Conflating LGBTQIA+ with Criminality
A successful backlash against civil rights advances is 100% dependent on stoking fear and anxiety
“The ‘mood of the nation,’ in 1972, was so overwhelmingly vengeful, greedy, bigoted, and blindly reactionary that no presidential candidate who even faintly reminded ‘typical voters’ of the fear & anxiety they’d felt during the constant ‘social upheavals’ of the 1960s had any chance at all of beating Nixon last year - not even Ted Kennedy - because the pendulum ‘effect’ that began with Nixon’s slim victory in ‘68 was totally irreversible by 1972.” - Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72
For LGBTQIA+ McGovernites, today must seem like a violent pendulum swing. Fifty years ago, the Gay Citizens for McGovern was getting a warm welcome from their candidate. In fact, “only Gov. George C. Wallace and Senator Edmund S. Muskie failed to provide the Gay Activists Alliance with statements on rights for homosexuals” in 1972. That year, according to the New York Times, “five self‐proclaimed homosexuals are running as delegates or alternates to the Democratic National Convention from New York State — the first time, activists in the homosexual rights movement say, that avowed homosexuals have ever run for public office here.” Four of those five delegates supported McGovern, while the fifth pledged to support Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm.
The Gay Liberation Movement really kicked off after a 1969 police raid at New York’s Stonewall Inn. Three years later, when Madeline Davis was asked to step onto center stage at the 1972 Democratic convention, she asked the crowd to support the inclusion of civil rights protections for her community. These are her words in full.
“It's our opportunity to speak to you. Twenty million Americans are grateful and proud of the Democratic Party. We are the minority of minorities. We belong to every race and creed, both sexes, every economic and social level, every nationality and religion. We live in large cities and in small towns, but we are the untouchables in American society. We have suffered the gamut of oppression, from being totally ignored or ridiculed, to having our heads smashed and our blood spilled in the street. Now we are coming out of our closets and onto the convention floor - to tell you the delegates and to tell all gay people throughout America that we are here to put an end to our fears - our fears that people will know us for who we are - that they will shun and revile us, fire us from our jobs, reject us from our families, evict us from our homes, beat us and jail us. And for what? Because we have chosen to love each other.
I am asking that you vote yes for the inclusion of this minority report into the Democratic platform for two major reasons. First, we must speak to the basic civil rights of all human beings. It is inherent in the American tradition that the private lives and lifestyles of citizens should be both allowed and ensured, so long as they do not infringe upon the rights of others. A government that interferes with the private lives of its people is a government that is alien to the American tradition and the American dream. You have before you, a chance to reaffirm that tradition and that dream. As a matter of practicality, you also have the opportunity to gain the vote of 20 million Americans that will help in November to put a Democrat in the White House.”
Her pleas were rejected after Ohio Delegate, Kathy Welch took the stage and connected homosexuality to pedophilia. At the time, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders listed homosexuality as a mental disorder that was to be treated by “ice pick lobotomies, electroshock, chemical castration with hormonal treatment or aversive conditioning,” according to Dr. Katharine Milar, professor of psychology at Earlham College. Sodomy laws criminalized same-sex intimacy in all but three states. So when Kathy likened homosexuality to criminal sexual assault, it was familiar language to Americans. Even, she argued, if one doesn’t believe it to be criminal, the matter is better left up to each individual state.
The 1972 platform proposal closed with “Liberty and Justice for All includes blacks, Chicanos, American Indians, women, homosexuals or any other group. ALL means ALL.” But Kathy Welch and the majority of Democratic delegates made sure all didn’t mean all.
President Nixon’s response? “Mr. Nixon has nothing to say to the homosexual community.” Meanwhile, Attorney General John Mitchell assured Washington insiders that, “this country is going so far to the right you won’t even recognize it.”Even knowing this, some portion of the LGBTQIA+ community undoubtedly cast their vote for Nixon while others didn’t bother to vote at all.
Years after the convention, political insider, Frank Mankiewicz, donated a “small file that was titled ‘Gays’ to the JFK Library.” That’s when JFK Library Archivist Stacey Flores Chandler, found that the six-part McGovern proposal originally included a prohibition against discriminatory hiring and licensing practices by the federal government and companies that contract with the federal government. It prohibited sexual preference from being considered in immigration status, housing, and insurance. It required the federal government to provide education on LGBTQIA+ discrimination, and it required the Department of Defense to reclassify the dishonorable discharge of service members whose service was dishonorable solely based on their sexual orientation.
In 1978, “George McGovern became what gay activists described as the first United States senator to make an appearance on behalf of the gay rights movement.” When McGovern was asked why he would accept such a controversial invitation, McGovern recalled an Alice in Wonderland quote “in which Alice asks Humpty Dumpty why he is alone, and he responds, ‘Because there is no one with me’.” George continued, "I have come to this assembly because I don't want any Americans to feel alone and deserted."
Four decades later, the former press secretary for America’s third largest state, Christina Pushaw, accused critics of House Bill 1557 of being either a “groomers” or groomer sympathizers. It was an attack she made after she lost control of the narrative to critics who quickly dubbed it the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, but the damage cut both ways. Supporters of the law to prohibit classroom discussion and instruction about sexual orientation or gender identity by school personnel or third parties were immediately labeled as homophobic, while opponents were labeled as pedophiles.
Pushaw, as a political appointee, was in a hybrid position that allowed her to engage in some modicum of partisan speech while sustaining herself financially by taxpayers. More concerning is the ever-expanding politicization of civil servants who cash paychecks written by all taxpayers as they actively seek to alienate some and curry favors with others.
It is alarming when government employees, with a duty to serve all Floridians, publicly support extreme ideologies like the Iron Law of Tolerance. The piece, amplified by the most senior public servant in the Florida Department of Education, argues that tolerating sinful behavior in others puts a Christian’s personal relationship with God at risk. Thereby, making tolerance a “zero-sum game.” In other words, Christians must actively change the sinful ways of others, cast the sinner out of their lives entirely, or risk their own salvation. “The battle lines between the bearers of the classical inheritance and those seeking its utter destruction are clear,” the author writes.
Texas has joined in on the pendulum swing as well. According to NPR's Ashley Lopez, the 2022 Texas Republican party platform considers homosexuality to be abnormal. “They also included language that says there shouldn't be any special legal protections for gay, lesbian and bisexual people, and they oppose any criminal or civil penalties against people who oppose homosexuality. The Texas Republican Party platform opposes all efforts to validate transgender identity, and that, for anyone under 21, no medical provider should be allowed to provide services to that person affirming their gender identity.” Virginia and twenty-three other states too.
There are very real debates to be had regarding child exploitation and human trafficking. Like America’s lax sentencing of convicted child predators, including Greg Baker [U.S. District Court, Case #3:08-cr-198] and Chase Keefover [Case #3:08-cr-315], who were each incarcerated for less than a year after successfully negotiating deals with Assistant US Attorney, Ron DeSantis. As Nicholas Kristof’s harrowing column, The Children of PornHub, makes very clear; those punishments did not fit those crimes. We could also focus on the fact that “Florida ranks as the third highest state for human trafficking cases and second for labor trafficking cases,” and that, on average, those trafficked for sex are thirteen years old. Or the fact that it is legal for adults to marry children in forty-three states and that marriage acts as a defense to statutory rape charges.
Instead, politicians are spending their time conflating sexuality and gender with criminal activity. Like Hungary, and the fourteen countries that criminalize identity expression with ‘impersonation’ and ‘disguise’ laws, this current explosion of performative politics only serves to demonize already vulnerable Americans. The result may very well be a full-on clawback of all public empathy garnered by the LGBTQIA+ community over the past five decades.
The only question now is - will other marginalized communities join the LGBTQIA+ community in solidarity or will they allow themselves to be divided in the same civil rights hierarchy employed since the dawn of the nation?
The wrong move by allied communities will end up in more homophobic, racist, anti-Semitic mash-ups like the one Joe Minadeo choreographed in Palm Beach, Florida, last week because Neo-nazis don’t make a distinction between the “sinners” they will and won’t tolerate.