Nov 9, 2008 | 2:02 AM
Category:
Political
Attention: The Orlando Sentinel
After reading the article written by Jay Hamburg, as well as the articles in the Nov. 5, 2008 issue, I wish to address the quote from Nadine Smith of Equality Florida that she "worries about a possible backlash against gays". This may be true, but it is NOT what should occur. The exact opposite is what should occur now: a backlash against denial of basic, human rights and a backlash against the straight majority that voted to take away the rights of human beings....and taxpayers. Would this happen today if the target of prejudice and discrimination were black people, Asian people, Hispanic people, and Jewish people? No, because all these minority groups are protected under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Unfortunately in 1964, very few gay people dared be themselves publicly for fear of murder, ridicule, ostracization, or even jail or confinement in a mental institution. The American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality as a mental illness in 1973 as a result of burgeoning scientific evidence that it is a
natural variation of human behavior.
In California, the repeal of same-sex marriage has sparked protests and riots already. This is where gay and lesbian taxpayers of Florida need to go next. I am already disputing being taxed by a government entity for school taxes in a state that does not allow me to adopt children and will not recognize parental rights. Why should any gay taxpayer pay school taxes for the children of heterosexuals? Why should we pay federal income taxes to a government that devalues us as second class citizens? This is no doubt taxation without representation because, quite obviously, gay people have no representation in government. What ill make the government stop and think> Perhaps is every gay and lesbian taxpayer changed their tax withholding election to reflect no withholding and file a tax return without any financial information, but instead making the return GAY=NO TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION. What could happen...will they lock up 10% of the American population in the already overcrowded jails? Well, if that happened, at least gay people who receive health care benefits.
I, for one, certainly do not want my tax dollars to go toward John Stemberger's children to be raised to discriminate and devalue other human beings as a result of ignorance and intolerance. The real threats to marriage are divorce and sex outside of marriage (committed overwhelmingly by heterosexual people). The roughly 50% divorce rate is exclusively a result of heterosexuals failure to honor the institution they claim to hold so sacred. Certainly the amount of time Stemberger committed to spending on worrying about what gay people should or shouldn't be allowed to do must have taken endless hours away from his family time. Maybe Evelyne, his wife, should be worried about why he is so obsessed.
Between the hours required to run his legal practice and this quest to strip gay people of their rights, did he have time left to be a real husband or a real parent to his two sons, Benjamin and Joseph? Maybe the protests and riots should begin right in front of John Stemberger's home at 4565 Saint Brides Ct., Orlando, FL 32812. Eventually the neighbors, similar to George and Cindy Anthony's neighbors, will get fed up with John Stemberger forcing his opinions of who deserves the right to freedom from persecution at the expense of their own peace. I wonder how he would explain why people are
protesting outside his home to his sons?
If the laws of karma apply, one son might just grow up to be gay. It surely would be serendipitous if one of his own son's faced the same discrimination John favors... or that Matthew Sheppard faced. Would Stemberger have taken the lawsuit against the teens who murdered Matthew Sheppard if Sheppard's mother asked him? Highly unlikely because he most likely would prefer to turn the screws insurance companies in personal injury cases, physicians in malpractice suits, or Disney...that is where he can make the big bucks to spend on his hate crusades. It is doubtful that you will find Stemberger employing or representing any minority clients at his 4853 South Orange Ave., Suite C, Orlando, Florida 32806 law office. His comment that this issue crosses cultural and racial boundaries are meritless...how would this white, straight supremacist know? He duped the other minority groups by the cleverly misleading language of Amendment #2..."protect marriage", as if there were an attack...I guess he thinks along the same lines as "W".... wait, where are those weapons of mass destruction again????
An especially poignant comparison is made with regard to Asian women. Cosmetic surgery is available that could alter the facial appearance of Asian women by changing their eyes to resemble those of Caucasian women. The existence of such procedures and their endorsement by some medical professionals serves to reinforce prejudice and bias against Asian features (Davison, 2005, para. 4). Stigmas and prejudice work in similar ways toward devaluization of all minority groups. If racial or ethnic discrimination was not prohibited by law, Stemberger and his mindless followers who probably keep their white sheets in the back of their closets, would probably be first in line in a crusade to
discriminate against racial, ethnic, and religious minority groups.
Prejudice, by definition, is a negative judgment of a particular group of people based on personal, social, religious, or cultural beliefs (Hodges and Parkes, 2005, para. 2). When this prejudice is directed specifically at homosexuals, it is referred to as homophobia and characterized by distrust, dislike, fear, oppression, and even hatred. Discrimination by governments, businesses, and other institutions and organizations towards lesbians, gays, and bisexuals represents “institutional homophobia” (Hodges and Parkes, 2005, para. 14). Falling into this category are discriminatory practices and policies by employers, health care organizations, housing, and legal and political organizations. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination based on race, ethnicity, gender, age, and religious affiliation in the United States. The exclusion of homosexuals from protection under this law continues to perpetuate prejudice, intolerance, and discrimination in contemporary American society to this day.
Cultural homophobia refers to the societal norms, beliefs, and values that revere heterosexual lifestyles above all others (Hodges and Parkes, 2005, para. 15). Citations from the literature abound with evidence that prejudice, homophobia, and negative stigmas associated with being homosexual have a major impact on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and even transgender individuals. The risks to an individual’s mental health include isolation, depression, deliberate self-harm, and suicide (Hodges and Parkes, 2005, para. 16). Remembering back in 1977 when Anita Bryant, who very publicly objected when Miami-Dade County added an amendment to its human rights ordinance, making it illegal to discriminate in housing, employment, loans, and public accommodations, based on sexual preference (Soylent, 2008, p. 1). Bryant founded Save Our Children based on her fear that children would be molested or converted. "As a mother, I know that homosexuals cannot biologically reproduce children; therefore, they must recruit our children” (Soylent, 2008, p. 1). Logic apparently evaded her, as it does Stemberger today, as most homosexuals would agree that their existence is the result of heterosexual parents. Homosexuality has existed in every species since the beginning of life.
Heterosexism, the view that a heterosexual lifestyle is the basis of psychological normality, remains deeply embedded in American cultural beliefs. Stemberger plays on the ignorance, fears and perception of the majority population, who are largely uneducated enough to truly understand homosexuality and he imbeds fears that the integrity of social institutions such as marriage, the military and religious organizations would suffer if offered equally to gay human beings. Adolf Hitler once convinced millions of people of the same notion in regard to Jewish people. Any Jewish people who voted for Amendment #2 should be ashamed. Negative stigmatization misleads some homosexuals to believe that their orientation is abnormal and in need of repair. Some practicing clinicians act against the ethical standards of the APA and attempt to “cure” those gay people who have psychological discomfort with their sexuality. Would this psychological discomfort exist if the stigmas against gay people did not exist? This author believes they would not, as the reason for the discomfort comes from the external environment of prejudice.
Homosexual people live their lives with underlying fear, such as fear of rejection or fear of victimization by others. Exemplifying this is the case of Matthew Sheppard, the 21 year old college student who was brutally attacked in Casper, Wyoming in October, 1998. After being lured by peers pretending to be gay, he was beaten, tortured, pistol whipped, and tied to a fence and left to die. Other students from the college assembled a float with a scarecrow meant to resemble Sheppard and paraded it during a homecoming event with anti-gay slurs (Geocities, 1998). The message sent to gay people was one of pure hatred meant to scare and dehumanize gay people. The case demonstrates that anti-gay stigmas and prejudice affect how others behave toward gay people. The effects of such attitudes and behavior toward homosexuals can be compared to the effects that lynching in public had on black Americans in the past. The effects of racism and anti-gay prejudices and stigma are very similar. John Stemberger and those who supported his initiative against gay human beings surely know this deep down inside, and so does God.
Social and cultural stigmas against homosexual people affect the lives of gay people today. Society values heterosexuality as the acceptable norm. This affects whether homosexual people feel comfortable in social situations and their perceptions of exclusion from the majority of society. Sadly, many of these people who feel this pain are children, parents, brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, friends, etc…The United States was founded on the concept of separation of church and state, the beliefs of the population in regards to homosexual people which are influenced by many different religions manage to find their way into the political and social infrastructure of the nation, which is prohibited by the Constitution, but does not stop the John Stembergers from violating this principle.
For the masses of people belonging to organized religions, homosexuality was and is stigmatized as immoral, sinful, and excludes homosexual people from the comfort the majority of people find in their beliefs of what lies beyond earthly lives in the afterlife. Judgment continues to be passed on homosexual people in the name of God, Jesus, Allah, etc… Alaska Governor Sarah Palin flatly stated that she does not support same-sex marriage and she believes that marriage should be defined exclusively as a union between one man and one woman due to religious beliefs. The statement demonstrates the “pick and choose” element of using religion as a reason to denounce homosexual people, their relationships, and promote exclusion of gay people from social acceptance. According to the Bible in the Gospel of Matthew, “Whatever you did for one of the least of these….you did for me”. This candidate’s judgment was better placed on her own daughter, an unmarried, pregnant teenager who was a minor when she had extramarital sex with an adult. Palin does not promote a ban on divorce, sex outside of marriage, or adultery, as the Bible clearly denounces, and luckily the country got it right when she and McCain were defeated.
Amendment No. 2, the Florida Marriage “Protection” Amendment states: “This amendment protects marriage as the legal union of only one man and one woman as husband and wife and provides that no other legal union that is treated as marriage or the substantial equivalent thereof shall be valid or recognized”. You do not protect your marriage in any way by taking away other people’s rights. The verbiage itself, specifically the word “protect”, connotes that there is an implicit threat to heterosexuals if homosexuals are afforded equal rights. The Kinsey studies, specifically the continuum scale of sexuality, explain human sexuality as more fluid than concrete with people at one end exclusively heterosexual and at the other homosexual (Johnson, 2003, p. 1). Perhaps Kinsey was correct in interpreting sexual orientation as a fluid, evolving behavioral experience that shifts to and from each direction rather than being set in stone. Perhaps it is the unnecessary social urge to label sexuality as one or the other and attach a negative or positive attribute to either orientation that is the real issue. Without negative connotations, stigmas that cause adverse consequences for all human beings would disappear. Perhaps one day there will be a scientific cure for nasty, lingering infections like John Stemberger.
Davison, G. (2005). Issues and nonissues in the gay-affirmative treatment of patients who are
gay, lesbian, or bisexual. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice. 12/1, pp. 25-28.
Geocities (2008). Funeral for gay hate-crime victim brutally murdered. Retrieved October 4,
2008 from: http://www.geocities.com/WestHollywood/Stonewall/2878/
. Hodges, N., and Parkes, N. (2005). Tackling homophobia and heterosexism. Learning Disability
Practice, 8(3), 10-16. Retrieved September 21, 2008, from Academic Search Premier database.
Johnson, R., (2003). Homosexuality: Nature or nurture. April 30, 2003. AllPsych Journal.
Retrieved September 30, 2008 from: http://allpsych.com/journal/homosexuality.html.
Soylent Communications, Inc., (2008). Retrieved September 26, 2008 from:
http://www.nndb.com/people/177/000024105/.
