― Anne Moody, Coming of Age in Mississippi
In 1963 during his inaugural address, George Wallace said--"I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever." He did what bigots do in the face of criticism. He cited God's-law and states rights to frame an unarguable platform to resist integration. Apparently, if "God" makes a law, you become a Godless tyrant in opposition. This argument that "God's Law" nullifies the laws of man (Now we hear about what God intended for us) has always been an arbitrarily clever Catch-22. A person that believes this will not be persuaded by voluminous earthly evidence contrary to their beliefs. Even obvious human suffering, in the mind of a zealot, can be viewed as a manipulation. Wallace stood in that schoolhouse door to keep Vivian Jones and James Hood from exercising their newly established legal rights. Even in that moment, when integration was a foregone conclusion, he continued to blame the victims for rocking the boat.
It is now widely accepted that Wallace was a racist; that he used his power as governor to actively discriminate based on race. Eventually, Wallace himself realized he'd been on the wrong side of history. For what hateful men do, history's "Angle of Repose" is slight. By 1979 Wallace was at the bottom of a slippery slope. That same year, while addressing the Montgomery Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, he back pedaled:
I have learned what suffering means. In a way that was impossible, I think I can understand something of the pain black people have come to endure. I know I contributed to that pain, and I can only ask your forgiveness.--George C. Wallace
During his era, Wallace picked a side. There is no doubt that he represented a Dominant group interest in prolonging the power dynamic of previous decades. As the country began changing, his choice to resist made his alienation an eventuality. Many household names have suffered a similar public death. Examples are as prevalent as the social movements that rolled over them. Wallace had been either uninformed or didn't care about the shifting social data concerning race relations in America. It cost him his political career. Comparative Historians and Sociologists had been tracking and publishing the markers that led to civil rights advancements years before he took office. It amazes me--so many "Celebriticians", like Wallace, wind up politically destitute because they simply cannot accept the apparent facts that ALWAYS predate social change. A social movement is not a nebulous entity manifested from the minds of an angry minority for no reason. Activism/legislation often merely becomes visible at the boiling point of social turmoil. Wallace must have seen the water rising. He would not budge. He is now a villain in America's written history.
There is and has always been a correlation between movements of any kind in society with quantifiable social and political conditions. A state governor has access to that data. Advisors put it on their desks daily. There are many complicated reasons why our leaders ignore the causal logic of social change. In brief; Conformity yields status. Status equals power. To be suddenly viewed as deviant by one's peers can often bring home negative social sanctions harsh enough to effect all areas of a person's life. If you are a politician you risk losing elections (Or much worse). It takes a brave person to advocate for an unpopular cause. As I write this, I fear what some people will think of me,...Will I even publish it? Beyond the fear of ridicule is an ultimate fear of speaking up publicly in a country where negative social sanctions have historically led to extreme violence. Rational or not, the fear is there. Is it worth the risk? In today's polarized political climate, taking a stand on a divisive issue could cost you everything.
The "civil rights era" has not and will never end. There will always be a new kind of bigotry for each generation to fight. As far as I can tell, no country on earth has achieved a full state of equality. We simply keep adding more banners to the civil rights movement each year. What has now reached a critical visibility is the issue of sexual freedom. This is not new. The public fight for sexual freedom began long ago. Some people even call the 60's-80's sexual revolution America's 2nd sexual revolution, the first being the "roaring twenties". America was, until about ten years ago, becoming a more permissive society concerning "sexual freedoms" on the whole. Public policy records support this statement. However, around 2002, we began seeing a statistically significant shift in America towards conservatism. This is also reflected in public policy records. This recent rise has brought into the light many previously more latent Dominant group opinions concerning sexual freedoms, religion, and the law concerning each. Between the year 2000 and now, 33 states have banned same-sex marriage (17 have legalized it). The point here is that all this drastic legal motion has come within the last decade. Kansas banned same-sex marriage in 2005. Following this, in February 2014, Kansas House bill 2453 was drafted and introduced to a vote by a Republican majority. The bill was entitled "AN ACT concerning religious freedoms with respect to marriage". It stated:
Section (1)a. Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no individual or religious entity shall be required by any governmental entity to do any of the following, if it would be contrary to the sincerely held religious beliefs of the individual or religious entity regarding sex or gender: (a) Provide any services, accommodations, advantages, facilities, goods, or privileges; provide counseling, adoption, foster care and other social services; or provide employment or employment benefits, related to, or related to the celebration of, any marriage, domestic partnership, civil union or similar arrangement.(Kansas. House of Representatives. HB 2453 2014. N.p.: n.p., 2014. Web. 18 Feb. 2014.)
In practice, this bill legalizes discrimination/ segregation against same-sex couples or an individual participating in a same-sex union. It allows discrimination at both the public and private levels per a service provider's individual religious ideology. This is just one example in one state. February 2014, in Tennessee, there was a similar bill introduced by Sen. Bryan Kelsey (R). The premise behind such legislation is that religious people are being persecuted by the homosexual community. Remember George Wallace? He took a similar blaming the victim approach towards racial integration. He blamed the African American community almost as if they were causing white people to suffer. To ignore the entire documented history of an oppressed minority in this way,...that was his downfall. He believed his way of doing things was divine and therefore racial segregation was justified. If you don't believe me, research his speeches. They are full of stubborn ideologies despite what was then a mounting public outcry against racial segregation. He played the hard case and he lost. History taught him a stern lesson in listening. I contend that any person that so willingly and blindly ignores the voices of the have-nots can expect to eventually join Wallace as an outcast villain. As the fight for equality continues, let the bigots come out. Let them scream and shout their exclusionary rhetoric and cite God with their imputed righteousness. In time they'll ruin themselves AND when they go back into hiding we'll know just where to find them.
From here I cannot proceed without first revealing a few personal and little know facts about myself (This might be where I lose friends). The psycho-sexual development of a human is quite a complicated thing. It resides on a continuum. We are not all the same. How could we be? Our experiences develop US! We do not control them or rule them. Our surroundings combined with biology provide the involuntary stimulus that comes with being alive. Within these frameworks we learn to love whosoever fits who we are. Love is not sex and sex is not gendered. I had my first homosexual experience at age 5. Most people would call this "playing doctor". Strangely enough (not) my first experience happened in a closet. The fact that we felt we had to hide tells me something about how powerfully reinforced the stigmas concerning sex, sexual preference, and gender roles really are. During my adolescent and young adult years I had a variety of sex/relationship experiences as I tried to figure out who I was. I've been with men, women, and both simultaneously. Erikson outlines this very process in his "stages of psychosocial development". For people in the 12-18 age group--in his chart in fact--he entitled this life stage "Identity vs. Role Confusion". I painfully dragged through many identity stages. Some roles did not allow me to challenge conventional ideas of sex or gender identity. Within certain circles I pretended to be an over masculinized version of myself just to avoid confronting my own insecurities. I thought I could avoid detection by playing the part of what would be considered a traditional WASP male. The problem with hiding among people with whom you fundamentally differ is, YOU slowly begin to hate YOU. There are a multitude of popular and yet homophobic sub-cultures in America. I've been just about one of each trying to escape my own duality. This self hatred and the drugs and alcohol I used to cope nearly killed me. Society was telling me I was wrong for not knowing whether I was gay or straight. Currently, in 33 states the law says it's wrong. If I had grown up in Kansas and not Austin, would I have survived?
My experiences are far from unique. As I've grown older, I've learned to love myself by relating to other people. I've met men and women with the exact same story. They struggled like I did. They fought hard to survive long enough to accept themselves and some of them fell in love in the process. They've built homes and families. Many have been together for years. I happened to fall in love with an old friend. We've been married almost 15 years. We have a 14 year old daughter. Among my friends and family, love is love. It does not depend on sexual attraction. In our life stories, we are as varied in who we love as there are primary shades in a kaleidoscope. It seems to me that love happens by chance delivery during an unexpected life. "Preference" has nothing to do with it. To dictate to people via law the level at which they are allowed to express that love is wrong. I have been publicly quiet on these issues until now. I have been admittedly scared to speak with any force except with certain confidantes. To engage the storm ahead, for me, I had to tell all. I needed to qualify my values as rooted in an indisputable life story. Nobody can take away what you've lived. People are suffering. They are suffering as we speak. If activism does not continue, what will become of people like me, like us, in the future? If we allow love to become connected to the consequence of law, at some point, there will be no place in this world for anyone.
Jason Leverett
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