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The Right Keeps Demonizing Us--But It’s Not Sticking by Joseph Erbentraut
EDGE ContributorMonday Nov 9, 2009 When Kevin Jennings was appointed by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to the post of assistant deputy secretary to the head the Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools in July, the move was lauded by the LGBT community as a step in the right direction for the Obama administration’s commitment to diversity.
But not everyone was as pleased with the founder of the Gay & Lesbian Straight Education Network’s new federal post.
The far right quickly mobilized and incited a media blitz based in a number of incendiary claims that Jennings was "sick and immoral" in his involvement with controversial organizations like ACT UP. They dredged up an incident recounted by Jennings himself when he looked the other way when an underaged teenager confided he’d had a relationship with an adult. (Actually, he advised the young man to use condoms.)
They claimed he supported the North American Man-Boy Love Association because he praised a veteran activist who had ties to the hyper-controversial group. And they dredged up a panel in which Jennings reportedly taught school kids about fisting.
As ridiculous as the narrative of Jennings as a "pervert" pushing a "pro-homosexual agenda" might sound, it was forcibly promoted by right-wing organizations like Americans for Truth About Homosexuality and the American Family Association. Conservative outlets including Fox News, the Washington Post and World Net Daily amplified their arguments.
Words and phrases like "extremist," "out of step" and "activist" also greeted the appointment of out-lesbian activist attorney Chai Feldblum to the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission and the introduction of the Matthew Shepard Act (coined the "Pedophile Protection Act" by some conservatives) to the Senate and House.
These arguments have not caught much wind in the mainstream. The Shepard Act has been signed into law and both Jennings and Feldblum have retained their posts.
But their rhetoric clearly has political impact. Last month, 53 House Republicans signed a letter addressed to Obama which called for Jennings’ dismissal. The talking points of "tradition" and "protecting children" also played a heavy role in conservatives’ successful repeal of Maine’s same-sex marriage-allowing amendment.
In an effort to get at the root of the right’s attack on Jennings, the Shepard Act and anything remotely gay-positive in recent months, EDGE spoke with a number of experts on the subject on the past, present and future of the conservative conquest against the modern LGBT rights movement.
Gay Sex Panic Dates Back to ’60s & Beyond
The criticism of Jennings did not come as much of a surprise to many of this story’s sources who noted that the strain of the far right rhetoric is neither exclusive to this era, community or issue.
Janice M. Irvine, sociology professor at the University of Massachusetts, dates the right’s targeting of sexuality, in particular, back to the early ’60s, when social conservatives took the reins of the Republican Party with the Barry Goldwater presidential campaign in 1964.
"[The Christian right] discovered by the late ’60s that scaring people with sexuality can help them build their movement and they’ve done it over and over again since then," Irvine said. "They are always trying to find the ’scariest’ aspect of sexuality that will create a sex panic. This is a time-worn tactic."
Tom Boellstorff, a University of California anthropology professor and editor-in-chief of American Anthropologist, looks back even further in his explanation of conservative attacks on LGBT persons’ legitimacy in both politics and the public sphere in general.
"In many cultures throughout history, control over sexuality is a way to achieve social control more generally - organizing who people can have sex with, when and what meanings are attached to that fact, and these ideas get linked to kinship," Boellstorff explained. "In many cultures, it is thus assumed that your sexuality dominates every aspect of your being and determines your personality."
We’ve Got to Think of the Children!
Seeing a name like Jennings rewarded with a federal post working directly on the issue of safety in schools strikes a particularly tender blow for the right. They’ve warmed up to the issue as one of their most effective aces up their sleeve dating back to the days of the Briggs Initiative and Anita Bryant’s "Save Our Children" campaign.
The "save marriage" campaigns in both California and Maine in recent memory successfully argued that legalized same-sex marriage would result in its teaching in schools.
As Boellstorff points out, the accusation that a visible LGBT community influences youth adversely follows a broader strategy used against other minority groups historically.
"One of the easiest ways to create oppression against any group is to claim they are a danger to children," he added. "This has been seen in anti-Semitic language in many historical periods, and in racist rhetoric toward African Americans; for instance, baseless claims that black men were hunting down and raping young white girls. This is a very old scare tactic used to demonize many different groups."
Next: Obama as President Ups the Rhetoric
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