Ernest Owens has a compelling article on Huffington Post Gay Voices I encourage everyone to read. Ideas about how gay civil rights issues are alike or different from black civil rights issues are not new and a post like his surfaces every June or so. Pride month seems to encourage such explorations as some feel empowered and others feel disenfranchised from this entity we call the LGBTQ Community. I really value Owen’s perspective and have been thinking about it since I read it the other day, which is exactly what I hope many people have been doing.

The other day I heard about Andrew Goodman’s mother, who was asked why she became involved with the Civil Rights Movement, and the question seemed odd to her. It was as if she had never made a conscious decision to join the struggle; it was just always a part of her life. I was so struck by that, and Owens expresses a sentiment about being Black that seems similar to me. I am thinking that for some, there is no separation between their personal experience and the civil rights movement.

Many gay, lesbian, and bi persons can just go about their lives never really having to engage in the movement for LGBTQ Rights. They may simply compartmentalize their lives- being gay in private while blending into the society at large. Even where impacted by homophobia, discrimination,  or a lack of basic civil rights, many gays and lesbians simply adept. Owens notes it this way:

At birth, I was identified as black before I was later recognized as gay.

What his comment fails to acknowledge however, is that while he may not have been recognized as “gay” that doesn’t mean he wasn’t gay at birth. He creates a false hierarchy of oppression.

Something that struck me reading Owen’s piece is how much personal experience and the civil rights movement are enmeshed for him. It is as if they are one and the same. From my perspective when he pushes back demanding that gay is not the new black, he is strongly making the point that gay experience isn’t the same as black experience. I’d totally agree with that idea. For me however, in the case of the LGBTQ community, the way mainstream culture controls and subjugates those who are seen as other, is  similar to the way mainstream culture controls and subjugates African Americans as other. Even if the history of that oppression is not the same.  From my perspective the LGBTQ community’s history is quite different from the African American community’s history, but the justifications for, and righteousness of a movement for basic civil rights is alike for both communities.

I wrote a few days ago about listening to a radio interview concerning Freedom Summer. Freedom Summer is a vivid reminder of just how hard the mainstream racist culture in the South fought to keep their domination over African Americans. Gays and lesbians haven’t experienced anything to the degree and depth of our African American sisters and brothers. While there have been some heinous hate crimes committed against queer persons, we as a community have no history where lynching for example, was commonplace. We have no present circumstance directly connected to a history of slavery; then utter and complete discrimination through Jim Crow laws and other similar indignities. Even in our current time, I know many who feel as if being black and walking on the street or driving, or even window shopping places them in danger of arrest: their only crime being “walking on the street while black.” Members of the LGBTQ community have no similar group experience in our country. Owens expresses these ideas eloquently. But in my opinion, he implies that no (white) LGBTQ activists understands this which is just plain wrong.

I really can’t agree with this sentiment Owen’s expresses:

I quite frankly cannot decide when all this began, but perhaps the election of our 44th president made many began to assume that a post-racial society may not be here but could be coming very soon. Well I am here to tell you all that we are not as close as we imagine because we have yet to even recognize the problem.

I don’t know of anyone with half a brain who seriously suggests we have entered a post-racial time for our society. The only persons who might spout such crap are those who seek to maintain the status quo racial divide. Their attempts to claim we are past racism is in itself a sign of racism. But Owens uses this as a premise for his entire position. Is he arguing against something that doesn’t really exist in any meaningful way? Possibly.

But the real problem I have with his argument is this:

So I say this with the utmost sincerity: please Gay America, stop comparing the current fight for LGBT rights to that of the civil rights movement. It is not only historically and culturally inaccurate, but personally offensive to the very gays of color you strive to also advocate for.

Put this in context. Before I open my mouth or cross the street, I am not approached because I am gay but because I am black. Yes, when walking down the Gayborhood in my current residence of Philadelphia, I might often be called a slur every now and then. However, the day-to-day oppression I endure as a man of color does not compare to the homophobia that I receive.

What Owen’s expresses in my opinion, is that Racism remains a current and intense problem within the society as a whole as well as within the Queer community. Yes, indeed! But to claim that calling for the LGBTQ Community’s right to full civil rights makes his community’s own history invisible  is simply ludicrous. The reason for a demand for full civil rights exists for the gay, lesbian, bi, trans, and queer community, just as it existed for the African American community, even if the community’s histories are not the same. One’s history doesn’t make the other any less potent, real or important.

Owens places his comments in the context that we are celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and this speaks volumes about his argument. The Civil Rights Movement as we are considering it culminated in passing legislation which created a more equal playing field for African Americans. Lyndon Johnson believed that if such legislation was passed, the rest would take care of itself, which we know didn’t happen. Today’s LGBTQ movement seeks the same type of civil rights change- legislative and legal justice like the earlier movement sought.

I believe Owens, expresses many valuable ideas but mixed with a victim mentality that suggests, only blacks who have endured centuries of oppression may own the cloak of being a part of a civil rights movement. It is as if he is saying that unless you have suffered “this much,” you don’t belong within the civil rights movement, and that, in my opinion is as damaging to progress as the status quo white male privilege which manifests all the oppression we are talking about.

To claim that gay, lesbian, bi, trans and queer persons’s struggle is not a civil rights movement in its own right or an extension of the already existing civil rights movement is divisive and unproductive. To accept that LGBTQ persons have been othered by and oppressed and discriminated against does not in any way take away from the history of the African American community. I especially like this sentiment Owen’s expresses:

When I hear things like “the fight for gay rights is the new civil rights,” I then reply “do you really think that people of color are done fighting?”

I am not sure if such an idea really implies that the “old” civil rights struggle has ended, but it is crucial for anyone to recognize that while we can point to a series of legislative and legal victories for African Americans, these legal/legislative changes alone have not ended bigotry and racism.

My experience is quite different from Owens in many regards. He writes:

When I look at the current make-up of LGBT groups around my alma mater and many other college campuses, many are filled with white men with a few spots of color or female representation in-between. What is even worse is the lack of acknowledging the intersection of the community which crosses various racial, gender, and sexual-identity lines.

Recently I was at a college group where the vast majority of participants where women and persons of color. And I want to relate another story:

About two years ago, I went to a meeting of mostly young queer persons where there was a great mix of people. A young African American woman spoke that she was tired of being in groups where blacks were’t accepted or supported. She expressed that the meeting was “too white” to do any good. Yet, in reality the percentage of blacks in the meeting was greater than the percentage of blacks that make up my city’s population. What would be “black enough” be, I wondered? I fully agree that calls for greater awareness of intersectionality is crucial. I just also think that it is easy to see ourselves as disadvantaged even when we are not. The idea that a meeting is too white is every bit as dismissive and unproductive as the sentiment Owens speaks against. I am not denying that her perception or Owen’s perceptions are not real for them, but I see their criticism as equally being a part of the problem they are supposedly fighting against.

Owens adds:

In other words, when it comes to “gay rights,” those who are mainly speaking on the behalf of the majority is not adhering to the needs of many who add to the diversity of it.

Yet here is Owen’s voice published as authoritative and valued in HuffPost Gay Voices. I think he ought to simply step up and speak out more. Be a voice rather than complaining about “the voice of the majority.” I personally think Owen’s is as blind to the problem  as he feels everyone else is. He equates “civil rights” as being about race, and since race and sexual orientation are different, the struggle for LGBTQ rights cannot be a civil rights issue.

That is why it is easier now for such progressive and direct action to be given for gay rights than it has been civil rights. Sexual preference/orientation and race are two different things and combating the war on the former still has not been won.

He is right on the money that racism has not been banished from our society, and it is easy to articulate ways in which African Americans still face horrific and unacceptable othering by the status quo. But that racism is merely a tool used to maintain white male privilege. I also, don’t mean to sound dismissive by the use of the word “merely.” Truly racism impacts many many in huge ways. But I have  never meet a progressive activist of any type who would claim that the struggle for full equality for African Americans has been won. Heterosexism is another tool used to accomplish the status quo of white male privilege. The problem isn’t those LGBTQ activists who identify their struggle as a civil rights struggle, but rather the status quo which seeks to maintain power over all.

Here is the most basic amazing statement in Owen’s post:

As a gay man, I can personally acknowledge my privilege and luxury in wanting specific laws to be knocked down and called out. But as a black man, I can’t even begin to start on how to re-shape laws that are already constitutionally sound, but are not being allocated properly in my community.

There are two aspects here worth articulating:

1) While a fight for legal/legislative change may be the focus of the current LGBTQ movement, it isn’t clear that a change to laws will eliminate prejudice and homophobia against gay, lesbian, bi,trans or queer people any more than legal/legislative changes (which Owens calls “constitutionally sound”) have ended racism.

2) White male privilege, the root of racism and homophobia is far more pervasive and complex to be destroyed with legal/legislative gains alone. It is a systemic and structural problem that runs throughout our culture and is manifest by our educational systems, financial systems, religious systems, as well as every type of social systems.

I personally think Owens has it all wrong when he equates the civil rights movement with racism in a broad general sense. The Civil Rights Movement of the 60’s was one piece in a larger struggle against racism which is and must be ongoing. Today LGBTQ persons label ours as a civil rights movement is to accomplish legal and legislative changes similar to those which were achieved by the African American Civil Rights Movement. These calls for legal and legislative change is not the whole of the need, but it is in this way that that movement and this one now are alike- they are calls for legal/legislative change.