My Facebook has been blowing up these past few days: apparently the gays are unwittingly under attack again. Every well-groomed, professionally-photographed, bare-chested Facebook friend I have is posting, sharing, and re-posting links that tell the story of yet another outrageous Republican conspiracy to crush our same-sex-loving rights under their cold, heartless bootheels.
"Turn the Gays Away" - this is the term social media have disdainfully applied to SB 2566, a bill introduced by Sen. Mike Bell to the Tennessee State Legislature on Feb. 6, 2014. The news networks claim that the bill will "allow people and businesses to refuse to provide goods and services to homosexuals." Holy fuck. Really? I feel a sit-in (or more appropriately, a "sit-on" - let your imaginations run wild with that one) is in order.
I must admit, I was shocked to hear the news - but I was also a bit skeptical, as I usually and rightfully am when a major media outlet actually manages to shock me. I began reading the pertinent articles and watching the relevant newsreels, something we should all get in the habit of doing more often, and I found that there was a little more to the story than the headlines dared to report. The unfolding of this "little more" (which is actually a "great deal more") requires me to become a little more cerebral than I've allowed myself to be up to this point; I hope my readers will bear with me, or jump ship now if they're not up to the task: I hate it when people disagree with something without understanding it. But I'll come back to that presently.
The summary of SB 2566 can be found at this location: Summary of SB 2566 - read it, and read it well. In fact, read the whole damned bill if you have a knack for legislative jargon, because it spells out quite succinctly, without the enticements of sensationalism, what this bill is all about.
The summary clearly states that the bill's goal is to "permit persons and religious or denominational organizations, based on sincere religious belief, to refuse to provide services or goods in furtherance of a civil union, domestic partnership, or marriage not recognized by the Tennessee Constitution." Let me say that again, in a more literary style: it permits each and every Tennessee citizen to uphold their beliefs in each and every aspect of their private lives - which includes the way in which they conduct their business with others. It is, quite simply, a defense of the First Amendment.
I started laughing when I read this, I must admit; not because of the sheer pretension of a twenty-first century Tennessee senator to presume that he can do anything to defend the constitution, but because of the rather amusing scenario that popped into my head. I imagined two men entering a hardware store in Cannon County - there are three elderly gentlemen besides, probably farmers, wearing overalls and trucker caps and eating boiled peanuts on the porch. Our two men get through the door and, realizing through context clues and general practical wisdom that they've entered an environment that may in fact be hostile to their worldview and way-of-life (the two men are a gay couple, if you hadn't already surmised), they nevertheless act contrary to all prudence and practical wisdom and proclaim to the owner of the shop: "Gooday sir. We two are homosexually in love with one another, and seem to have misplaced our allum wrench, which we purchased, of course, with money from our joint bank account, an account which we have on account of our being, as I said, homosexually in love." They pause for an affectionate kiss, after which: "Could you be so kind as to point us in the direction of a replacement?" The owner of the store, eyeing the couple from under two grey caterpillars on his forehead, spits a spittle of dip and replies: "I don't think we can help you kinda' folks." The shocked couple huffs, exits noisily, and gets furiously back into their jointly-purchased Prius; they easily acquire an allum wrench in nearby progressive Murfreesboro, but decide to sue the offending shopkeeper for discrimination. Old Jedediah (this is the shopkeeper's unfortunate monicker) is forced to hand over the ownership of his shop to the Tractor Supply Company in order to pay the legal fees, but he faithfully returns daily at sunrise, in melancholy and nostalgia, to gnash peanuts on the front porch with his friends.
Ladies and gentlemen, our dear Jedediah - however bigoted and old-fashioned his views on sexuality may be - has done nothing more than inact his right, as sole proprietor of a privately owned business, to sell his wares to whom he likes. And while I've obviously dramaticized here, for the sake of rhetoric and point-making, it does not change the fact that the bill being introduced is designed specifically to uphold an individual's right to conduct his business as he sees fit.
Now it will be pointed out that the bill stipulates as one of the rights it's defending that no individual must "provide employment or employment benefits" to people who offend their deep-seated religious convictions, and on this point I must admit things get a little hairy: the bill is essentially saying that homosexuals may be turned down for a job because of their gayness, which is obviously retarded. But this touches on the other point I raised in my little imaginative exercise, which is this: remember, at all times, where you are. Unless you're Thoreau, and can afford a few years of seclusion and self-sufficiency, you are always going to find yourself in some form of human society; and if that society has a great disdain for buggery, it would be best for a buggerer to keep his private life to himself.
In other words, a potential discriminator can only discriminate if he knows he has something against which he can act discriminately. We homosexuals happen to have an edge here: our predilection for the same sex doesn't visibly manifest itself in our appearance. We can enter a hardware store, a grocery store, a bank or a Taco Bell, and unless we greet the patrons thereof with "Hullo! I'm a homosexual, in need of your services," then we can usually avail ourselves of their services without fear of discrimination. The bill under dispute, when considered in the light of the humdrum and everyday arenas in which discrimination actually takes place, is practically impotent: it cannot encourage nor diminish it. I hate to say it, friends, but no piece of legislation ever will.
And I have to stop here and ask my gays a sincere question: do you honestly want to work for, do business with, or give money to someone who hates the way you love?
But back to the point: what this bill does in fact do (although it shouldn't have to - I oppose it simply on the grounds of its redundancy) is re-establish the constitutional rights of the individual to interact with his society in any benign way that he sees fit - sodomites in particular should be fond of this right's preservation. If there are individuals who truly believe that gays worship the Satan (and I can assure you that there are), this bill means for them that they can refuse to do business with the devil without fear of terrestrial litigation. The bill in no way promotes such refusals - a tolerant and understanding person can't be changed into a bigot by a piece of legislation any more than a heterosexual can be homosexualized by the sight of a gay pride parade. What is at issue here is freedom: the freedom for me to love who I love, and the freedom of others to deal professionally with whom they wish. When it comes down to it, my freedom to pursue butt-sex as an enjoyable pasttime and method of intimacy is no more important than a redneck's freedom to hate faggots. It's just two sides of the flimsy and mottled coin we call modernity.
Now I've been somewhat calm, collected and even flippant up to this point, but I have to stop now and express a real fear I have for our society: this sensationalism in America is getting out of control. There are chasms growing on all fronts, born not from real and profound differences of belief, but from simple misunderstandings - this is just one more chink in the crevasse. Trenches are being dug every day to defend ideologies that haven't been thought through, against opposing ideologies that have only been assumed to exist. Ladies and gentlemen, you're allowing CNN and FOX to define the relationship you have with your next-door neighbors. You're allowing your hatred to be fanned to a fever pitch, a hatred directed against nothing and everything at once - you're losing, day-by-day, your humanity, and you can't get it back by re-posting hyperbolic headlines onto your news feed. But more importantly, you're being pursuaded by P.R. specialists and marketing campaigns to relinquish the freedom that two-and-a-half centuries worth of effort has been spent to establish; and now we come to a generation that can loath and revile a small, quaint, and misguided attempt to save it, by letting a talking head tell us that those attempts are nothing but "evil." You all need to pause, collect yourself, and take a good look at your intentions and the intentions of others (you can start by reading the summary of SB 2566, if you've gotten this far without doing so); you may find out that neither are exactly what they seemed to be.
In any case, I wish all my fellow homosexuals a long and happy same-sex-love-life - I say this, since I know the above-stated opinions will be considered bigoted by not just a few readers. And I send out also my request that, in the unlikely event that this bill does pass, all the patrons of all the places I love to spend my money go on accepting it in return for their services and wares. You only stand to benifit thereby, and so do I.
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