THE EDUCATION OF JARVIS SLACKS

We can disagree in an agreeable way.

“The shape of the world will not permit us the luxury of gradualism and procrastination.”  Those are the words of Martin Luther King Jr., from his book Why We Can’t Wait.  He wrote those words decades ago.  I wonder where he got the idea for that?  Where did he get that statement? The exigency was obviously the Black Civil Rights Movement and the suffering of the black people, my people.  Why We Can’t Wait. It is a thick, collection of words, full of complexities and the promise that, before that statement, there was a lack of clarity, a lump of ignorance and validated inaction that the phrase obligated. There was a reason why the Black Civil Right movement couldn’t wait and take things slow.  They couldn’t wait because nothing is promised to us.  The future is as tangible as dirty smoke, as just as irritable. Black people couldn’t wait then and neither can Gay people now.  That same sense of urgency, that same unmoving desire to achieve equal rights now, right now, needs to spread through the Gay community like wild fire and it needs to consume, take them and cook them and hardened them and force them to fight, tooth and nail, for the rights and privileges that every single American has the born-promise of having.   This isn’t debatable.  And I find it amazingly interesting that this call for action is coming from me, a straight Black man born in the most racist and uncompromising regions of this country.  But that is how important the Gay rights movement is.  It is moving past the realm of being desirable, a dream that may come true, someday.  America’s inaction is coming close to being damn-near a crime against humanity.

Why do I care about Gay rights?  Why does a guy, a guy who is as straight as an arrow, a guy raised in the rough arms of the Fundamentalist Church, a guy that is just a tiny bit uncomfortable around Gay men, a guy who loves the South, loves what the South is and how it feels and would, probably, punch someone in the face if they talked bad about the South, even though the South is a horrible place. Why does a guy like that, a Black man in his thirties with absolutely no reason to care, actually and strongly does care about gay rights?  The automatic, knee-jerk of a reaction is that, well, obviously I am gay and I haven’t come out the closet yet. That is inherently part of the problem.  Saying that a Straight man can’t care about Gay rights is like saying that White people couldn’t care about Black Civil Rights.  It is like saying that there are no feminists that are men. Civil rights are Civil rights.  Beat up on a section of the population, no matter who they are or what they do, and the average, typical dude in the check out line or the woman driving to soccer practice takes notice.  It all matters.

It matters more to me, now, especially after last year’s elections.  Yes, we elected the first Black President. Everyone stand up and cheer.  That same night in California, on the same ballot, legal Gay Marriage was overturned.  In one hand, we had the apogee of the entire Civil Rights movement, a one hundred and forty nine year struggle. On the other hand, we had the ripping apart of a Constitutional right.  We had people, American citizens, who suddenly weren’t married.  One minute, they were.  The next, they weren’t.  The Gay Community blamed this catastrophe on the high Black turn out that November 4^th.  Was it the Black Community’s fault?  No.  It was the lobbyist and the closed-minded activist who set Proposition 8 into motion in the first place. The only thing good that came out of all of that is the open and frank discussion that elevated the Gay Rights question into a discourse on basic human freedoms. We all should be concerned.

My concern for the Gay community is connected with my interaction with them, my life-long intersection with their lives and their dreams.  Being a writer means you have plenty of time to meet different people, to ask them questions, to have them share their lives with you.  You make friends.  And those friends and their struggles quickly and permanently become a part of your life.  A Lesbian couple I know is about to get married, are about to connect in a way that never has been available to me.  Another couple is having the best relationship that I’ve ever seen, the obnoxious monster of a commitment where they say they love each other and that they want to have babies together and all that.  It is epic, looming. Undeniable.  How can I condemn them?  How can anyone that walks this earth and breathes the air have any negative opinion about two people that want to live the rest of their lives together?  I thought this was a good thing?  I thought this was what we wanted?  Isn’t this what we want as a society?  Don’t we want stability?  Don’t we want people to be responsible?  Don’t we want a community built on trust and faith and love?  I can’t think of anything more abhorrent than not letting two people do this. It is so illogical.  It is hard to describe in its stupidity.  Bigotry often is.

I care about Gay rights because I am a direct result of another Civil Rights campaign, one that watched its leader assassinated, watched racists put cross hairs on little brown boys and girls who just wanted to go to school.   Fifty years ago the establishment, those that didn’t want the integration of Blacks, used dogs and water hoses and the threat of the noose and unrelenting apathy to keep Black people in a position that was controllable and disgusting.  Then, Black men and women fought. Then, we marched.  Then, we promised that, no, we aren’t going to stop.  Then we said, take us to jail, lock us up, beat us, spit on us, handcuff us, and, yes, even kill us.  Then, we said, you’ll have to do all that because we won’t stop.  We weren’t going to give up until we got not what we wanted, but what we deserved.  I am scared for the Gay community.  Even now, I face discrimination on a passive level.  I get dirty looks.  I’ve probably had a harder time getting a job just because my skin color has a nice, chocolate hue.  And it has been fifty years. What is the Gay community going to do?  How long will it take for them to not only achieve equality, but to be recognized as equals, to have that recognition?  I know, like every minority should know but sometimes forget:  The ones in power do not give a damn about those not in power.  Those entrenched in the status quo have no reason to give us anything.

“One aspect of the Civil Rights struggle that receives little attention is the contribution it makes to the whole of society.”  Martin Luther King Jr. was talking about the Black struggle, but that statement applies to the Gay struggle even more so, on multiple levels.  The reason we care about Gay rights is because we should care about all of our rights, the rights of every America.  We have the right to protect ourselves.  We have the right to say what we believe without the risk of punishment from our government.  We have the right to try, the best as we can, to be happy.  That last one isn’t some abstract concept written on thin paper.  It is a promise.  It is what we deserve.  If some of us don’t have all of these rights, it is an insult and a risk to all of us.  If one person suffers, not only should we care about that person, we should be very concerned that, maybe, we too will suffer.  Gay men and women aren’t allowed to get married universally because certain men and women, the uneducated, the prejudice, the just plain scared, don’t want them to.  Just like certain men and women didn’t want my mother and my father to go to school with white children, just like certain men and women wouldn’t let a white man and a black woman get married without the fear of lynching.  It is more than a slippery slope.  It is a cliff with jagged rocks at the bottom.  The collective soul of America is standing at the edge of that cliff.  If we don’t give equal rights and protections to the Gay community now, right now, we risk tripping and careening down to that horrible bottom.  Waiting is a luxury we no longer have the pleasure of indulging in.