From: John_Graves@cellbio.duke.edu
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: Re: Responsibilities (was Re: Insults)
Date: 27 Aug 92 14:38:28 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: Duke University Medical Center

In article <1992Aug26.234945.5694@macc.wisc.edu> anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess
Anderson) writes:
>
>In article <4871@news.duke.edu> John_Graves@cellbio.duke.edu
>writes:
>
>>If you wish to not take any responsibility for making the
>>world a better place, you could not have stated it any
>>better than by rejecting education and explanation.

I stand by this statement.  I do not believe that we will ever have a society
in which sexual minorities will be free to practice without oppression unless
efforts at education and explanation are made.  And I think that anyone who is
willing to complain ought to be willing to take responsibility rather than
putting the responsibility for change on and blaming others.  There is
certainly enough blame to go around.  But, and I want to make this clear right
from the beginning, that I do not extend the blame for discrimination against
us to even the most outrageous among our community (choose your own definition
of most outrageous).    


>Seems a pretty safe statement.  That points to a problem
>with it, I think.

If you want to find fault you will (with any statement).

>Few people would advocate not taking responsibility for
>one's own actions.  Most would probably agree that trying to
>do something so that the world would be a better place is a
>pretty good idea.

I hope so.

>But claiming that people who happen "not to take
>responsibility for making the world a better place" are
>somehow defaulting on an implied duty is quite another
>matter.

I don't believe in God.  I don't believe in natural progress.  I believe that
the only way we will get to a nonhomophobic world is by doing something to make
it happen.

>Responsibility, and moreover taking it, are extremely
>complex personal and social issues.  Your formulation is to
>that extent grossly oversimplified, for you are not explicit
>about its terms.

I was responding to a grossly oversimplified anger and hate.
  
>Rather, especially in the guilt-inducing negative rhetoric

I think the language I was responding to was very negative.

>you use, it suggests a desire to suppress discussion by
>submerging everything in a morass of pious platitudes.  This
>is shown in greater relief by the remainder of your
>statement.

I think you forget the original poster was attempting to end discussion.

>Many would doubtless agree that education is a key element
>in such an improvement ("education and explanation" seems
>redundant).

Possibly redundant but I think that while they both can mean to make
understandable, and reinforce each other, the words have different contexts. 
If I were to us just one it would be education.  
>
>But you do not address at all a broad range of issues --
>they can hardly be glossed over -- about *what* education
>we're talking about: by whom, of whom, toward what end,
>using which texts, in the presence of which inherent
>contradictions or of which inherent uncertainties, in the
>light of which realities, according to which strategies and
>tactics -- and so forth.

Well we could start a newsgroup, or hold a series of conferences, or publish a
journal, just to talk about what kind of education, which texts, etc.  Or we
could talk about this issue here, in depth.  I think you are asking for more
than was necessary to respond to the previous poster.
>
>In the context in which your statement arises, the terms
>involve sizable disagreement over each of the things I mention,
>none of which is actually addressed in your remarks. 

Please state the context. 

>It actually does make a difference if your "education" means
>denying basic freedoms to some of our cohort in a vain
>effort to placate a homophobic majority (this is the basic
>thrust of a couple noxious posters here recently).  That
>style of "education" means training LGB people to go back in
>the closet on terms negotiated for them by "straight-acting"
>storm troopers.  That style of "education" means rolling
>back the (already too limited) progress we've made by about
>70 years.  That "education" means nullifying the
>considerable sacrifices of two and a half generations of our
>own people.  That style of accomodation has never worked and
>it will never work.  400 years of racism in this country
>shows us nothing, if not that.

Well, I'm glad we're in agreement.  My kind of education would not include any
of those things.  I'm not interested in presenting any kind of image that
denies who we are.  I disagree wholeheartedly with Bob S.  And I've let him
know that.

>In more than 35 years of political advocacy, I've met very
>few people who are as openly homophobic and misogynistic
>as the two gay men posting here recently in support of that
>style of "education."

Unfortunately, there are those, particularly Christian Educators, who educate
against diversity and freedom.  That is why I believe in educating for freedom
and diversity.  We are, as you know, not in a vacuum.  It is a battle for the
minds of Americans, as Pat Buchanan was happy to remind us.

>In my opinion, thoughtful and caring LGB people should
>promote and insist upon a very different kind of education.
>It's virtually inconceivable that we ourselves would agree
>on each and every facet of such an effort.

If we tried to teach people what to believe it would be very difficult.  I
believe that we need to teach people about learning itself.  I and my religious
organization believe that education is about examination, self-examination,
trial-and-error, and choice.  At the same time, it's about presenting oneself
honestly and openly.  It's about admitting that not only doesn't one have all
the answers but that there are no all the answers to have.    
>
>But I think the terms on which the greatest unanimity might
>be expected would be that full and complete civil rights
>*must* be accorded to *all* people without reference to
>their sexuality, gender, personal affiliations, personal
>mannerisms, clothing or adornment, and so forth.

This a given for me.  Everything else follows from this basic human right.

>A very high degree of unanimity could probably be expected
>on the expectation that LGB couples or other family-like
>groups must be accorded every right and privilege as
>parents, teachers, scout leaders, etc. as straight couples
>are, with or without formal marriage.  LGB people must be
>secure from terrorism and hate crimes to the same extent the
>majority straight population enjoys such protections.  LGB
>people must not be discriminated against on account of the
>diversity of their natures.  LGB people must not be
>discriminated against on account religion (or its absence).
>We must be free to behave in any manner that does not cause
>a clearly identifiable harm to other free people or to
>society as a whole.

Agreed.

While I have chided you on religious issues before, I don't in any manner wish
to discriminate against you because of your nonreligious (what I would call
religious) beliefs.  


>In strong contrast to the approach advocated here by such
>mentally unbalanced people as Sarver and Melmon, it is not
>LGB people themselves who would be the *primary* focus of
>ecucational efforts.  Rather, it would be the homophobes in
>the majority population, who must eventually come to realize
>that our oppression at their hands works against their own
>interests as well as ours.

Having led some very well received internalized homophobia workshops, I would
say that you are both right and wrong here.  I'm not sure who should be the
primary focus of educational efforts or whether there should even be a primary
focus. I think that the focus on soc.motss could be the audience by which it is
read.  As has been mentioned, there is a considerable amount of misogeny and
distrust on this bb. But even assuming that education was directed here solely
towards ways to educate the outside world, there would be several subgroups
which could educate in different ways.       

>All of this has already been extensively worked out in a
>general way with respect to racism, and to a considerable
>degree with respect to sexism. 

By whom.  There is still considerable debate about how to approach the issues
of racism and sexism.  The important point is that the issues are being
addressed at all.

 Indeed, I don't see that LGB
>people have the slightest chance of addressing homophobia
>without also embracing the goals of ending racism and sexism
>in the society.  The problems of these social malaises are
>not identical, but they are indissolubly linked.

Agreed.

>Obviously, it also true that much education remains to be
>done within the LGB constituencies on all these issues.
>This summer has been rich in examples of gay men who were
>out-and-out misogynists.  It has been rich in examples of
>racism.  It has been rich in examples of sexism.  We too have
>much to do, including discussing what it is we must do and
>how to do it.

Agreed as above.

>Statements of the sort you made, while possibly informed by
>an earnest desire to better the lot of all people, are at
>base regressive, because they tend to paper over real
>issues, substituting instead a kind of cynical, pious,
>content-free platitude.  

I think that you don't seem to think that there is power in a loving posture. 
I do.  For me it isn't a content-free platitude but a strong technique for
change.

Furthermore, it does so by clucking
>its rhetorical tongue at a red herring, the supposed faults
>of those unspecified sinners you mention.  

Heck, I didn't even mention sinners.  Seems like a red herring here.

That's quite the
>opposite of education, I think.  What it is is a sell-out.

Opps, sounds like an irrational attack out of the blue.  

>It's anything but a program of love.

Okay, what would a program of love be for you?  

What would be your educational program Jess?  

I've worked out and done educational programs for both predominately GLB groups
and nonGLB groups.  I'm out on the lines in the south, in Jesse Helms country. 
I've been cursed at, forced off the road, and even shot at.  But I refuse to
stop speaking out and being out.  Because of my actions, and those of others
who have come out, many people have told me about their own change in
attitudes.  Because of people like Mandy Carter, Jim Baxter, and Wib Gulley,
and the good people of Pullen Memorial and Binkley Baptist churches, the south
is changing.  Homosexuality is an issue in this election because of the success
of our efforts, not because of the failures.  

While this may sound too Christian for you Jess, I believe that the best way to
educate is to witness.  To witness for the truth of a better world in which
diversity and freedom are valued, in which change is continuing, and in which
the future is not set but will be what we make of it.

Love,

John Allan Graves
Unitarian Univeralist Minister,
Raleigh, North Carolina