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Gay Horses
--By Sandy Rapp  I spent last Freedom To Marry Day with WABC Radio's Curtis Sliwa. Yep, the Guardian Angels founder rang me for some on-air conversation around air-play of my lesbian/gay politics song "Everyone Was At Stonewall". The format was call-in and the atmosphere good-natured confrontation. Curtis acknowledged that discrimination was a bad thing, then prodded: "But what about the argument that no other species has same-sex relations?"
"Curtis, where have you been," I inquired. "Zoologists from Alfred Kinsey on down have noticed same-gender relations in all species. There are gay horses," I expanded, "gay ducks, gay newts and gay Gingriches. You should get around more!" A phone call interrupted my diatribe. From past experience I expected HOSTILE. But no, it was a woman somewhere in rural America who was all for Freedom To Marry Day, and whose stallion, it seemed, repeatedly mounted her gelding (an altered male). "Even when there was a filly around?" pressed Sliwa. "Mare," we chorused. "Fillies are underage, Curtis," I explained, "which raises another question altogether. You really should get around more." Conscious of our getting lost in this expanding exploration of gay livestock, I turned the conversation to the nature/nurture stuff underlying the whole issue. "UCLA professor and author Richard Green MD, JD," I ventured, "provides an excellent theory of what makes for sexual orientation. He once said "'the answer to the question: is homosexuality learned or inborn? is YES.'" The point is that orientation, whether gay or non-gay, is a deeply-felt, self-defining attribute with origins as complex as the soul itself. I wanted to add that arguing orientation as purely "natural" serves gay politics no better than arguing the reverse. I have always been afraid the political advancement of a simplistic "gay gene" theory would return us to past practice of electro-shock "therapy" and hormone "cures" for lesbian and gay people. But the radio station ran a commercial and a news spot so we sat in silence. "Furthermore," I thought, "civil rights in the United States are often premised on acquired characteristics. For example religious groups, whose protection is based precisely on whatever religion they've acquired, are perfectly free to discriminate against gays in no less than forty of these United States. So we needn't beat these gay horses to death." The next caller was what you'd expect. She too was from farm country, but argued that if animals did it, it couldn't be good. She documented herself to Sodom and Gomorrah. Her trashing of gays via Scripture proceeded in spite of contemporary research like John Boswell's Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality showing the events at Sodom concerned inhospitality and possible gang rape but certainly not consentual same-gender relations. I shouted her down with this, sort of. Then Miami, Florida rang in. He liked the tune about Stonewall but wondered what recognition of gay marriages might do to existing marriage laws. "Nothing," is the answer. Recognizing more marriages does not invalidate traditional ones. The arguments against gay marriage are precisely those used thirty years ago against legalization of interracial marriage. And the federal Defense of Marriage Act, permitting states to not recognize gay marriages performed in other states, is probably unconstitutional. It violates the United States Constitution's Article IV, Section 1, which facilitates national unity through the "full faith and credit" by which individual states honor each other's contracts. Similar anti-gay DOMA measures are on the books in roughly half the states. I fit a good bit of this in through the next few calls, one hostile and two friendly. The radio segment ended with a caller praising Sliwa's Guardian Angels for having saved her life all the way over in London. I found myself recalling a bit of local history. When, in 1988 we argued for the expansion of Suffolk County's Human Rights Commission's domain to include lesbian and gay-related investigations, the topic of animals also arose. Repeated testimony, to the effect that the overwhelming preponderance of child abusers are heterosexual men, did nothing to dissuade Suffolk's fundamentalists from distributing flyers declaring the human rights bill legalized "child-molestation" and "bestiality." One local paper ran a column about the immorality of sex between humans and ducks. Before the radio show I'd talked to Lambda's marriage project director, Evan Wolfson, who emphasized that we should "use on-air forums to elicit non-gay support for gay issues." He stressed the need for allies and said to remind listeners that "winning one battle is never enough." Indeed, dialogue with conservative hosts does expand our movement in significant ways. Curtis now knows, (and I believe likes) one more gay. And my female terrier mix, Cagney, is definitely Bi.(c) SandyRapp 1998
Sandy Rapp is a feminist singer whose CD/Tape We The People and book God's Country: A Case Against Theocracy are available at SandyRapp@aol.com & Amazon.com.
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