overhear about how wrong or disgusting queer people are. I’m afraid that I will let these inevitable words get in my head. I’m afraid that I will feel ashamed or less of a person where I know that I never should. I’m afraid of giving people power over me, even if they are completely unaware of what they are doing. I’m afraid people will draw a connection between my politics and my sexuality and expose me. I’m afraid that what has been my home for so long will no longer be that. And I’m afraid that all of my friends there who would be affected by the Amendment and the change of social atmosphere that it would bring, wonderful queer and allied people who deserve nothing better than the best, will be subjected to the same.

I find myself faced with what seems to be an unavoidable step back into the closet. I’ve been able to surround myself with LGBT community at Duke in ways that I never had even imagined possible. I have been fulfilled and supported and have developed and it has all been a dream. After having all of this freedom, going back is going to be undeniably hard. I dread that I will have to be there when the Amendment 1 voting results come in. If it’s good news, I will celebrate alone; if it’s bad news, I will cry alone. And it is like this for so many queer and allied people in rural communities through the state. So I guess that’s ultimately what Amendment 1 would mean for me—a hit when I’m already down.

Strength

I have to admit it. As the vote on Amendment One draws near, I’m scared. And not just horror movie scared—no, I’m scared in an existential way that shakes you to your core. It may seem obvious to some, but let me explain why I’m scared.

You see, I consider myself a strong person, and yet these past few months, I’ve started to feel very weak. While weakness isn’t new to me, I haven’t felt this weak in quite some time. In many ways, I’ve spent my life learning to be strong, learning to overcome, and learning to take pride in my identity. Through persistent effort, I’ve been able to make weakness something that is constantly in my past—at least until now.

I remember feeling weak as a child, when the other kids in my neighborhood made fun of me for playing with Barbies and for wanting an easy bake oven. I used to sit in the dining room of my house and watch the other kids in my neighborhood play on the street, but because I was a “sissy,” and a “girly-boy,” I didn’t go outside—I stayed at the window, wishing that I had friends in my neighborhood who could play dress-up with me, who could be my friends even though I was a little bit different. I remember feeling weak then, but I mustered up my strength, learned to assert myself, and eventually found a way to make friends in spite of being different.

I remember feeling weak in middle school whenever my friends asked me if I had a crush on someone. I dreaded that question, because every time someone asked me, I longed to tell them the truth and never did. Thoughts of a boy in my class would bubble up warmly into my mind, but each time I pushed them back down in favor of a lie. I lied so often. I remember feeling weak then. Over the years and after many failures, I gained the courage to stop lying, to claim my truth. Through strength, I was able to live a more honest life.

I remember feeling weak in high school, when I heard about Lawrence King, an eighth-grader who was murdered by one of his classmates because he was gay. It wasn’t until I heard about Lawrence’s death that I began to understand the full magnitude of homophobia, and it was crushing. I realized that I lived in a world where even children thought it acceptable to kill someone for being different. I remember feeling weak then, but I didn’t take weakness for an answer—I found the strength to make an announcement over my high school intercom decrying Lawrence’s murder, I found the strength to begin organizing local gay straight alliances in Raleigh, and I found the strength to author and pass a resolution against LGBT bullying at the Annual Conference of the NC Methodist Church.

And I remember feeling weak last semester, when the NC General Assembly approved a referendum on Amendment One, placing my civil rights to a majority vote. I sat, dazed, surrounded by the realization that something like this could happen in my home state. But once again, I summoned all of my strength and got moving. Along with a few cherished friends, I worked to establish a campus-wide coalition against Amendment One, to hold a rally, to secure a voting site on campus, to author a Duke Student Government resolution against Amendment One that passed unanimously, and to get grants for printing up t-shirts, buttons and stickers.

But over the past few days, I began to realize something.

I realized that, no matter what I do, I could never be strong enough. Through individual strength and perseverance, I will never be able to defeat one of the most hateful pieces of legislation in our state’s history. My personal strength—no matter how fervent, no matter how fierce—will never be able to overcome amendment one, because at the end of the day, I am still just one person with one vote. In the face of Amendment One, I am profoundly weak. For the first time in my life, I feel powerless.

Which is why I need you.

While I may be weak as an individual, with you, I can be strong again. Because of you and through your ardent support, I will be able to find my strength. Alone, I may be only one person with one vote, but together, we are two people with two votes, and as a community, we are hundreds and thousands of people with the strength to change this world.

So I need you to be strong. I need you to be strong for my family. I need you to be strong for my community. Alone, I can never achieve equality before the law, but together, we just may stand a fighting chance. Together, against all odds, we may just be able to beat Amendment One. If we stand up, arm in arm and hand in hand, we have the chance to make history by being the first state in the South to vote down an amendment that takes away the fundamental rights of the LGBT community.

Together we are strong. Together we make history.

Will you be strong with me?

Navigating Multiple, Seemingly Conflicting, Identities

[Editor's note: We are thrilled to welcome newest faculty writer, Dr. Brian Ammons, to the blog!]

In the midst of final papers and projects, advising and fielding questions about next fall, and all of the other minutia that creep up at the end of the semester, I’ve got a rally to plan. On Sunday, April 22 at 1:00 PM, I’ll be gathering at the Trotter Building (410 West Greer) with other church folk who are opposing Amendment One, doing my part to try and actually get people to the polls. I imagine it will be a strange moment for me. Church folk aren’t the first set of allies that many of think of in political battles for LGBTQ rights. But it’s who I know, and as I’ve asked around, these are the folks who have been willing to step up and commit to standing against this amendment.

Alongside my faculty appointment here in the Duke Program in Education, I am also an ordained Baptist Minister. As far as I know, I was the first out gay man to be ordained in North Carolina outside of the predominantly LGBTQ Metropolitan Community Churches. I still serve a small congregation in Raleigh, and much of my speaking and writing remain tied up in religious conversations. Yet, here at Duke I generally keep my “Rev.” title in my back pocket, only whipping it out for strategic purposes now and then.

I always find the process of coming out as a teacher to be strange and complicated. Part of me resists the idea that I need to make myself easily intelligible to students in order to claim the authority to speak about queer theory or the experiences of LGBTQ people. And yet, part of me believes that visibility matters, and that in claiming and normalizing my own sexual identifications I stand with my queer students and have space to disrupt the assumptions of some of my other students.

But I come out twice…given that I teach about controversial social issues, it is a rare case that at some point in the semester we doesn’t land in some conversation about the role of religion in public discourse. Again, I have to navigate whether or not self-identifying as a Baptist minister is productive or likely to shut down conversation. Part of me believes that visibility matters, and that in claiming and normalizing my own religious identifications I stand with my religious students and have space to disrupt the assumptions of some of my other students.

Be clear, I’m not interested in using my authority to coerce or convert on either count. I am however conscious of the complicated choices around self-identification and disclosure I am asked to make in my professional life. I teach courses largely about power, politics, and identity in education systems, and yet two of the most centrally defining aspects of my own identity are consider by many educational institutions as out of bounds – rendered invisible by academic discourse. Or, on the other hand, in making them visible, I chose to let myself be reduced to being the “gay Baptist guy” who talks about schools.

It’s a complicated dance, and I almost always stumble. In the end, I count on the relationships we build in the classroom to be able to hold the tensions that each of us carry with us as we engage complicated questions. I am intentional about not requiring my students to self-disclose, and yet simultaneously try to create an environment that values the organic knowledge that comes from lived experience, the kind of stuff I learned on Sunday afternoons sitting at the feet of my elders on my great-grandfather’s front porch. It’s a dance about showing up, living with the tensions, and trying to navigate the contradictions with grace and integrity.

Not all of the folks coming out on Sunday are affirming of same-gender relationships. In fact, many of them are openly opposed to them. Yet, they are standing against the Amendment based on their understandings of the role of government in society, the nature and purpose of constitutions, the very practical realities of how the amendment could affect children and all unmarried couples, and even a sense of neighborliness. These are folks who live with tensions. Some are taking significant risks in their personal and professional lives to stand with those of us who are outspoken in our opposition. They are my friends, and I’m grateful for their choices.

I am a queer North Carolina native, who has made intentional choices to stay in my home state and work for progressive change. I am a minister. I am a teacher. I am an activist. I live in those tensions. So I’ll take a break from grading final papers on the implications of French inflected poststructural thought for American public schools to hang out with some Christians and cast my ballot.

A Marriage Between Church and State?

Like just about every other social justice issue, it seems that the issue of gay marriage and gay rights has become a political one. It is, of course, disappointing, to say the least, when issues of social justice become politically polarized, because it automatically means they can’t be viewed objectively. Just as the GOP seems to be opposed to practically every pro-environmental piece of legislation that comes to vote (not to mention that they are staunch advocates of a lot of anti-environmental legislation), the issue of gay rights is similarly polarized by political party lines. However, unlike the former, the ethics of the anti-gay rights argument is founded not in logic, nor science, nor even economic interest, but rather in religious texts, traditions and beliefs.

I am infuriated that this continues to entertain this debate in the legislature becaus from the ethical argument that everyone should be treated equally under the law and by his/her peers, it conflicts with founding ideologies of our nation. The ideology I want to focus on is an idea inherent in the First Amendment. Though not explicitly stated in the Bill of Rights – but rather quoted from a letter written by then President Thomas Jefferson in 1802 regarding the function of the First Amendment – we believe in a “wall of separation between church and state.” Almost a century and a half later this ideology was upheld in court when a 1947 Supreme Court ruling (Everson v. Board of Education) held that a separation of church and state means “that there should be virtually no contact between religious ideas and government activity.” But 200 years after Jefferson’s explanation and over 60 years since the Supreme Court case, we’re still fighting to keep religious ideas out of legislation.

With regard to fight to legalize gay marriage, I have yet to find someone whose opinion against this legalization is not grounded in (Judeo-Christian) religious belief and, as I’m sure you’ve heard before, this belief is grounded in one verse: Leviticus 18:22, which is typically understood to denounce homosexual acts in some way, shape or form. Before this blog post I would have, without hesitation, told you that it explicitly denounces a male from sleeping with another male and would have made the argument that this is ridiculous because we merely need to look at male and female anatomy to acknowledge that this is, indeed, impossible. But after doing a little scooping around, I fell upon a webpage (Religioustolerance.org) with different interpretations of Leviticus 18:22. I’m now beginning to think, “It’s no wonder people are using this verse as an attack against gay marriage legislation because some of these translations are ‘interpretation[s] that most closely reinforce…initial biases about the Bible and homosexual behavior.’” Translations of this verse range from “Thou shalt not lie with a man as with a woman: it is [an] abomination” (English Standard Version) to “Homosexuality is absolutely forbidden, for it is an enormous sin” (Living Bible). The latter, of course, translates a preconceived notion of morality, as the Living Bible translation extends the phraseology also to condemn sex between two women, whereas the first makes no mention of women’s sexual exploits. Now I’m no biblical expert, but I know enough Hebrew to know that these two translations absolutely cannot originate from the same text. Which brings me to this point: if, for a moment, we ignore our ideology that bars religious ideas in government activity, if we can’t even decide how properly to translate this verse – if we don’t even understand what it’s trying to tell us – how can we validate it as an argument against legalizing gay marriage?

If we run with this argument – that the Torah (Old Testament) forbids homosexuality in some way, shape or form, therefore we should write this into law – why do we only choose to continue to try to enforce this one verse? Our religious morals certainly do not pertain only to the issue of homosexuality. As a society, we look down upon, if not condemn, adultery, though I doubt you’d find many supporters for the ancient law that reads “the man that committeth adultery with another man’s wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death” [sic] (Leviticus 20:10, King James translation). Or for dealing with a difficult teenager, I doubt you’d find many who think this law is just: “If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother…then shall his father…bring him out unto the elders of his city…And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die” (Deuteronomy 21:18-21, King James translation). If, in agreeing that many of these laws are outdated, to say the least, and border on ‘cruel and unusual,’ why do we still maintain that ancient laws about homosexuality pertain to modern society any more than ancient laws about justice for unruly sons or unfaithful spouses?

I am Conservative Jewish and my experience has lent me to believe that I am more observant than most of my Conservative peers (note: Conservative here means Conservative Jews), yet I don’t believe in applying ancient law to a society that is so vastly different in practically every way from ancient times. Is this text that speaks out against men lying with other men in my religious history? Yes, but that does not mean I want to see this translated into law.

The First Amendment protects my right to freely exercise my own religion and my own religious beliefs and my right to be protected from “an establishment of religion.” I think I’ve made it clear that the way I interpret this ancient text is very different from the way others interpret it. I don’t believe – with regard to the Constitution or otherwise – that another’s religious beliefs should be forced on my lifestyle or anyone else’s. If you don’t believe in the institution of gay marriage then my advice is simple: don’t marry someone of the same sex. But don’t tell me that just because your religious preachings tell you not to marry someone of the same sex means that your belief should legally apply to everyone, regardless of their own religious ideologies.

As it stands, we live in a country that, historically at least, believes that religious doctrine should not be translated to law. Unless a logical argument, independent of religious bias, can be made, the arguments against legalizing gay marriage should be voided and the issue kicked out of Congress and off the ballots, because I don’t want to live in a state –or a country for that matter – that thinks religious ideas should be made into secular law, even if the decision is determined democratically.

Obligations

Does it matter if people know that I’m gay?

It shouldn’t, right? I mean, I’m just a person who happens to be attracted to women. That fact doesn’t usually influence the lives of the people I interact with on a daily basis. Besides, the majority of people—straight people, that is—never have to declare their sexuality. It’s just irrelevant in most situations. My sexuality is really no one’s business but my own, right?

I’ll be starting a new job soon. That means a new boss and new coworkers that I potentially have to come out to. I’ve been wondering how important it is that they know I’m gay. Sure, it would be nice to avoid a lot of awkward conversations or questions about whether or not I have a boyfriend if they just knew up front that I date women. But then again, why should I be obligated to share this really personal aspect of my life as soon as I meet anyone new? Who I date has no bearing on my professional life, so unless I get to be good friends with my new coworkers I’m not sure if there’s a reason for them to know.

But it does matter if they know. Because them not knowing really just means that I’m allowing them to assume that I’m straight. Which isn’t true. My silence would be almost the same thing as denying my sexuality—denying a big part of who I am.

And I am not ashamed of who I am. So, no, I won’t let them just assume that I’m straight.

But back to the question: does it matter if people know that I’m gay? What difference does it make for people to see me and know that I’m gay? This is the difference: Every coworker, classmate, friend, or family member who knows that I am gay is one more person who will have to think twice about voting to take away the rights of their coworker, classmate, friend, or family member. I may be a part of a minority, but we are by no means a minority living in a bubble. You see that majority that gets to vote on the rights of a minority? Don’t let them live in a bubble.

You Cannot Legislate Love

Change it up a bit with a vid.

A Brief Reaction to the Wake County Board of Commissioners

Yesterday, while I was in class talking about freedom songs of the Civil Rights Movement, the Wake County Board of Commissioners was busy voting to support Amendment One, an amendment to the state constitution that would make any legal recognition of same-sex partnerships unconstitutional in North Carolina. Because I was in class, I couldn’t make it to the meeting to speak during the public comments section. So I figured that I’d do it here. Without further ado, here’s what I would have said to the Wake County Board of Commissioners at their meeting yesterday:

Hello Commissioners,

I want to take my allotted three minutes to introduce you to two people who have played an extremely important role in my life, to introduce you to two people who I deeply love, two people who have made me the person that I am today.

I want to introduce you to my mom and dad.

They’re the ones sitting over there waving at you shyly; my mother’s the one that’s probably beginning to get teary-eyed at the sight of her little boy speaking in front of the County Commissioners, and my father’s the one who’s been overzealously socializing with the stranger he’s sitting next to up until I started speaking. My dad’s a people person, and just like me, he’s never met a stranger.

Today, I stand before you as someone who has spent most of his young life working to bring about a world where his rights and the rights of his community will be recognized. I stand before you as someone who has had to fight for his very identity. I stand before you as a minority whose right to a family is currently being decided upon by a majority vote. I stand before you as someone whose home state has turned its back on him. I stand before you today as a proud gay man.

But let’s be realistic. I know that you probably don’t think about people like me. I know that you probably don’t think about the families of queer people or about the rights of those who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. I know that, at best, many of you may think people like me are strange, and at worst, many of you think that we’re an abomination. I know that you probably don’t think about how this amendment impacts me, even though I grew up in Wake County, even though I completed over 300 community service hours every year in high school, and even though I was one of two Wake County students who received a full-ride scholarship to Duke my year. I know that, no matter what I do, you probably don’t think about people like me.

So I want to introduce you to two people who you will think about. I want to introduce you to two straight people who will be profoundly hurt by the proposed constitutional amendment, because I know that those are the kind of people whose rights and concerns you respect.

I want to introduce you to my parents. I want to introduce you to them because they’re probably not the people that you’ve been thinking about up until now. In your haste to insert discrimination into our state constitution, they’re the kind of people that you’ve forgotten about. I think you’ve forgotten that almost every person who is gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender has straight parents, has a mom and a dad. I think you’ve forgotten that my family is larger than just my future husband and my future children—my family includes my straight brother, my straight mother, and my straight father. And if this amendment passes, my straight father and mother will be deprived of legal recognition of their grandchildren. If this amendment passes, my straight brother will be deprived of legal recognition of his nieces and nephews.

What I think you’ve forgotten is that what you define as “gay” families are never truly “gay.” You cannot separate my “gay” family from my “straight” one. Everyone that I love, everyone that has shaped who I am, is part of my family, gay or straight. And in your rush to take away my right to a “gay” family, you’re depriving my “straight” family of their rights too.

So if you cannot respect me for who I am; if you cannot respect the rights of queer people, then at least respect the rights of straight people. Respect the right of my straight mother to look at her grandchildren for the first time, to rush over to them, to scoop them out of my arms, to hug them in the way that only a new grandmother could, and to spoil them for the rest of her life. Respect her right to a family. Respect the fact that, behind most gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender individuals, there are straight parents who want their families to be recognized, who want the best for their grandchildren.

County Commissioners, I want you to meet Abraham and Jane Tobia, my dad and mom. I want you to meet the people whose right to a family you are trying to take away by supporting Amendment One. I want you to meet the people whose current and future family will be broken apart by your actions today.

And North Carolina, I want you to meet my parents too. I want you to meet them so that, when you go to vote on May 8^th, you’ll know exactly whose family you’re impacting. I want you to meet them so that you will know once and for all that this amendment is not just about gay families—it is about all families. I want you to meet them so you can know exactly whose rights you’ll be taking away if you vote in favor of Amendment One.

Say hello.

-Jacob

[Editor's note: If you want to take a stand against Wake County's Resolution, consider signing this petition.]

Alicia Keys is Right - No One!

I had great plans for a post here. I did research on the various polls regarding NC Amendment One - the terrible, terrible attempt to put discrimination and prejudice smack dab in the middle of North Carolina's constitution.  I looked at different reports about the effects of passage and strove to craft a meaningful argument against the amendment that might appeal to the people in the middle - the people whose thoughtful consideration and vote will hopefully defeat this wrong-headed plebiscite.

I hoped to communicate to all those other people out there who are not personally directly affected - or rather who think they are not personally directly affected - by this Amendment that passage of such a thing denigrates us all and adds North Carolina to the sad list of states willing to deny, rather than protect, the rights of all its citizens. I wanted to pass along anecdotes about friends whose loving examples of union define and uphold the sanctity of marriage in ways everyone in North Carolina should cherish. I planned to talk about the real damage North Carolina will be doing to itself by trying to strip away the rights of loving and devoted couples and their children - because, make no mistake, a vote for Amendment One is a vote against families, not in "defense" of them.

And what I realized is this - if you are here, and you are reading this, you already know all that. You know that Amendment One represents a cynical and unpatriotic attack against a minority population. You know that Amendment One is a thinly veiled act of bullying taken straight from the grade school playground into the state house. You know the people whose rights of citizenship will be marginalized were this Amendment come to pass. You know the families who will be faced with the terrible decision of staying in North Carolina and being mistreated for who they love, or taking their talents and their children and moving to a state that recognizes the value and legitimacy of a union between two people without putting undue limitations on the partners.

You already know Amendment One is wholly wrong, and that North Carolina will be much reduced if its constitution bears such an ugly mark on its constitution. You already know how important it is to make sure the huge group of people who either haven't made up their mind, or who have barely made up their mind, know how important it is to Vote No On One. You know that group of Not Quite Sure People is formed of a diverse set of backgrounds, and that therefore diverse messages are required to allow them to fully understand the importance of Voting No On One.

Some will need to be shown examples of loving couples as the core of tremendous families. Some will need to see partners living in union and practicing their faith without reservation. Some will require highly intellectual arguments stemming from the modernized universality of Jefferson that states that, "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all are created equal, that they are endowed with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among people, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

Some will need to battle generations of prejudice and hatred cultivated in their own communities and families to see how important it is to Vote No - they will need your guidance and your patience, as unfair as it is to ask even more of you through this unjustified trial.

It is truly reprehensible that the men and women elected to positions of representational authority have abrogated their duties to protect the rights of all their constituents against any notion of the "tyranny of the majority." It is damnable that they have instead taken a pass on personally upholding the principles of the republic and instead allowed rights to go to a vote. This country and this state stand for more than that, but in this particular instance, those who purport to serve as the instruments of the state have failed. It will therefore be important to remind those in power that we expect more of them and that we reject their attempt to reduce the rights of any of our fellow citizens.

We must Vote No On One.

"Make it Better" at Duke

Calling all LGBTQ individuals and allies! We will be partnering with Duke Together, the Center for LGBT Life, Duke ACLU, and Freewater Productions to create a video in the spring semester in the spirit of the "It Gets Better" project.

"The It Gets Better project was created to show young LGBT people the levels of happiness, potential, and positivity their lives will reach -- if they can just get through their teen years. The It Gets Better project wants to remind teenagers in the LGBT community that they are not alone -- and it WILL get better." (www.itgetsbetter.org)

We want to make a video that embodies the spirit of this project, but tailor it to the relevant issues of our community -- Duke, Durham, and the state of NC. We are looking for people to tell their stories; their struggles, their triumphs, and their goals.

This coming May, North Carolinians will be faced with a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as a union between a man and a woman. Not only would this enshrine discrimination in the state's constitution, but it would have a real impact on the Duke community -- the students who currently attend, prospective students, and the many employees of the university. We want to show the people of this state that this is not what NC is about. We want to show students who are considering to attend Duke that this is a welcoming place, no matter their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Our goal: to send the message that "it gets better," but only if we stand up together and fight discrimination on our home turf. We are looking for people from all walks of life: gay, straight, bisexual, transgender, positive stories, stories of hardships overcome, and anything else that speaks to your personal experience with this issue. If you are interested in contributing to a video that could potentially garner attention from the Duke community, citizens of NC, and even the entire nation, please come forward! Send an email to christine.ko@duke.edu to get involved in the video!

An Open Letter to the NC General Assembly

Dear NCGA,

Hey, it’s me. I don’t know if you remember me or not, but we used to be pretty good friends. Do you remember that awkward high schooler who stood at the dais of the Senate back in 2007 when he was a Senate page? You remember, the one who had just gotten a haircut because his father said that he should look presentable at the legislature. The one who had long, brown, curly hair before then. You don’t remember me? But I stood right at the front of the Senate sessions, just to the right of the now-governor Beverly Perdue.

Perhaps you remember me in a slightly different way. Maybe you remember me as the young, scared, closeted high schooler that I was; maybe you remember the way you made me feel then. When I sat in a question and answer session with Senator Jim Forrester, and he decided that the best thing to talk about with a group of pages was how frustrated he was that the Democratic leadership wouldn’t hear a bill on a referendum to ban gay marriage in the state constitution. Maybe you remember me as the kid who went home to my best friend Paige that night, the only person I was out to, and told her how angry you made me. Or maybe you remember the way that I timidly talked to the other pages about how frustrated you made me feel, but not so much as to give away that I was hiding something.

Or it might be that you remember me when I came to the legislature on a field trip with my high school, and after sitting down with representative Deborah Ross to hear from her about what it’s like to work in the House, I asked her why you couldn’t pass a law that protected people from employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Maybe you remember the way that she looked at me with sad eyes and told me that other legislators are scared to support the LGBT community because they could lose their seats.

Or maybe you remember me from a year later. I could’ve sworn that we met at some point. That summer I was interning in my state senator’s office. It was only for a week or two, but it was really exciting for a high schooler like me to feel important in that way. You even gave me a staff badge so I could walk around on the Senate floor without getting in trouble. Didn’t you see me? I was that same, curly-haired high schooler that you saw running around to drop something off at a committee meeting or at a caucus. You probably saw me as I welcomed you into my senator’s office; I was the young guy sitting at the front desk, who smiled as he asked you to wait for a moment as he went to see if the Senator was in. Maybe you remember me as the intern who hesitantly came out to his state senator, so that his state senator might better understand why he should vote for a bill that stops LGBT kids from getting bullied. Does that ring a bell?

But maybe I made a stronger impression later in high school, when I was volunteering with Equality NC, and I went around to all of you and handed you all hand-signed postcards from your constituents telling you that they support having a law that protects LGBT kids from bullying. Do you remember the way that made you feel? Do you remember how strange it was to have a gay high schooler come around to your office and tell you to vote for a bill that would protect him and other people like him from harassment in school; that would protect his fundamental right to seek an education in a safe environment? Do you remember me? Do you?

Two weeks ago, you showed me that you don’t. When you signed into law a referendum putting my minority rights to a majority vote, you erased me from your memory. When you decided that my right to one day marry the love of my life was less important than your own political goals, you showed me that you don’t remember me at all. Two weeks ago, when you decided to denigrate my identity in our state’s founding document, when you decided to slander my pride and self-esteem in the most permanent, public way possible, you denied that we ever met. Last week, while you were on the house and senate floors rejecting my worth as a citizen and trampling on my human dignity, I was crying in the LGBT Center at Duke, lamenting the fact that you can’t even remember my face.

Given that you seem to have forgotten me completely, I’d like to take a brief moment to re-introduce myself:

Hello. My name is Jacob Tobia, I’m a gay North Carolinian, I am someone’s son, someone’s brother, someone’s future husband, and I am deserving of your respect.

Do you remember me now?

—Jacob