Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Are all homophobes equals?

So, I'm riding my bike to work the other day along the river in Georgetown and there's a bumper sticker on the back of a car that says "Marriage=1 man+1woman". My first thought was "homophobe". Thankfully, acivities like biking allow for deeper processing than the first reaction. So, as I made my way towards the Lincoln Memorial, I started to think about progess. Lincoln himself, by today's standards, would certainly be considered a racist, but in his day, he was very much a progressive. This had me thinking about the owner of this car, and a desire to not give him/her a piece of my mind, but to instead maybe ask a few questions.

Here are two perhaps most clarifying questions:
1. Is the origin of the bumper sticker related to same-gender marriage, polygamy, or both?
2 (and really, the more important, as far as dialog goes and assuming that the bumper sticker is really a statement about the sanctity of marriage, prop 8, etc) would be questions that seek to identify where this person stand on glbt rights in general. People as diverse as Barack Obama, Jim Wallis, Rick Warren, Pat Robertson and Fred Phelps (of www.godhatesfags.com fame) all stand against "Marriage=1 man+1man" (or woman+woman), but the clearly have very differnt takes in the bigger scheme of things.

What I am really starting to appreciate that we all draw lines in the sand on issues, but perhaps our most important allies are not those on our side of the line, but those just on the other side. I suspect that the leaders of movements recognize this, and often moderate messages to try and garner a 51% split. This is why there is so much yelling about gay marriage, and so little talk about couple's rights.

So, back to my bumper sticker friend; were I to first engage him/her, it would probably have been with an edge. But, given time to reflect, and to be still within, I am pretty confident that, given time, we could have a wonderful confersation. I'd hedge my bets that the person might be very much for most rights for the glbt community, if we had the chance to talk and get to know each other. Of course, in our drive-by bumper sticker culture, a beep of the horn and flip of the finger may also be part of the norm. I'm just not sure that this kind of venting helps advance the cause of peace.