OK, maybe we liberals can all get off Rob Portman’s back for not behaving the way everyone in our perfect world would when his son came out to him. For a guy who was solidly in the “we won’t admit to hating gays, but we’re going to treat them like crap until they stop doing what they do” camp, I think he did all right.
First off, he didn’t take the moronic and mean-spirited tack of turning on his son. He didn’t disown him. He didn’t vilify hem. In my book that’s a great way to be a human being and a father, to keep a family together and not to add to the numbers of gay teen suicides. Go Rob!
The big beef against Senator Portman is that it took him two years to make a public statement. Seriously? This man is a leading Republican. That he ever said anything supportive of Marriage Equality out loud and on the record almost makes me believe in miracles. Has anyone ever heard Newt Gingrich do the same for his sister Candace in the twenty years that we’ve known he’s known she’s a lesbian?
As wonderful as an MGM big-screen instant turnaround might seem to some, I wouldn’t have wanted it in the Portman case. In fact, if he’d been able to reverse himself that quickly, I would have been incredibly angry. No one drops a deeply-held belief in a heartbeat no matter what it is or whom it affects. Portman’s views on gays, though extraordinarily misguided, were real and that the journey he took to full acceptance was real as well. Sure, it may have been lengthened by his vice-presidential aspirations, but I don’t think that invalidates it. I’m also a believer that when a person is allowed to make his own journey, he winds up being a much more fervent supporter in the end.
The place I do find fault with Senator Portman is the same one I find with a large number of conservatives: their rampant lack of empathy for anything outside their own experience. Since the Portman revelation, I’ve seen a continuing montage of Republicans proving the point. There’s Sen. Jon Kyl arguing inexplicably against including maternity care in insurance because he doesn’t need it, Sen. Saxby Chambliss saying he doesn’t have to care about gay marriage because he’s not gay, and the ever-mystifying Sen. James Inhofe claiming with pride that there’s never been a reported divorce or homosexual relationship in the history of his family – as if those are facts or have any relevance to anything.
It saddens me that Senator Portman would likely never have come to the light if his son was a regular heterosexual college sophomore. As a good a person as he believes he strives to be, it seems the stories of millions of same-sex American couples and their families would never have moved him. He would have continued like John Boehner, who last Sunday said he’d never change his views because – well – because that’s just the way he was raised and it’s what his church teaches him. (Once again, can we acknowledge the numbers of horrible and/or ridiculous ideas people have been raised with in the past that were thought by their churches? “That’s the way it’s always been” isn’t an argument and it isn’t true, either.)
In the LGBT community, we’ve known for a long time that the path to full citizenship was for more and more of us to come out of the closet so that more and more people realized we weren’t a stereotype or a cartoon, that we were their brothers and sisters and sons and daughters. It would be nice if the conservatives would open their minds just a little. Not only to us, but to anyone they don’t consider part of their lives. Gay people, or poor people or women. You know – the others.
I hold out little hope, though. As an example, I give you my favorite sanctimonious ass, Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, who turned on Portman immediately, saying just because our kids do something doesn’t make it right. Perkins, you’ll recall is certain none of his kids will be gay because he’s “raised them right.” Take that Senator Portman. You and the gay Yalie son you still love are an abomination in the eyes of God and good parents everywhere.
Gosh, there’s nothing like Christian love, is there?
As the parent of two teens, I am amazed how much of a non- issue gay marriage or even gender identification is with them. “Why shouldn’t gays marry if they want to, they are just like everyone else”. My daughter goes to the G S A meetings at school as an ally, but mostly because they have snacks and all the cool people are there. . .
Think about it Chris, RHS in the Seventies, there were one or two openly gay guys. My daughter says all the cool guys are gay. It truly is different world, and in ten years gay marriage will be like interracial marriage or living together without marriage was when we were young, impossible to believe anyone ever had a problem with it.
I hope that soon the coming out trauma is also a nonissue. It caused so much heartache in our generation, with the shadow cast by AIDS, part of me thinks a lot of the parental backlash was panic and fear that it would be a death sentence. At least the good parents who were unexpectedly harsh. The slogan I resonate with most is NO FEAR. That is where I wish we were.
All great points, Letha. Happy to hear the world for your kids is so different from ours. (And Roosevelt was a relatively benign place to be gay in the 70s.) Fingers crossed about coming out, too. I expect that if kids are just allowed to be who they are from an early age, it will become a non-issue.