Are hate and prejudice American values?

Twenty-one-year-old, Matthew Shepard?(pictured),?was murdered in 1998 in a field near Laramie, Wyoming. His death sparked a national outcry and led US President, Bill Clinton, to speak publicly about “hate and prejudice” not being “American values”.[2]?Shepard’s violent death at the hands of two, supposedly, heterosexual strangers he met in a bar the night of his denouement has become a fixed social descriptor for a broader battle against hate crimes. Shepard has become a martyr for this battle and a perfect symbol of its case for change.?

In Stephen Jimenez' book?The Book of Matt: Hidden Truths about the Murder of Matthew Shepard[3], he challenges the clear martyr narrative and instead claims that while the murder was heinous and brutal, Shepard was a drug user and, significantly, knew one of his assailants as a sexual partner. None of this came out in the trial.[4]

There is a battle that has erupted as a consequence of Jimenez’ book over Shepard’s legacy as a social symbol of gay rights pushing back against a hateful state or society, versus a more complex cultural story of a flawed human whose death still came at the hands of homophobia. Other elements could be said to have conspired to cause Shepard’s death, and seem to echo the history of social and cultural forces that have characterised the existence of homosexuality in America.

Social and cultural forces played pivotal roles in the emergence of a visible homosexual community, but neither easily explains how the homosexual community arrived to its present, tenuous, position in society. Like Shepard’s death, the polemic that has emerged fifteen years afterwards, has challenged the social explanation for his death and has proposed a more nuanced cultural explanation.

George Chauncey (1994) and Lisa Duggan’s (2001) more recent cultural forays into homosexuality across American history challenge the simple and very time constrained efforts by John D’Emilio (1983) and Carl Wittman (1969) to argue that homosexuality only came into existence because of capitalism or the Stonewall riots. The latter are claiming that homosexual existence can only be defined by those people having claimed a homosexual identity. But even within the social arguments of homosexual existence (Canaday, 2009) and (Mason, 2016), it appears that they accept that cultural forces play a significant role, despite special forces arraigned against them, in continuing the fight for acceptance.

These forces of reaction came as a response to cultural expression and visible identification of homosexuality. As the 20th?century continued, these expanded and contracted and expanded again as certain individuals took up the mantle of fighting for “traditional values” or “national security” from Joseph P. McCarthy to Anita Bryant to Fred Phelps.

For the purposes of consistency, I will use the term homosexual/homosexuality to describe what is now commonly referred to as the LGBTIQ+ community. Language, as we will see, plays a significant role in both the cultural and social framing of the homosexual community from within and without.

Humans have short memories. None are shorter than the homosexual community of the 1970s and 1980s proclaiming their arrival as a community with agency like the stork delivering a baby. Carl Wittman in his?“Gay Manifesto”?writes, “How it began? We don’t know”.[5]?John D’Emilio in?Capitalism and Self Identity summarises the “truth” as?

"Urban vice squads invaded private homes, made sweeps of lesbian and gay male bars, entrapped gay men in public places, and fomented local witch hunts. The danger involved in being gay rose even as the possibilities of being gay were enhanced. Gay liberation was a response to this contradiction."[6]

D’Emilio is partly correct but like much of the historiography that has emerged since his article in 1983, there was much more to it than that. His central argument is that gay men have not always existed but are a “product” of history.[7]?Further, he seeks to differentiate homosexual behaviour from homosexual identity and claim that the former does not indicate the latter. While that may, in part, be true what he is saying is that prior to the 1960s, there was no visible homosexual identity that had the requisite political agency.

George Chauncey in his book, Gay New York:?gender, urban culture, and the makings of the gay male world, 1890-1940?that was published eleven years after D’Emilio’s work, challenges this head on describing a “highly visible, complex and changing gay male world” prior to 1940. The absence of political agency is simply the product of a “subculture viewed (sic) as part of the spectacle that characterised the city”.[8]?As homosexual culture emerged, to begin with, there was almost an idle curiosity. The reaction only grew once the events, the balls – the visibility of the homosexual cultural community – began to grow in size that by the late 1920s and early 1930s the State started banning balls, censoring images and films and even prohibiting employment.?

Chauncey challenges D’Emilio and Wittman’s view that the Gay Liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s was the beginning of a serious cultural existence. He shows that as a “battery of laws criminalised sexual behaviour, association with each other, cultural styles and any efforts to speak on their own behalf”, there is ample evidence that homosexuals could “construct spheres of relative cultural autonomy”, develop “mutual dependence”, “foster alliances” and seek “emotional support”.[9]?By Wittman’s own admission, the San Francisco “ghetto” which affords the homosexual community self-protection is no different to what Chauncey describes of the earlier homosexual community prior to 1940 which was a “rejection of the dominant culture’s definition of sick, criminal and unworthy”.[10]

This last point captures how the broader public developed a “legitimate” opposition to homosexuality as the medical fraternity was the “dominant discourse promoting an anti-homosexual viewpoint”[11]. But as Chauncey uncovers, even within this supposedly wise medical assessment, was a study of “imprisoned working-class homosexuals” who outright “rejected the prescriptions of the dominant culture”.[12]?Hardly an example of “no history to fashion our goals and strategy”, as D’Emilio claims.[13]

But what of this dominant cultural rejection? What was driving this? What larger social and cultural frameworks were in play? World War Two was to be a watershed for homosexuality and in the post war era both a greater cultural expansion would incur an even more intense social reaction.

"There appears to be no other major culture in the world in which homosexual relations were so severely penalised."

Alfred Kinsey, 1953

In Margot Canaday’s 2009 book,?The Straight State, she describes how State agencies that “administered benefits”, rather than capitalism itself, developed “an interest in homosexuality”. This State sanctioned repression of “sex and gender non-conformity” was due to the, she uses the word “sudden”, visibility of gays and lesbians after World War Two.[14]?While world war certainly gave rise to a perhaps more visible and widespread homosexual culture, it was hardly sudden.

In the wake of Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” speech in 1941[15]?and Churchill’s “Iron Curtain” speech[16]arose a more confident and certain America with claims to be defending democracy against the spectre of communism. Into this nationalism against a common global enemy came the characterisation of internal enemies and “communists” everywhere, in “our midst”. Caught up in this was the McCarthy trials that associated homosexuals with communists – both were seen as cultural assaults on the very values that Americans held dear: the family. As this ideal took hold, it built on the earlier association of homosexuals as medically sick, and a picture of a State and a dominant culture took further shape to nominate what constituted a healthy “sexual identity”.[17]

The other social force that drove wider cultural values when it came to an oppressive State entity was race. In Lisa Duggan’s book, The Sapphire Slashers, she examines a specific murder trial related to a love affair between two women in 19th?century Memphis. In a post-Restoration south where black and white was a “rigid binary” with a clear hierarchy, lynching was “illegal but unpunished violence” against (mostly) black men.[18] As Duggan points out, lynching “constituted an attack on white dominance” and therefore, “motivated murder”[19]. The lesbian love tryst overlapped with this racial binary by being a “threat” to “white power and masculinity”.[20]

What is most fascinating about this event was the salaciousness with which a white, male dominated media described the people involved and held the power to influence people in the broader community about what to think of these “depraved”, “fallen” women[21]. Themes of family, morality and a newly coined term “Un American” sought to further entrench notions that the behaviour was imported, foreign, and like a virus, to be vaccinated against. Like the medical fraternity in the 1930s, and the State in the 1950s, the media held first dibs on getting to position homosexuality in the minds of 19th?century Americans and driving a mindset that would arrive with full and unrestrained force in the 21st?century.

Carol Mason in Oklohomo: Lessons in Unqueering America taps into a 2014 proposed ban on conversion therapy. The State of Oklahoma responded by proposing a bill that gave parents “the right to send children to conversion therapy”.[22]?A campaign led several years earlier by Sally Kern of the Oklahoma State Legislature said, “Homosexuality was more of threat than Islam or terrorism”[23]

Despite the social forces that have risen across the 19th, 20th?and 21st?centuries in reaction to an emerging homosexual culture, there can be no doubt that some of the cultural expression has arisen because of the repressive and hostile attempts from within sections of society to marginalise and repel advances in rights afforded to homosexuals. But even with the threats of death, including Matthew Shepard’s “lynching” in 1998, there remains a strong cultural framework and sense of community that has expanded and propelled homosexuality increasingly into the mainstream. While Bill Clinton tried to override more than a century of hate and intolerance by reclaiming Un American as a virtuous expression of being inclusive rather than exclusive, there is little doubt that the presidency of Donald J. Trump gave succour to those who continue to hold hateful and intolerant views of people of colour, alternative political views and people of diverse sex and gender identity.

If ever there was proof for the argument that culture trumps social in the way homosexual life and identity has prevailed, it comes down one simple idea: irrespective of whether you were born in a working class, middle class or upper-class family, there was a high probability that your sexuality wasn’t accepted. As confidence has grown, including from the social forces prosecuting the political cause, one family at a time has come to increasingly accept their son or daughter, thus challenging the rules the media, the State or the doctors have laid down. This cultural acceptance has driven social institutions and the dominant culture to retreat from their previous positions.

No one could argue that the situation for homosexuality globally is perfect. There are still countries for which the death penalty is applied, and yes, there is still clear and intense opposition from social groups within the United States, which may yet unfold on a Supreme Court currently tipped in conservatives favour. The fact is that the determination to be visible, the be out, to be fabulous and to be a “family” has driven the cultural expansion and social acceptance of homosexuality.??Nonetheless, despite Clinton’s ’98 call to arms that hate and prejudice are not American values, it is hard to accept that given not just the recent Republican presidency, but more than a century of persecution, this is not the case.

*Update - since the recent US midterm elections of 2022, the ability for the Democrats to hold back a red wave that was hotly anticipated is something of a glimmer of hope for minorities across America. This, coupled with the recent announcement by the Mormon Church that it would support same sex marriage and the passing of the Respect for Marriage Act; and that 12 Republicans crossed the floor to ensure its safe passage, is a clear sign social institutions are catching up to the cultural advances made decades ago.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Haynes, M. and Park, J., 2019.?Man Murdered In 1998 Anti-Gay Hate Crime Honoured At?

National Cathedral. [online] WUSA9. Available at: <https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/local/man-murdered-in-1998-anti-gay-hate-crime-honored-at-national-cathedral/65-6da039d0-93c8-4ee2-a494-2af571535d20> [Accessed 28 November 2020].

Associated Press Archive, 2015.?USA: CLINTON CONDEMNS BEATING TO DEATH OF GAY?STUDENT. [video] Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qm8D-ANXg8> [Accessed 28 November 2020].

Bindel, J., 2014.?The Truth Behind America’s Most Famous Gay-Hate Murder. [online] The?Guardian. Available at: <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/26/the-truth-behind-americas-most-famous-gay-hate-murder-matthew-shepard> [Accessed 28 November 2020].

Wittman, C., 1970.?Refugees from America: A Gay Manifesto. San Francisco. Red Butterfly?Publishing.

Roosevelt, F., 1941.?Annual Message (Four Freedoms). Available at:?

https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=70. [Accessed 28 November 2020]

Churchill, W., 1946.?Sinews of Peace "Iron Curtain Speech". Available at:?

https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/cold-war-on-file/iron-curtain-speech/. [Accessed 28 November 2020]

Secondary Sources

Jimenez, S., 2014.?Book of Matt: Hidden Truths About the Murder of Matthew Shepard.?South Royalton: Steerforth Press.

D'Emilio, J., 1983. Capitalism & Gay Identity. [online] pp.7, 18, 14. Available at:?

https://cominsitu.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/capitalism-gay-identity.pdf?[Accessed 28 November 2020].

Chauncey, G., 1994.?Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Makings of The Gay?Male World, 1890-1940. New York: Basic Books, pp.1-6.

Canaday, M., 2009. The Straight State, Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth Century?America. Oxford: Princeton Books, pp.1-16.

Duggan, L., 2001.?The Sapphic Slashers, Sex, Violence and American Modernity. Durham, NC:?Duke University Press, pp.4-11.

Mason, C., 2015.?Oklohomo: Lessons in Unqueering America. Albany: Suny Press, p.2

[1]?https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/local/man-murdered-in-1998-anti-gay-hate-crime-honored-at-national-cathedral/65-6da039d0-93c8-4ee2-a494-2af571535d20?. Accessed 28 Nov. 20.

[2]?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qm8D-ANXg8?. Accessed 28 Nov. 20.

[3]?Stephen Jimenez,?The Book of Matt: Hidden Truths about the Murder of Matthew Shepard, (South Royalton: Steerforth Press, 2014).

[4]?https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/26/the-truth-behind-americas-most-famous-gay-hate-murder-matthew-shepard?. Accessed 28 Nov. 20

[5]?Carl Wittman, Gay Manifesto, San Francisco, 1970.

[6]?John D’Emilio,?Capitalism & Gay Identity,?1983, p.7

[7]?Ibid, p.8

[8]?George Chauncey, Gay New York: gender, urban culture, and the makings of the gay male world, 1890-1940,?New York: Basic Books, 1994,?p.1.

[9]?Ibid, p. 3.

[10]?Ibid, p. 4.

[11]?Ibid, p. 5.

[12]?Ibid, p. 6.

[13]?John D’Emilio,?Capitalism & Gay Identity,?1983, p. 14.

[14]?Margot Canaday,?The Straight State,?Sexuality and Citizenship in Twentieth-Century America, 1-16. Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2009.?

[15]?Franklin D. Roosvelt, Four Freedoms Speech, 6 January 1941,?https://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=false&doc=70

[16]?Winston Churchil, Sinews of Peace Speech, 5 March 1946,?https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/resources/cold-war-on-file/iron-curtain-speech/

[17]?Margot Canaday,?The Straight State, Ibid, p. 14.

[18]?Lisa Duggan,?The Sapphic Slashers, Sex, Violence and American Modernity, Durham, Duke University Press, 2001, p. 4

[19]?Ibid. p. 8.

[20]?Ibid. p. 9.

[21]?Ibid. p. 11

[22]?Carol Mason, Oklohomo: Lesson in UnQueering America, Albany, Suny Press, 2015, p .2

[23]?Ibid, p 2