Heterosexual
Family Pride Day
Editorial - May 1st 2001
By Michael Paré, Toronto ON
Originally published by Toronto Digital Queeries
"The office of the Mayor of the City of Regina, Saskatchewan proclaims Monday, June 18, as Heterosexual Family Pride Day."
The long list of "whereases" makes the mayor's orientation abundantly clear. Whereas the intact heterosexual family unit is ordained by God as clearly revealed in the Holy Bible, and whereas "large bodies" of research show that the intact hetero families provide excellent nurturing for children, and whereas the i.h.f. provides necessary stability for the good of society, and whereas the i.h.f. provides "sexual satisfaction for the men and women who are committed to them," and whereas monogamous husbands and wives have no reason to worry about AIDS or broken hearts (oh yeah?), citizens are urged to recognize Heterosexual Family Pride Day.
Our first reaction was a burst of hearty laughter; our second was a slight queasiness at the thought of the small-eyed, snake-belly-white kind of homophobe who would come up with such a farrago of nonsense.
Smug majorities are given to this kind of thing. They lash back at any disadvantaged group that pesters them with demands, needles them into the painful exercise of thought or disturbs their placid enjoyment of their monolithic rightness, whiteness and entitlement.
The first stage of reaction is denial. Wife battering? Child sexual abuse? Systemic racism in Canada? We could cite chapter and verse of the respectable commentators who swore up and down that none of these harms existed.
The second stage of majoritarian panic is, pardon the expression, appropriation. The same misogynists who insisted there was no such thing as wife battering soon began to change their tune: from a bellow to a whine. "Me too!" they began to whimper. "Men are battered too."
Despite the obvious idiocy of this claim, women who are deemed "battered" are subject to a complex mesh of submissive conditioning, threats, intimidation, physical violence, crushed self-respect, terror and financial dependency, usually because of responsibility for the children, the wails of the copycat victim are heard worldwide.
In Cairo, where women can choose female-only subway cars to avoid gropers, a male lawyer is threatening to sue unless the city provides men-only cars. In Austria, where women earn one-third of the male rate of pay, Herbert Haupt of the far-right Freedom Party is not only the minister of women's affairs, he's also a backlash bozo who thinks there should be a men's department. And in British Columbia, a shelter for men who have suffered "verbal or physical abuse" (cry me a river) had to close down for lack of public support. The National Post was aghast at their plight.
Heterosexual Family Pride Day, however, is the ultimate in embarrassing acts of appropriation. Can you imagine the mind of someone who think he has to strut the "pride" of heterosexual men? The smarmy language doesn't hide the all-too-obvious motives: to assert the supremacy of conservative family values, to denigrate the claims of the gay rights movement, and to try to enshrine one Christian or "missionary" brand of sexuality as the only official and legal style of union.
Seems these evangelicals feel all shook up unless the state enforces their form of belief. Their idea of social stability, however, is just what threatens us all. It creates the kind of parents who teach their children to hate and taunt their schoolmates who are children of lesbians or gay men. It gives licence to the kind of thugs who would beat a Matthew Shepard to death because he was gay. It breeds the toxic intolerance that drives gay youths to a 30 per cent higher suicide rate than other teens.
Heterosexual "intact families" a declining minority, already bask at the top of the social-approval ladder. Surely that's enough legitimacy for anyone. Besides, We just read in the New York Times that the divorce rate in the evangelical Christian heartland of the United States is 50 per cent above the national average.
The patriarchal system isn't working any more, people! It's plumb broke. Proclaim all you want, you're driving last century's model. Maybe, instead of copycatting gay pride days, you ought to learn something from feminists, lesbians and gays about real love and commitment in the arms of equality.
On second thought, nah. Equality is one thing you can't fake.
Editorial - May 1st 2001
By Michael Paré, Toronto ON
Originally published by Toronto Digital Queeries
"The office of the Mayor of the City of Regina, Saskatchewan proclaims Monday, June 18, as Heterosexual Family Pride Day."
The long list of "whereases" makes the mayor's orientation abundantly clear. Whereas the intact heterosexual family unit is ordained by God as clearly revealed in the Holy Bible, and whereas "large bodies" of research show that the intact hetero families provide excellent nurturing for children, and whereas the i.h.f. provides necessary stability for the good of society, and whereas the i.h.f. provides "sexual satisfaction for the men and women who are committed to them," and whereas monogamous husbands and wives have no reason to worry about AIDS or broken hearts (oh yeah?), citizens are urged to recognize Heterosexual Family Pride Day.
Our first reaction was a burst of hearty laughter; our second was a slight queasiness at the thought of the small-eyed, snake-belly-white kind of homophobe who would come up with such a farrago of nonsense.
Smug majorities are given to this kind of thing. They lash back at any disadvantaged group that pesters them with demands, needles them into the painful exercise of thought or disturbs their placid enjoyment of their monolithic rightness, whiteness and entitlement.
The first stage of reaction is denial. Wife battering? Child sexual abuse? Systemic racism in Canada? We could cite chapter and verse of the respectable commentators who swore up and down that none of these harms existed.
The second stage of majoritarian panic is, pardon the expression, appropriation. The same misogynists who insisted there was no such thing as wife battering soon began to change their tune: from a bellow to a whine. "Me too!" they began to whimper. "Men are battered too."
Despite the obvious idiocy of this claim, women who are deemed "battered" are subject to a complex mesh of submissive conditioning, threats, intimidation, physical violence, crushed self-respect, terror and financial dependency, usually because of responsibility for the children, the wails of the copycat victim are heard worldwide.
In Cairo, where women can choose female-only subway cars to avoid gropers, a male lawyer is threatening to sue unless the city provides men-only cars. In Austria, where women earn one-third of the male rate of pay, Herbert Haupt of the far-right Freedom Party is not only the minister of women's affairs, he's also a backlash bozo who thinks there should be a men's department. And in British Columbia, a shelter for men who have suffered "verbal or physical abuse" (cry me a river) had to close down for lack of public support. The National Post was aghast at their plight.
Heterosexual Family Pride Day, however, is the ultimate in embarrassing acts of appropriation. Can you imagine the mind of someone who think he has to strut the "pride" of heterosexual men? The smarmy language doesn't hide the all-too-obvious motives: to assert the supremacy of conservative family values, to denigrate the claims of the gay rights movement, and to try to enshrine one Christian or "missionary" brand of sexuality as the only official and legal style of union.
Seems these evangelicals feel all shook up unless the state enforces their form of belief. Their idea of social stability, however, is just what threatens us all. It creates the kind of parents who teach their children to hate and taunt their schoolmates who are children of lesbians or gay men. It gives licence to the kind of thugs who would beat a Matthew Shepard to death because he was gay. It breeds the toxic intolerance that drives gay youths to a 30 per cent higher suicide rate than other teens.
Heterosexual "intact families" a declining minority, already bask at the top of the social-approval ladder. Surely that's enough legitimacy for anyone. Besides, We just read in the New York Times that the divorce rate in the evangelical Christian heartland of the United States is 50 per cent above the national average.
The patriarchal system isn't working any more, people! It's plumb broke. Proclaim all you want, you're driving last century's model. Maybe, instead of copycatting gay pride days, you ought to learn something from feminists, lesbians and gays about real love and commitment in the arms of equality.
On second thought, nah. Equality is one thing you can't fake.
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