It is hard to believe that a decade has passed since Ellen DeGeneres and her television character came out. How could you forget the iconic April 14, 1997, cover of Time (“Yep, I’m Gay”) and the extraordinary amount of attention the April 30, 1997, coming-out episode of Ellen garnered? Over 42 million people watched it, 2,000 of whom I had the privilege of being with in Birmingham, Ala., after we rallied to create an event when the local ABC affiliate refused to air the episode. It was the largest gay event in Alabama history. It was a life-changing experience for me as an activist and even more so for the LGBT community in Alabama and beyond.
Remember Jerry
Falwell calling her “Ellen Degenerate”? How
brilliant. Ellen once commented that this was a
favorite schoolyard epithet, which demonstrates
Falwell’s maturity—and creativity. I was lucky
enough to debate the good Reverend Falwell on national
television. Pity there was no YouTube then, because I
kicked his butt. “I’m sorry,” I
said as he berated me about families not wanting to
see lesbians on television, “but Mr. Falwell is
missing the point here, and that point is: reality.
We are part of your families, and we have
families.” Score one for the team. Even the MSNBC
host, Jodi Applegate, laughed out loud.
It seemed like a golden age for the community
back then. Bill Clinton was president and, despite his
faults, was certainly the most supportive person we've
ever had in the White House. The religious right was falling
all over itself, outing the likes of Tinky Winky and Barney.
We had strong lesbian leaders at many of our national
organizations. It felt like change was happening fast
and that more progress was inevitable. We soon got a
difficult wake-up call.
Clinton’s time in office unraveled in
scandal, and we saw antigay groups jumping on
“reparative therapy.”
I found
myself at the center of the media frenzy in
Wyoming after Matthew Shepard’s murder in
October 1998 and witnessed the nation’s
realization that antigay violence is far more common than
they imagined. In the late 1990s and early in the new
century, media outlets gave platforms to Laura
Schlessinger and Michael Savage, and we spent
tremendous effort and resources fighting back. The Catholic
Church abuse scandal was laid at the feet of gay priests.
As we fast-forward to 2007 we should celebrate
progress despite the challenges. Ellen DeGeneres
hosted the Oscars. Turn on the television and you will
not only see programming like The
L Word but entire networks like Logo and Here
dedicated to the community. Films like Boys Don’t
Cry opened the door for Transamerica and
more discussion about gender identity issues than ever
before. Brokeback Mountain broke more than records at
the box office; it started a conversation about the
struggles of LGBT people from our point of
view, not from the outside looking in.
Perfect? Of course not. Progress? Definitely. We
often lose sight of how much progress we have made and
so quickly we've made it. Patience and persistence are
both needed in the long run.
Unfortunately, I often see more progress in our
culture than in our community. In recent years we have
fewer lesbians at the helm of our national
organizations. We are fortunate to have the likes of
Jennifer Chrisler at Family Pride, Kate Kendell at the
National Center for Lesbian Rights, and Mara Keisling
at the National Center for Transgender Equality. The
top five groups in our community are all run by men, and I
cannot help but notice the glaring lack of diversity. I
think it does have a real impact, at least symbolic
and at most detrimental, on women and people of color
in the LGBT community.
On February 18 the community lost a lesbian
icon, Barbara Gittings. Barbara was a pioneer, active
in the first gay organizations and founder of "The
Ladder," the first lesbian publication. She was
protesting for gay rights in 1965 (the year I was born) at
the White House and was one of a few women involved in
groups like the Mattachine Society. She remained
active in the community until she passed away last
month. Her last act of visibility was to come out in her
assisted-living community’s newsletter. She
knew that coming out is something we will do all our lives.
There is a wonderful clip of her that I
recently saw in a tribute video. She describes her
first meeting at the Daughters of Bilitis, a lesbian
organization founded by Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon in the
1950s: “I was in a room with 12 other lesbians
for the first time, and oh, what a thrill that
was.” Signature Barbara, especially that ever-present
enthusiasm and positive attitude. I think we all have our
“moment” like that. Now, of course, it
can happen online as much as offline, but that seminal
(or should we call it “ovarian”?) moment is
still very important.
We all know the
struggle is far from over. It was only in 2003 that
sodomy laws were struck down by the Supreme Court. Use of
the word faggot as an epithet warrants
“rehab” but is still up for debate, and
antigay discrimination, bullying, and hate crimes go
on unabated.
It is a complex world we live in as LGBT people:
lots of progress mixed with a healthy dose of
challenges. So many of our issues intersect with our
class, gender, gender expression, and race as much as they
do with our sexual orientation. What keeps me going? I
have the honor of working with a lot of queer young
people and LGBT families, and it gives me great hope
when I see the care and thought that goes into the activism
of the current and coming generations of youth. They
get the intersections, they get the overlap, they get
the complexity more than my generation does.
Bottom line is this: We all have a lot to thank
Ellen for today. Even if you think she doesn’t
use her now-enormous platform enough for activism, she
is leading by example in living her life openly and
honestly. When she walks down the red carpet with
Portia de Rossi and says she waits for the day they
can get married legally, she is doing far more than most
celebrities. I don’t think we would have had Will
& Grace without Ellen. Frankly, she
has done far more than many of us in the community.
We definitely benefit from having more out
celebrities in the world, but the truly transformative
moments (read: legal advances for individuals and
families) come from the hard daily work of activists and
individuals who live their truth and work for change.
That is why I hope everyone takes a moment to reflect
on 1997 and 2007. We are entering a
presidential cycle where a woman is the de facto
Democratic nominee, and yet we are still waffling (or is it
tiptoeing?) around the basic rights of existence for
LGBT people and whether we are
“immoral.” It is now or never to make your
voice heard. If ACT UP can come back into the fray
(Goddess knows, we could use a creative and more
confrontational way to address the Ann Coulters and General
Paces of the world in 2008), we all can do something.
Do it for Barbara Gittings. Do it for Ellen. Do it for
all the kids who aren’t out yet. Do it for
yourself.
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