Look out, Chicagoans. The gays are coming for your jobs.
That’s roughly the message a homophobic campaign flyer distributed over the weekend on the South Side was trying to send to voters, warning them that if Chicago mayoral candidate Lori Lightfoot gets elected, she’ll enact some amorphous all-gay agenda.
All bathrooms will be genderless! (THE HORROR!)
School children will be forced to learn “Gay History.” (SAY IT ISN’T SO!)
Lightfoot promptly and properly responded to the flyers by saying: “Hate has no place in Chicago.”
She’s right, of course.
But when the argument the hateful trot out to discredit an openly gay political candidate is a laughably absurd bunch of “Gay people are scary! Run for your lives!” claptrap, it feels to me, oddly, like a sign of progress.
Let me explain: Those trying to make an issue of Lightfoot’s sexuality don’t just look hateful — they look pathetic. They look dated and sad and stuck in time.
A record-breaking number of openly LGBT candidates won in the 2018 midterm elections, creating what many called a “Rainbow Wave.” Jared Polis of Colorado became the first openly gay man to win a gubernatorial race. Sharice Davids of Kansas became the state’s first openly gay member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Malcolm Kenyatta became the first openly gay person of color elected to the state legislature in Pennsylvania.
And now South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg may become the first openly gay presidential candidate, expected to join the crowded field vying for the Democratic presidential nomination.
What Lightfoot has in common with these other politicians is this: Her sexuality, for most, is a non-issue. LGBT people are entering political races and winning them because they’re good candidates — period. That doesn’t mean America has been cleansed of homophobia or that flyers like the ones aimed at Lightfoot and her wife can’t be politically damaging and harmful in other ways. Far from it.
But it’s a positive sign when fear-mongering of the sort found in those flyers is viewed more as preposterous hysteria than a serious political attack.
The flyer has a photo of Lightfoot with her arm around her wife. It reads: “The Feminist and Gay Movement Have Come Full Circle!”
Other lines from the flyer include: “The GAY EQUALITY ACT!!! ITS OUR TURN”; “All contracts, jobs, and employment newly assigned exclusively to gay people!”; and “With our people in City Hall, I promise to enforce the Gay Equality Act. All churches will abide by the gay marriage laws. All public restrooms will be gender free. All public schools will teach Gay History by mandate. School restrooms must be DE-SEGREGATED.”
If you believe any of that garbage, there’s no helping you. For the rest of us, it’s transparent nonsense, an anti-LGBT screed aimed only at people who already harbor bigoted beliefs.
And that’s where the problem lies. There are still people who would find a candidate’s sexuality disqualifying, regardless of their qualifications. But with each LGBT person elected to office, the number of people who think that way goes down.
When LGBT activists fought for the legalization of civil unions, opponents believed the sky would fall if such a thing was allowed. The sky didn’t fall.
When LGBT activists fought to legalize same-sex marriage, opponents believed the sky would fall and the earth would be torn asunder. Again, the sky didn’t fall and the earth kept right on spinning.
With each step toward equality, fewer people have the capacity to hate. That’s because we start to understand differences, and we stop fearing them.
Most of us, anyway.
Hatred eventually reaches a tipping point where it becomes more broadly rejected. Are those anti-Lightfoot flyers hateful? Yes. But they’re also almost comically feeble, a voice from the past screeching into a present that no longer cares.
Discussing the flyer Monday, Lightfoot said Chicagoans need to stand up to hate in all its forms, and she noted the New Zealand terrorist attack that killed 50 Muslims last week.
“Any attempts by anyone to propagate hate, we have to stand together as a city and denounce it unequivocally because hate can have no place in our city,” Lightfoot said.
Again, she’s right. There’s no writing off hatred in any form.
But political flyers warning voters of some bizarro-world gay apocalypse will now be met by most with a laugh and an extended eye roll.
And that, in its own way, is a comforting sign of progress.
rhuppke@chicagotribune.com
01-All No Sub,02-Pol,05-Z,19-Legal,22-Talk,26-Delivered
Columns,Feeds,Region: Chicago,City: Chicago,Opinion
via Commentary – Chicago Tribune https://ift.tt/2b2aIzV
March 18, 2019 at 04:51PM
Illinois Delivered 