Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
If only to honor the memory of my two Gay classmates who were brutalized until they killed themselves, I am here to tell you that what has routinely happened to Gay People in Mississippi amounts to something far more substantive than crosses being burned in yards.
All over the state, the persecution, exploitation, and subjugation of Gay People - both in insidious ways and in more overt ways like physical violence - has been largely swept out of sight.
Deep in the Mississippi Delta, there used to stand a classic Mississippi general store: solid cypress - a porch on three sides - a gathering place in the mornings, for farmers in that locale. It was the first 'brick & mortar' store for the first Mr. Stein, whose descendants would go on to found Stein Mart. The structure was widely admired, and the amiable social web, for which it served as nucleus, was greatly treasured.
But just before the arrival of the Steins, sometime early in the Twentieth Century, something very dark and frightening happened there. Another Jewish merchant, with a, "...name like Eichelberger - rather awkward, and inviting contempt in its own right.", was Proprietor. The Merchant was identified as a homosexual, and "run out of the country" by a "group of the menfolk", in a way that was too horrific to be relayed. My source was told this by a grandparent, probably as a way of cautioning him against 'being effeminate'.
That was a recurring theme in Mississippi, until very recently: elders discretely trying to save their boys who were 'not manly-enough', and their girls who were, "you know...". "When you get into the Army, they're going to...", "When you get up to Ole Miss, they're going to..." - threats of gang violence against those who were unseemly. Those with means sent their vulnerable family members off to good schools, and/or counseled them, "You need to go up to New York and live.", or "You need to move down to New Orleans like your Cousin Bobbeh did...". Those without means and mobility simply prayed.
In New Orleans, Uptown, The Garden District, The Faubourg Marigny, and The French Quarter were (and perhaps still are) full of discarded Mississippians, who went there to rot and die. Luckier are the Gays who put down roots in Dallas, Atlanta, and Manhattan. Those who stayed where they were born lived incredibly sad and stunted lives. At best, they were "The Town Joke". At worst? Well... such incidents were swept under the rug. Mississippi's Gays did not have activists coming down from New York by the bus-load, to save them. The New York Times and the television networks did not make it their business to endlessly expose the plight of Mississippi's Gays, as they exposed the plight of other victims of oppression in Mississippi. Federal troops were not sent into Mississippi's schools, to force cessation of physical attacks against those perceived as 'qu--rs'. Gays suffered in silence.
In Jackson, furniture stores and "houses of design" could pay their Gay men pittances, because, after all, "They're just little f--s. Who else is gonna hire them." Same with the ad agencies, the banks, the architecture firms, the department stores... Even in the Early Nineties, in the building where I had my Home Office, there was an architect who, even though he and his wife were supposedly "sophisticated and liberal", treated their Gay employees as something shameful and to be 'tolerated'. That office, like mine, was built on the talents and work ethic of its Gay men. But, when there were parties and office gatherings, while the firm's heterosexual employees were encouraged to bring their spouses, their children, or just whoever it was they were dating, the Gay employees were not - not even in the case of Significant Others who were basically married to Gay employees who'd been with the firm since its inception. And I hope none of those employees ever heard the way that Employer and its wife joked about them behind their backs. I don't think they even realized how ugly they sounded.
Families treated their Gays in much the same way as did that employer. The 'strange ones' were tolerated, as long as they stayed 'in their places'. They could be lap dogs for matriarchs, and the butt of jokes. But they were generally not invited to "go in farmin' with Daddy", or to go into the family business. They were not encouraged to go to law school, or to medical school. Simple ideation of success was subtly forbidden for Gay boys in Mississippi. Even today, Greatest Generation members of families become quite upset to hear anything about Gay relatives that is not sinister or pitiful. "They've blocked-out the fact that I was on the Dean's List. They continually speak as if I never got a degree. They absolutely refuse to process the fact that I've been with the same firm for thirty years. They think I need to move down to New Orleans and sell things on the street. They 'love me', but only 'in my place'.
But if outsiders, today, think that by moving to Mississippi, they will have arrived in a milieu where they can finally, fully express their inner nastiness, backwardness, and "Conservatism"... I think they will have been mistaken. And I think that they need to stay in the places that spawned them.
When I attended Biloxi Senior H.S. in 1963, virtually everything that has been written negatively about GLTB was being done to blacks. I even remember sitting in the school auditorium (the ONLY air-conditioned building in the school) and listening to the Superintendent of Schools tell us that we should, "remain the young ladies and gentlemen you are--but I have to inform you that next year Biloxi Senior High will be integrated." You could have heard a pin drop in the auditorium. You can imagine the comments being made after that meeting.
Now that that bit of prejudice and maltreatment of people based on race has mostly passed us by, the malcontents who are so insecure as to feel that they need to put someone else down to feel better about themselves are choosing the GLTB community to persecute.
I don't pretend to understand that lifestyle--nor do I necessarily celebrate it--but I believe everyone should be treated EQUALLY--whether male or female, black or white, straight or gay, catholic or protestant, religious or atheistic. It is the job of GOVERNMENT to see that equality is enforced by our institutions.
Mississippi struggles more than many states with finding equality for all its citizens (read The Spirit Level, a book about income inequality and how it literally impacts overall health, teenage pregnancy, length of prison terms, and overall happiness), but this bit of news about Oxford is a light in the darkness.
It's so very refreshing to see it from a state neighboring my own home state of Alabama. We need to follow suit.
When I attended Biloxi Senior H.S. in 1963, virtually everything that has been written negatively about GLTB was being done to blacks. I even remember sitting in the school auditorium (the ONLY air-conditioned building in the school) and listening to the Superintendent of Schools tell us that we should, "remain the young ladies and gentlemen you are--but I have to inform you that next year Biloxi Senior High will be integrated." You could have heard a pin drop in the auditorium. You can imagine the comments being made after that meeting.
Now that that bit of prejudice and maltreatment of people based on race has mostly passed us by, the malcontents who are so insecure as to feel that they need to put someone else down to feel better about themselves are choosing the GLTB community to persecute.
I don't pretend to understand that lifestyle--nor do I necessarily celebrate it--but I believe everyone should be treated EQUALLY--whether male or female, black or white, straight or gay, catholic or protestant, religious or atheistic. It is the job of GOVERNMENT to see that equality is enforced by our institutions.
Mississippi struggles more than many states with finding equality for all its citizens (read The Spirit Level, a book about income inequality and how it literally impacts overall health, teenage pregnancy, length of prison terms, and overall happiness), but this bit of news about Oxford is a light in the darkness.
It's so very refreshing to see it from a state neighboring my own home state of Alabama. We need to follow suit.
I've always seen it as a state-only issue, it's not my fight.
But using the federal government to force it EITHER WAY on the issue is not good.
I've always seen it as a state-only issue, it's not my fight.
But using the federal government to force it EITHER WAY on the issue is not good.
No, it's not good that individuals can't do it for themselves. More times than not, it takes the government putting pressure on issues like this in order for things to progress.
I've always seen it as a state-only issue, it's not my fight.
But using the federal government to force it EITHER WAY on the issue is not good.
Did you also believe that racism was a state only issue? It would never have been resolved on that basis.
And it IS your fight. If you are a Christian, then anyone being oppressed or treated differently should be an affront to you, even if you do not agree with or understand their life style.
Each of us is either part of the solution or part of the problem.
The following video focuses on the Hunger Games movie (the first one), but points out that always there are a group of people who find satisfaction in sacrificing other people by dehumanizing them. It makes no difference WHO it is that is sacrificed, it remains a critical weakness in our human nature. When one group or person is removed as the object of our anger, we find another.
As the video points out, Government (whether local, state, or federal) can often be the SOURCE of the problem. Thank God we have a federal government that has overcome the restrictive nature most often displayed by state governments.
This priest (I am not catholic) points out something deep seated in each of us.
Did you also believe that racism was a state only issue? It would never have been resolved on that basis.
And it IS your fight. If you are a Christian, then anyone being oppressed or treated differently should be an affront to you, even if you do not agree with or understand their life style.
Each of us is either part of the solution or part of the problem.
The following video focuses on the Hunger Games movie (the first one), but points out that always there are a group of people who find satisfaction in sacrificing other people by dehumanizing them. It makes no difference WHO it is that is sacrificed, it remains a critical weakness in our human nature. When one group or person is removed as the object of our anger, we find another.
As the video points out, Government (whether local, state, or federal) can often be the SOURCE of the problem. Thank God we have a federal government that has overcome the restrictive nature most often displayed by state governments.
This priest (I am not catholic) points out something deep seated in each of us.
Not disagreeing with anything you've said. But I'm not dumb enough to not believe that even the most *egalitarian train of thought can be eventually corrupted and twisted into something else.
For all you know, this current Gay marriage issue can spin into incestuous marriages or even polygamy. And what the Feds are going to squash is anyone who has the audacity to OPPOSE IT!
The Hunger Games showed things like thought police as well.
I've always seen it as a state-only issue, it's not my fight.
But using the federal government to force it EITHER WAY on the issue is not good.
The old "states' rights" meme, eh?
The problem with that approach is that given the majority will of some states, you'd still have things like Jim Crow.
States rights is a decent enough argument when dealing with laws like marijuana use, sales taxes, and gun regulation etc. But to use it to defend disenfranchisement of other people is the reason we have a Civil Rights Act.
Logic taken to it's natural end. You can use all the same arguments for polygamy and such as you can for gay marriage.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rock Climber
The old "states' rights" meme, eh?
The problem with that approach is that given the majority will of some states, you'd still have things like Jim Crow.
States rights is a decent enough argument when dealing with laws like marijuana use, sales taxes, and gun regulation etc. But to use it to defend disenfranchisement of other people is the reason we have a Civil Rights Act.
And I'm all for states that want to legalize whatever in their own states, just as long as other states get to outlaw it as they see fit. I'm not against California legalizing gay marriage or pot, but don't force it on the rest of us.
I'm certainly not.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
