Despite the 72 degrees here in Manhattan, there’s a crispness in the air. It’s fall, the season that is supposed to represent the beginning of dormancy, a shortening of summer’s long days and fun times, a letting-go of play and a return to the seriousness of work.
And yet, I don’t think America had a fun summer.
We had the attack of the birthers and deathers. We had play-cowboys with real guns attend presidential speeches and congressional town halls. For all our focus on health care this summer, few have realized the tremendous irony shooting us in the face: America is a country in the midst of a nervous breakdown.
Bob Herbert reminded me of this, yesterday morning when he wrote,
“Looking back at the past few months, it’s fair to wonder if the country isn’t going through a nervous breakdown… We need therapy… The first step, of course, is to recognize that we have a problem.”
A problem, indeed.
I often write about “the gay community.” Truth be told, there isn’t one. Like the “straight community,” there are many. Both have many different ideas, ideals, morals, goals, and behaviors. And yet, some within “the gay community” spent a good part of the spring trying to get what the “straight community” already has: civil marriage.
Legal recognition of our equality is what a great many of us are trying to obtain. But there are a few things, perhaps more important, that we need to achieve first: an across-the-board recognition within the gay community that we actually want and deserve equality, and that we have the willingness to fight for it. And the one pre-requisite that has to happen before any of this: we have to start acting like it.
Herbert wonders if America is going through a nervous breakdown. I think the gay community is.
Despite our marriage equality wins this spring, despite our collective temper-tantrum that led to the Hate Crimes Bill making its way through Congress and talk of repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” the gay community is too silent on matters that affect us just as much if not more deeply than those the rest of the country is confronting.
Yes, there are bright spots. Grass-roots organizations and individuals are making a difference every day. My fellow gay writers and bloggers work long days, often without any compensation, to help move the ball forward. And we’re having some success.
But the straight community, in the form of conservatives, gay marriage opponents, and the religious right, have enslaved us for far too long. And its taken its toll.
Because most of us can’t get married, we approach relationships differently. Our opponents like to say we have all the rights we need (and deserve.) What they don’t talk about is the security they have that comes in the form of societal recognition. We know that the bond of marriage is not only a goal, but an aid to maintaining a relationship through troubled times. It’s a lot easier to walk away when there are no legal issues, common property, children, or even the reaction of family, friends, and neighbors to stop you.
And because we don’t have this responsibility, we often don’t act with the same level of responsibility that straights purport to have. Much to our detriment, and, dare I say, much to the secret delight of our foes, we are still acting as teenagers, more interested in fun and sex for today than taking a healthy interest in achieving equality tomorrow.
While there are a great many long-term same-sex relationships, gay relationships aren’t necessarily long-lasting – not because we’re not capable or desirous of long-term relationships, but because society has not put the same focus on same-sex marriage that it has on “traditional” marriage.