October’s LGBT History Month ended with a historic event, when Matthew Shepard’s (1976-’98) ashes were interred in the Washington National Cathedral. Twenty years after his vicious murder by homophobic thugs, the act’s historic significance was magnified by the fact that the Episcopal Church’s first openly gay bishop, Gene Robinson, presided over the ceremony.
Shepard’s 1998 torture and death are recognized as a critical moment of America’s reckoning with LGBTQ bias. It led to a protracted fight for hate crime legislation, inevitably derailed by Republicans, until, more than a decade later, President Barrack Obama signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crimes Prevention Act in 2009. It also led to the creation of the Matthew Shepard Foundation. Its mission is the embrace of human dignity and diversity and to “replace hate with understanding, compassion and acceptance.”
But, sadly, other events overshadowed that historic marker. It’s been a horrific week for our country. A crazed regime cheerleader sent pipe bombs to a dozen Democratic leaders, an actor and a major news outlet. After failing to enter an African American church, a white supremacist shot dead two black shoppers at a grocery store. Then, an anti-Semitic white nationalist gunman attacked a Pittsburgh synagogue. The resulting massacre of 11 congregants took place during a bris ceremony for a gay couple’s adopted twins (a fact that has been thus far omitted by most news outlets). Save for one, the victims were senior citizens, including 97-year-old Rose Mallinger, a Holocaust survivor. It was just two weeks before the 80th anniversary of Reichskristallnacht—a pogrom against Jewish citizens in Nazi Germany that led to the death and incarceration of thousands of innocents.
Finally, at least this for this week, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services seems to be planning on redefining gender to exclude transgender people. And all this in the aftermath of a journalist’s butchering at the hands of a so-called ally, followed by our provocateur-president encouraging violence against reporters while declaring himself a “nationalist” and bemoaning the “bomb stuff” that distracted from his own incendiary message. His radicalized cult loved it.
With the 2018 election, we have the chance to at least slow the erosion of our democratic values. Oddly though, our LGBTQ community still seems to be mired in a residual minimalization of our self-worth. Many organizations declare their apolitical nature as a matter of course. Even a local online history page leads with a repeated “NO Politics” warning. What is our LGBTQ history if not one of a political struggle? Admittedly, I’m on the board of a gay social organization that also that insists on its non-political nature. Like those family Thanksgiving dinners where guests eschew talk of politics and religion at the table, we ignore the elephant in the room for the sake of a Rockwellian but false sense of family harmony. We do so at our peril.
Still, there are numerous out LGBTQ candidates running as Democratic Party candidates, including our own Tammy Baldwin. None represent the GOP. For its part, the Republican Party’s slate includes a North Carolina state election candidate claiming God is a racist and white supremacist.
Meanwhile, Pittsburgh’s Jewish leaders have told the president he is not welcome there until he denounces white nationalism. Just days away now, the Tuesday, Nov. 6, election may be our only chance to effectively deliver a similar demand that he finally and unequivocally denounce homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, racism and hate. But he won’t.
Remember Matthew Shepard and VOTE!
