Gay Hate Speech

Ervan commented in my Vocabulary post about this, but I thought I'd reply in a separate post because it's really a different topic, and interesting enough (to me anyway) to deserve its own post.

He said:

Speaking of language: have you heard the latest "backlash" against LGBT folks?
Apparently, some are accusing them of "hate-speech" for using terms like "breeder" in reference to those damn hetero peeps.

I had not heard it, but I did my homework and found some interesting stuff on the net about "gay hate speech."

Provincetown

Richard Newell at Outright Libertarians discusses community reactions against "hate speech" in Provincetown. And also links to this article from the Boston Globe.

Trees and things has a story with some background on the history of hate crimes/hate speech in Provincetown, as well as the knowthyneighbor group.

A quick note: one of the instances of hate speech given in the Boston Globe article involved a Jamaican woman reporting that many (presumably non-Jamaican) gay residents harrassed her because they assumed that all Jamaicans were homophobic:

Winsome Karr, 45, originally from Jamaica, has worked in town since 2002. Lately, she said, the off-color comments stem from gay visitors who mistakenly believe that all Jamaicans share the views of an island religious sect that disagrees with homosexuality.

If this is true, I think it actually is unacceptable behavior. Being hostile towards immigrants of a certain group because of an overgeneralisation about their culture sounds like xenophobia to me. Just because you're gay/lesbian/bisexual/trans doesn't give you a free pass to be racist and xenophobic. Hell it doesn't even give you a free pass to be homophobic.

On the other hand, calling someone a bigot (another incident reported in the Globe article) because you see them signing a petition against same-sex marriage is much more of a gray area. I don't think it's hate speech, personally, but just calling somebody out on their bigoted action. There's no overgeneralization here - you just saw someone perform an act of bigotry. I only say it's a gray area because there might be a minor problem of misinterpretation of her actions. Maybe they signed the petition not understanding what it was calling for, or in a mistaken nod to "radical" queer notions (note, although I am opposed to many of the methods being used to campaign for same-sex marriage, and am ambivalent about the goal as well, I think that it is absolutely wrong to sign anti-same-sex-marriage petitions or support religious opponents of same-sex marriage, because in context they are inevitably also anti-gay)

GALHA Magazine in the UK

This article in the Guardian says that the Gay and Lesbian Humanists Association published in its magazine an article "that described immigrants as criminals of the worst kind and Islam as a barmy doctrine" (internal quotations reformatted). It also said that Islam was growing in the UK through "unrestrained and irresponsible breeding".

Other gay rights groups (not sure which ones) condemned the article.

GALHA actually seems to be a generally level-headed not-in-favor-of-bigotry organization, and anyway the ExCom did take action against the magazine's editor:

Galha's executive committee said the magazine's editor and deputy editor had been forced to resign over the comments, published in the autumn issue, and the magazine had been relaunched under a new editorial team. "We've done everything we can to rectify the situation," said the secretary of Galha, George Broadhead.

Most of GALHA's website content and events seem to be directed not at Muslim homophobia, but at Christian and Catholic homophobia, which makes sense, since there are far more Christians in Britain than Muslims.

I haven't found the full text of the GALHA piece, so I can't make a fully informed comment on it (although it does sounds pretty misconceived). Just a note: other than the "unrestrained breeding" comment, nothing else in the Guardian article indicates that this magazine piece was specifically anti-heterosexual, rather, it was anti-Islam. As I said above, nothing about being gay makes you immune to charges of racism and xenophobia.

"Burning Black Triangle" campaigns against "straight haters"

Ex-Gay Watch has a 2004 piece about PFOX's webmaster "Burning Black Triangle"'s personal website. Part of the mission statement of that site:

Many Homosexuals would like nothing better then to become an elite class among the Heterosexual population. We will not be pushed around by these heterophobes!

Look, this "elite class" of homosexuals isn't going to manifest, unless they somehow manage to get organized enough to start manipulating politics and blindsiding the media, numbing the nation with fear while accumulating more wealth and power for their rich friends. In other words, if they became the Republican party.

The Ex-Gay Watch piece is pretty long and has a lot of quotes from the BBT website. I couldn't read them all, as I would have to bang my head against the desk too hard, and it might startle the other office folk. Here's just one more, in reference to the Broward County v. Boy Scouts case (in which the judge ordered a school to allow the Boy Scouts to access its facilities, despite its disagreement with the Boy Scout's anti-gay policies):

The Boy Scouts of America... are caught up in the resurging wave of a Socialist movement in America. The Nazi's in Germany had a similar paramilitary group. The pedrastic leanings of the Nazi's tried to subvert Germany's youth this way too. Keep our Children safe from Homosexuality... Support your local scouts! OPPOSE QUEER AMERICA!

Homosexuals are closet Nazis? The sheer historical amnesia of this little tirade is astounding.

As a bitchy aside, Scouting worldwide was founded by Robert Baden-Powell, whose sexuality is the subject of some speculation. What is NOT the subject of speculation is that he commanded a regiment for the British in their colonial war against the Boer (who wanted self-governance).