Pride and Politics

By Daniel Lanzillotta

6/20/2021  Republished 10/24/22

We are republishing Daniel’s discussion of Pride and Politics because it demonstrates that the path to recognition of equal rights for everyone in our country leads through culture, courts and legislation.  Nov. 8 is a crucial election to support minority segments of our population whether they be LGBTQ, BIPOC, or immigrants in their quest for equal rights, as our BND values state.  

 Driving north from Cincinnati to Columbus you will pass a billboard advertising more than its simple statement—Holy Matrimony is Between One Man and One Woman.  It presents itself as a universal truth chiseled in stone like the next sign on your right depicting the Ten Commandments.  They loom over highway travelers, not as overtly threatening as what you will find when you head back south—bold black letters reading HELL IS REAL and another asking “If You Died Tonight, Where Would You Spend Eternity?”

My first trip to Columbus’s Pride weekend was in June of 2015. I was in a new relationship with my future spouse.  Her educational background was in musical theater, and with that often comes many close friends in the gay community.    I may have been a little nervous, as one is when meeting a partner’s crew for the first time, but her friends welcomed me warmly as we prepared for the parade the next day.

As I tend to preface everything that comes with social politics: I grew up in a conservative family in a conservative section of a conservative town.  For a ‘90s kid, that meant Republicans were the party of “family values,' respect for God, country, military, though not always in that order.  Most of my engagement with LGBTQIA+ people came from pop culture.  Ellen DeGeneres was gay!  It was right there on the cover of Time Magazine.  Seinfeld joked about being mistaken for gay—“not that there’s anything wrong with that!”   I had gay and lesbian extended family members, which seemed fine with everyone as long as you didn’t bring it up in front of great grandma.  I know I engaged in behavior that anyone would be shamed for now in certain circles.  We used “gay” as a casual insult constantly.  Either it stood in for “lame” or attacked someone’s masculinity.  We used the other “f” word like it was nothing.  You might catch yourself if you were around adults, but who were we hurting?  We didn’t know any gay people, and even if we did, they could take a joke, right?  

I grew out of that in my later teens and college years, and I like to think our country grew out of it culturally too.  Kids learn the weight of those words, and when adults use them, it is with an intent to harm for which they should be held accountable.  There is no pleading a collective cultural ignorance as there may have been in decades past.  

Despite spending college scooting around one of the most liberal campuses in the state, I gravitated to friends that looked like me, thought liked me, came from the same background as I did.  It wasn’t until my late 20s that I had openly LGBTQ friends, personal and professional.  By then I started breaking out ever so slightly from my conservative roots, graduating to the “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” stance. The former gave me an excuse to express empathy for marginalized groups of fellow Americans while the latter justified my continued voting with the presumption of self-interest.

That Friday night in Columbus I listened to young Americans talk about growing up, coming out, and living every day in a country that doesn’t always love them back.  There was so much love and acceptance between these friends and family members that you couldn’t help but be enveloped by it.  Not simply acceptance for someone’s identity as gay, straight, queer, but acceptance of each other, exactly as you were.  I’m not sure I’d ever felt anything like it.  Not many had sad stories, or at least they were far enough removed from the sadness.  Some fought against that part of their identity into their 20s.  Some were encouraged by their families to be themselves from the beginning.  There seemed to be a consensus understanding that they were on the lucky end of any collective experience, especially speaking generationally.

In high school I felt like an outcast because I had acne, dressed differently, didn’t play sports, and listened to punk rock music (what passed as punk rock in 2002).  Getting to know these new friends I realized I had no idea what it was like to grow up in a world that told you the most intimate aspects of your identity were wrong— socially, politically, legally, religiously wrong.  How do you imagine a future in the face of a steel barrier of hatred and inequality?  I wasn’t a punk rocker - they were.  If I make no coherent point in this paper I need to simply express my admiration for LGBTQIA+ people everywhere - you are all incredibly bold in ways I will never have to be.  I was proud to march with them that weekend in a celebration of the love we can share with one another.

The next week was Obergefell v Hodges. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of marriage equality across the United States.  It was a historic Pride month as millions of Americans felt safe to imagine a happier future for themselves and their loved ones.  And a couple weeks after that, two of my new Columbus friends were engaged.  I had never witnessed such a direct, immediate impact that politics could have in people’s lives.  

I recall an extended family member’s reaction to the immediate fallout of 2016 election results, something like “let’s be honest, is anyone’s life going to be different no matter who is president?”  He was a white, middle-class, conservative college freshman.  I would have said the same thing at age 18.  When politics has no obvious impact on your life, or those closest to you, it’s easy to assume they don’t matter to anyone.  Obergefell was truly transformative, a lighting bolt of government action.

It’s notable that this breakthrough could only come from the courts, and even then it took the turn of a conservative judge for the 5-4 decision.  Any sort of legislation would likely have taken decades to become effective.

The rising support for marriage equality over the past 25 years in America is something to behold and much of it preceded the decision .  According to Gallup polls, 27% of Americans were in favor of same-sex marriage in 1996. Record-High 70% in U.S. Support Same-Sex Marriage (gallup.com) That year politicians on both sides of the aisle overwhelmingly passed the “Defense of Marriage Act'' which Bill Clinton signed into law, defining marriage for federal purposes as the union of one man and one woman.  Clinton would try to wiggle away from this politically, but as recently as President Obama’s first campaign, moderate Democrats continued the stance that marriage was for straight couples - civil unions for everyone else.  While Democrats played defense on the matter - deferring to states, trying not to stand in the way of progress - Republicans were aggressive and often hateful, calling homosexuality immoral, pursuing a Constitutional amendment that would define marriage as between one man and one woman.  

Always the argument was that allowing same-sex or non-binary coupes to marry would harm the institution of marriage.   How silly does this seem now?  It seems so plainly obvious that the opposite is true.  To deny two adults who are willing to give their lives to each other, for better or worse, who want to take that same eternal leap of faith, can only pervert the institution.  The idea that my marriage could be more lawfully, spiritually, socially, financially, politically legitimate than someone else’s is disgusting and in direct opposition to the ideals we are supposed to champion as Americans.  

By 2011, most of America agreed, with polls showing over 50% favorability.  As most states began to allow same-sex marriage, either through the ballot box or the courts, its popularity rose.  In 2016, just before Obergefell, it was over 60%.  Today it stands around 70%, with 55% of Republicans in support.  In this case, culture kicked politics to the curb.  It’s easy to imagine future generations stunned that marriage equality was ever even a contested issue, shrugging their shoulders with the same sort of “I guess that’s just the way things were” that we give the generations preceding the Civil Rights era.  

As great of a success story as marriage equality has been in the last decade, there is clearly a mountain of work ahead to support LGBTQ people.  There is no comprehensive law protecting LGBTQ rights at the federal level.  States are often allowed to pass discriminatory laws on the basis of protecting religious (white Christian) freedoms.  Just this past week, the Supreme Court decided that a Catholic adoption agency could deny married same sex couples the right to adopt through their agency.  

While the majority of Americans support progress toward equal rights for all, anti-democratic systems continue to thwart progress.  Gerrymandering keeps state legislatures in the hands of white conservatives and gives them disproportionate influence in the House.  The Senate filibuster allows lawmakers representing less than 20% of the population to veto policy supported by those representing the other 80%.  The Electoral College, of course, gives unbalanced power to small states to elect the president and thus determine the makeup of the judiciary.  

As they’ve lost ground in the war over marriage equality and other LGBTQ issues, Republicans have turned their focus to attacking the rights of Transgender Americans.  President Trump banned openly transgender Americans from serving in the military in an infamous tweet, since reversed by President Biden.  Now some states have moved on from waging wars over public restrooms to propose policies that would call for the physical “gender inspection” of a child before they’re allowed to play girls sports.  These violations must be defeated democratically by removing Republicans from the levers of power at every level of government.  

You don’t need a billboard on Interstate 71 to tell you there is still hatred and violence affecting LGBTQ Americans. My second trip to Columbus Pride was monumental for another reason - it was the week following the Pulse nightclub shooting.   That march took a different kind of solidarity, with a genuine sense of danger in the air.  There was strength in numbers then, just as we have strength in numbers politically today.  We just have to use it.  

That first Pride weekend in Columbus opened up the world for me in many ways. A few years later, I was back in town for the wedding of two of those friends.  The ceremony and reception were outdoors.  We gathered.  We danced.  We drank. The grooms wrote their own vows and there wasn’t a dry eye in sight.  You could feel their deep love for each other and among everyone surrounding them.  The rain poured for hours.  It was beautiful.