Some kid in Eliza’s fourth-grade class recently used an objectionable word to describe homosexuals. The kid was feeling pretty good when the rest of the class chuckled. That’s when Eliza stood up. Figuratively, I mean.
Eliza is my 10-year-old granddaughter. She has these big beautiful dark eyes that can pierce your soul. She likes Judy Blume books and writing about animals. She is quiet and introspective — the opposite of her 8-year-old brother, an extrovert who can charm an Eskimo into buying a year’s supply of ice. Usually the only thing that gets her dander up is her younger brother, who annoys her the way younger brothers always seem to do. But the slur this kid shouted out in class struck a nerve.
Eliza raised her hand and said she thought gays are pretty much like other people. She didn’t like the nasty word. Further, she said, she thought gays ought to be able to get married just like anyone else.
Apparently it was not a popular opinion. Eliza’s teacher told my daughter at a parent-teacher conference it was a good example of Eliza being an independent thinker. She doesn’t cave in to peer pressure, is the way the teacher put it. But it was more than that.
Eliza did something more of us ought to do. We’ve all heard the casual slurs and most of us have let them pass. Most of us are not that brave when it comes to peer pressure. We pretend we don’t hear it.
We have finally come to a point in this country when most people are afraid to utter bigoted remarks in public. The use of most racial and ethnic slurs are frowned upon in good company. Gay-bashing seems to be the one exception, but maybe that is changing too.
The actor from "Grey’s Anatomy," who slammed a fellow actor on the show for being gay, got into hot water. The former pro-basketball player, who declared he would never have accepted a homosexual in the locker room, lost his job representing the National Basketball Association during its recent All-Star weekend. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was roundly criticized last week when he took it upon himself to declare homosexuality as immoral. But then you have the example of Ann Coulter thinking it was funny to call Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards a "faggot."
Coulter has become the pinup girl for the far right because of her over-the-top comments (and short skirts). She predicted that by using the word "faggot," she would outrage the liberal community. Coulter earns fat fees for speaking engagements and writing right-wing screeds. She knows what turns on her audience and particularly enjoys using gay slurs as part of her verbal arsenal. She previously referred to Elizabeth Taylor as a "fag hag."
It is interesting the right wing has such hostility toward gays. Inside the Republican Party, there is more tolerance for gays than in most organizations. It has at least as many gay members in Washington as Democrats, if not more. The Log Cabin Republicans stay loyal even while their party bashes gays to win votes. But the outrageous Coulter has unlikely defenders.
In her recent Daily News column, Christine Flowers espouses that view by trivializing Coulter’s use of the term "faggot." Flowers wrote if Coulter had used the word "vagina" instead, she would have been safe from liberal outrage. Flowers was referring to the recent incident where three female students were suspended from school for using the word "vagina" while reading an excerpt from "The Vagina Monologues." The students were treated as heroines by the liberal media.
The analogy escapes me. Flowers admits "vagina" is perfectly acceptable. Yet she argues it is the prerogative of the school principal to ban the use of the word. Well then it is our prerogative to protest such silliness. For the Coulter incident to be analogous, "faggot" and "vagina" would have to be equally acceptable or unacceptable. But one word describes a body part and the other is a slur against a group of people. Where is the analogy?
Our problem with the gay slur (and Eliza’s too) isn’t that we are prissy P.C. types. Words matter. It may take sticks and stones to break your bones, but words can sometimes leave an even deeper scar. We seem to realize that when it comes to other bigoted slurs, but it is supposed to somehow be different when applied to homosexuals. Use of the slur blinds us to individual worth and makes group-hate so much easier. It is what allowed police at one time to harass innocent people in Rittenhouse Square with the silent assent of the rest of us. It is what has, in the extreme, sometimes led to innocent people getting beaten up and even murdered.
I guess that’s why I’m so proud of Eliza. At 10, she has learned what others haven’t learned in a lifetime. She has learned to stand up and be counted while some others laugh or remain silent. She is my hope that, each day, the old world is dying and a new one is replacing it.
Eliza will never be one of those snickering in Coulter’s audience, either.
